The Civilisation of the Renaissance in Italy

It deserves to be noticed that the higher monastic orders—the Benedictines, with their many branches—were, notwithstanding their great wealth and easy lives, far less disliked than the mendicant friars. For ten novels which treat of ‘frati,’ hardly one can be found in which a ‘monaco’ is the subject and the victim. It was no small advantage to this order that it was founded earlier, and not as an instrument of police, and that it did not interfere with private life. It contained men of learning, wit, and piety, but the average has been described by a member of it, Firenzuola,[1045 - See p. 88 sqq. He was abbot at Vallombrosa. The passage, of which we give a free translation, is to be found Opere, vol. ii. p. 209, in the tenth novel. See an inviting description of the comfortable life of the Carthusians in the Commentario d’Italia, fol. 32 sqq. quoted at p. 84.] who says: ‘These well-fed gentlemen with the capacious cowls do not pass their time in barefooted journeys and in sermons, but sit in elegant slippers with their hands crossed over their paunches, in charming cells wainscotted with cyprus-wood. And when they are obliged to quit the house, they ride comfortably, as if for their amusement, on mules and sleek, quiet horses. They do not overstrain their minds with the study of many books, for fear lest knowledge might put the pride of Lucifer in the place of monkish simplicity.’

Those who are familiar with the literature of the time, will see that we have only brought forward what is absolutely necessary for the understanding of the subject.[1046 - Pius II. was on principle in favour of the abolition of the celibacy of the clergy. One of his favourite sentences was, ‘Sacerdotibus magna ratione sublatus nuptias majori restituendas videri.’ Platina, Vitae Pontiff. p. 311.] That the reputation attaching to the monks and the secular clergy must have shattered the faith of multitudes in all that is sacred is, of course obvious.

And some of the judgments which we read are terrible; we will quote one of them in conclusion, which has been published only lately and is but little known. The historian Guicciardini, who was for many years in the service of the Medicean Popes says (1529) in his ‘Aphorisms’[1047 - Ricordi, n. 28, in the Opere inedite, vol. i.]: ‘No man is more disgusted than I am with the ambition, the avarice, and the profligacy of the priests, not only because each of these vices is hateful in itself, but because each and all of them are most unbecoming in those who declare themselves to be men in special relations with God, and also because they are vices so opposed to one another, that they can only co-exist in very singular natures. Nevertheless, my position at the Court of several Popes forced me to desire their greatness for the sake of my own interest. But, had it been for this, I should have loved Martin Luther as myself, not in order to free myself from the laws which Christianity, as generally understood and explained, lays upon us, but in order to see this swarm of scoundrels (‘questa caterva di scellerati’) put back into their proper place, so that they may be forced to live either without vices or without power.’[1048 - Ricordi, n. i. 123, 125.]

The same Guicciardini is of opinion that we are in the dark as to all that is supernatural, that philosophers and theologians have nothing but nonsense to tell us about it, that miracles occur in every religion and prove the truth of none in particular, and that all of them may be explained as unknown phenomena of nature. The faith which moves mountains, then common among the followers of Savonarola, is mentioned by Guicciardini as a curious fact, but without any bitter remark.

Notwithstanding this hostile public opinion, the clergy and the monks had the great advantage that the people was used to them, and that their existence was interwoven with the everyday existence of all. This is the advantage which every old and powerful institution possesses. Everybody had some cowled or frocked relative, some prospect of assistance or future gain from the treasure of the Church; and in the centre of Italy stood the Court of Rome, where men sometimes became rich in a moment. Yet it must never be forgotten that all this did not hinder people from writing and speaking freely. The authors of the most scandalous satires were themselves mostly monks or beneficed priests. Poggio, who wrote the ‘Facetiae,’ was a clergyman; Francesco Berni, the satirist, held a canonry; Teofilo Folengo, the author of the ‘Orlandino,’ was a Benedictine, certainly by no means a faithful one; Matteo Bandello, who held up his own order to ridicule, was a Dominican, and nephew of a general of this order. Were they encouraged to write by the sense that they ran no risk? Or did they feel an inward need to clear themselves personally from the infamy which attached to their order? Or were they moved by that selfish pessimism which takes for its maxim, ‘it will last our time’? Perhaps all of these motives were more or less at work. In the case of Folengo, the unmistakable influence of Lutheranism must be added.[1049 - See the Orlandino, cap. vi. str. 40 sqq.; cap. vii. str. 57; cap. viii. str. 3 sqq., especially 75.]

The sense of dependence on rites and sacraments, which we have already touched upon in speaking of the Papacy (p. 103 (#x6_x_6_i32)), is not surprising among that part of the people which still believed in the Church. Among those who were more emancipated, it testifies to the strength of youthful impressions, and to the magical force of traditional symbols. The universal desire of dying men for priestly absolution shows that the last remnants of the dread of hell had not, even in the case of one like Vitellozzo, been altogether extinguished. It would hardly be possible to find a more instructive instance than this. The doctrine taught by the Church of the ‘character indelibilis’ of the priesthood, independently of the personality of the priest, had so far borne fruit that it was possible to loathe the individual and still desire his spiritual gifts. It is true, nevertheless, that there were defiant natures like Galeotto of Mirandola,[1050 - Diaria Ferrarese, in Murat. xxiv. col. 362.] who died unabsolved in 1499, after living for sixteen years under the ban of the Church. All this time the city lay under an interdict on his account, so that no mass was celebrated and no Christian burial took place.

A splendid contrast to all this is offered by the power exercised over the nation by its great Preachers of Repentance. Other countries of Europe were from time to time moved by the words of saintly monks, but only superficially, in comparison with the periodical upheaval of the Italian conscience. The only man, in fact, who produced a similar effect in Germany during the fifteenth century,[1051 - He had with him a German and a Slavonian interpreter. St. Bernard had to use the same means when he preached in the Rhineland.] was an Italian, born in the Abruzzi, named Giovanni Capistrano. Those natures which bear within them this religious vocation and this commanding earnestness, wore then in Northern countries an intuitive and mystical aspect. In the South they were practical and expansive, and shared in the national gift of language and oratorical skill. The North produced an ‘Imitation of Christ,’ which worked silently, at first only within the walls of the monastery, but worked for the ages; the South produced men who made on their fellows a mighty but passing impression.

