and trade had accumulated great wealth in Florence, the spirit of the community accorded well with it. In spite of the many wars and other disturbances the city rose to such prosperity in the first decades of the fourteenth century (when its territory included only Pistoja, Colle, and Arezzo, and therefore scarcely a third of Tuscany in later times) that Giovanni Villani could remark in 1336–1338 that her revenues exceeded those of the kings of Naples, of Sicily, and of Aragon. With all the changes after the rise of the new wealthy families at the beginning of the century the style of living had remained simple, and even continued so after the luxury of the court of Anjou, partly supported by Florentine money, had affected Florentine manners unfavourably; yet there was no stinting for public works. The citizens were in general beneficent: the number and importance of the charitable institutions prove it. As with the Government, so with the corporations, a lively sense was always displayed of the dignity and grandeur of the city and community. And even if that oft-mentioned decree of the republic of the year 1294,[49] according to which the architect Arnolfo shall be charged to design the model of a cathedral church ‘of such splendour that human power should be unable to invent anything grander or more beautiful, in consideration that a people of noble origin ought so to arrange its affairs that even in the exterior works a wise and lofty mind may be recognised’—even if this decree appears to be a production of the sixteenth instead of the thirteenth century, there are not wanting reliable records which announce the same spirit, and, still more, works which testify to it. In the year 1296, legacies in aid of this church were made a duty for every one; notaries were obliged to enjoin them in drawing up wills, and omissions were punished.[50] In 1338 the community granted subsidies for this same building, ‘that a work so beautifully and honourably begun might be continued and completed still more beautifully, and the grants made by the community appear liberal and considerable.’ When a pavement for the Piazza della Signoria was ordered in June 1351 it was especially insisted upon that the dignity and importance of the whole town were concerned, as well as the stateliness and beauty of the palace of the chief magistrate of state. When in August 1373 the public reading and exposition of the Divina Commedia was applied for and permitted, the petitioners assigned as the ground of their request the wish that, even if otherwise unlearned, they themselves, their fellow-citizens, children, and posterity, be instructed in eloquence, guided to virtue, and warned against vice. When in 1409 the fabrication of the bronze gates of the shrine of St. Zanobius was entrusted to Lorenzo Ghiberti, it was said that he must have regard to the ancient veneration for the saint, as well as to the high dignity of the community, and respect to the cathedral in which this work was to have the most honourable place possible allotted to it. At the first mention of the building of the Foundling Hospital, begun in 1421 at the expense of the silk-weavers’ company, it is remarked that ‘this beautiful building is destined for the reception of those whose father and mother have maliciously forsaken them, contrary to the rights of nature.’ As the silk guild here, so was the woollen guild in Sta. Maria del Fiore entrusted with the guidance of the works, beside the regular building committee (Opera del Duomo). The share of the companies in the building and decoration of Or San Michele is repeatedly mentioned. As a matter of course, all that concerned the adornment of the city, the churches not excepted, must be subordinate to the requirements of safety and defence. In 1353, when the people were fighting against Giovanni Visconti, and afterwards, when the enterprise of Cardinal d’Albornoz for regaining Romagna for the Holy See gave a prospect of unsettled times, and the disorder of the freebooters led by the Knight of St. John of Montreal (Fra Moriale) began, the money held in readiness for the bell-tower was employed in enlisting men. As late as October 1368, when the city fell to bickerings with the Emperor Charles IV., which were then, as usual, made use of by the Visconti for the extension of their own power over Tuscany, and when their mercenary bands penetrated to the gates of Florence, a decree was passed that the sums destined for the completion of Sta. Maria del Fiore should be employed for strengthening and repairing the walls. The architects of the church were soon afterwards commanded to build a wall along the river, from the Castell Altafronte, which is still in partial preservation, and which joins the Uffizi, built in the sixteenth century, to the Rubaconte bridge, and to level the road ‘as should appear most suitable to the adornment of the city.’
A people which accomplished such great things must have possessed unusual civic virtues, apart from their more brilliant intellectual qualities, and spite of the weaknesses and faults which the greatest of the sons of Florence has scourged in angry love and loving anger. A despot can in a short time heap splendour on splendour; the activity of spirit of a popular commonwealth is different and more steady. The two free States in which we meet with the most perfect expression of this, Venice and Florence, show that this is not dependent on the form of government, but on a firm will and clear conception. The Florentine people combined these in a high degree. In the midst of political troubles and civil disturbances they constantly advanced; the final gain was greater than the losses through momentary retrogression, however violent. The people were contented, frugal, industrious, and attached at all times to ancient customs. That great changes were gradually made in customs and modes of life was according to the law of all ages, and of natural development, though some aspects of it did not seem the most pleasing. Manners and feelings of those days, which the Paradiso in the ‘Divina Commedia’ describes with such incomparable beauty and at the same time with such melancholy, when ‘in the old encircling walls, Florence was peaceful, moderate, and modest,’ the ‘civic life so calm, so beautiful, the society so reliable,’—a state of things which the poet closes with the time ‘before Frederic had fought out his quarrel,’[51]—they indeed lay far behind him who has lent to their memory form and duration for all future time. But the greatest change was to come after his death. The influence of the numerous foreigners, especially the French and Frenchified Neapolitans who came with the Angevins and their regents, was by no means beneficial; and the various sumptuary laws which were to restrain the women point especially to the example set in 1326, by Charles Duke of Calabria and his consort, Marie of Valois, the parents of the unhappy Joanna I., with their whole court. Then came the times of the Duke of Athens; soon after, the pestilence with its evil results, which are open to all in the stories of the ‘Decamerone.’ Giovanni Villani, who died in the year 1348, says once that the Florentines of the thirteenth century in their simple life and poverty achieved more than those of his time in the midst of their wealth and luxury.
Nevertheless, the age was in many respects simple, and remained so even after communication had been rendered easier in all directions, wealth accumulated, and more connections formed. The houses were simple, with their windows closed, not yet by panes of glass, but by wooden shutters, with their steep staircases and narrow courtyards; the furniture and the meals were simple, even of the foremost citizens and high magistrates; the clothing of the men was simple—and all this lasted to the fifteenth century, and during a part of it. The loggie have been already spoken of, in which, about the middle of this century, important family affairs were still despatched. At weddings and other family festivals, those who were invited assembled before the house, which often had not space to hold them all—as may be easily comprehended, when we find that the statutes of 1415 decreed that the number of the guests on both sides should not exceed two hundred. Notwithstanding Dante’s complaint that a father, at the birth of a daughter, thought with terror on the time of her marriage, the dowry was still, a century after his time, small in comparison with the wealth of the family. They saved at home, in order to gain means for public purposes, for ecclesiastical buildings and endowments, for beneficent institutions and patriotic festivals. The building of churches and hospitals came before the expenses for decorating town-house and villa. The public festivals were brilliant, and united spiritual and worldly interests. First in rank were those on the day of John the Baptist, the patron saint of the city, to which all the towns, villages, and protégés of the territory brought votive offerings, and races were held in the afternoon, a custom which dated from 1288, when the Florentines had besieged Arezzo on that day. Races were customary on other festivals also, either with riders or free horses (barberi), as in the present day in Florence and other towns of Italy. The prizes consisted of large pieces of gold and silk brocades, called palio. Beside the feast of St. John, in which the whole city with the signoria and other magistrates took a part, and that on St. Peter’s day, various others celebrated patriotic events. Thus the feast on St. Romulus’ day commemorated deliverance from the threatening hordes of Radagaïs; that on St. Barnabas’ day the victory over the