CHAPTER IV.
INDUSTRY, TRADE, AND LIFE IN FLORENCE.
THE large sums which were continually expended by the Government as
well as the citizens of Florence, from the middle of the thirteenth
century, for public objects—such as the enlargement, fortification,
and embellishment of the city, for palaces and the residences of
officers of the State, bridges and streets, churches and convents,
hospitals and charitable institutions—would lead us to infer pecuniary
means apparently out of proportion with the extent and resources
of the territory and the site of the town, excluded as it was from
the unrestricted use of the sea route till far into the fifteenth
century. The great industrial activity and unusual intelligence of
the inhabitants profited by favourable and conquered unfavourable
circumstances so far, that while the Pisans still commanded the port
which bore the name of their town, and was afterwards replaced by that
of Leghorn—while Lucca possessed the harbour of Motrone, and Siena
that of Talamone, and could thus shut out the inland state from the
sea—the trade and industry of Florence had long surpassed theirs.
The political importance attained by the great guilds so soon after
their institution shows how firmly rooted was their power, even at
the commencement of their existence, and that they really represented
the most respected and affluent part of the community. We are vividly
reminded of these corporations when we stand before the magnificent
building of Or San Michele, or, at the eastern end of the Piazza della
Signoria, gaze upon the arms graven in stone upon the residence of the
Magistrate of Trade, who had to decide in all disputes and questions
of competition between the magistrates of the different guilds. Four
of these guilds come under consideration when we treat of industrial
and commercial activity on a large scale—viz., the cloth-weavers,
merchants or traders in foreign cloth, silk-weavers, and money-changers.
The woollen manufacture arose perhaps earliest of all, to satisfy
one of the most important demands; and though it is doubtful whether
native productions are spoken of in a Lucchese document of the year
840 respecting woollen and silk goods, we certainly do not err in the
inference that Florence knew and practised this branch of industry
at least from the time of her political rise, after the death of
the Countess Matilda. In the beginning of the following century,
a corporation of cloth-weavers existed, whose consuls signed a
treaty of peace between their fellow-citizens and Siena in the year
1202. Thirty-seven years later, this branch of industry received an
important accession from the Lombard order of the Humiliates, founded
by Bishop Pietro Manadori. They settled first in the neighbourhood
of the city, where the extensive buildings and gardens of the Villa
San Donato are now to be seen, and finally, removed in 1256, to the
monastery of Ognissanti, where they were long actively employed in
their own interests and the welfare of the community who protected
them, and did much to promote and perfect the woollen manufacture. On
the neighbouring banks of the Arno arose workshops, houses for dyeing
and washing wool, warehouses and booths of these brethren, who also
aided essentially in the draining and cultivation of a somewhat marshy
district. By the time the useful activity of the order slackened (about
1330 it entirely ceased), the Florentines had learnt all they could
teach, and the city was full of cloth-weavers, as the names of several
streets still remind us. From the ordinary kinds of cloth, with which
they began, when the finer still came from the Levant, they advanced
to better and best qualities, and strict regulations after the fashion
of the guilds in the Middle Ages, certainly not to the disadvantage
of the producers and their wares, guaranteed their excellence. The
extensive sale and higher prices testified to their value. The wool was
imported principally from France and Flanders, and also in considerable
quantity from England and Scotland, especially from the wealthy abbeys
and convents; and in the eighth decade of the thirteenth century we
hear of Florentine agents in London buying up the wool for several
years in advance. These agents stood in connection with no less than
two hundred convents.[38]
In close and varied connection with the Arte della Lana was that of
the Mercatanti, usually called Arte di Calimala, the oldest statutes
of which date from 1339. As the native cloth manufacture did not
suffice for the demand, and at first only supplied ordinary kinds,
French and Flemish cloth was imported from abroad in great quantity,
in a raw state, to Florence, where it was dyed, shorn and dressed, and
returned to foreign countries, often to the place whence it had come.