This impression consisted chiefly in the awakening of the conscience. The sermons were moral exhortations, free from abstract notions and full of practical application, rendered more impressive by the saintly and ascetic character of the preacher, and by the miracles which, even against his will, the inflamed imagination of the people attributed to him.[1052 - Capistrano, for instance, contented himself with making the sign of the cross over the thousands of sick persons brought to him, and with blessing them in the name of the Trinity and of his master San Bernadino, after which some of them not unnaturally got well. The Brescian chronicle puts it in this way, ‘He worked fine miracles, yet not so many as were told of him’ (Murat. xxi.).] The most powerful argument used was not the threat of Hell and Purgatory, but rather the living results of the ‘maledizione,’ the temporal ruin wrought on the individual by the curse which clings to wrong-doing. The grieving of Christ and the Saints has its consequences in this life. And only thus could men, sunk in passion and guilt, be brought to repentance and amendment—which was the chief object of these sermons.

Among these preachers were Bernadino da Siena, and his two pupils, Alberto da Sarteano and Jacopo della Marca, Giovanni Capistrano, Roberto da Lecce (p. 413 (#x15_x_15_i0)), and finally, Girolamo Savonarola. No prejudice of the day was stronger than that against the mendicant friar, and this they overcame. They were criticised and ridiculed by a scornful humanism;[1053 - So e.g. Poggio, De Avaritia, in the Opera, fol. 2. He says they had an easy matter of it, since they said the same thing in every city, and sent the people away more stupid than they came. Poggio elsewhere (Epist. ed. Tonelli i. 281) speaks of Albert of Sarteano as ‘doctus’ and ‘perhumanus.’ Filelfo defended Bernadino of Siena and a certain Nicolaus, probably out of opposition to Poggio (Sat. ii. 3, vi. 5) rather than from liking for the preachers. Filelfo was a correspondent of A. of Sarteano. He also praises Roberto da Lecce in some respects, but blames him for not using suitable gestures and expressions, for looking miserable when he ought to look cheerful, and for weeping too much and thus offending the ears and tastes of his audience. Fil. Epist. Venet. 1502, fol. 96 b.] but when they raised their voices, no one gave heed to the humanists. The thing was no novelty, and the scoffing Florentines had already in the fourteenth century learned to caricature it whenever it appeared in the pulpit.[1054 - Franco Sacchetti, nov. 72. Preachers who fail are a constant subject of ridicule in all the novels.] But no sooner did Savonarola come forward than he carried the people so triumphantly with him, that soon all their beloved art and culture melted away in the furnace which he lighted. Even the grossest profanation done to the cause by hypocritical monks, who got up an effect in the audience by means of confederates (p. 460 (#x16_x_16_i24)), could not bring the thing itself into discredit. Men kept on laughing at the ordinary monkish sermons, with their spurious miracles and manufactured reliques;[1055 - Compare the well-known story in the Decamerone vi. nov. 10.] but did not cease to honour the great and genuine prophets. These are a true Italian specialty of the fifteenth century.

The Order—generally that of St. Francis, and more particularly the so-called Observantines—sent them out according as they were wanted. This was commonly the case when there was some important public or private feud in a city, or some alarming outbreak of violence, immorality, or disease. When once the reputation of a preacher was made, the cities were all anxious to hear him even without any special occasion. He went wherever his superiors sent him. A special form of this work was the preaching of a Crusade against the Turks;[1056 - In which case the sermons took a special colour. See Malipiero, Ann. Venet. Archiv. Stor. vii. i. p. 18. Chron. Venet. in Murat. xxiv. col. 114. Storia Bresciana, in Murat. xxi. col. 898. Absolution was freely promised to those who took part in, or contributed money for the crusade.] but here we have to speak more particularly of the exhortations to repentance.

The order of these, when they were treated methodically, seems to have followed the customary list of the deadly sins. The more pressing, however, the occasion is, the more directly does the preacher make for his main point. He begins perhaps in one of the great churches of the Order, or in the cathedral. Soon the largest piazza is too small for the crowds which throng from every side to hear him, and he himself can hardly move without risking his life.[1057 - Storia Bresciana, in Murat. xxiii. col. 865 sqq. On the first day 10,000 persons were present, 2,000 of them strangers.] The sermon is commonly followed by a great procession; but the first magistrates of the city, who take him in their midst, can hardly save him from the multitude of women who throng to kiss his hands and feet, and cut off fragments from his cowl.[1058 - Allegretto, Diari Sanesi, in Murat. xxiii. col. 819 sqq. (July 13 to 18, 1486); the preacher was Pietro dell’Osservanza di S. Francesco.]

The most immediate consequences which follow from the preacher’s denunciations of usury, luxury, and scandalous fashions, are the opening of the gaols—which meant no more than the discharge of the poorer creditors—and the burning of various instruments of luxury and amusement, whether innocent or not. Among these are dice, cards, games of all kinds, written incantations,[1059 - Infessura (in Eccard, Scriptores, ii. col. 1874) says: ‘Canti, brevi, sorti.’ The first may refer to song-books, which actually were burnt by Savonarola. But Graziani (Cron. di Perugia, Arch. Stor. xvi. i., p. 314) says on a similar occasion, ‘brieve incanti,’ when we must without doubt read ‘brevi e incanti,’ and perhaps the same emendation is desirable in Infessura, whose ‘sorti’ point to some instrument of superstition, perhaps a pack of cards for fortune-telling. Similarly after the introduction of printing, collections were made of all the attainable copies of Martial, which then were burnt. Bandello, iii. 10.] masks, musical instruments, song-books, false hair, and so forth. All these would then be gracefully arranged on a scaffold (‘talamo’), a figure of the devil fastened to the top, and then the whole set on fire (comp. p. 372).

Then came the turn of the more hardened consciences. Men who had long never been near the confessional, now acknowledged their sins. Ill-gotten gains were restored, and insults which might have borne fruit in blood retracted. Orators like Bernadino of Siena[1060 - See his remarkable biography in Vespasiano Fiorent. p. 244 sqq., and that by Æneas Sylvius, De Viris Illustr. p. 24. In the latter we read: ‘Is quoque in tabella pictum nomen Jesus deferebat, hominibusque adorandum ostendebat multumque suadebat ante ostia domorum hoc nomen depingi.’] entered diligently into all the details of the daily life of men, and the moral laws which are involved in it. Few theologians nowadays would feel tempted to give a morning sermon ‘on contracts, restitutions, the public debt (“monte”), and the portioning of daughters,’ like that which he once delivered in the Cathedral at Florence. Imprudent speakers easily fell into the mistake of attacking particular classes, professions, or offices, with such energy that the enraged hearers proceeded to violence against those whom the preacher had denounced.[1061 - Allegretto, l. c. col. 823. A preacher excited the people against the judges (if instead of ‘giudici’ we are not to read ‘giudei’), upon which they narrowly escaped being burnt in their houses. The opposite party threatened the life of the preacher in return.] A sermon which Bernadino once preached in Rome (1424) had another consequence besides a bonfire of vanities on the Capitol: ‘after this,’[1062 - Infessura, l. c. In the date of the witch’s death there seems to be a clerical error. How the same saint caused an ill-famed wood near Arezzo to be cut down, is told in Vasari, iii. 148, Vita di Parri Spinelli. Often, no doubt, the penitential zeal of the hearers went no further than such outward sacrifices.] we read, ‘the witch Finicella was burnt, because by her diabolical arts she had killed many children and bewitched many other persons; and all Rome went to see the sight.’

