Great care must be taken not to confound Attalus with Tantalus,a blunder which, as Villani observes,1 is often committed by ignorant chroniclers. But Tantalus, as we all very well know, was the son of Jupiter, and grandson of Saturn. Now we are quite sure that Noah never married a daughter of Saturn, because that voracious heathen ate up all his children except Jupiter. This simple fact precludes all possibility of a connection with Saturn by the mother's side, and illustrates the advantage of patient historical investigation, when founded upon a reverence for traditional authority. Had it not been for such an honest chronicler as Giovanni Villani, our historic thirst might have been tantalized for seven centuries longer with this delusion. Certainly, to confound Tantalus, ancestor of all the Trojans, with Attalus, ancestor of all the Tuscans, would be worse than that "confusion of Babel" which the quiet-loving potentate came to Florence to avoid.
Attalus brought with him from Babel an eminent astrologer and civil engineer, who assured him, after careful experiments, that, of all places in Europe, the mount of Fiesole was the healthiest and the best. He was therefore ordered to build the city there at once. When finished, it was called Fia sola, because of its solitariness; Attalus, in consequence of his participation in the Babel confusion, having become familiar with Tuscan several thousand years before that language was invented. The city, thus auspiciously established, flourished forty or fifty centuries, more or less, without the occurrence of any event worth recording, down to the time of Catiline. The Fiesolans, unfortunately, aided and comforted that conspirator in his designs against Rome, and were well punished for their crime by Julius Cæsar, who battered their whole town about their ears, in consequence, and then ploughed up their territory, and sowed it with salt. The harvest of that agricultural operation was reaped by Florence; for the conqueror immediately afterwards, by command of the Roman Senate, converted a little suburb at the bottom of the hill into a city. Into this the Fiesolans removed at once, and found themselves very comfortable there; being saved the trouble of going up and down a mountain every time they came out and went home again. Florence took its name from one Fiorino, marshal of the camp, in the Roman army, who was killed in the battle of Fiesole. As he was the flower of chivalry, his name was thought of good augury; the more so, as roses and lilies sprang forth plenteously from the spot where he fell. Hence the fragrant and poetical name which the City of Flowers has retained until our days; and hence the cognizance of the three flowers-de-luce which it has borne upon its shield. Julius Cæsar, whose sword had severed the infant city from its dead mother in so Cæsarean a fashion, had set his heart upon calling the town after himself, and took the contrary decree of the Roman Senate very much in dudgeon. He therefore left the country in a huff, and revenged himself by annihilating vast numbers of unfortunate Gauls, Britons, Germans, and other barbarians, who happened to come in his way.
The first public edifice of any importance erected in the city was a temple to Mars, with a colossal statue of that divinity in the midst of it. This is the present baptistery, formerly cathedral, of Saint John; for the temple never was destroyed, and never can be destroyed, until the day of judgment. This we know on the authority of more than one eminent historian. It is also proved by an inscription to that effect in the mosaic pavement, which any one may inspect who chooses to do so.2
The town was utterly destroyed A.D. 450, by Totila, Flagellum Dei, who, with great want of originality, immediately rebuilt Fiesole; thus repeating, but reversing, the achievement of the Romans five hundred years before. So Fiesole and Florence seem to have alternately filled and emptied themselves, like two buckets in a well, down to the time of Charlemagne. That emperor rebuilt Florence, but experienced some difficulty in doing so, by reason of the statue of Mars, which had been thrown into the Arno. The temple, converted to Christian purposes, had been the only building to escape the wrath of Totila; but owing to the pagan incantations practised when the town was originally consecrated to the god of war, the statue of that divinity would not consent to lie quietly and ignominiously in the bed of the Arno, while his temple and town were appropriated to other purposes. The river was dragged. The statue was found and set upon a column near the edge of the river, on a spot which is now the head of the Ponte Vecchio. True to its pugnacious character, it brought nothing but turbulence and bloodshed upon the town. The long and memorable feuds between the Guelphs and Ghibellines began by the slaying of Buondelmonte in his wedding dress, at the base of the statue. (A.D. 1215.)