The skill of the dyers and other workmen in Florence, whose processes
long remained a carefully guarded secret, made this profitable trade
a monopoly until the rise of manufactures in the western countries of
Europe. The guild had its representatives, couriers, settlements, and
hostelries in France. It is clear that only the most conscientious
honesty could sustain their credit, wherefore the strictest statutes
respecting the different qualities of the cloth, the dyeing, and all
other things to be taken into consideration, regulated the manufacture
as well as the sale. The dyers formed a special guild, which, however,
was subordinate to the consuls of Calimala, to whom also, rather
singularly, the gold and silver smiths were subject. Another guild
belonging to that of the Arte della Lana was that of the washers and
combers of wool, which still exists as Compagnia dei Battilani, and
has its meeting-place in Via delle Ruote, near Via San Gallo. Its
church, whose sacristy is adorned by the portrait of Michele di Lando,
was publicly exhibited every year on the feast of the Assumption of
the Virgin, the high festival of the company. That such subordinate
connections gave rise to misunderstandings in troublous times, and that
new guilds arose without being able to maintain themselves permanently,
has been already stated.
In the year 1338 the number of workshops (_botteghe_) of the clothiers’
guild amounted to more than 200, which supplied from seventy to eighty
thousand pieces of cloth at the price of 1,200,000 gold florins, the
third of which sum at least remained in the city as workmen’s wages,
not to mention the profits of cloth merchants. The number of workmen
amounted to 30,000. In the first years of this century the number of
workshops had been a third more, and that of the pieces of cloth above
100,000; but the quality and price were lower, as they had not then
the excellent English wool. The number of the magazines (_fondachi_)
of the Calimala guild amounted to twenty. These imported yearly more
than 10,000 pieces of foreign cloth, to the worth of 300,000 gold
florins, for sale in the city itself, besides those which were again
exported.[39] Among the proprietors of such magazines, we find the
names Acciaiuoli, Alberti, Albizzi, Bardi, Buonaccorsi, Capponi,
Corsini, Peruzzi, Pucci, Ricci, Ridolfi, Rinuccini—names which are
mentioned a hundred times in the annals of the city, and which mostly
are still heard there. Even in the second half of the thirteenth
century, and therefore some time before their political power, these
two guilds were very active in France, and we find their agents in
1281, beside those of the Genoese in Nismes, where, fifteen years
later, we meet with the representatives of the trading companies of
the Cerchi, Mozzi, Spini, Scali, and Folchi. In 1325, Filippo Villani
and Cione di Lapo Ghini conducted the business of the Peruzzi and the
Scali as Florentine consuls at Paris. The great fairs of Beaucaire and
Forcalquier, with those of Provins, Lagny, Troyes, Bar-sur-Aube, etc.,
were of the greatest importance for this branch of industry.[40] In
Italy, Venice was an important emporium for this trade, for Germany
and Hungary as well as for the Levant. Till a few years ago, the
extensive barn-like building which served for the dyeing and washing
of the wool was still to be seen on the Lung’arno above the Uffizi;
and on several palaces we still see the rings for holding the wooden
staves on which the woollen fabrics were hung out as an indication that
the houses belonged to the guild. The guild-hall of the Arte della
Lana was the present Canonica of Or San Michele, where the coat of
arms—the lamb with the flag, and the comb with the lily above it, in
a blue field—still reminds one of its former destination, as well as
an inscription of the date of 1308. The guild-hall of the Calimala,
which had as a device a golden eagle standing over a ball of wool in
a red field, stood in the little street leading from the Piazza della
Signoria to the New Market, which is now called Calimaruzza: though it
was converted into private houses after the abolition of the guild, the
old devices may still be seen upon them. The street leading from the
New to the Old Market still preserves the name Calimala, respecting
the origin of which only untenable conjectures exist, and which in
its present aspect reminds us as little as does any part of the whole
centre of the old city of the former flourishing state of the trade.[41]
Of no less importance, and perhaps hardly less ancient than the cloth
manufactures, was the weaving of silk, which, after its introduction
into Sicily by King Roger, had been in a short time transplanted to
Central Italy, if, indeed, it was not previously cultivated in Lucca.
Of all the great branches of industry of the Middle Ages, this is the
only one which has preserved a certain importance down to our day.