But the most important aim of the preacher was, as has been already said, to reconcile enemies and persuade them to give up thoughts of vengeance. Probably this end was seldom attained till towards the close of a course of sermons, when the tide of penitence flooded the city, and when the air resounded[1063 - ‘Pareva che l’aria si fendesse,’ we read somewhere.] with the cry of the whole people: ‘Misericordia!’ Then followed those solemn embracings and treaties of peace, which even previous bloodshed on both sides could not hinder. Banished men were recalled to the city to take part in these sacred transactions. It appears that these ‘Paci’ were on the whole faithfully observed, even after the mood which prompted them was over; and then the memory of the monk was blessed from generation to generation. But there were sometimes terrible crises like those in the families Della Valle and Croce in Rome (1482), where even the great Roberto da Lecce raised his voice in vain.[1064 - Jac. Volaterran. in Murat. xxiii. col. 166 sqq. It is not expressly said that he interfered with this feud, but it can hardly be doubted that he did so. Once (1445), when Jacopo della Marca had but just quitted Perugia after an extraordinary success, a frightful vendetta broke out in the family of the Ranieri. Comp. Graziani, l. c. p. 565 sqq. We may here remark that Perugia was visited by these preachers remarkably often, comp. pp. 597, 626, 631, 637, 647.] Shortly before Holy Week he had preached to immense crowds in the square before the Minerva. But on the night before Maunday Thursday a terrible combat took place in front of the Palazzo della Valle, near the Ghetto. In the morning Pope Sixtus gave orders for its destruction, and then performed the customary ceremonies of the day. On Good Friday Roberto preached again with a crucifix in his hand; but he and his hearers could do nothing but weep.

Violent natures, which had fallen into contradiction with themselves, often resolved to enter a convent, under the impression made by these men. Among such were not only brigands and criminals of every sort, but soldiers without employment.[1065 - Capistrano admitted fifty soldiers after one sermon, Stor. Bresciana, l. c. Graziani, l. c. p. 565 sqq. Æn. Sylvius (De Viris Illustr. p. 25), when a young man, was once so affected by a sermon of San Bernadino as to be on the point of joining his Order. We read in Graziani of a convert quitting the order; he married, ‘e fu magiore ribaldo, che non era prima.’] This resolve was stimulated by their admiration of the holy man, and by the desire to copy at least his outward position.

The concluding sermon is a general benediction, summed up in the words: ‘la pace sia con voi!’ Throngs of hearers accompany the preacher to the next city, and there listen for a second time to the whole course of sermons.

The enormous influence exercised by these preachers made it important, both for the clergy and for the government, at least not to have them as opponents; one means to this end was to permit only monks[1066 - That there was no want of disputes between the famous Observantine preachers and their Dominican rivals is shown by the quarrel about the blood of Christ which was said to have fallen from the cross to the earth (1462). See Voigt. Enea Silvio iii. 591 sqq. Fra Jacopo della Marca, who would not yield to the Dominican Inquisitor, is criticised by Pius II. in his detailed account (Comment. l. xi. p. 511), with delicate irony: ‘Pauperiem pati, et famam et sitim et corporis cruciatum et mortem pro Christi nomine nonnulli possunt; jacturam nominis vel minimam ferre recusant tanquam sua deficiente fama Dei quoque gloria pereat.’] or priests who had received at all events the lesser consecration, to enter the pulpit, so that the Order or Corporation to which they belonged was, to some extent, responsible for them. But it was not easy to make the rule absolute, since the Church and pulpit had long been used as a means of publicity in many ways, judicial, educational, and others, and since even sermons were sometimes delivered by humanists and other laymen (p. 234 (#x10_x_10_i9) sqq.). There existed, too, in Italy a dubious class of persons,[1067 - Their reputation oscillated even then between two extremes. They must be distinguished from the hermit-monks. The line was not always clearly drawn in this respect. The Spoletans, who travelled about working miracles, took St. Anthony and St. Paul as their patrons, the latter on account of the snakes which they carried with them. We read of the money they got from the peasantry even in the thirteenth century by a sort of clerical conjuring. Their horses were trained to kneel down at the name of St. Anthony. They pretended to collect for hospitals (Massuccio, nov. 18; Bandello iii., nov. 17). Firenzuola in his Asino d’Oro makes them play the part of the begging priests in Apulejus.] who were neither monks nor priests, and who yet had renounced the world—that is to say, the numerous class of hermits who appeared from time to time in the pulpit on their own authority, and often carried the people with them. A case of this kind occurred at Milan in 1516, after the second French conquest, certainly at a time when public order was much disturbed. A Tuscan hermit Hieronymus of Siena, possibly an adherent of Savonarola, maintained his place for months together in the pulpit of the Cathedral, denounced the hierarchy with great violence, caused a new chandelier and a new altar to be set up in the church, worked miracles, and only abandoned the field after a long and desperate struggle.[1068 - Prato, Arch. Stor. iii. p. 357. Burigozzo, ibid. p. 431 sqq.] During the decades in which the fate of Italy was decided, the spirit of prophecy was unusually active, and nowhere where it displayed itself was it confined to any one particular class. We know with what a tone of true prophetic defiance the hermits came forward before the sack of Rome (p. 122 (#x7_x_7_i11)). In default of any eloquence of their own, these men made use of messengers with symbols of one kind or another, like the ascetic near Siena (1429), who sent a ‘little hermit,’ that is a pupil, into the terrified city with a skull upon a pole, to which was attached a paper with a threatening text from the Bible.[1069 - Allegretto, in Murat. xxiii. col. 856 sqq. The quotation was: ‘Ecce venio cito et velociter. Estote parati.’]

