Chapter I: The Origins (2)

From the dry records of incipient prose it is refreshing to turn to another species of popular poetry; for poetry in the period of origins is always more adult than prose. Numerous fragments of political songs have been disinterred from chronicles, which can be referred to the thirteenth century. Thus an anonymous Genoese rhymster celebrated the victories of Laiazzo (1294) and Curzola (1298), while Giovanni Villani preserved six lines upon the siege of Messina (1282).[30] Verses in the vulgar tongue commemorating the apostasy of Fra Elia, General of the Franciscans, in 1240, and the coming of the Florentine Lambertesco dei Lamberteschi as Podesta to Reggio in 1243, with scraps of song relating to Pisan and Florentine history, may be read in Carducci's monumental work upon this period of literature.[31] These relics, though precious, are singularly scanty; nor can a Northern student pass them by without remarking the absence of that semi-historical, semi-mythical poetry, which is so familiar to us under the name of Ballad. More important, because of greater extent, are the laments and amorous or comic poems, which can be attributed to the same century. The Lament of the Paduan woman for her husband, who has journeyed to Holy Land in the Crusade preached by Urban IV., may be compared with Rinaldo d'Aquino's Farewell.[32] Both of these compositions were written under Provencal influence, though the former at least is strictly dialectical and popular. Passing to satirical poems, I may mention two pieces extracted from a Bolognese MS. of 1272 which paint with vivid force of humor the manners of women.[33] One represents a drinking-party of more than Aristophanic freedom; the other, a wrangling match between two sisters-in-law--the _Cognate_. Each displays facility of composition and a literary style already formed. They are not without French parallels; but the mode of presentation is Italian, and the phrases have been transplanted without change from vulgar dialogue. Two romantic lyrics extracted from the same MS. prove that the fashionable style of Provence had descended from the nobles to the common folk and taken a new tincture of realism.[34] The complaint of an unwedded maiden to her mother is a not uncommon motive in this early literature, turning either to pathos or suggesting a covert coarseness in the climax.[35] To the same class may be referred some graceful lyrics and dance-songs, combining the artlessness of popular inspiration with reminiscences of French originals.[36] Of these the Nightingale and the Song of Love in Dreams might be selected for their close sympathy with the _rispetti_ made in Italian country districts at the present day. Lastly, I have to mention two obscene poems of great popularity, _Il Nicchio_ and _L'Ugellino_.[37] These were known to Boccaccio, for he refers to them by name at the close of the fifth day in the Decameron. Each of the ditties bears a thoroughly Italian stamp, and anticipates by its peculiar style of _double entendre_ a whole department of national poetry--the Florentine Carnival Songs and the Capitoli of the Roman academies being distinctly foreshadowed in their humorous and allusive treatment of a vulgar topic. Hence we may take occasion to observe that those who accuse Lorenzo de' Medici and his contemporaries of debasing popular taste by the deliberate introduction of licentiousness into art, exceed the limits of just censure. What is called the Paganism of the Renaissance, was indigenous in Italy. We find it inherent in vulgar literature before the date of Boccaccio; and if, with the advance of social luxury, it assumed, in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries, a more objectionable prominence, this should not be exclusively ascribed to the influence of humanistic studies or to the example of far-sighted despots. Indeed, it can be asserted that the specific quality of the popular Italian genius--its sensuous realism, qualified with irony--emerges unmistakably in five most important relics of the thirteenth century, the _Cognate_, the _Comadri_, the Tenzone of the Maiden and her Mother (_Mamma lo temp'e venuto_), the _Nicchio_, and the _Ugellino_.[38] They yield the common stuff of that magnificent art which shall afterwards be developed into the _Decameron_ and the _Novelle_, out of which shall proceed the comedies and Bernesque lyrics of the _Cinque Cento_, and which is destined to penetrate the golden cantos of the _Orlando Furioso_. To an unprejudiced student of Italian arts and letters nothing seems more clearly proved than the fact that a certain powerful objective quality--call it realism, call it sensuousness--determines their most genuine productions, sinking to grossness, ascending to sublimity, combining with religious feeling in the fine arts, blending with the definiteness of classic style, but never absent. It is this objectivity, realism, sensuousness, which constitutes the strength of the Italians, and assigns the limitations of their faculty.

In quite a different region, but of no less importance for the future of Italian literature, must be reckoned the religious hymns, which, during the thirteenth century, began to be composed in the vernacular. The earliest known specimen is S. Francis' famous _Cantico del Sole_, which, even as it is preserved to us, after undergoing the process of modernization, retains the purity and freshness of a bird's note in spring. After S. Francis, but at the distance of half a century, followed Jacopone da Todi, with his passionate and dithyrambic odes, which seem to vibrate tongues of fire. To this religious lyric the Flagellant frenzy (1260) and the subsequent formation of Companies of Laudesi gave decisive impulse. I shall have in a future chapter to discuss the relation between the Umbrian Lauds and the origins of the Drama. It is enough here to notice the part played in the evolution of the language by so early a transition from the Latin Hymns of the Church to Hymns written in the modern speech for private confraternities and domestic gatherings.