The Arte della Seta was usually called the Por Sta. Maria, after the
St. Mary’s Gate, or Porta Regina, opposite the Ponte Vecchio, at the
entrance of the street still called Via di Por Sta. Maria (usually
Mercato Nuovo), where the former guild-hall still stands, near the
church of Sta. Maria sopra Porta, in the Via di Capaccio, distinguished
by the coat of arms, a closed red door in a white field. The
silk-weavers appear already, in the twelfth and oftener still in the
thirteenth century, as a corporation in public acts and treaties, in
the conclusions of peace and other compacts. In the list of the masters
of the guild in the year 1225 their number is given as more than 350,
and probably they had even then statutes; but the oldest still extant
date from 1335, and therefore from a time when this industry seems to
have attained considerable importance under the Guelfs from Lucca, who
had emigrated to Florence in great numbers in 1316. The dyeing of silk
was pursued here with great skill, and in particular the crimsoned
tissue stood in high reputation in the fourteenth century. We shall
speak later of the most brilliant epoch, the fifteenth century. The
Vicolo della Seta, in the vicinity of the former hall, and the Via de’
Velluti, on the left bank of the river, near Via Maggio, where numerous
silk-weavers and other mechanics originally lived, and where the still
flourishing family of the Velluti took its rise, remind us of their
former great activity.[42]
Though the branches of industry we have mentioned contributed much
to increase the wealth of the Florentine people, and make their
name famous in foreign lands, they were not the chief source of
national wealth. The business of money-changing seemed thoroughly at
home here, and it is not surprising that the invention of bills of
exchange, which we first meet with in 1199 in the relations between
England and Italy, should be ascribed to Florence. The money trade
seems to have flourished as early as the twelfth century, towards
the end of which a Marquis of Ferrara raised money on his lands
from the Florentines. In 1204 we find the money-changers as one of
the corporations. In 1228, and probably from the beginning of the
century, several Florentines were settled in London as changers to
King Henry III.; and here, as in France, they conducted the money
transactions of the Papal chair in conjunction with the Sienese. Their
oldest known statute, which established rules for the whole conduct
of trade (Statuto dell’Università della Mercatanzia) drawn up by a
commission consisting of five members of the great guilds, is dated
1280. Their guild-hall was in the Via Calimaruzza, opposite that of the
Calimala, and was later included in the buildings of the post-office,
on the site of which, after the post-office had been removed to what
was formerly the mint, a building was lately erected, similar in
architecture to the Palazzo of the Signoria, which stands opposite.
Their coat of arms displayed gold coins laid one beside another on
a red field. At the end of the thirteenth century their activity,
especially in France and England, was extraordinarily great. But if
wealth surpassing all previous conception was attained, it not seldom
involved loss of repute, and those who pursued the calling ran the
risk of immense losses from fiscal measures to the carrying out of
which they themselves contributed, as well as those which were caused
by insolvency or dishonesty. These losses would indeed have ruined the
trade and credit of the Florentines in the fourteenth century, had
not their resources been so varied, and their intelligent activity
so great. The names of Tuscans and Lombards, and that of Cahorsiens
in France, no longer indicated the origin, but the trade of the
money-changers, who drew down the ancient hatred upon themselves which
the _fœneratores_ had incurred from too frequently confounding usury
with rightful gains. It is this which the _Divina Commedia_ describes
where it speaks of shadows sitting mournfully shielding themselves
from the glow of vapours with their hands, and with bags round their
necks on which they feed their eyes.[43] France possessed at this time
the greatest attraction for the Florentine money-makers, although they
were sometimes severely oppressed, which is sufficient proof that
their winnings were still greater than their occasional losses. In
1277, they, with other Italians, were obliged to compound for a sum of
120,000 gold florins, when King Philip III. took advantage of a decree
of the Council to proceed against the usurers, a manœuvre which Philip
IV. the Fair repeated fourteen years later.
If Florentines suffered among those prosecuted by this king for
‘money coining on the Seine,’[44] Florentines certainly aided him in
other extortions and dishonesties in France and in Flanders, and it
was the bank of the Peruzzi which paid the sum by means of which the
constables of Philip the Fair, and chief among them the Tuscan knight
and financier Musciatto Franzesi, accomplished the attempt on Pope
Boniface VIII. in 1303 at Anagni.[45] New oppressions arose under
Philip VI., in whose person the line of Valois ascended the French
throne. He not only again debased the coinage for the necessities of
the English war, but also extorted a heavy forced loan from all foreign
merchants and bankers, and furthermore assisted the Duke of Athens,
after his expulsion, in his reprisals against the Florentine trade. But
notwithstanding all partial losses, and the great catastrophes which
befell the Florentine trade in the same century, it remained, even
in the following, mistress of the French money transactions, and, in
certain respects, of French trade.
The Florentine money market suffered the severest blow from England.