Nor did the monks themselves scruple to attack princes, governments, the clergy, or even their own order. A direct exhortation to overthrow a despotic house, like that uttered by Jacopo Bussolaro at Pavia in the fourteenth century,[1070 - Matteo Villani, viii. cap. 2 sqq. He first preached against tyranny in general, and then, when the ruling house of the Beccaria tried to have him murdered, he began to preach a change of government and constitution, and forced the Beccaria to fly from Pavia (1357). See Petrarch, Epp. Fam. xix. 18, and A. Hortis, Scritti Inediti di F. P. 174-181.] hardly occurs again in the following period; but there is no want of courageous reproofs, addressed even to the Pope in his own chapel (p. 239 (#x10_x_10_i19), note 1), and of naïve political advice given in the presence of rulers who by no means held themselves in need of it.[1071 - Sometimes at critical moments the ruling house itself used the services of monks to exhort the people to loyalty. For an instance of this kind at Ferrara, see Sanudo (Murat. xxii. col. 1218). A preacher from Bologna reminded the people of the benefits they had received from the House of Este, and of the fate that awaited them at the hands of the victorious Venetians.] In the Piazza del Castello at Milan, a blind preacher from the Incoronata—consequently an Augustinian—ventured in 1494 to exhort Ludovico Moro from the pulpit: ‘My lord, beware of showing the French the way, else you will repent it.’[1072 - Prato, Arch. Stor. iii. p. 251. Other fanatical anti-French preachers, who appeared after the expulsion of the French, are mentioned by Burigozzo, ibid. pp. 443, 449, 485; ad a. 1523, 1526, 1529.] There were further prophetic monks, who, without exactly preaching political sermons, drew such appalling pictures of the future that the hearers almost lost their senses. After the election of Leo X. in the year 1513, a whole association of these men, twelve Franciscan monks in all, journeyed through the various districts of Italy, of which one or other was assigned to each preacher. The one who appeared in Florence,[1073 - Jac. Pitti, Storia Fior. l. ii. p. 112.] Fra Francesco di Montepulciano, struck terror into the whole people. The alarm was not diminished by the exaggerated reports of his prophecies which reached those who were too far off to hear him. After one of his sermons he suddenly died ‘of pain in the chest.’ The people thronged in such numbers to kiss the feet of the corpse that it had to be secretly buried in the night. But the newly awakened spirit of prophecy, which seized upon even women and peasants, could not be controlled without great difficulty. ‘In order to restore to the people their cheerful humour, the Medici—Giuliano, Leo’s brother, and Lorenzo—gave on St. John’s Day, 1514, those splendid festivals, tournaments, processions, and hunting-parties, which were attended by many distinguished persons from Rome, and among them, though disguised, by no less than six cardinals.’

But the greatest of the prophets and apostles had been already burnt in Florence in the year 1498—Fra Giorolamo Savonarola of Ferrara. We must content ourselves with saying a few words respecting him.[1074 - Perrens, Jérôme Savonarole, two vols. Perhaps the most systematic and sober of all the many works on the subject. P. Villari, La Storia di Girol. Savonarola (two vols. 8vo. Firenze, Lemonnier). The view taken by the latter writer differs considerably from that maintained in the text. Comp. also Ranke in Historisch-biographische Studien, Lpzg. 1878, pp. 181-358. On Genaz. see Vill. i. 57 sqq. ii. 343 sqq. Reumont, Lorenzo, ii. 522-526, 533 sqq.]

The instrument by means of which he transformed and ruled the city of Florence (1494-8) was his eloquence. Of this the meagre reports that are left to us, which were taken down mostly on the spot, give us evidently a very imperfect notion. It was not that he possessed any striking outward advantages, for voice, accent, and rhetorical skill constituted precisely his weakest side; and those who required the preacher to be a stylist, went to his rival Fra Mariano da Genazzano. The eloquence of Savonarola was the expression of a lofty and commanding personality, the like of which was not seen again till the time of Luther. He himself held his own influence to be the result of a divine illumination, and could therefore, without presumption, assign a very high place to the office of the preacher, who, in the great hierarchy of spirits, occupies the next place below the angels.

This man, whose nature seemed made of fire, worked another and greater miracle than any of his oratorical triumphs. His own Dominican monastery of San Marco, and then all the Dominican monasteries of Tuscany, became like-minded with himself, and undertook voluntarily the work of inward reform. When we reflect what the monasteries then were, and what measureless difficulty attends the least change where monks are concerned, we are doubly astonished at so complete a revolution. While the reform was still in progress large numbers of Savonarola’s followers entered the Order, and thereby greatly facilitated his plans. Sons of the first houses in Florence entered San Marco as novices.

This reform of the Order in a particular province was the first step to a national Church, in which, had the reformer himself lived longer, it must infallibly have ended. Savonarola, indeed, desired the regeneration of the whole Church, and near the end of his career sent pressing exhortations to the great powers urging them to call together a Council. But in Tuscany his Order and party were the only organs of his spirit—the salt of the earth—while the neighbouring provinces remained in their old condition. Fancy and asceticism tended more and more to produce in him a state of mind to which Florence appeared as the scene of the kingdom of God upon earth.

The prophecies, whose partial fulfilment conferred on Savonarola a supernatural credit, were the means by which the ever-active Italian imagination seized control of the soundest and most cautious natures. At first the Franciscans of the Osservanza, trusting in the reputation which had been bequeathed to them by San Bernadino of Siena, fancied that they could compete with the great Dominican. They put one of their own men into the Cathedral pulpit, and outbid the Jeremiads of Savonarola by still more terrible warnings, till Pietro de’Medici, who then still ruled over Florence, forced them both to be silent. Soon after, when Charles VIII. came into Italy and the Medici were expelled, as Savonarola had clearly foretold, he alone was believed in.

It must be frankly confessed that he never judged his own premonitions and visions critically, as he did those of others. In the funeral oration on Pico della Mirandola, he deals somewhat harshly with his dead friend. Since Pico, notwithstanding an inner voice which came from God, would not enter the Order, he had himself prayed to God to chasten him for his disobedience. He certainly had not desired his death, and alms and prayers had obtained the favour that Pico’s soul was safe in Purgatory. With regard to a comforting vision which Pico had upon his sick-bed, in which the Virgin appeared and promised him that he should not die, Savonarola confessed that he had long regarded it as a deceit of the Devil, till it was revealed to him that the Madonna meant the second and eternal death.[1075 - Sermons on Haggai; close of sermon 6.] If these things and the like are proofs of presumption, it must be admitted that this great soul at all events paid a bitter penalty for his fault. In his last days Savonarola seems to have recognised the vanity of his visions and prophecies. And yet enough inward peace was left him to enable him to meet death like a Christian. His partisans held to his doctrine and predictions for thirty years longer.

He only undertook the reorganisation of the state for the reason that otherwise his enemies would have got the government into their own hands. It is unfair to judge him by the semi-democratic constitution (p. 83 (#x6_x_6_i8), note 1) of the beginning of the year 1495. Nor is it either better or worse than other Florentine constitutions.[1076 - Savonarola was perhaps the only man who could have made the subject cities free and yet kept Tuscany together. But he never seems to have thought of doing so. Pisa he hated like a genuine Florentine.]