We learn from this meager review of ancient popular poetry that during the thirteenth century the dialects of each district had begun to seek literary expression. There are many indications that the products of one province speedily became the property of the rest. Spontaneous motives were mingled with French and Provencal recollections; and already we can trace the unconscious effort to form a common language in the process known as _Toscaneggiamento_, or the translation of local songs into Tuscan idiom.[39] It would, therefore, be incorrect to imagine either that the Sicilian poets were blank imitators of Provencal models, or that the Italian language started into being at Palermo. What really happened was, that Frederick's Court became the center of a widespread literary movement. The Sicilian dialect predominating at Palermo over the rest, the poets of different provinces who assembled round the Emperor were subsequently known as Sicilian. Their songs, passing upward through the peninsula, bore that name, even when they had, as at Florence, been converted, by dialectical modifications, to the use of Tuscan folk.[40] The aristocratic tone of the Court made Provencal literature fashionable; and a refined diction, softening the crudities of more than one competing dialect, was formed to express the subtleties of the Provencal style. We must bear in mind that the poets of this Court were men of learned education--judges, notaries, officials. Dante makes _dottori_ nearly synonymous with _trovatori_. At the same time, one of the earliest specimens of Sicilian poetry, Ciullo d'Alcamo's _Tenzone_, is popular, free from Provencal affectation, inclining to comedy in some of its marked motives and to coarseness at its close. This proves that in the island, side by side with "courtly makers" and _dottori_, there flourished an original and vulgar manner of poetry.

The process of Tuscanization referred to in the preceding paragraph is too important in its bearings on the problems of Italian language and literature, to be passed over without further discussion. Nearly all the poetry of the Sicilian epoch has been transmitted to us in Florentine MSS., after undergoing _Toscaneggiamento_. We possess but a few stanzas in a pure condition. There is, therefore, reason to believe that when Dante treated of the courtly Sicilian poets in his essay _De Vulgari Eloquio_, he knew their writings in a form already Tuscanized.[41] In commending the curial and illustrious vernacular, as something distinct from the dialects, he was in truth praising the dialect of his own province, refined by the practice of polite versifiers. At the date of the composition of that essay, the Suabian House had been extinguished; the literary society of the south was broken up; and to Florence had already fallen the heritage of art. What is even more remarkable, the Bolognese poets, who preceded Dante and his peers by one generation, had abandoned their own dialect in favor of the purified Tuscan. Consequently the new Italian literature was already Tuscan either by origin, or by adoption, or by a process of transformation, before the Florentines assumed the dictatorship of letters. It seems paradoxical to hint that Dante should not have perceived what has been here stated as more than a mere possibility. How came it that he included Florentine among the peccant idioms, and maintained that the true literary speech was still to seek? These doubts may in part at least be removed, when we remember the peculiar conditions under which the courtly poetry he praised had been produced; and the indirect channels by which it had reached him. In the first place, we have seen that it was composed in avowed imitation of Provencal models, by men of taste and learning drawn from several provinces. They culled, for literary purposes, a vocabulary of colorless and neutral words, which clothed the same conventional ideas with elegant and artificial monotony. When these compositions underwent the further process of Tuscanization (which was easy, owing to certain dialectical affinities between Sicilian and Tuscan), they lost to a large extent what still remained to them of local character, without acquiring the true stamp of Florentine. Even a contemporary could not have recognized in the verse of Jacopo da Lentino, thus treated, either a genuine Sicilian or a genuine Tuscan flavor. His language presented the appearance of being, as indeed it was, different from both idioms. The artifice of style made it pass for superior; and, in purely literary quality, it was in truth superior to the products of plebeian inspiration. We may prefer the racy stanzas of the _Cognate_ to those frigid and exhausted euphuisms. But the critical taste of so great a master as even Dante was not tuned to any such preference. Though he recognized the defects of the Sicilian poets, as is manifest from his dialogue with Guido in the _Purgatory_, he gave them all credit for elevating verse above the vulgar level. Their insipid diction seemed to him the first germ of a noble _lingua aulica_. Its colorlessness and strangeness hid the fact that it had already, at the close of the thirteenth century, assumed the Tuscan habit, and that from the well-springs of Tuscan idiom the Italian of the future would have to draw its aliment.