At the end of the twelfth century there were already Florentine houses
of exchange in London, and if Pisans, Genoese, and Venetians managed
the trade by sea in the times of the Crusades, it was the Florentines
mostly who looked after financial affairs in connection with the Papal
chair, as we have seen. Numerous banks appeared about the middle of the
thirteenth century, among which the Frescobaldi, a family of ancient
nobility, and as such attainted by the prosecutions against it, took
the lead, and were referred to the custom-house of the country for
re-imbursement of the loans made to the kings Edward I. and II. Later,
the two great trading companies of the Bardi and Peruzzi came into
notice, and with their money Edward III. began the French war against
Philip of Valois. But even in the first year of this war, which began
with an unsuccessful attack upon Flanders, the king suspended the
payments to the creditors of the State by a decree of May 6, 1339. The
advances made by the Bardi amounted to 180,000 marks sterling, those
of the Peruzzi to above 135,000, according to Giovanni Villani,[46]
who knew only too well about these things, since he was ruined by them
himself to the extent of ‘a sum of more than 1,355,000 gold florins,
equivalent to the value of a kingdom.’ Bonifazio Peruzzi, the head of
the house, hastened to London, where he died of grief in the following
year. The blow fell on the whole city, for, as may be supposed,
numerous families were interested in the business of the great houses,
which not only counted a number of partners or shareholders, but had
also money from all sides, from the city and from foreign countries,
to keep as deposits or to invest profitably. The injury to credit was
very threatening. In the year 1326, the fall of one of the oldest and
most important of the banking companies, that of the Scali, Amieri, and
Petri, had occurred just as the war against Castruccio, the lord of
Lucca, took an evil turn. But the position of affairs was now far more
critical. Both houses began at once to liquidate, and the prevailing
disturbance contributed not a little to the early success of the
ambitious plans of the Duke of Athens. The real bankruptcy ensued,
however, in January 1346, when new losses had occurred in Sicily on
account of the measures of the French Government which we have already
mentioned. The banks of the Acciaiuoli, Bonaccorsi, Cocchi, Antellesi,
Corsini, da Uzzano, Perendoli, and many smaller ones, as well as
numerous private persons, were involved in the ruin. ‘The immense
loans to foreign sovereigns,’ adds Villani, ‘drew down ruin upon our
city, the like of which it had never known.’ There was a complete lack
of cash. Estates in the city found no purchasers at a third of their
former value; those in the country were disposed of at two-thirds their
value, and fell even lower than this. The chronicler who gives us this
sad information was imprisoned for debt on account of the failure of
the Bonaccorsi, whose partner he was.
As the first result of these misfortunes was the impoverishment of
numerous families, the community at large was soon involved in it; as
the revenues diminished quickly with the public affluence, money was
only to be obtained at unheard-of usurious interest, and the _prestige_
of the Florentine trade lost considerably in foreign countries.
The famine and pestilence of 1347 and 1348, the oppressions of the
mercenary bands and the heavy expenses caused by them, the cost of the
war against Pope Gregory XI., and finally the tumult of the Ciompi,
left Florence no peace for a long time. The aristocracy, which came
into power in 1382, at last succeeded in restoring the equilibrium,
opening new resources to industry and trade, and rendering the old
connections again secure. Thus, at the beginning of the fifteenth
century industry was again flourishing in all its branches in Florence,
financial operations were extended, and foreign countries filled with
Florentine banks and mercantile houses. After the fall of Pisa the
last restrictions on navigation were removed, and it was no longer
necessary, as in past times, to hire French vessels in Aiguesmortes
for conveyance to the insecure and small roadsteads of Motrone or
Pietrasanta, or to conclude treaties with the Sienese for the use of
the bad and pestilential harbour of Talamone. The number of Florentine
settlements and offices had been already very considerable a century
earlier. In London the most important firms had their representatives,
Bruges was the chief place for Flanders, and we shall see how these
connections lasted to the time of the greatest splendour of the
Medici. France is frequently mentioned. The official representatives
of the Florentine nation resided in the capital, while numerous
houses established themselves in Lyons, in Avignon (since the removal
of the Papal chair to this town), in Nismes, Narbonne, Carcassonne,
Marseilles, &c. Large transactions were made in Upper Italy at Venice
and Genoa, at Castel di Castro in Sardinia, in Apulia, Barletta, and at
Palermo in the island of Sicily; Rome and Naples saw in the fifteenth
century the greater part of the banking business and a considerable
portion of other trade in Florentine hands. There were Florentine
colonies in Majorca, at Tunis, at Chiarenza in the Morea, in Rhodes
under the supremacy of the Knights of St. John, and in Cyprus under
that of Guy de Lusignan; while Florentine merchants carried trade into
Asia Minor, Armenia, the Crimea, far into Central Asia and Northern
China. The house of the Peruzzi alone had sixteen counting-houses in
the fourteenth century, from London to Cyprus.
