Through the Casentino with Hints for the Traveller — Story, Setting & Ideas

rmans, but in this case by Germans who had grasped the idea of a centralised system of government. Before the unity of the Franks the scattered and divided nobles of Italy were as chaff before the wind. The greater number of her dukes, counts and barons recognised Frankish over-lordship, and in due course became feudatories to the Empire. This relation eventually secured to the Emperor his staunchest allies against the growing Italian communes--it in no way debarred the Italian nobles from living as independent chiefs, warring against one another as personal hatred, jealousy and private revenge prompted. The distinguishing qualities of these men--they may well be called virtues--were audacity, enterprise and a boundless self-reliance. But they were qualities unseparated as yet from the revolting contempt for life and limb of a rough barbarian age, a contempt that found expression in wanton stabbing, poisoning and mutilation as a convenient mode of retaliation on enemies.

But a safeguard necessary to the very existence of these men now lay in their recognition of the claims of the Church. The Pope, as a temporal ruler, might be defied; as a spiritual ruler, who had hosts untold at his command, he was a power and a strength to be respected. Turbulent barons, whose play often ended in bloodshed, began to defer to the priest and to patronise the monk. The ascent to the stronghold was flanked by a chapel, and monastic colonies were invited to settle in the most fruitful districts.

There can be no doubt that the men who, thus prompted, accepted Mother Church, accepted her from purely utilitarian motives. But Mother Church was apparently content to dwell with them on the terms proposed, for she blessed them with many blessings. Exactly those dynasties prospered whose piety is borne out by the numerous endowments which they made. Certainly these were made on conditions which left a loophole for interference on the part of those who made them. But the greater prevails over the lesser, whatever terms the lesser may make. The Church entered into the alliance in obedience to a call from the barons, but in course of time she shook herself free from their control.

The history of the Casentino illustrates the sequence of these changes. Few rocky heights but are crowned by the ruins of a stronghold, few upland expanses but preserve the remembrance of an ancient monastery. The word _badia_, the ancient term for monastery, survives in a number of local names, such as Badia a Tega, Badia a Prataglia. These monasteries went through stormy experiences towards the close of the tenth century, and all owing to the high-handed manner in which their patrons dealt with them. The Church was defiled by iniquity of traffic. On the one side laymen sold Church property and privileges, simony in the wider sense of the word. On the other, ecclesiastics themselves traded in benefices, simony in its narrower sense.

One of the important movements set on foot to oppose this evil is associated with the name of St Romuald, and through him with the Casentino, where the monastery of Camaldoli most directly embodied and most religiously preserved the spirit of one of Christianity’s most zealous champions. Camaldoli in the course of centuries has attracted visitors of many tempers from many countries. In Dante’s estimation Romuald was so important a person that he pictured him in Paradise as one of the chosen two whom St Benedict pointed out to him by name.

Among those whom the fame of Romuald brought to the Casentino was St Francis of Assisi. On his journey he passed La Verna, that solitary mountain height in the Apennines which appeared to him as a chosen spot for meditation. Many visitors come to see La Verna in the Casentino who come there to see nothing else, especially of late years, since a less prejudiced view of the saints has helped to restore the importance of St Francis on a wider basis than that of a purely devotional interest.

But not only the votaries of St Francis find a shrine at which to pay homage in the Casentino. Since the publication of the _Voyages Dantesques_ by Ampère, every student of Dante longs to wander among these hills, for here the poet stayed at different periods of his life, and here his admirers are especially able to appreciate those occasional references to the beauties of nature, which are as manna in the wilderness among the terrible descriptions of Hell and Purgatory. In the Casentino Dante fought in his youth, hither he came in his manhood to stay with the Counts Guidi when Florence had closed her gates to him. And again the revived study of Dante’s works during the Renaissance was directly associated with the Casentino. Cristofero Landini, who first published a commentary on Dante, was from there; and Bandini, who wrote a famous work on the revival of learning in Italy, describes this revival in connection with Landini, and prefaces his work by an account of the numerous distinguished men to whom the Casentino gave birth.