The downfall of the Hohenstauffens and the dispersion of their Court-poets proved a circumstance of decisive benefit to Italian literature, by removing it from a false atmosphere into conditions where it freely flourished and expanded its originality. Feudalism formed no vital part of the Italian social system, and chivalry had never been more than an exotic, cultivated in the hotbed of the aristocracy. The impulse given to poetry in the south, under influences in no true sense of the phrase national--a Norman-German dynasty attempting to acclimatize Provencal forms upon Italian soil--could hardly have produced a vigorous type of literature. It is from the people, in centers of popular activity, or where the spirit of the people finds full play in representative society, that characteristic art must be developed. When we say this, we think inevitably of Periclean Athens, Elizabeth's London, the Paris of Louis XIV. If the chances of our drama had been confined to Court-patronage or Sidney's Areopagus, instead of being extended to the nation by free competition in the wooden theaters where Marlowe and Shakspere appealed to popular taste, there is little doubt but that England would only have boasted of a mediocre and academical stage. When Italian poetry deserted Palermo for the banks of the Arno, it exchanged the Court for the people; the subtleties of decadent chivalry for the genuine impulses of a free community; the pettiness of culture for the humanities of a public conscious of high destinies and educated in a masculine political arena. Here the grand qualities of the Italian genius found an open field. Literature, abandoning imitative elegance, expressed the feelings, thoughts, and aspirations of a breed second to none in Europe for acuteness of intellect, intensity of emotion, and greatness of purpose. At Palermo the princes and their courtiers had been reciprocally auditors and poets. At Florence the people listened; and the poets, sprung from them, were speakers. Except at Athens in the golden age of Hellas, no populace has equaled that of Florence both for the production of original genius, and also for the sensitiveness to beauty, diffused throughout all classes, which brings the artist and his audience into right accord.

Two stages in the transition from Sicily to Florence need to be described. Guittone of Arezzo (1230-1294) strikes the historian of literature as the man who first attempted to nationalize the polished poetry of the Sicilian Court, and to strip the new style of its feudal pedantry.[42] It was his aim, apparently, dismissing chivalrous conventions, to use the diction and the forms of literary art in an immediate appeal to the Italian people. He wrote, however, roughly. Though he practiced vernacular prose, and assumed in verse the declamatory tone which Petrarch afterwards employed with such effect in his addresses to the consciousness of Italy, yet Dante could speak of him with cold contempt[43]; nor can we claim for him a higher place than that of precursor. He attempted more than he was able to fulfill. But his attempt, when judged by the conditions of his epoch, deserves to rank among achievements.

With a poet of Bologna the case is different. Placed midway between Lombardy and Tuscany, Bologna shared the instincts of the two noblest Italian populations--the Communes who wrested liberty from Frederick Barbarossa, and the Communes who were to give arts and letters to the nation. Bologna, moreover, was proud of her legal university, and had already won her title of "the learned." Here Guido Guinicelli solved the problem of rendering the Sicilian style at once national in spirit and elevated in style.[44] He did so by making it scientific. Receiving from his Italo-Provencal predecessors the material of chivalrous love, and obeying the genius of his native city, Guido rhymed of love no longer as a fashionable pastime, but as the medium of philosophic truth. Learning was the mother of the national Italian poetry. From Guido started a school of transcendental singers, who used the ancient form and subject-matter of exotic poetry for the utterance of metaphysical thought. The Italians, born, as it were, old, were destined thus to pass from imitation, through speculation, to the final freedom of their sensuous art. Of this new lyric style--logical, allegorical, mystical--the first masterpiece was Guido's Canzone of the Gentle Heart. The code was afterwards formulated in Dante's _Convito_. The life it covered and interpreted was painted in the _Vita Nuova_. Its apocalypse was the _Paradiso_. If Guido Guinicelli did not succeed in writing from the heart, if he was more of an analyst than a lover, it is yet clear that the euphuisms of the Italo-Provencal imitators have yielded in his verse to genuine emotion, while, speaking technically, the complex structure of the true Italian Canzone now appears in all its harmony of grace and grandeur. Guido's language is Tuscan; not the Tuscan of the people, but the Tuscan of the Toscaneggiamenti. Herein, again, we note the importance of this poet in the history of literature. Working outside Florence, but obeying Florentine precedent, he stamps Italian with a Tuscan seal, and helps to conceal from Tuscans themselves the high destinies of their idiom.

Dante puts us at the right point of view for estimating Guido's service. Though he recognized the Sicilians as the first masters of poetic style in Italy, Dante saluted the poet of Bologna as his father[45]:

Quando i' udi' nomar se stesso il padre
Mio, e degli altri miei miglior, che mai
Rime d'amor usar dolci e leggiadre.

On the authority of this sentence we hail in Guido the founder of the new and specifically national literature of the Italians. If not the master, he was the prophet of that _dolce stil nuovo_, which freed them from dependence on foreign traditions, and led, by transmutation, to the miracles of their Renaissance art. He divined that sincere source of inspiration, whereof Dante speaks[46]:

Io mi son un che quando
Amore spira, noto; ed a quel modo
Ch'ei detta dentro, vo significando.

The happy instinct which led him to use Tuscan, has secured his place upon the roll of poets who may still be read with pleasure. And of this, too, Dante prophesied[47]:

Li dolci detti vostri,
Che, quanto durera l'uso moderno,
Faranno cari ancora i loro inchiostri.

