Part 47 (1/2)

ETNA

PALERMO

SYRACUSE AND GIRGENTI

ATHENS

INDEX

The Ildefonso Group _Frontispiece_

SKETCHES AND STUDIES

IN

ITALY AND GREECE

_FOLGORE DA SAN GEMIGNANO_

Students of Mr. Dante Gabriel Rossetti's translations from the early Italian poets (_Dante and his Circle_. Ellis & White, 1874) will not fail to have noticed the striking figure made among those jejune imitators of Provencal mannerism by two rhymesters, Cecco Angiolieri and Folgore da San Gemignano. Both belong to the school of Siena, and both detach themselves from the metaphysical fas.h.i.+on of their epoch by clearness of intention and directness of style. The sonnets of both are remarkable for what in the critical jargon of to-day might be termed realism. Cecco is even savage and brutal. He antic.i.p.ates Villon from afar, and is happily described by Mr.

Rossetti as the prodigal, or 'scamp' of the Dantesque circle. The case is different with Folgore. There is no poet who breathes a fresher air of gentleness. He writes in images, dealing but little with ideas. Every line presents a picture, and each picture has the charm of a miniature fancifully drawn and brightly coloured on a missal-margin. Cecco and Folgore alike have abandoned the mediaeval mysticism which sounds unreal on almost all Italian lips but Dante's. True Italians, they are content to live for life's sake, and to take the world as it presents itself to natural senses. But Cecco is perverse and impious. His love has nothing delicate; his hatred is a morbid pa.s.sion. At his worst or best (for his best writing is his worst feeling) we find him all but rabid. If Caligula, for instance, had written poetry, he might have piqued himself upon the following sonnet; only we must do Cecco the justice of remembering that his rage is more than half ironical and humorous:--

An I were fire, I would burn up the world; An I were wind, with tempest I'd it break; An I were sea, I'd drown it in a lake; An I were G.o.d, to h.e.l.l I'd have it hurled; An I were Pope, I'd see disaster whirled O'er Christendom, deep joy thereof to take; An I were Emperor, I'd quickly make All heads of all folk from their necks be twirled; An I were death, I'd to my father go; An I were life, forthwith from him I'd fly; And with my mother I'd deal even so; An I were Cecco, as I am but I, Young girls and pretty for myself I'd hold, But let my neighbours take the plain and old.

Of all this there is no trace in Folgore. The worst a moralist could say of him is that he sought out for himself a life of pure enjoyment. The famous Sonnets on the Months give particular directions for pastime in a round of pleasure suited to each season.

The Sonnets on the Days are conceived in a like hedonistic spirit.

But these series are specially addressed to members of the Glad Brigades and Spending Companies, which were common in the great mercantile cities of mediaeval Italy. Their tone is doubtless due to the occasion of their composition, as compliments to Messer Nichol di Nisi and Messer Guerra Cavicciuoli.

The mention of these names reminds me that a word need be said about the date of Folgore. Mr. Rossetti does not dispute the commonly a.s.signed date of 1260, and takes for granted that the Messer Nicol of the Sonnets on the Months was the Sienese gentleman referred to by Dante in a certain pa.s.sage of the 'Inferno':[1]--

And to the Poet said I: 'Now was ever So vain a people as the Sienese?

Not for a certainty the French by far.'

Whereat the other leper, who had heard me, Replied unto my speech: 'Taking out Stricca, Who knew the art of moderate expenses, And Nicol, who the luxurious use Of cloves discovered earliest of all Within that garden where such seed takes root.

And taking out the band, among whom squandered Caccia d' Ascian his vineyards and vast woods, And where his wit the Abbagliato proffered.'

Now Folgore refers in his political sonnets to events of the years 1314 and 1315; and the correct reading of a line in his last sonnet on the Months gives the name of Nichol di Nisi to the leader of Folgore's 'blithe and lordly Fellows.h.i.+p.' The first of these facts leads us to the conclusion that Folgore flourished in the first quarter of the fourteenth, instead of in the third quarter of the thirteenth century. The second prevents our identifying Nichol di Nisi with the Niccol de' Salimbeni, who is thought to have been the founder of the Fellows.h.i.+p of the Carnation. Furthermore, doc.u.ments have recently been brought to light which mention at San Gemignano, in the years 1305 and 1306, a certain Folgore. There is no sufficient reason to identify this Folgore with the poet; but the name, to say the least, is so peculiar that its occurrence in the records of so small a town as San Gemignano gives some confirmation to the hypothesis of the poet's later date. Taking these several considerations together, I think we must abandon the old view that Folgore was one of the earliest Tuscan poets, a view which is, moreover, contradicted by his style. Those critics, at any rate, who still believe him to have been a predecessor of Dante's, are forced to reject as spurious the political sonnets referring to Monte Catini and the plunder of Lucca by Uguccione della f.a.ggiuola. Yet these sonnets rest on the same ma.n.u.script authority as the Months and Days, and are distinguished by the same qualities.[2]

[1] _Inferno_, xxix. 121.--_Longfellow_.