He was at bottom the most unsuitable man who could be found for such a work. His ideal was a theocracy, in which all men were to bow in blessed humility before the Unseen, and all conflicts of passion were not even to be able to arise. His whole mind is written in that inscription on the Palazzo della Signoria, the substance of which was his maxim[1077 - A remarkable contrast to the Sienese who in 1483 solemnly dedicated their distracted city to the Madonna. Allegretto, in Murat. xxiii. col. 815.] as early as 1495, and which was solemnly renewed by his partisans in 1527: ‘Jesus Christus Rex populi Florentini S. P. Q. decreto creatus.’ He stood in no more relation to mundane affairs and their actual conditions than any other inhabitant of a monastery. Man, according to him, has only to attend to those things which make directly for his salvation.

This temper comes out clearly in his opinions on ancient literature: ‘The only good thing which we owe to Plato and Aristotle, is that they brought forward many arguments which we can use against the heretics. Yet they and other philosophers are now in Hell. An old woman knows more about the Faith than Plato. It would be good for religion if many books that seem useful were destroyed. When there were not so many books and not so many arguments (“ragioni naturali”) and disputes, religion grew more quickly than it has done since.’ He wished to limit the classical instruction of the schools to Homer, Virgil, and Cicero, and to supply the rest from Jerome and Augustine. Not only Ovid and Catullus, but Terence and Tibullus, were to be banished. This may be no more than the expression of a nervous morality, but elsewhere in a special work he admits that science as a whole is harmful. He holds that only a few people should have to do with it, in order that the tradition of human knowledge may not perish, and particularly that there may be no want of intellectual athletes to confute the sophisms of the heretics. For all others, grammar, morals, and religious teaching (‘litterae sacrae’) suffice. Culture and education would thus return wholly into the charge of the monks, and as, in his opinion, the ‘most learned and the most pious’ are to rule over the states and empires, these rulers would also be monks. Whether he really foresaw this conclusion, we need not inquire.

A more childish method of reasoning cannot be imagined. The simple reflection that the new-born antiquity and the boundless enlargement of human thought and knowledge which was due to it, might give splendid confirmation to a religion able to adapt itself thereto, seems never even to have occurred to the good man. He wanted to forbid what he could not deal with by any other means. In fact, he was anything but liberal, and was ready, for example, to send the astrologers to the same stake at which he afterwards himself died.[1078 - He says of the ‘impii astrologi’: ‘non è dar disputar (con loro) altrimenti che col fuoco.’]

How mighty must have been the soul which dwelt side by side with this narrow intellect! And what a flame must have glowed within him before he could constrain the Florentines, possessed as they were by the passion for culture, to surrender themselves to a man who could thus reason!

How much of their heart and their worldliness they were ready to sacrifice for his sake is shown by those famous bonfires by the side of which all the ‘talami’ of Bernadino da Siena and others were certainly of small account.

All this could not, however, be effected without the agency of a tyrannical police. He did not shrink from the most vexatious interferences with the much-prized freedom of Italian private life, using the espionage of servants on their masters as a means of carrying out his moral reforms. That transformation of public and private life which the iron Calvin was but just able to effect at Geneva with the aid of a permanent state of siege necessarily proved impossible at Florence, and the attempt only served to drive the enemies of Savonarola to a more implacable hostility. Among his most unpopular measures may be mentioned those organised parties of boys, who forced their way into the houses and laid violent hands on any objects which seemed suitable for the bonfire. As it happened that they were sometimes sent away with a beating, they were afterwards attended, in order to keep up the figment of a pious ‘rising generation,’ by a body-guard of grown-up persons.

On the last day of the Carnival in the year 1497, and on the same day the year after, the great ‘Auto da Fé’ took place on the Piazza della Signoria. In the centre of it rose a great pyramidal flight of stairs like the ‘rogus’ on which the Roman Emperors were commonly burned. On the lowest tier were arranged false beards, masks, and carnival disguises; above came volumes of the Latin and Italian poets, among others Boccaccio, the ‘Morgante’ of Pulci, and Petrarch, partly in the form of valuable printed parchments and illuminated manuscripts; then women’s ornaments and toilette articles, scents, mirrors, veils, and false hair; higher up, lutes, harps, chess-boards, playing-cards; and finally, on the two uppermost tiers, paintings only, especially of female beauties, partly fancy-pictures, bearing the classical names of Lucretia, Cleopatra, or Faustina, partly portraits of the beautiful Bencina, Lena Morella, Bina, and Maria de’Lenzi; all the pictures of Bartolommeo della Porta, who brought them of his own accord; and, as it seems, some female heads—masterpieces of ancient sculptors. On the first occasion a Venetian merchant who happened to be present offered the Signoria 22,000 gold florins for the objects on the pyramid; but the only answer he received was that his portrait, too, was taken, and burned along with the rest. When the pile was lighted, the Signoria appeared on the balcony, and the air echoed with song, the sound of trumpets, and the pealing of bells. The people then adjourned to the Piazza di San Marco, where they danced round in three concentric circles. The innermost was composed of monks of the monastery, alternating with boys, dressed as angels; then came young laymen and ecclesiastics; and on the outside old men, citizens, and priests, the latter crowned with wreaths of olive.[1079 - See Villari on this point.]

All the ridicule of his victorious enemies, who in truth had no lack of justification or of talent for ridicule, was unable to discredit the memory of Savonarola. The more tragic the fortunes of Italy became, the brighter grew the halo which in the recollection of the survivors surrounded the figure of the great monk and prophet. Though his predictions may not have been confirmed in detail, the great and general calamity which he foretold was fulfilled with appalling truth.

Great, however, as the influence of all these preachers may have been, and brilliantly as Savonarola justified the claim of the monks to this office,[1080 - See the passage in the fourteenth sermon on Ezechiel, in Perrens, o. c. vol. i. 30 note.] nevertheless the order as a whole could not escape the contempt and condemnation of the people. Italy showed that she could give her enthusiasm only to individuals.

If, apart from all that concerns the priests and the monks, we attempt to measure the strength of the old faith, it will be found great or small according to the light in which it is considered. We have spoken already of the need felt for the Sacraments as something indispensable (pp. 103, 464). Let us now glance for a moment at the position of faith and worship in daily life. Both were determined partly by the habits of the people and partly by the policy and example of the rulers.