Bologna could boast of many minor bards--of the excellent Onesto, of Fabrizio and Ghislieri, _qui doctores fuerunt illustres et vulgarium discretione repleti_.[48] Her erudition was further illustrated by the work of one Guidotto, who composed a treatise on the new vernacular, which he dedicated to King Manfred. Thus both by example and precept, by the testimony of Dante and the fair fame of her own writers, this city makes for us a link between Sicilian and Tuscan literature.

Manfred was slain at Benevento in 1266, and with him expired the prospects of Sicilian poetry. Dante, destined to inaugurate the great age, was born at Florence in 1265. Guido Guinicelli died in 1277, when Dante had completed his twelfth year. From 1249 until 1271, during the whole childhood of Dante, Enzo, King of Sardinia, Manfred's half-brother and Frederick II.'s son, remained a prisoner in the public palace of Bologna. In one of those years of preparation and transition, while the learned stanzas of Guido Guinicelli were preluding the "new sweet style" of Tuscany, this yellow-haired scion of the Suabian princes, the progenitor of the Bentivogli, sent a song forth from his dungeon's _loggie_ to greet the provinces of Italy:--

Va, Canzonetta mia,
E saluta Messere,
Dilli lo mal ch'i' aggio.
Quella che m'ha in balia
Si distretto mi tene,
Ch'eo viver non poraggio.
Salutami Toscana,
Quella ched e sovrana,
In cui regna tutta cortesia;
E vanne in Puglia piana,
La magna Capitana,
La dove e lo mio core notte e dia.

These lines sound a farewell to the old age and a salutation to the new. Enzo's heart is in the lowlands of Apulia and the great Capitanate, where his father built castles and fought mighty wars. He belongs, like his verses, like his race, like the chivalrous sentiments he had imbibed in youth, to the past; and now he is dreaming life away, a captive with the burghers of Bologna. Yet it is Tuscany for which he reserves the epithet of Sovereign--Tuscany where all courtesy holds sway. The situation is pathetic. The poem is a prophecy.

Raimond of Tours, one of the earlier French minnesingers, bade his friend seek hospitality "in the noble city of the Florentines, named Florence; for it is there that joy and song and love are perfected with beauty crowned."[49] The delicate living and graceful pastimes of Valdarno were famous throughout Europe. In the old French romance of "Cleomades," for example, we read a rhymed description of the games and banquets with which Florence welcomed May and June[50]:--

Pour May et Gayn honorer;
Le May pour sa jolivite,
Et le Gayn pour la plante.

Villani, writing of the year 1283, when the Guelfs had triumphed and the nobles had been quelled, speaks thus of those festivities[51]:--"In this happy and fair state of ease and peaceful quiet so wealth-giving to merchants and artificers, and specially to the Guelfs, who ruled the land, there was formed in the quarter of S. Felicita beyond the Arno, where the family De' Rossi took the lead, together with their neighborhood, a company or band of one thousand men and upwards, all attired in white, with a Lord named the Lord of Love. This band had no other purpose than to pass the time in games and solace, and in dances of ladies, knights and other people of the city, roaming the town with trumpets and divers instruments of music, in joy and gladness, and abiding together in banquets at mid-day and eventide." From another chronicle it appears that this company was called the _Brigata bianca_, or _Brigata amorosa_.[52] "There," says a rhymer who had seen the sports, "might one behold the rich attire of silk and gold, of samite, white and blue and violet, with fair velvets; and trappings of all colors I beheld that day. The young men mid the women went with gaze fixed upon those eyes angelical, that turn the midnight into noon. Over their blonde tresses the maidens wore gems and precious garlands; lilies, violets and roses were their charming faces. You would not have said: 'Yon are mortal beings.' They rather seemed a thousand paradises."[53]

The amusements lasted two months, from May 1 until the end of the midsummer feast of S. John, patron of Florence. Later on, we read of two companies, the one dressed in yellow, the other in white, each led by their King, who filled the city with the sound of music, and wore garlands on their heads, and spent their time in dances and banquets.[54]

Again, when the nobles, after the battle of Campaldino, had been finally suppressed, Villani once more returns to the subject of these companies, describing the booths of wood adorned with silken curtains, which were ranged along the streets and squares, for the accommodation of guests.[55] It will be observed that Villani connects the gladness of this season with the successive triumphs of the Guelf party and the suppression of the nobles by the Popolo. Not only was Florence freed from grave anxieties and heavy expenses, caused by the intramural quarrels between Counts and Burghers, but the city felt the advent of her own prosperity, the realization of her true type, in their victorious close. Then the new noble class, the _popolani grassi_, assumed the gentle manners of chivalry, accommodating its customs to their own rich jovial ideal. Feudalism was extinguished; but society retained such portions of feudal customs as shed beauty upon common life. Tranquillity succeeded to strife, and the medieval city presented a spectacle similar to that which an old Greek lyrist has described among the gifts of Peace:

To mortal men Peace giveth these good things:
Wealth, and the flowers of honey-throated song;
The flame that springs
On carven altars from fat sheep and kine,
Slain to the gods in heaven; and, all day long,
Games for glad youths, and flutes, and wreaths, and circling wine.
Then in the steely shield swart spiders weave
Their web and dusky woof:
Rust to the pointed spear and sword doth cleave;
The brazen trump sounds no alarms;
Nor is sleep harried from our eyes aloof,
But with sweet rest my bosom warms:
The streets are thronged with beauteous men and young,
And hymns in praise of Love like flames to heaven are flung.

