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The large sums which were continually expended by the Government as well as the citizens of Florence, from the middle of the thirteenth century, for public objects—such as the enlargement, fortification, and embellishment of the city, for palaces and the residences of officers of the State, bridges and streets, churches and convents, hospitals and charitable institutions—would lead us to infer pecuniary means apparently out of proportion with the extent and resources of the territory and the site of the town, excluded as it was from the unrestricted use of the sea route till far into the fifteenth century. The great industrial activity and unusual intelligence of the inhabitants profited by favourable and conquered unfavourable circumstances so far, that while the Pisans still commanded the port which bore the name of their town, and was afterwards replaced by that of Leghorn—while Lucca possessed the harbour of Motrone, and Siena that of Talamone, and could thus shut out the inland state from the sea—the trade and industry of Florence had long surpassed theirs. The political importance attained by the great guilds so soon after their institution shows how firmly rooted was their power, even at the commencement of their existence, and that they really represented the most respected and affluent part of the community. We are vividly reminded of these corporations when we stand before the magnificent building of Or San Michele, or, at the eastern end of the Piazza della Signoria, gaze upon the arms graven in stone upon the residence of the Magistrate of Trade, who had to decide in all disputes and questions of competition between the magistrates of the different guilds. Four of these guilds come under consideration when we treat of industrial and commercial activity on a large scale—viz., the cloth-weavers, merchants or traders in foreign cloth, silk-weavers, and money-changers.

The woollen manufacture arose perhaps earliest of all, to satisfy one of the most important demands; and though it is doubtful whether native productions are spoken of in a Lucchese document of the year 840 respecting woollen and silk goods, we certainly do not err in the inference that Florence knew and practised this branch of industry at least from the time of her political rise, after the death of the Countess Matilda. In the beginning of the following century, a corporation of cloth-weavers existed, whose consuls signed a treaty of peace between their fellow-citizens and Siena in the year 1202. Thirty-seven years later, this branch of industry received an important accession from the Lombard order of the Humiliates, founded by Bishop Pietro Manadori. They settled first in the neighbourhood of the city, where the extensive buildings and gardens of the Villa San Donato are now to be seen, and finally, removed in 1256, to the monastery of Ognissanti, where they were long actively employed in their own interests and the welfare of the community who protected them, and did much to promote and perfect the woollen manufacture. On the neighbouring banks of the Arno arose workshops, houses for dyeing and washing wool, warehouses and booths of these brethren, who also aided essentially in the draining and cultivation of a somewhat marshy district. By the time the useful activity of the order slackened (about 1330 it entirely ceased), the Florentines had learnt all they could teach, and the city was full of cloth-weavers, as the names of several streets still remind us. From the ordinary kinds of cloth, with which they began, when the finer still came from the Levant, they advanced to better and best qualities, and strict regulations after the fashion of the guilds in the Middle Ages, certainly not to the disadvantage of the producers and their wares, guaranteed their excellence. The extensive sale and higher prices testified to their value. The wool was imported principally from France and Flanders, and also in considerable quantity from England and Scotland, especially from the wealthy abbeys and convents; and in the eighth decade of the thirteenth century we hear of Florentine agents in London buying up the wool for several years in advance. These agents stood in connection with no less than two hundred convents.[38]

In close and varied connection with the Arte della Lana was that of the Mercatanti, usually called Arte di Calimala, the oldest statutes of which date from 1339. As the native cloth manufacture did not suffice for the demand, and at first only supplied ordinary kinds, French and Flemish cloth was imported from abroad in great quantity, in a raw state, to Florence, where it was dyed, shorn and dressed, and returned to foreign countries, often to the place whence it had come. The skill of the dyers and other workmen in Florence, whose processes long remained a carefully guarded secret, made this profitable trade a monopoly until the rise of manufactures in the western countries of Europe. The guild had its representatives, couriers, settlements, and hostelries in France. It is clear that only the most conscientious honesty could sustain their credit, wherefore the strictest statutes respecting the different qualities of the cloth, the dyeing, and all other things to be taken into consideration, regulated the manufacture as well as the sale. The dyers formed a special guild, which, however, was subordinate to the consuls of Calimala, to whom also, rather singularly, the gold and silver smiths were subject. Another guild belonging to that of the Arte della Lana was that of the washers and combers of wool, which still exists as Compagnia dei Battilani, and has its meeting-place in Via delle Ruote, near Via San Gallo. Its church, whose sacristy is adorned by the portrait of Michele di Lando, was publicly exhibited every year on the feast of the Assumption of the Virgin, the high festival of the company. That such subordinate connections gave rise to misunderstandings in troublous times, and that new guilds arose without being able to maintain themselves permanently, has been already stated.