Thus on the very point of entering the Casentino were we made to pause and call to remembrance some of those periods which associated the district with so much that is worthy of recollection. If knowledge be the wing wherewith we fly to heaven, it is also the key wherewith to unlock the treasures of this earth. And it seemed the more needful to recall the distinguishing features of the past as the different periods gained in importance when seen on a wider historical background. But discursiveness too has its limits. Wisely were the words spoken, “a time to break down and a time to build up.” It so happened that we had each brought a copy of Dante, though books are not a pleasant burden on a walking tour. But the trouble of carrying them was well repaid by the enjoyment we derived from studying them during the evening hours while in the land in which we were so frequently reminded of the poet.

_Bibbiena and Cardinal Bibbiena_

“Bibbiena ‘che una terra è sopr’ Arno molto amena.” (Berni: _Orlando Innamorato_, 3, 7, 1.)

The town of Bibbiena boasts of no special architecture and of no great works of art, but it has all the characteristic charm of a Tuscan hill city. Looked at from without, the remains of its great walls and the substructure of its buildings suggest line upon line of successive ages of builders; within, there are the usual open spaces and narrow streets, with sudden changes from dazzling sunlight to dim coolness. Apparently the town has not spread since it was dismantled at the beginning of the sixteenth century; its limits are still marked by the remains of its walls. And, as in all walled cities, its buildings, churches, palaces, dwelling-houses and store-houses stand shoulder to shoulder, the more important buildings stretching to greater height and overlooking the less important ones.

On ordinary days the town was quiet enough. Few people were seen abroad and the noise of a vehicle was an event. But inside the houses

various trades were plied. The main streets of the place were lined with vaulted cavernous shops, the doors of which were thrown open, and in the deep, shady recesses men were busy at work. As usual in hill cities, blacksmiths’ shops were numerous, and the owners of all seemed well employed. And as one passed along the street--those narrow, stony Italian streets--one’s attention was arrested by the sound of hammering. Presently the hammering ceased, the bellows stirred up a rush of sparks, and for a moment a ruddy light fell on the bending cyclopean figures at work, or perhaps on the bellows themselves, a panting monster couchant on the hearth. From the braziers’ shops sounded the din of the strokes falling on the metal. These shops too were numerous, and their roofs could hardly be seen for the number of large-bellied copper water pots hanging there. The roof too of the shop of smoked wares was almost invisible from rows upon rows of suspended sausages and hams, each tightly confined in a close network of string. There was the weaver’s workshop, from which sounded the regular thud of the beam thrown back on the woof, and there was the wheelwright’s, with its smell of stored timber and its floor strewn with crisp shavings as they were taken off by the plane. The greengrocer’s store was but a poor one as yet; there were lumps of boiled spinage and bunches of young artichokes, no other green-meats, but there were lemons, oranges, nuts and dried figs in plenty. There was the drug store too, with its clean, cool, deserted look. The apothecary and a friend were sitting down to a game of cards one day when we passed, and looked up in surprise as we entered in the hope of coming upon some pots of Savona ware--a desire for which was strong in the new-fledged M.D. Then there was the barber’s shop, with its nimble master, who could be seen operating on a customer, and the small window with panes of glass behind which the watchmaker sat bending over his work.

On market-days the town assumed a look of greater liveliness. Two-wheeled country carts came toiling up the hill. They were left on the terrace below or on one side of the market-place, and their inmates stood about in groups with the men of the town who had stopped work for the day. A number of stalls were set up on the market-place and wares of many kinds were displayed. There were stalls of butchers’ meat, loaded with the tiniest of lambkins, a sorry sight; there were stalls with a show of ribbons and laces, all of the cheapest; stalls with bales of homespun; stalls with hats and caps of felt. And on the ground brown and yellow and red earthenware was heaped up or spread about, jars and platters, and pots and pans, in the plainest of forms but most decorative in colour.