There could be no better foundation for romance or drama than the famous Buondelmonte marriage, before which, sings Dante, Florence had never cause to shed a tear, and after which the white lily of her escutcheon was dyed red in her heart's blood. There were four noble families in Florence, of surpassing importance,the Buondelmonti, the Uberti, the Donati, and the Amidei. A match-making widow of the Donati has a daughter of extraordinary beauty, whom she intends to bestow in marriage upon the young chief of the Buondelmonti. Before she has time to complete her arrangements, however, Buondelmonte betroths himself to a daughter of the house of Amidei. Signora Donati waylays him, as he passes the door, and suddenly displays to him the fatal beauty of her daughter. "She should have been your bride," said the widow, "had you not been so hasty." The gentleman, dazzled by the beauty of the girl, and satisfied by the prudent mother as to the dowry, marries Signorina Donati upon the spot. Next day, riding across the Ponte Vecchio upon a white horse, he is beset by a party of friends and relatives of the deserted damsel, and killed close by the statue of Mars. All the nobles of Florence take part in the question; upon one side the Nerli, the Frescobaldi, the ; but "courage, gentle reader," as Tristram Shandy observes, in his famous historical chapter upon Calais; "I scorn it; 'tis enough to have thee in my power; but to make use of the advantage which the fortune of the pen has now gained over thee would be too much."
Thirty years long, then, the town gates were all fastened, and the streets all chained, so as to make many little compact inclosures for slaughtering purposes; while the whites and blacks, Guelphs and Ghibellines, red caps and brown, all buffeted each other pell-mell. To the exhaustion thus produced of noble blood is often ascribed the establishment of a popular government at the close of the thirteenth century. The causes lay really much deeper, however,in the great revolutions consequent upon the extinction of the Suabian dynasty, and in the wonderful progress in culture made by the Florentine democracy.
O Buondelmonte, quanto mal fuggisti
Le nozze sue per gli altrui conforti!
Molti sarebber lieti, che son tristi,
Se Dio t' avesse conceduto ad Ema
La prima volta ch' a città venisti.
Ma conveniasi a quella pietra scema
Che guarda il ponte, che Fiorenza fesse
Vittima nella sua pace postrema.
Con queste genti, e con altre con esse,
Vid' io Fiorenza in sì fatto riposo,
Che non avea cagione onde piangesse.
Con queste genti vid' io glorioso
E giusto il popol suo tanto, che 'l giglio
Non era ad asta mai posto a ritroso,
Nè per division fatto vermiglio.
II
II
SAN MINIATO
The walk to the church of San Miniato is a paved, steep path, through olive orchards fringed by a row of cypresses, to the little church of San Salvadore; thence, through a garden of roses and cabbages, fresh and fragrant in the December sun, to the convent of Miniato. From the terrace is one of the best views of the city; not so fine, however, as that from Bello Sguardo. The gentle, beautiful chain of hills which encircle Florence smile cheerfully in the sunshine, clapping their hands and skipping like lambs, if little hills ever did make such a demonstration. These environs of the town are like a frame of golden filigree, almost too fantastic a one for so shadowy and sombre a city. The green hill-sides and plains are sown thickly with palaces and villas glancing whitely through silvery forests of olives and myrtle; while the distant Apennines, like guardian giants, lift their icy shields in the distance.
The church is built upon the grave of the eminent saint, Miniato. This personage was, it seems, the son of the king of Armenia,very much as all the heroes in the Arabian Nights are sons of the emperor of China. Having been converted to Christianity, he was offered by the emperor Decius great honors and rewards suitable to his royal rank, if he would renounce his faith. (A.D. 250.) He refused, and the emperor cut off his head. The execution took place in Florence, on the north side of the Arno. The holy man was not so easily disposed of, however; for he immediately clapped his head upon his shoulders again, and holding it on with both hands, waded across the river, and marched steadily up the hill on the other side. Arrived at the top, he gave up his head and the ghost. Hence the convent and church of San Miniato.
The church, to an architectural student, is interesting and important. A man needs a good eye and a good education to feel and thoroughly appreciate the grand symphonies which this wonderful architectural music of the Middle Ages has so long been silently playing. San Miniato belongs to the close of the Romanesque or Latin period. The early Christian school had expired in the midst of the general convulsions of the ninth and tenth centuries,in the struggles of an effete and expiring antiquity with the brutal, blundering, but vigorous infancy of mediæval Europe. During the three centuries which succeeded, there was rather a warming into unnatural life of the mighty corpse, than the birth of a new organism, capable of healthy existence and unlimited reproduction. The Romanesque art seems to have dealt with the ancient forms, without moulding any thing essentially and vitally new. Where there seemed originality, it was, after all, only a theft from the Saracenic or Byzantine, and the plagiarism became incongruity when engrafted upon the Roman. Thus a Latin church was often but an early Christian basilica with a Moorish arcade.
The San Miniato has an arcade, of course not pointed, upon the façade and the interior. Its tessellated marble work, its ancient mosaics, with its Roman capitals and columns, all make it interesting. These last show that at the close of the epoch, even as at its beginning, the chain which binds the school to the ancient Roman is fastened anew.