All that has to do with penitence and the attainment of salvation by means of good works was in much the same stage of development or corruption as in the North of Europe, both among the peasantry and among the poorer inhabitants of the cities. The instructed classes were here and there influenced by the same motives. Those sides of popular Catholicism which had their origin in the old pagan ways of addressing, rewarding, and reconciling the gods have fixed themselves ineradicably in the consciousness of the people. The eighth eclogue of Battista Mantovano,[1081 - With the title, De Rusticorum Religione. See above p. 352.] which has been already quoted elsewhere, contains the prayer of a peasant to the Madonna, in which she is called upon as the special patroness of all rustic and agricultural interests. And what conceptions they were which the people formed of their protectress in heaven! What was in the mind of the Florentine woman[1082 - Franco Sacchetti, nov. 109, where there is more of the same kind.] who gave ‘ex voto’ a keg of wax to the Annunziata, because her lover, a monk, had gradually emptied a barrel of wine without her absent husband finding it out! Then, too, as still in our own days, different departments of human life were presided over by their respective patrons. The attempt has often been made to explain a number of the commonest rites of the Catholic Church as remnants of pagan ceremonies, and no one doubts that many local and popular usages, which are associated with religious festivals, are forgotten fragments of the old pre-christian faiths of Europe. In Italy, on the contrary, we find instances in which the affiliation of the new faith on the old seems consciously recognised. So, for example, the custom of setting out food for the dead four days before the feast of the Chair of St. Peter, that is to say, on February 18, the date of the ancient Feralia.[1083 - Bapt. Mantuan. De Sacris Diebus, l. ii. exclaims:—Ista superstitio, ducens a Manibus ortumTartareis, sancta de religione facessatChristigenûm! vivis epulas date, sacra sepultis.A century earlier, when the army of John XXII. entered the Marches to attack the Ghibellines, the pretext was avowedly ‘eresia’ and ‘idolatria.’ Recanti, which surrendered voluntarily, was nevertheless burnt, ‘because idols had been worshipped there,’ in reality, as a revenge for those whom the citizens had killed. Giov. Villani, ix. 139, 141. Under Pius II. we read of an obstinate sun-worshipper, born at Urbino. Æn. Sylv. Opera, p. 289. Hist. Rer. ubique Gestar. c. 12. More wonderful still was what happened in the Forum in Rome under Leo X. (more properly in the interregnum between Hadrian and Leo. June 1522, Gregorovius, viii. 388). To stay the plague, a bull was solemnly offered up with pagan rites. Paul. Jov. Hist. xxi. 8.] Many other practices of this kind may then have prevailed and have since then been extirpated. Perhaps the paradox is only apparent if we say that the popular faith in Italy had a solid foundation just in proportion as it was pagan.

The extent to which this form of belief prevailed in the upper classes can to a certain point be shown in detail. It had, as we have said in speaking of the influence of the clergy, the power of custom and early impressions on its side. The love for ecclesiastical pomp and display helped to confirm it, and now and then there came one of those epidemics of revivalism, which few even among the scoffers and the sceptics were able to withstand.

But in questions of this kind it is perilous to grasp too hastily at absolute results. We might fancy, for example, that the feeling of educated men towards the reliques of the saints would be a key by which some chambers of their religious consciousness might be opened. And in fact, some difference of degree may be demonstrable, though by no means as clearly as might be wished. The Government of Venice in the fifteenth century seems to have fully shared in the reverence felt throughout the rest of Europe for the remains of the bodies of the saints (p. 72 (#x5_x_5_i34)). Even strangers who lived in Venice found it well to adapt themselves to this superstition.[1084 - See Sabellico, De Situ Venetae Urbis. He mentions the names of the saints, after the manner of many philologists, without the addition of ‘sanctus’ or ‘divus,’ but speaks frequently of different relics, and in the most respectful tone, and even boasts that he kissed several of them.] If we can judge of scholarly Padua from the testimony of its topographer Michele Savonarola (p. 145 (#x7_x_7_i55)), things must have been much the same there. With a mixture of pride and pious awe, Michele tells us how in times of great danger the saints were heard to sigh at night along the streets of the city, how the hair and nails on the corpse of a holy nun in Santa Chiara kept on continually growing, and how the same corpse, when any disaster was impending, used to make a noise and lift up the arms.[1085 - De Laudibus Patavii, in Murat. xxiv. col. 1149 to 1151.] When he sets to work to describe the chapel of St. Anthony in the Santo, the writer loses himself in ejaculations and fantastic dreams. In Milan the people at least showed a fanatical devotion to relics; and when once, in the year 1517, the monks of San Simpliciano were careless enough to expose six holy corpses during certain alterations of the high altar, which event was followed by heavy floods of rain, the people[1086 - Prato, Arch. Stor. iii. pp. 408 sqq. Though he is by no means a freethinker, he still protests against the causal nexus.] attributed the visitation to this sacrilege, and gave the monks a sound beating whenever they met them in the street. In other parts of Italy, and even in the case of the Popes themselves, the sincerity of this feeling is much more dubious, though here, too, a positive conclusion is hardly attainable. It is well known amid what general enthusiasm Pius II. solemnly deposited the head of the Apostle Andrew, which had been brought from Greece, and then from Santa Maura, in the Church of St. Peter (1462); but we gather from his own narrative that he only did it from a kind of shame, as so many princes were competing for the relic. It was not till afterwards that the idea struck him of making Rome the common refuge for all the remains of the saints which had been driven from their own churches.[1087 - Pii II. Comment. l. viii. pp. 352 sqq. ‘Verebatur Pontifex, ne in honore tanti apostoli diminute agere videretur,’ &c.] Under Sixtus IV. the population of the city was still more zealous in this cause than the Pope himself, and the magistracy (1483) complained bitterly that Sixtus had sent to Louis XI., the dying king of France, some specimens of the Lateran relics.[1088 - Jac. Volaterran. in Murat. xxiii. col. 187. The Pope excused himself on the ground of Louis’ great services to the Church, and by the example of other Popes, e.g. St. Gregory, who had done the like. Louis was able to pay his devotion to the relic, but died after all. The Catacombs were at that time forgotten, yet even Savonarola (l. c. col. 1150) says of Rome: ‘Velut ager Aceldama Sanctorum habita est.’] A courageous voice was raised about this time at Bologna, advising the sale of the skull of St. Dominic to the king of Spain, and the application of the money to some useful public object.[1089 - Bursellis, Annal. Bonon. in Murat. xxiii. col. 905. It was one of the sixteen patricians, Bartol. della Volta, d. 1485 or 1486.] But those who had the least reverence of all for the relics were the Florentines. Between the decision to honour their saint S. Zanobi with a new sarcophagus and the final execution of the project by Ghiberti nineteen years elapsed (1409-28), and then it only happened by chance, because the master had executed a smaller order of the same kind with great skill.[1090 - Vasari, iii. 111 sqq. note. Vita di Ghiberti.]