On such a day selling extended down the side streets. And the vendor of cheap literature was seen suspending tracts and booklets in rows by means of bits of string, while the hawker of cheap jewellery took advantage of a projecting window-ledge to set out his little trays. The display of outlandish wares invariably causes one’s money to burn, and one of us was tempted to buy a silver finger-ring with a crucified Christ--a pattern peculiar to Tuscany, I believe--while the other, from a mass of twopenny romances and stories of the saints, picked out the romance of Pia dei Tolomei, the story of a faithful wife’s cruel treatment and violent death. This was she, unforgotten in popular literature as it seemed, who started up before Dante in Purgatory and prayed him to recall her memory on earth.

But it was at night, when the dark of the evening filled the streets with gloom, when the last carts had rattled down the steep streets and were speeding away along the white country roads in the darkness, when men passed along the walls like shadows, and silence had laid her hold on the concerns of this world, that fancy began to stir and breathe more freely, and stepped forth to take her pleasure with the figures of the past.

One evening I had stayed in the Franciscan church looking at the altar-pieces of the Della Robbias, the Nativity and the Deposition--the latter a gift to the church from Cardinal Bibbiena--till the twilight drove me out and I went to walk on the terrace of the town, which commanded a view of the panorama of the hills. There had been a thunderstorm, and heavy rain-clouds hung over the Apennines. Their lower slopes were shrouded in mist, but spanned from side to side by a rainbow. Towards the south the skyline above the valley of the Arno was piled with masses upon masses of clouds. Further yet, towards the west, the sun had just set behind a rocky height, but its reflection was caught by the white vapour that filled the undulating plain and extended upwards into the numerous branching valleys beneath the snow-capped heights of the Pratomagno, revealing line upon line of rocky crag and sloping hillside. It was a sight that stirred emotion and roused the imagination. And wandering back through the dark, solitary streets, I seemed to see some of the figures of the shadowy past, whose mortal remains long ago had fallen to dust and decay, nay, for aught we knew, had gone to build up new forms of life again and again under the transforming agency of time.

Had they not all walked and talked here, the Etruscan potter, cunning of hand, worthy forerunner of the Tuscan painter of the Quattrocento?--The Roman centurion, proud of a system of government which embraced the known world, never equalled before, never since?--The Langobard hunter--the soft-treading monk--the sister of charity--had they not all walked and talked in sight of the surrounding hills? And had not these streets seen some of those feuds between commune and commune, very thorns in the eyes of Italian liberty in the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries, when the hope of national unification was shattered, and that for centuries to come, by the rise of the _condottieri_, those upstart rulers, spoilt children of fortune, to whom Italian history owes some of its most sombre and also some of its brightest pages? There is no English equivalent for the word _condottiere_, the thing and the term for it are unknown outside Italy. For in Italy alone a combination of peculiar circumstances made it possible for men, who were gifted with unlimited determination, to watch their opportunity inside the separate townships and to snatch at the reins of independent government by the help of mercenary troops, a tool, dangerous in itself, which they handled with consummate ability.

The development of communal life in the cities of northern Italy had been early. But placed between Emperor and Pope the citizens of different towns split into factions; some preferred allegiance to an Emperor who was on the other side of the Alps, others, more national in feeling, sided with the Pope. But when the respective authority of Pope and Emperor became a matter of dispute, and each sought to support his claims by introducing foreign armies into Italy, all alike were thrown off their balance.

Under these circumstances the joint action of citizens was inconceivable, much more the joint action of different cities, to the common end of national consolidation. Worn out by party conflicts, townships at last succumbed to the high-handed government of a military leader who brought security if nothing else, and the Republican Government of city after city fell a prey to men whose attitude recalled that of the tyrants of classical antiquity. For among the _condottieri_ also there were men famous for their misdeeds, yet whose despotism was relieved by a trait of grandeur. Among them also there were men who held the prosperity of their subjects dear at heart and who made their courts into centres of learning and polite intercourse. A stormy period was followed by comparative quiet, and the arts of peace found their best patrons among parvenu princes.