The frescos in the sacristy, by Spinello Aretino, painted at the end of the fourteenth century, are singularly well preserved,fresh as if painted yesterday. 'Tis a great pity that the works of other masters of the same age, Spinello's superiors, could not have been as fortunate. If the frescos of Orgagna, and of Benozzo Gozzoli in the Campo Santo at Pisa, were in as good condition, it would be much more satisfactory.
These pictures of Spinello are drawn with much boldness and energy, but it is not the fortunate audacity of Orgagna. They are much more the work of a mechanic, not self-distrustful, but with comparatively little feeling for the higher range of artistic expression. They are quite destitute of sentiment, but are not without a strong, rough, hardy humor. The drawing is far from accurate, but the coloring is well laid on. They represent the life and adventures of Saint Benedict, are of colossal size, and depict the saint in various striking positions. Here he is portrayed as rescuing a brother friar from the inconveniences resulting from a house having fallen upon him; in another he is miraculously mending a crockery jug belonging to his nurse; and in a third he is unsuccessfully attempting to move a large stone, upon which the Devil has seated himself, much to Benedict's discomfiture. The fiend is drawn, con amore, in black, with hairy hide, bat's wings, and a monkey's tail; the traditional Devil who has come down to us unharmed through all the vicissitudes of the Middle Ages. The saints and friars are generally attired in mazarine blue.
III
ACADEMY OF THE FINE ARTS
There is here a large hall, containing a brief chronicle of the progress of painting from Cimabue toCarlo Dolce! There may be a still deeper descent; but that is bathos sufficient for any lover of his species.
It is desirable to look at these painters of the thirteenth, fourteenth, and fifteenth centuries with some reference to the political condition of Florence and of Italy at that time. In truth, Florence during the period of its life was Italy,the vivida vis, creative, contemplative, ornative, impulsive to the clay of Europe. The art of painting seems to spring full-grown into existence, with the appearance of Cimabue in the latter part of the thirteenth century. Even so the Italian language suddenly crystallizes itself into a brilliant and perpetual type, at the same epoch as the wondrous poem of Dante flashes forth from the brooding chaos,the fiat lux of a new intellectual world.
The Emperor Frederic II., last of the imperial Hohenstaufens, died in 1250. Chivalrous, adventurous, despotic, as became the head of the conquering German races at their epoch of triumph,imaginative, poetical, debauched, atheistical, as might be expected of a prince born in Italy, he seemed to justify the somewhat incongruous eagerness with which the Florentine mind sought political salvation in the bosom of the Church. Yet here seems the fatal flaw in the liberal system of Italy at that period. The Ghibelline party was at least consistent. To be an imperialist, a Hohenstaufenite, was at least definite; as much so as to be an absolutist, a Habsburgite, a Napoleonite to-day. But to be a Guelph,to be in favor of municipal development, local self-government, intellectual progress, and to fight for all these things under the banner of the Church, in an age which witnessed the establishment of the Inquisition, in an age when the mighty spirit of Hildebrand was rising every day from his grave in more and more influential and imposing shape,this was to place one's self in a false position. Dante, no doubt, felt all this to the core of his being. A poet by nature, with that intense, morbid, proud, uncomfortable, alternately benevolent and misanthropical temperament which occasionally accompanies the poetic faculty, he had little in common with the bustling, vivacious character of his fellow-townsmen. Fiorentino di nascita, non di costumi, as he describes himself, he had slight sympathy with Blacks or Whites, Guelphs or Ghibellines. A Guelph by birth, a Ghibelline by banishment, he was in reality an absolutist in politics, and a bigot in religion. Had a hell never been heard of, he would have invented one, for the mere comfort of roasting his enemies in it, and his friends along with them,the solitary enjoyment of his lifetime. His part in public affairs has been much magnified. He was prior in 1300; but almost any citizen of Florence might be prior. He was once sent to Rome, on a diplomatic errand; but he was only the envoy of a party, only one of a set of delegates appointed by the Whites. He was banished for his political opinions, and afterwards condemned to death; but even this was no distinction; for six hundred other persons, most of them obscure men, were included in the same sentence, for the same offence. They all happened, in short, to belong to the party opposed to the one which was successful. His merits of style can hardly be exaggerated. Alone of mankind he almost created a language. Imagine the English, or the German, or the French poetry of the year 1300 flowing musically and familiarly from the lips of 1857! The culture, too, of his epoch might almost be measured by his personal accomplishments. The Aristotle, the Bacon, the Humboldt of Florence was one of the world's great poets into the bargain; but he was any thing but a statesman or a politician.