The prudence and careful calculation which were in general
characteristic of the Florentine trade prevailed in everything relating
to the transmission and receipt of money and the term of payments.
Not only have we general rules from Balducci Pegolotti, in the first
thirty years of the fourteenth century, as to how they should proceed
in calculating the money to be paid abroad, but detailed notes on the
fluctuations of the money market in consequence of fairs, expeditions
of galleys, regular proceedings of the State, purchase of wool, etc.,
in the most important places, as Naples, Genoa, Bologna, Venice,
Avignon, Paris, Bruges, Barcelona, etc. The Papal court, with which
such extensive business was pursued—whether Rome or Avignon, or for
the time another town, were its residence—seemed to the experienced
Florentine to deserve especial remark. ‘Wherever the Pope goes, money
is dear, because from all sides one has to pay so much to him. When he
goes away, an ebb sets in, because the members of his court, if they
are not rich, must borrow.’ The times when the bills fell due were
regulated generally by the distance. An order drawn at Florence on
Pisa or Venice was due on the fifth day after the money was paid in;
in Rome and Genoa it was the fifteenth day; in Naples the twentieth;
in Provence, Majorca, and France, the sixtieth; in Flanders the
seventieth; in England the seventy-fifth; and in Spain, after three
months. The contracting parties could, however, make arrangements at
will.[47] According to the report of an annalist,[48] seventy-two
exchange houses and tables were counted in Florence, in the Mercato
Nuovo and its vicinity, in the year 1422, and the sum of money in
circulation was calculated at two millions of gold florins; while the
value of the wares, the letters of credit, and other property defied
calculation.
While industry and trade had accumulated great wealth in Florence, the
spirit of the community accorded well with it. In spite of the many
wars and other disturbances the city rose to such prosperity in the
first decades of the fourteenth century (when its territory included
only Pistoja, Colle, and Arezzo, and therefore scarcely a third of
Tuscany in later times) that Giovanni Villani could remark in 1336-1338
that her revenues exceeded those of the kings of Naples, of Sicily,
and of Aragon. With all the changes after the rise of the new wealthy
families at the beginning of the century the style of living had
remained simple, and even continued so after the luxury of the court of
Anjou, partly supported by Florentine money, had affected Florentine
manners unfavourably; yet there was no stinting for public works. The
citizens were in general beneficent: the number and importance of the
charitable institutions prove it. As with the Government, so with the
corporations, a lively sense was always displayed of the dignity and
grandeur of the city and community. And even if that oft-mentioned
decree of the republic of the year 1294,[49] according to which the
architect Arnolfo shall be charged to design the model of a cathedral
church ‘of such splendour that human power should be unable to invent
anything grander or more beautiful, in consideration that a people of
noble origin ought so to arrange its affairs that even in the exterior
works a wise and lofty mind may be recognised’—even if this decree
appears to be a production of the sixteenth instead of the thirteenth
century, there are not wanting reliable records which announce the same
spirit, and, still more, works which testify to it. In the year 1296,
legacies in aid of this church were made a duty for every one; notaries
were obliged to enjoin them in drawing up wills, and omissions were
punished.[50] In 1338 the community granted subsidies for this same
building, ‘that a work so beautifully and honourably begun might be
continued and completed still more beautifully, and the grants made
by the community appear liberal and considerable.’ When a pavement for
the Piazza della Signoria was ordered in June 1351 it was especially
insisted upon that the dignity and importance of the whole town were
concerned, as well as the stateliness and beauty of the palace of the
chief magistrate of state. When in August 1373 the public reading and
exposition of the _Divina Commedia_ was applied for and permitted, the
petitioners assigned as the ground of their request the wish that,
even if otherwise unlearned, they themselves, their fellow-citizens,
children, and posterity, be instructed in eloquence, guided to virtue,
and warned against vice. When in 1409 the fabrication of the bronze