Perhaps through being tricked by a cunning Neapolitan abbess (1352), who sent them a spurious arm of the patroness of the Cathedral, Santa Reparata, made of wood and plaster, they began to get tired of relics.[1091 - Matteo Villani, iii. 15 and 16.] Or perhaps it would be truer to say that their æsthetic sense turned them away in disgust from dismembered corpses and mouldy clothes. Or perhaps their feeling was rather due to that sense for glory which thought Dante and Petrarch worthier of a splendid grave than all the twelve apostles put together. It is probable that throughout Italy, apart from Venice and from Rome, the condition of which latter city was exceptional, the worship of relics had been long giving way to the adoration of the Madonna,[1092 - We must make a further distinction between the Italian cultus of the bodies of historical saints of recent date, and the northern practice of collecting bones and relics of a sacred antiquity. Such remains were preserved in great abundance in the Lateran, which, for that reason, was of special importance for pilgrims. But on the tombs of St. Dominic and St. Anthony of Padua rested, not only the halo of sanctity, but the splendour of historical fame.] at all events to a greater extent than elsewhere in Europe; and in this fact lies indirect evidence of an early development of the æsthetic sense.

It may be questioned whether in the North, where the vastest cathedrals are nearly all dedicated to Our Lady, and where an extensive branch of Latin and indigenous poetry sang the praises of the Mother of God, a greater devotion to her was possible. In Italy, however, the number of miraculous pictures of the Virgin was far greater, and the part they played in the daily life of the people much more important. Every town of any size contained a quantity of them, from the ancient, or ostensibly ancient, paintings by St. Luke, down to the works of contemporaries, who not seldom lived to see the miracles wrought by their own handiwork. The work of art was in these cases by no means as harmless as Battista Mantovano[1093 - The remarkable judgment in his De Sacris Diebus, the work of his later years, refers both to sacred and profane art (l. i.). Among the Jews, he says, there was a good reason for prohibiting all graven images, else they would have relapsed into the idolatry or devil-worship of the nations around them:Nunc autem, postquam penitus natura SatanumCognita, et antiqua sine majestate relicta est,Nulla ferunt nobis statuae discrimina, nullosFert pictura dolos; jam sunt innoxia signa;Sunt modo virtutum testes monimentaque laudumMarmora, et aeternae decora immortalia famae.] thinks; sometimes it suddenly acquired a magical virtue. The popular craving for the miraculous, especially strong in women, may have been fully satisfied by these pictures, and for this reason the relics been less regarded. It cannot be said with certainty how far the respect for genuine relics suffered from the ridicule which the novelists aimed at the spurious.[1094 - Battista Mantovano complains of certain ‘nebulones’ (De Sacris Diebus, l. v.) who would not believe in the genuineness of the Sacred Blood at Mantua. The same criticism which called in question the Donation of Constantine was also, though indirectly, hostile to the belief in relics.]

The attitude of the educated classes towards Mariolatry is more clearly recognisable than towards the worship of images. One cannot but be struck with the fact that in Italian literature Dante’s ‘Paradise’[1095 - Especially the famous prayer of St. Bernard, Paradiso, xxxiii. 1, ‘Vergine madre, figlia del tuo figlio.’] is the last poem in honour of the Virgin, while among the people hymns in her praise have been constantly produced down to our own day. The names of Sannazaro and Sabellico[1096 - Perhaps we may add Pius II., whose elegy on the Virgin is printed in the Opera, p. 964, and who from his youth believed himself to be under her special protection. Jac. Card. Papiens. ‘De Morte Pii,’ Opp. p. 656.] and other writers of Latin poems prove little on the other side, since the object with which they wrote was chiefly literary. The poems written in Italian in the fifteenth[1097 - That is, at the time when Sixtus IV. was so zealous for the Immaculate Conception. Extravag. Commun. l. iii. tit. xii. He founded, too, the Feast of the Presentation of the Virgin in the Temple, and the Feasts of St. Anne and St. Joseph. See Trithem. Ann. Hirsaug. ii. p. 518.] and at the beginning of the sixteenth centuries, in which we meet with genuine religious feeling, such as the hymns of Lorenzo the Magnificent, and the sonnets of Vittoria Colonna and of Michelangelo, might have been just as well composed by Protestants. Besides the lyrical expression of faith in God, we chiefly notice in them the sense of sin, the consciousness of deliverance through the death of Christ, the longing for a better world. The intercession of the Mother of God is only mentioned by the way.[1098 - The few frigid sonnets of Vittoria on the Madonna are most instructive in this respect (n. 85 sqq. ed. P. Visconti, Rome, 1840).] The same phenomenon is repeated in the classical literature of the French at the time of Louis XIV. Not till the time of the Counter-Reformation did Mariolatry reappear in the higher Italian poetry. Meanwhile the plastic arts had certainly done their utmost to glorify the Madonna. It may be added that the worship of the saints among the educated classes often took an essentially pagan form (p. 260 (#x10_x_10_i51)).

We might thus critically examine the various sides of Italian Catholicism at this period, and so establish with a certain degree of probability the attitude of the instructed classes toward popular faith. Yet an absolute and positive result cannot be reached. We meet with contrasts hard to explain. While architects, painters, and sculptors were working with restless activity in and for the churches, we hear at the beginning of the sixteenth century the bitterest complaints of the neglect of public worship and of these churches themselves.

Templa ruunt, passim sordent altaria, cultus
Paulatim divinus abit.[1099 - Bapt. Mantuan. De Sacris Diebus, l. v., and especially the speech of the younger Pico, which was intended for the Lateran Council, in Roscoe, Leone X. ed. Bossi, viii. p. 115. Comp. p. 121, note 3.]

It is well known how Luther was scandalised by the irreverence with which the priests in Rome said Mass. And at the same time the feasts of the Church were celebrated with a taste and magnificence of which Northern countries had no conception. It looks as if this most imaginative of nations was easily tempted to neglect every-day things, and as easily captivated by anything extraordinary.

It is to this excess of imagination that we must attribute the epidemic religious revivals, upon which we shall again say a few words. They must be clearly distinguished from the excitement called forth by the great preachers. They were rather due to general public calamities, or to the dread of such.