Goro di Stagio Dati, writing at the end of the fourteenth century, has preserved for us an animated picture of Florence in May.[56] "When the season of spring appears to gladden all the world, every man bethinks him how to make fair the day of S. John, which follows at midsummer, and there is none but provides himself betimes with clothes and ornaments and jewels. Marriages and other joyous occasions are deferred until that time, to do the festival honor; and two months before the date, they begin to furnish forth the decorations of the races--dresses of varlets, banners, clarions, draperies, and candles, and whatsoever other offerings should be made. The whole city is in a bustle for the preparation of the Festa; and the hearts of young men and women, who take part therein, are set on naught but dancing, playing, singing, banqueting, jousting, and other fair amusements as though naught else were to be done in those weeks before the coming of S. John's Eve." The minute account of the ceremonies observed on S. John's Day which follows, need not be transcribed. Yet it may be well to call attention to a _quattrocento_ picture in the Florentine Academy, which illustrates the customs of that festival. It is a long panel representing the marriage of an Adimari with a daughter of the Ricasoli. The Baptistery appears in the background; and on the piazza are ladies and young men, clad in damask and rich stuffs, with jewels and fantastic head-dresses, joining hands as though in act of dancing. Under the Loggia del Bigallo sit the trumpeters of the Signory, blowing clarions adorned with pennons. The lily of Florence is on these trappings. Serving men carry vases and basins toward the Adimari palace, in preparation for the wedding feast. A large portion of the square is covered in with a white and red awning.

If the chroniclers and painters enable us to form some conception of Florentine festivity, we are introduced to the persons and pastimes of these jovial companies by the poet Folgore da San Gemignano.[57] Two sets of his Sonnets have been preserved, the one upon the Months, addressed to the leader of a noble Sienese company; the other on the Days, to a member of a similar Florentine society. If we are right in reckoning Folgore among the poets of the thirteenth century, the facility and raciness of his style, its disengagement from Provencalizing pedantry, and the irony of his luxurious hedonism, prove to what extent the Tuscans had already left the middle age behind them.[58] Folgore, in spite of his spring fragrance and auroral freshness, anticipates the spirit of the Renaissance. He is a thirteenth-century Boccaccio, without Boccaccio's enthusiasm for humane studies. Ideal love, asceticism, religion, the virtues of the Christian and the knight, are not for him. His soul is set on the enjoyment of the hour. But this materialism is presented in a form of art so temperate, with colors so refined and outlines so delicately drawn, that there is nothing repulsive in it. His selfishness and sensuality are related to Aretino's as the miniatures of a missal to Giulio Romano's Modes of Venus.[59]

In his sonnets on the Months, Folgore addresses the Brigata as "valiant and courteous above Lancelot, ready, if need were, with lance in rest, to spur along the lists of Camelot." In January he gives them good fires and warm chambers, silken coverlids for their beds, and fur cloaks, and sometimes in the day to sally forth and snow-ball girls upon the square:

Uscir di fora alcuna volta il giorno,
Gittando della neve bella e bianca
A le donzelle, che staran dattorno.

February brings the pleasures of the chase. March is good for fishing, with merry friends at night, and never a friar to be seen:

Lasciate predicar i Frati pazzi,
Ch'hanno troppe bugie e poco vero.

In April the "gentle country all abloom with fair fresh grass" invites the young men forth. Ladies shall go with them, to ride, display French dresses, dance Provencal figures, or touch new instruments from Germany, or roam through spacious parks. May brings in tournaments and showers of blossoms--garlands and oranges flung from balcony and window--girls and youths saluting with kisses on cheeks and lips:

E pulzellette, giovene, e garzoni
Basciarsi nella bocca e nelle guance;
D'amore e di goder vi si ragioni.

In June the company of youths and maidens quit the city for the villa, passing their time in shady gardens, where the fountains flow and freshen the fine grass, and all the folk shall be love's servants. July finds them in town again, avoiding the sun's heat and wearing silken raiment in cool chambers where they feast. In August they are off to the hills, riding at morn and eve from castle to castle, through upland valleys where streams flow. September is the month of hawking; October of fowling and midnight balls. With November and December winter comes again, and brings the fireside pleasures of the town. On the whole, there is too much said of eating and drinking in these sonnets; and the series concludes with a piece of inhumane advice:

E beffe far dei tristi cattivelli,
E miseri cattivi sciagurati
Avari: non vogliate usar con elli.