The town of Bibbiena had experienced her share of these vicissitudes. Subject at one time to the Prince Bishop of Arezzo, the town was besieged and appropriated by the Republic of Florence, snatched back by members of the powerful Tarlati family, and reconquered by Florence thirty years later. For its vicinity to Florence, combined with its comparative remoteness, made Bibbiena a dangerous neighbour in times of warfare. This was especially the case after the expulsion from Florence of the Medici in 1494, when Piero, the eldest son and successor of Lorenzo the Magnificent, with his brothers and others, sought the help of Venice. An army of Venetians invaded the Casentino, and made Bibbiena its headquarters. The Florentines, having secured the help of the Sforza of Milan, in their turn invaded the Casentino, laying siege to Bibbiena, and the Venetian army was caught as in a trap. Bibbiena fell, and all possibility of her harbouring the enemies of Florence in the future was removed by the entire demolition of her town walls.

The Medici escaped. Piero, whom his father designated as the “fool,” threw himself into the arms of the Borgia and perished a few years later; Giovanni, Lorenzo’s “clever” son, who was a cardinal at the age of thirteen, and afterwards Pope Leo X., left Italy to seek solace by travelling in Germany, Flanders and France; and the third brother, the spirited and gifted Giuliano, called by his father the “good,” a few years later was staying at the Court of Urbino, together with the devoted friend of the family, Bernardo Divizio, afterwards Cardinal Bibbiena.

And these streets had seen him often, in obscure youth and again in the pride of successful manhood, Bernardo Divizio, surnamed Bibbiena, true representative of the spirit of the late Italian Renaissance, with its boundless faith in its own wisdom. Author of that most spirited and most licentious comedy, the _Calandra_, _maître-de-plaisir_ at the court of Leo X., patron of Rafael, self-conscious, versatile, handsome, with glowing eye and scornful lip, he lives in the portrait which Rafael painted of him. Count Baldassare Castiglione, in his famous analysis of the _Perfect Courtier_, introduced Bibbiena as the man of mirth and wit. Paolo Giovio, the historian, to whose facile pen posterity owes so many biographies, says much in praise of him. Bembo addressed to him some of his most pleasing letters, and all accounts corroborate the impression produced by Bibbiena’s writings as they lie before us, and by the man’s portrait as it hangs in the Pitti, painted by one of the greatest artists the world has known.

Bernardo Divizio was of an obscure family of Bibbiena. The story that the Divizi had changed their name from Tarlati is an obvious invention, and the boy, at the age of nine, was sent to Florence, where his brother was secretary to Lorenzo the Magnificent. He was an able letter-writer at seventeen, and was the constant companion of Lorenzo’s son Giovanni, his junior by five years. The two young men rivalled each other in studying literature and the classics, but apparently there was never a cloud between them. Before the Medici went into exile Bibbiena acted as their envoy, and a letter of his addressed to Piero throws a curious side-light on the kind of love-adventure in which these young men found diversion. At a later period Bibbiena acted as secretary to Giovanni, advocating his cause at the Papal Court with Julius II. Later still he joined Giuliano at the Court of Urbino, which had become the rallying-place of many men of distinction.

For the Montefeltre of Urbino, _condottieri_ by origin, belonged to those princes who set before them a high degree of excellence. Duke Federigo, whose boast it was never to have lost a battle, acted as patron to the translators and commentators on the Greek classics; he collected a library at Urbino and built a magnificent palace there. There is something pathetic in the fact that Federigo’s son Guidobaldo, himself a confirmed invalid, presided in person over the games by which the young men perfected their physical training. For athletic exercises, no less than culture and good breeding, were the object of attention at Urbino, where the best aspirations of the age, intellectual, artistic and social, found protection. Bramante, who designed St Peter’s at Rome, was from Urbino. Rafael was born here, and he always retained an affection for the home of his childhood, which he frequently visited. Several of his earlier pictures, including Christ on the Mount of Olives, were painted for Duke Guidobaldo. Guidobaldo’s wife, Elisabetta, was a Gonzaga of Mantua, a family of origin and ambitions similar to those of the Montefeltre at Urbino. And when her delicate husband had retired to rest, the Duchess, with the witty Lady Emilia Pia, entertained the company in her apartments, where social accomplishments and literary talents were fully displayed.