In the Middle Ages all Europe was from time to time flooded by these great tides, which carried away whole peoples in their waves. The Crusades and the Flagellant revival are instances. Italy took part in both of these movements. The first great companies of Flagellants appeared, immediately after the fall of Ezzelino and his house, in the neighbourhood of the same Perugia[1100 - Monach. Paduani Chron. l. iii. at the beginning. We there read of this revival: ‘Invasit primitus Perusinos, Romanes postmodum, deinde fere Italiæ populos universos.’ Guil. Ventura (Fragmenta de Gestis Astensium in Mon. Hist. Patr. SS. tom. iii. col. 701) calls the Flagellant pilgrimage ‘admirabilis Lombardorum commotio;’ hermits came forth from their cells and summoned the cities to repent.] which has been already spoken of (p. 482 (#x17_x_17_i1), note 2), as the head-quarters of the revivalist preachers. Then followed the Flagellants of 1310 and 1334,[1101 - G. Villani, viii. 122, xi. 23. The former were not received in Florence, the latter were welcomed all the more readily.] and then the great pilgrimage without scourging in the year 1399, which Corio has recorded.[1102 - Corio, fol. 281. Leon. Aretinus, Hist. Flor. lib. xii. (at the beginning) mentions a sudden revival called forth by the processions of the ‘dealbati’ from the Alps to Lucca, Florence, and still farther.] It is not impossible that the Jubilees were founded partly in order to regulate and render harmless this sinister passion for vagabondage which seized on whole populations at times of religious excitement. The great sanctuaries of Italy, such as Loreto and others, had meantime become famous, and no doubt diverted a certain part of this enthusiasm.[1103 - Pilgrimages to distant places had already become very rare. Those of the princes of the House of Este to Jerusalem, St. Jago, and Vienne are enumerated in Murat. xxiv. col. 182, 187, 190, 279. For that of Rinaldo Albizzi to the Holy Land, see Macchiavelli, Stor. Fior. l. v. Here, too, the desire of fame is sometimes the motive. The chronicler Giov. Cavalcanti (Ist. Fiorentine, ed. Polidori, ii. 478) says of Lionardo Fescobaldi, who wanted to go with a companion (about the year 1400) to the Holy Sepulchre: ‘Stimarono di eternarsi nella mente degli uomini futuri.’]

But terrible crises had still at a much later time the power to reawaken the glow of mediæval penitence, and the conscience-stricken people, often still further appalled by signs and wonders, sought to move the pity of Heaven by wailings and scourgings, by fasts, processions, and moral enactments. So it was at Bologna when the plague came in 1457,[1104 - Bursellis, Annal. Bon. in Murat. xxiii. col. 890.] so in 1496 at a time of internal discord at Siena,[1105 - Allegretto, in Murat. xxiii. col. 855 sqq. The report had got about that it had rained blood outside the gate. All rushed forth, yet ‘gli uomini di guidizio non lo credono.’] to mention two only out of countless instances. No more moving scene can be imagined than that we read of at Milan in 1529, when famine, plague, and war conspired with Spanish extortion to reduce the city to the lowest depths of despair.[1106 - Burigozzo, Arch. Stor. iii. 486. For the misery which then prevailed in Lombardy, Galeazzo Capello (De Rebus nuper in Italia Gestis) is the best authority. Milan suffered hardly less than Rome did in the sack of 1527.] It chanced that the monk who had the ear of the people, Fra Tommaso Nieto, was himself a Spaniard. The Host was borne along in a novel fashion, amid barefooted crowds of old and young. It was placed on a decorated bier, which rested on the shoulders of four priests in linen garments—an imitation of the Ark of the Covenant[1107 - It was also called ‘l’arca del testimonio,’ and people told how it was ‘conzado’ (constructed) ‘con gran misterio.’] which the children of Israel once carried round the walls of Jericho. Thus did the afflicted people of Milan remind their ancient God of His old covenant with man; and when the procession again entered the cathedral, and it seemed as if the vast building must fall in with the agonised cry of ‘Misericordia!’ many who stood there may have believed that the Almighty would indeed subvert the laws of nature and of history, and send down upon them a miraculous deliverance.

There was one government in Italy, that of Duke Ercole I. of Ferrara,[1108 - Diario Ferrarese, in Murat. xxiv. col. 317, 322, 323, 326, 386, 401.] which assumed the direction of public feeling, and compelled the popular revivals to move in regular channels. At the time when Savonarola was powerful in Florence, and the movement which he began spread far and wide among the population of central Italy, the people of Ferrara voluntarily entered on a general fast (at the beginning of 1496). A Lazarist announced from the pulpit the approach of a season of war and famine such as the world had never seen; but the Madonna had assured some pious people[1109 - ‘Ad uno santo homo o santa donna,’ says the chronicle. Married men were forbidden to keep concubines.] that these evils might be avoided by fasting. Upon this, the court itself had no choice but to fast, but it took the conduct of the public devotions into its own hands. On Easter Day, the 3rd of April, a proclamation on morals and religion was published, forbidding blasphemy, prohibited games, sodomy, concubinage, the letting of houses to prostitutes or panders, and the opening of all shops on feast-days, excepting those of the bakers and greengrocers. The Jews and Moors, who had taken refuge from the Spaniards at Ferrara, were now compelled again to wear the yellow O upon the breast. Contraveners were threatened, not only with the punishments already provided by law, but also ‘with such severer penalties as the Duke might think good to inflict,’ of which one-fourth in case of a pecuniary fine was to be paid to the Duke, and the other three-fourths were to go to some public institution. After this, the Duke and the court went several days in succession to hear sermons in church, and on the 10th of April all the Jews in Ferrara were compelled to do the same.[1110 - The sermon was especially addressed to them; after it a Jew was baptised, ‘ma non di quelli’ adds the annalist, ‘che erano stati a udire la predica.’] On the 3rd of May the director of police—that Zampante who has been already referred to (p. 50 (#x5_x_5_i10))—sent the crier to announce that whoever had given money to the police-officers in order not to be informed against as a blasphemer, might, if he came forward, have it back with a further indemnification. These wicked officers, he said, had extorted as much as two or three ducats from innocent persons by threatening to lodge an information against them. They had then mutually informed against one another, and so had all found their way into prison. But as the money had been paid precisely in order not to have to do with Zampante, it is probable that his proclamation induced few people to come forward. In the year 1500, after the fall of Ludovico Moro, when a similar outbreak of popular feeling took place, Ercole[1111 - ‘Per buono rispetto a lui noto e perchè sempre è buono a star bene con Iddio,’ says the annalist. After describing the arrangements, he adds resignedly: ‘La cagione perchè sia fatto et si habbia a fare non s’intende, basta che ogni bene è bene.’] ordered a series of nine processions, in which there were 4,000 children dressed in white, bearing the standard of Jesus. He himself rode on horseback, as he could not walk without difficulty. An edict was afterwards published of the same kind as that of 1496. It is well known how many churches and monasteries were built by this ruler. He even sent for a live saint, the Suor Colomba, shortly before he married his son Alfonso to Lucrezia Borgia (1502). A special messenger[1112 - He is called ‘Messo del Cancellieri del Duca.’ The whole thing was evidently intended to appear the work of the court only, and not of any ecclesiastical authority.] fetched the saint with fifteen other nuns from Viterbo, and the Duke himself conducted her on her arrival at Ferrara into a convent prepared for her reception. We shall probably do him no injustice if we attribute all these measures very largely to political calculation. To the conception of government formed by the House of Este, as indicated above (p. 46 (#x5_x_5_i6), sqq.), this employment of religion for the ends of statecraft belongs by a kind of logical necessity.

CHAPTER III.