The sonnets on the Days breathe the same quaint medieval hedonism.[60] Monday is the day of songs and love; our young man must be up betimes, to make his mistress happy:

Levati su, donzello, e non dormire;
Che l'amoroso giorno ti conforta,
E vuol che vadi tua donna a fruire.

Tuesday is the day of battles and pitched fields; but these are described in mock-heroics, which show what the poet really felt about the pleasure of them. Wednesday is the day of banquets, when ladies and girls are waited on by young men wearing amorous wreaths:

E donzelletti gioveni garzoni
Servir, portando amorose ghirlande.

Thursday is the day of jousts and tourneys; Friday of hounds and horses; Saturday, of hawks and fowling-nets; Sunday, of "dances and feats of arms in Florence":

Danzar donzelli, armeggiar cavalieri,
Cercar Fiorenza per ogni contrada,
Per piazze, per giardini, e per verzieri.

Such then was the joyous living, painted with colors of the fancy by a Tuscan poet, and realized in Florence at the close of that eventful century which placed the city under Guelf rule, in the plenitude of peace, equality, and wealth by sea and land. Distinctions of class had been obliterated. The whole population enjoyed equal rights and equal laws. No man was idle; and though the simplicity of the past, praised by Dante and Villani, was yielding to luxury, still the pleasure-seekers were controlled by that fine taste which made the Florentines a race of artists.[61] This halcyon season was the boyhood of Dante and Giotto, the prime of Arnolfo and Cimabue. The buildings whereby the City of the Flower is still made beautiful above all cities of Italian soil, were rising. The people abode in industry and order beneath the sway of their elected leaders. Supreme in Tuscany, fearing no internal feuds, strong in their militia of thirty thousand burghers to repel a rival State, the Florentines had reached the climax of political prosperity. Not as yet had arisen that little cloud, no bigger than a man's hand, above Pistoja, which was destined to plunge them into the strife of Blacks and Whites. During that interval of windless calm, in that fair city, where the viol and the lute were never silent through spring-tide and summer, the star of Italian poetry, that "crowning glory of unblemished wealth," went up and filled the heavens with light.

FOOTNOTES:

[1] See Giesebrecht, _De Litterarum studiis apud Italos primis medii aevi saeculis_, Berolini, 1845, p. 15.

[2] See Giesebrecht, _op. cit._ p. 19. Wippo recommends the Emperor to compel his subjects to educate their sons in letters and law. It was by such studies that ancient Rome acquired her greatness. In Italy at the present time, he says, all boys pass from the games of childhood into schools. It is only the Teutons who think it idle or disgraceful for a man to study unless he be intended for a clerical career.

[3] See Adolfo Bartoli, _Storia della Letteratura Italiana_, vol. i. pp. 142-158, and p. 167, on Guido delle Colonne and Qualichino da Spoleto.

[4] See above, vol. i. _Age of the Despots_, 2nd ed. chap. 2.

[5] The Italians did not even begin to reflect upon their _lingua volgare_ until the special characters and temperaments of their chief States had been fixed and formed. In other words, their social and political development far anticipated their literary evolution. There remained no center from which the vulgar tongue could radiate, absorbing local dialects. Each State was itself a center, perpetuating dialect.

[6] See Du Meril, _Poesies Populaires Latines anterieures au douzieme Siecle_, Paris, 1843.

[7] Regarding the authorship of Latin hymns see the notes in Mone's _Hymni Latini Medii AEvi_, Friburgi Brisgoviae, 1853, 3 vols. For the French origin of _Carmina Burana_ see _Die lateinischen Vagantenlieder der Mittelalters_, von Oscar Hubatsch, Goerlitz, 1870.

[8] Du Meril, _op. cit._ p. 268.

[9] Dante, _Paradiso_, xv.

[10] See _Age of the Despots_, p. 65.

[11] xvi. 115.

[12] See D'Ancona, _Poesia Popolare_, p. 11, note.

[13] See Carducci, _Dello Svolgimento della Letteratura Nazionale_, p. 29.

[14] Romagnoli has reprinted some specimens of the _Illustre et Famosa Historia di Lancillotto del Lago_, Bologna, 1862.

[15] Muratori in _Antiq. Ital. Diss._ xxx. p. 351, quotes a decree of the Bolognese Commune, dated 1288, to the effect that _Cantatores Francigenarum in plateis Communis omnino morari non possint_. They had become a public nuisance and impeded traffic.

[16] In the _Cento Novelle_ there are several Arthurian stories. The rubrics of one or two will suffice to show how the names were Italianized. _Qui conta come la damigella di Scalot mori per amore di Lanciallotto de Lac._ Nov. lxxxii. _Qui conta della reina Isotta e di m. Tristano di Leonis._ Nov. lxv. In the _Historia di Lancillotto_, cited above, Sir Kay becomes _Keux_; Gawain is _Gauuan_. In the _Tavola Ritonda_, _Morderette_ stands for Mordred, _Bando di Benoiche_ for Ban of Benwick, _Lotto d'Organia_ for Lot of Orkeney.