gates of the shrine of St. Zanobius was entrusted to Lorenzo Ghiberti,
it was said that he must have regard to the ancient veneration for the
saint, as well as to the high dignity of the community, and respect to
the cathedral in which this work was to have the most honourable place
possible allotted to it. At the first mention of the building of the
Foundling Hospital, begun in 1421 at the expense of the silk-weavers’
company, it is remarked that ‘this beautiful building is destined
for the reception of those whose father and mother have maliciously
forsaken them, contrary to the rights of nature.’ As the silk guild
here, so was the woollen guild in Sta. Maria del Fiore entrusted with
the guidance of the works, beside the regular building committee (Opera
del Duomo). The share of the companies in the building and decoration
of Or San Michele is repeatedly mentioned. As a matter of course, all
that concerned the adornment of the city, the churches not excepted,
must be subordinate to the requirements of safety and defence. In
1353, when the people were fighting against Giovanni Visconti, and
afterwards, when the enterprise of Cardinal d’Albornoz for regaining
Romagna for the Holy See gave a prospect of unsettled times, and the
disorder of the freebooters led by the Knight of St. John of Montreal
(Fra Moriale) began, the money held in readiness for the bell-tower
was employed in enlisting men. As late as October 1368, when the city
fell to bickerings with the Emperor Charles IV., which were then, as
usual, made use of by the Visconti for the extension of their own power
over Tuscany, and when their mercenary bands penetrated to the gates of
Florence, a decree was passed that the sums destined for the completion
of Sta. Maria del Fiore should be employed for strengthening and
repairing the walls. The architects of the church were soon afterwards
commanded to build a wall along the river, from the Castell Altafronte,
which is still in partial preservation, and which joins the Uffizi,
built in the sixteenth century, to the Rubaconte bridge, and to level
the road ‘as should appear most suitable to the adornment of the city.’
A people which accomplished such great things must have possessed
unusual civic virtues, apart from their more brilliant intellectual
qualities, and spite of the weaknesses and faults which the greatest
of the sons of Florence has scourged in angry love and loving anger. A
despot can in a short time heap splendour on splendour; the activity
of spirit of a popular commonwealth is different and more steady. The
two free States in which we meet with the most perfect expression of
this, Venice and Florence, show that this is not dependent on the form
of government, but on a firm will and clear conception. The Florentine
people combined these in a high degree. In the midst of political
troubles and civil disturbances they constantly advanced; the final
gain was greater than the losses through momentary retrogression,
however violent. The people were contented, frugal, industrious, and
attached at all times to ancient customs. That great changes were
gradually made in customs and modes of life was according to the law
of all ages, and of natural development, though some aspects of it did
not seem the most pleasing. Manners and feelings of those days, which
the Paradiso in the ‘Divina Commedia’ describes with such incomparable
beauty and at the same time with such melancholy, when ‘in the old
encircling walls, Florence was peaceful, moderate, and modest,’ the
‘civic life so calm, so beautiful, the society so reliable,’—a state
of things which the poet closes with the time ‘before Frederic had
fought out his quarrel,’[51]—they indeed lay far behind him who has
lent to their memory form and duration for all future time. But the
greatest change was to come after his death. The influence of the
numerous foreigners, especially the French and Frenchified Neapolitans
who came with the Angevins and their regents, was by no means
beneficial; and the various sumptuary laws which were to restrain the
women point especially to the example set in 1326, by Charles Duke of
Calabria and his consort, Marie of Valois, the parents of the unhappy
Joanna I., with their whole court. Then came the times of the Duke of
Athens; soon after, the pestilence with its evil results, which are
open to all in the stories of the ‘Decamerone.’ Giovanni Villani, who
died in the year 1348, says once that the Florentines of the thirteenth
century in their simple life and poverty achieved more than those of
his time in the midst of their wealth and luxury.