[2] The above points are fully discussed by Signor Giulio Navone, in his recent edition of _Le Rime di Folgore da San Gemignano e di Cene da la Chitarra d' Arezzo_.

Bologna: Romagnoli, 1880. I may further mention that in the sonnet on the Pisans, translated on p. 18, which belongs to the political series, Folgore uses his own name.

Whatever may be the date of Folgore, whether we a.s.sign his period to the middle of the thirteenth or the beginning of the fourteenth century, there is no doubt but that he presents us with a very lively picture of Italian manners, drawn from the point of view of the high bourgeoisie. It is on this account that I have thought it worth while to translate five of his Sonnets on Knighthood, which form the fragment that remains to us from a series of seventeen. Few poems better ill.u.s.trate the temper of Italian aristocracy when the civil wars of two centuries had forced the n.o.bles to enroll themselves among the burghers, and when what little chivalry had taken root in Italy was fast decaying in a gorgeous over-bloom of luxury. The inst.i.tutions of feudal knighthood had lost their sterner meaning for our poet. He uses them for the suggestion of delicate allegories fancifully painted. Their mysterious significance is turned to gaiety, their piety to amorous delight, their grimness to refined enjoyment. Still these changes are effected with perfect good taste and in perfect good faith. Something of the perfume of true chivalry still lingered in a society which was fast becoming mercantile and diplomatic. And this perfume is exhaled by the petals of Folgore's song-blossom. He has no conception that to readers of Mort Arthur, or to Founders of the Garter, to Sir Miles Stapleton, Sir Richard Fitz-Simon, or Sir James Audley, his ideal knight would have seemed but little better than a scented civet-cat. Such knights as his were all that Italy possessed, and the poet-painter was justly proud of them, since they served for finished pictures of the beautiful in life.

The Italians were not a feudal race. During the successive reigns of Lombard, Frankish, and German masters, they had pa.s.sively accepted, stubbornly resisted feudalism, remaining true to the conviction that they themselves were Roman. In Roman memories they sought the traditions which give consistency to national consciousness. And when the Italian communes triumphed finally over Empire, counts, bishops, and rural aristocracy; then Roman law was speedily subst.i.tuted for the 'asinine code' of the barbarians, and Roman civility gave its tone to social customs in the place of Teutonic chivalry. Yet just as the Italians borrowed, modified, and misconceived Gothic architecture, so they took a feudal tincture from the nations of the North with whom they came in contact. Their n.o.ble families, those especially who followed the Imperial party, sought the honour of knighthood; and even the free cities arrogated to themselves the right of conferring this distinction by diploma on their burghers. The chivalry thus formed in Italy was a decorative inst.i.tution. It might be compared to the ornamental frontispiece which masks the structural poverty of such Gothic buildings as the Cathedral of Orvieto.

On the descent of the German Emperor into Lombardy, the great va.s.sals who acknowledged him, made knighthood, among t.i.tles of more solid import, the price of their allegiance.[1] Thus the chronicle of the Cortusi for the year 1354 tells us that when Charles IV. 'was advancing through the March, and had crossed the Oglio, and was at the borders of Cremona, in his camp upon the snow, he, sitting upon his horse, did knight the doughty and n.o.ble man, Francesco da Carrara, who had constantly attended him with a great train, and smiting him upon the neck with his palm, said: ”Be thou a good knight, and loyal to the Empire.” Thereupon the n.o.ble German peers dismounted, and forthwith buckled on Francesco's spurs. To them the Lord Francesco gave chargers and horses of the best he had.'

Immediately afterwards Francesco dubbed several of his own retainers knights. And this was the customary fas.h.i.+on of these Lombard lords.

For we read how in the year 1328 Can Grande della Scala, after the capture of Padua, 'returned to Verona, and for the further celebration of his victory upon the last day of October held a court, and made thirty-eight knights with his own hand of the divers districts of Lombardy.' And in 1294 Azzo d'Este 'was knighted by Gerardo da Camino, who then was Lord of Treviso, upon the piazza of Ferrara, before the gate of the Bishop's palace. And on the same day at the same hour the said Lord Marquis Azzo made fifty-two knights with his own hand, namely, the Lord Francesco, his brother, and others of Ferrara, Modena, Bologna, Florence, Padua, and Lombardy; and on this occasion was a great court held in Ferrara.' Another chronicle, referring to the same event, says that the whole expenses of the ceremony, including the rich dresses of the new knights, were at the charge of the Marquis. It was customary, when a n.o.ble house had risen to great wealth and had abundance of fighting men, to increase its prestige and spread abroad its glory by a wholesale creation of knights. Thus the Chronicle of Rimini records a high court held by Pandolfo Malatesta in the May of 1324, when he and his two sons, with two of his near relatives and certain strangers from Florence, Bologna, and Perugia, received this honour. At Siena, in like manner, in the year 1284, 'thirteen of the house of Salimbeni were knighted with great pomp.'