[17] See Adolfo Bartoli, _Storia della Letteratura Italiana_, vol. ii. chapters iii., iv., v., vi., for a minute inquiry into this early dialectical literature.

[18] _Cento Novelle_, Milano, 1825, Nov. ii. and xxi.

[19] _Chronica Fr. Salimbene Parmensis, ord. min._, Parmae, 1857, p. 166.

[20] See the _Cronache Siciliane_, Bologna, Romagnoli, 1865, the first of which bears upon its opening paragraph the date 1358. Sicilian, it may be said in passing, presents close dialectical resemblance to Tuscan. Even the superficial alteration of the Sicilian _u_ and _i_ into the Tuscan _o_ and _e_ (_e.g._ _secundu_ and _putiri_ into _secondo_ and _potere_) effaces the most obvious differences.

[21] The Italians wavered long between several metrical systems, before they finally adopted the hendecasyllabic line, which became the consecrated rhythm of serious poetry. Carducci, in his treatise _Intorno ad alcune Rime_ (Imola, Galeati, 1876), pp. 81-89, may be profitably consulted with regard to early Italian Alexandrines. He points out that Ciullo's _Tenzone_:

Rosa fresc' aulentissima--c'appar' in ver' l'estate:

and the Ballata of the Comari:

Pur bi' del vin, comadr'--e no lo temperare:

together with numerous compositions of the Northern Lombard school (Milan and Verona), are written in Alexandrines. In the Lombardo-Sicilian age of Italian literature, before Bologna acted as an intermediate to Florence, this meter bid fair to become acclimatized. But the Tuscan genius determined decisively for the hendecasyllabic.

[22] See the Appendix to this chapter on Italian hendecasyllables.

[23] See Carducci, _Cantilene_, etc. (Pisa, 1871), pp. 58-60, for thirteenth-century _rispetti_ illustrating the Sicilian form of the Octave Stanza and its transformation to the Tuscan type.

[24] The poetry of this period will be found in Trucchi, _Poesie Inedite_, Prato, 1846; _Poeti del Primo Secolo_, Firenze, 1816; _Raccolta di Rime Antiche Toscane_, Palermo, Assenzio, 1817; and in a critical edition of the _Codex Vaticanus_ 3793, _Le Antiche Rime Volgari_, per cura di A. d'Ancona e D. Comparetti, Bologna, Romagnoli, 1875.

[25] The most important modern works upon this subject are three Essays by Napoleone Caix, _Saggio sulla Storia della Lingua e dei Dialetti d'Italia_, Parma, 1872; _Studi di Etimologia Italiana e Romanza_, Firenze, 1878; _Le Origini della Lingua Poetica Italiana_, Firenze, 1880. D'Ovidio's Essay on the _De Eloquio_ in his _Saggi Critici_, Napoli, 1878, may also be consulted with advantage.

[26] "Lingua Tusca magis apta est ad literam sive literaturam quam aliae linguae, et ideo magis est communis et intelligibilis." Antonio da Tempo, born about 1275, says this in his Treatise on Italian Poetry, recently printed by Giusto Grion, Bologna, Romagnoli, 1869. See p. 17 of that work.

[27] This fact was recognized by Dante. He speaks of the languages of Si, Oil, and Oc, meaning Italian, French, and Spanish. _De Eloquio_, lib. i. cap. 8. Dante points out their differences, but does not neglect their community of origin.

[28] _De Vulg. Eloq._ i. 16.

[29] _Ibid._ i. 18.

[30] See _Archivio Glottologico Italiano_, vol. ii. Villani, lib. vii. cap. 68.

[31] _Cantilene e Ballate, Strambotti e Madrigali nei Secoli xiii. e xiv._ A cura di Giosue Carducci (Pisa, 1871), pp. 29-32.

[32] _Ibid._ pp. 18, 22.

[33] _Ibid._ pp. 39, 42.

[34] _Ibid._ pp. 43, 45.

[35] See _ibid._ p. 45, the stanza which begins, _Matre tant o_.

[36] _Ibid._ pp. 47-60.

[37] _Ibid._ pp. 62-66.

[38] The practical and realistic common sense of the Italians, rejecting chivalrous and ecclesiastical idealism as so much nonsense, is illustrated by the occasional poems of two Florentine painters--Giotto's Canzone on _Poverty_, and Orcagna's Sonnet on _Love_. Orcagna, in the latter, criticises the conventional blind and winged Cupid, and winds up with:

L'amore e un trastullo:
Non e composto di legno ne di osso;
E a molte gente fa rompere il dosso.

[39] See Carducci, _op. cit._ pp. 52-60, for early examples of Tuscanized Sicilian poems of the people.