Nevertheless, the age was in many respects simple, and remained so
even after communication had been rendered easier in all directions,
wealth accumulated, and more connections formed. The houses were
simple, with their windows closed, not yet by panes of glass, but by
wooden shutters, with their steep staircases and narrow courtyards;
the furniture and the meals were simple, even of the foremost citizens
and high magistrates; the clothing of the men was simple—and all
this lasted to the fifteenth century, and during a part of it. The
loggie have been already spoken of, in which, about the middle of this
century, important family affairs were still despatched. At weddings
and other family festivals, those who were invited assembled before
the house, which often had not space to hold them all—as may be
easily comprehended, when we find that the statutes of 1415 decreed
that the number of the guests on both sides should not exceed two
hundred. Notwithstanding Dante’s complaint that a father, at the birth
of a daughter, thought with terror on the time of her marriage, the
dowry was still, a century after his time, small in comparison with
the wealth of the family. They saved at home, in order to gain means
for public purposes, for ecclesiastical buildings and endowments,
for beneficent institutions and patriotic festivals. The building
of churches and hospitals came before the expenses for decorating
town-house and villa. The public festivals were brilliant, and united
spiritual and worldly interests. First in rank were those on the day of
John the Baptist, the patron saint of the city, to which all the towns,
villages, and _protégés_ of the territory brought votive offerings, and
races were held in the afternoon, a custom which dated from 1288, when
the Florentines had besieged Arezzo on that day. Races were customary
on other festivals also, either with riders or free horses (_barberi_),
as in the present day in Florence and other towns of Italy. The prizes
consisted of large pieces of gold and silk brocades, called _palio_.
Beside the feast of St. John, in which the whole city with the signoria
and other magistrates took a part, and that on St. Peter’s day, various
others celebrated patriotic events. Thus the feast on St. Romulus’ day
commemorated deliverance from the threatening hordes of Radagaïs; that
on St. Barnabas’ day the victory over the Ghiellines on Campaldino in
1279; that on St. Anne’s day the expulsion of the Duke of Athens; St.
Victor’s day the victory over the Pisans in 1364. Church festivals were
frequently united with mysteries in Carmine, Sto. Spirito, San Felice,
&c.; representations which we find shared in by the highest classes,
and customary even in the second half of the fifteenth century. Various
kinds of amusements took place in the open air; and the history of
the Carraia bridge tells of the accident which occurred on May 1,
1304, when the bridge fell in, during a representation of the infernal
regions by means of a grand apparatus.
May 1, the Calendimaggio, was the high day for the people, and the
green branches on the door-posts have preserved the name of May in
Italian as well as in German (and in English). It was on this day that
Dante first saw Beatrice Portinari at an entertainment for children.
Among the popular festivals were the Epiphany (_Befana_), celebrated
by processions and masquerades, which are still carried on; and the
Ferragosto, the Roman August holidays, where a donkey-race took place,
with a buffalo-race as counterpart. Public games in which physical
strength and, still more, agility were brought into play, delighted
high and low. Among these were _calcio_ and _maglio_: the first of
which was played on the large oblong square, afterwards shut in by
rows of houses which bears the name of Prato d’Ognissanti; the latter
in the vicinity of the Piazza San Marco, where the Via del Maglio
still reminds us of it. In the one game the feat consisted in throwing
a ball with the hand; in the other it was propelled by a wooden
hammer weighted with iron. We shall speak farther on of the tourneys,
exercises, and festivals of the high, and the merry popular gatherings
of the _potenze_. There was never a lack of music. The trumpeters and
other musicians of the Signoria were never absent from any procession,
and cheerful tunes accompanied every festival. Boccaccio’s tales
and the frescoes in the Camposanto of Pisa show how music formed an
integral part of social life. The most renowned instrumental performer
who flourished in the second half of the fourteenth century, Francesco
Landino, enchanted all by his delicate performances on the harpsichord,
even in his old age and blindness.
Such were life and manners in the times preceding the rise of the
Medici to power. The original simplicity no longer existed, and could
no longer exist; but, in the tone and conduct of public as well as
private life, the good old traditions still retained their influence.
When the Romans and Neapolitans mocked at the frugal habits of the
Florentines, the Florentine, seeing the anarchy and degeneracy of the
former, and the effeminacy and instability of the latter, could point
to his beautiful city, and the order in his private life, in which,
though everything was conducted with the most scrupulous economy, the
necessaries of life, and, in many cases, its luxuries, were always
to be found. In Florence we find no Roman and no Neapolitan in trade
and industry; but in both Naples and Rome, the principal business
was in the hands of the Florentines, whose gains were profitable to
their native city. Among these, in the fourteenth century, none was so
conspicuous as Niccolò Acciaiuoli, who became a great and influential
man at the court of Anjou, and lord of extensive possessions in Apulia
and Greece, but whose heart belonged to his native city, in the
neighbourhood of which he prepared his family vault. The heroic times
of the Farinata, Cavalcanti, and Donati were past; but the Florentine
of the later times combined the citizen and the great lord, the
merchant, statesman, and patron of art, in a harmonious whole, to a
degree never surpassed by the denizen of any other country.