[40] The Tuscanized Sicilian poems in Carducci's collection referred to above, are extracted from a Florentine MS. called _Napolitana_, and a Tenzone between man and woman (_ib._ p. 52), which has clearly undergone a like process, is called _Ciciliana_.

[41] See Francesco d'Ovidio, _Sul Trattato De Vulgari Eloquentia_. It is reprinted in his volume of _Saggi Critici_, Napoli, 1879. The subject is fully discussed from a point of view at variance with my text by Adolf Gaspary, _Die Sicilianische Dichterschule_, Berlin, 1878.

[42] _Rime di Fra Guittone d'Arezzo_, Firenze, Morandi, 1828, 2 vols.

[43] _De Vulg. Eloq._ ii. 6; ii. 1; i. 13, and _Purg._ xxvi. 124.

[44] His poems will be found in the collections above mentioned, p. 26, note.

[45] _Purg._ xxvi.

[46] _Purg._ xxiv.

[47] _Purg._ xxvi.

[48] _De Vulg. Eloq._ i. 15.

[49] Fauriel, _Dante et les origines_, etc. (Paris, 1854), i. 269.

[50] D'Ancona, _La Poesia Popolare Italiana_ (Livorno 1878), p. 36, note.

[51] Giov. Vill. vii. 89.

[52] Stefani, quoted by D'Ancona, _op. cit._ p. 36.

[53] _Ibid._ p. 37, note.

[54] Giov. Vill. x. 216.

[55] Giov. Vill. vii. 132.

[56] _Storia di Firenze di Goro Dati_ (Firenze, 1735), p. 84.

[57] The date commonly assigned to Folgore is 1260, and the Niccolo he addresses in his series on the Months has been identified with that

Nicolo, che la costuma ricca
Del garofano prima discoperse,

so ungently handled by Dante in the _Inferno_, Canto xxix. I am aware that grave doubts, based upon historical allusions in Folgore's miscellaneous sonnets, have been raised as to whether we can assign so early a date to Folgore, and whether his Brigata was really the _brigata godereccia, spendereccia_, of Siena alluded to by Dante. See Bartoli, _Storia della Letteratura Italiana_, vol. ii. cap. II, for a discussion of these points. See also Giulio Navone's edition of Folgore's and Cene's _Rime_, Bologna, Romagnoli, 1880. This editor argues forcibly for a later date--not earlier at all events than from 1300 to 1320. But, whether we choose the earlier date 1260 or the later 1315, Folgore may legitimately be used for my present purpose of illustration.

[58] This is equally true of Cene dalla Chitarra's satirical parodies of the Months, in which, using the same rhymes as Folgore, he turns each of his motives to ridicule. Cene was a poet of Arezzo. His series and Folgore's will both be found in the _Poeti del Primo Secolo_, vol. ii., and in Navone's edition cited above.

[59] These remarks have to be qualified by reference to an unfinished set of five sonnets (Navone's edition, pp. 45-49), which are composed in a somewhat different key. They describe the arming of a young knight, and his reception by Valor, Humility, Discretion, and Gladness. Yet the knight, so armed and accepted, is no Galahad, far less the grim horseman of Duerer's allegory. Like the members of the _brigata godereccia_, he is rather a Gawain or Astolfo, all love, fine clothes, and courtship. Each of these five sonnets is a precious little miniature of Italian carpet-chivalry. The quaintest is the second, which begins:

Ecco prodezza che tosto lo spoglia,
E dice: amico e' convien che tu mudi,
Per cio ch'i' vo' veder li uomini nudi,
E vo' che sappi non abbo altra voglia.

This exordium makes one regret that the painter of the young knight in our National Gallery (Giorgione?) had not essayed a companion picture. Valor disrobing him and taking him into her arms and crying _Queste carni m'ai offerte_ would have made a fine pictorial allegory.

[60] If I were writing the history of early Tuscan poetry, I should wish here to compare the rarely beautiful poem of Lapo Gianni, _Amor eo chero_, with Folgore, and the masterly sonnets of Cecco Angiolieri of Siena, especially the one beginning _S'io fossi fuoco_, with Cene dalla Chitarra, in order to prove the fullness of sensuous and satirical inspiration in the age preceding Dante. Lapo wishes he had the beauty of Absalom, the strength of Samson; that the Arno would run balm for him, her walls be turned to silver and her paving-stones to crystal; that he might abide in eternal summer gardens among thousands of the loveliest women, listening to the songs of birds and instruments of music. The voluptuousness of Folgore is here heightened to ecstasy. Cecco desires to be fire, wind, sea, God, that he might ruin the world; the emperor, that he might decapitate its population; death, that he might seek out his father and mother; life, that he might fly from both; being Cecco, he would fain take all fair women, and leave the foul to his neighbors. The spite of Cene is deepened to insanity.

[61] See _Paradiso_, xv.; Giov. Vill. vi. 69.