In the year 1338 the number of workshops (botteghe) of the clothiers’ guild amounted to more than 200, which supplied from seventy to eighty thousand pieces of cloth at the price of 1,200,000 gold florins, the third of which sum at least remained in the city as workmen’s wages, not to mention the profits of cloth merchants. The number of workmen amounted to 30,000. In the first years of this century the number of workshops had been a third more, and that of the pieces of cloth above 100,000; but the quality and price were lower, as they had not then the excellent English wool. The number of the magazines (fondachi) of the Calimala guild amounted to twenty. These imported yearly more than 10,000 pieces of foreign cloth, to the worth of 300,000 gold florins, for sale in the city itself, besides those which were again exported.[39] Among the proprietors of such magazines, we find the names Acciaiuoli, Alberti, Albizzi, Bardi, Buonaccorsi, Capponi, Corsini, Peruzzi, Pucci, Ricci, Ridolfi, Rinuccini—names which are mentioned a hundred times in the annals of the city, and which mostly are still heard there. Even in the second half of the thirteenth century, and therefore some time before their political power, these two guilds were very active in France, and we find their agents in 1281, beside those of the Genoese in Nismes, where, fifteen years later, we meet with the representatives of the trading companies of the Cerchi, Mozzi, Spini, Scali, and Folchi. In 1325, Filippo Villani and Cione di Lapo Ghini conducted the business of the Peruzzi and the Scali as Florentine consuls at Paris. The great fairs of Beaucaire and Forcalquier, with those of Provins, Lagny, Troyes, Bar-sur-Aube, etc., were of the greatest importance for this branch of industry.[40] In Italy, Venice was an important emporium for this trade, for Germany and Hungary as well as for the Levant. Till a few years ago, the extensive barn-like building which served for the dyeing and washing of the wool was still to be seen on the Lung’arno above the Uffizi; and on several palaces we still see the rings for holding the wooden staves on which the woollen fabrics were hung out as an indication that the houses belonged to the guild. The guild-hall of the Arte della Lana was the present Canonica of Or San Michele, where the coat of arms—the lamb with the flag, and the comb with the lily above it, in a blue field—still reminds one of its former destination, as well as an inscription of the date of 1308. The guild-hall of the Calimala, which had as a device a golden eagle standing over a ball of wool in a red field, stood in the little street leading from the Piazza della Signoria to the New Market, which is now called Calimaruzza: though it was converted into private houses after the abolition of the guild, the old devices may still be seen upon them. The street leading from the New to the Old Market still preserves the name Calimala, respecting the origin of which only untenable conjectures exist, and which in its present aspect reminds us as little as does any part of the whole centre of the old city of the former flourishing state of the trade.[41]

Of no less importance, and perhaps hardly less ancient than the cloth manufactures, was the weaving of silk, which, after its introduction into Sicily by King Roger, had been in a short time transplanted to Central Italy, if, indeed, it was not previously cultivated in Lucca. Of all the great branches of industry of the Middle Ages, this is the only one which has preserved a certain importance down to our day. The Arte della Seta was usually called the Por Sta. Maria, after the St. Mary’s Gate, or Porta Regina, opposite the Ponte Vecchio, at the entrance of the street still called Via di Por Sta. Maria (usually Mercato Nuovo), where the former guild-hall still stands, near the church of Sta. Maria sopra Porta, in the Via di Capaccio, distinguished by the coat of arms, a closed red door in a white field. The silk-weavers appear already, in the twelfth and oftener still in the thirteenth century, as a corporation in public acts and treaties, in the conclusions of peace and other compacts. In the list of the masters of the guild in the year 1225 their number is given as more than 350, and probably they had even then statutes; but the oldest still extant date from 1335, and therefore from a time when this industry seems to have attained considerable importance under the Guelfs from Lucca, who had emigrated to Florence in great numbers in 1316. The dyeing of silk was pursued here with great skill, and in particular the crimsoned tissue stood in high reputation in the fourteenth century. We shall speak later of the most brilliant epoch, the fifteenth century. The Vicolo della Seta, in the vicinity of the former hall, and the Via de’ Velluti, on the left bank of the river, near Via Maggio, where numerous silk-weavers and other mechanics originally lived, and where the still flourishing family of the Velluti took its rise, remind us of their former great activity.[42]

Though the branches of industry we have mentioned contributed much to increase the wealth of the Florentine people, and make their name famous in foreign lands, they were not the chief source of national wealth. The business of money-changing seemed thoroughly at home here, and it is not surprising that the invention of bills of exchange, which we first meet with in 1199 in the relations between England and Italy, should be ascribed to Florence. The money trade seems to have flourished as early as the twelfth century, towards the end of which a Marquis of Ferrara raised money on his lands from the Florentines. In 1204 we find the money-changers as one of the corporations. In 1228, and probably from the beginning of the century, several Florentines were settled in London as changers to King Henry III.; and here, as in France, they conducted the money transactions of the Papal chair in conjunction with the Sienese. Their oldest known statute, which established rules for the whole conduct of trade (Statuto dell’Università della Mercatanzia) drawn up by a commission consisting of five members of the great guilds, is dated 1280. Their guild-hall was in the Via Calimaruzza, opposite that of the Calimala, and was later included in the buildings of the post-office, on the site of which, after the post-office had been removed to what was formerly the mint, a building was lately erected, similar in architecture to the Palazzo of the Signoria, which stands opposite. Their coat of arms displayed gold coins laid one beside another on a red field. At the end of the thirteenth century their activity, especially in France and England, was extraordinarily great. But if wealth surpassing all previous conception was attained, it not seldom involved loss of repute, and those who pursued the calling ran the risk of immense losses from fiscal measures to the carrying out of which they themselves contributed, as well as those which were caused by insolvency or dishonesty. These losses would indeed have ruined the trade and credit of the Florentines in the fourteenth century, had not their resources been so varied, and their intelligent activity so great. The names of Tuscans and Lombards, and that of Cahorsiens in France, no longer indicated the origin, but the trade of the money-changers, who drew down the ancient hatred upon themselves which the fœneratores had incurred from too frequently confounding usury with rightful gains. It is this which the Divina Commedia describes where it speaks of shadows sitting mournfully shielding themselves from the glow of vapours with their hands, and with bags round their necks on which they feed their eyes.[43] France possessed at this time the greatest attraction for the Florentine money-makers, although they were sometimes severely oppressed, which is sufficient proof that their winnings were still greater than their occasional losses. In 1277, they, with other Italians, were obliged to compound for a sum of 120,000 gold florins, when King Philip III. took advantage of a decree of the Council to proceed against the usurers, a manœuvre which Philip IV. the Fair repeated fourteen years later.

If Florentines suffered among those prosecuted by this king for ‘money coining on the Seine,’[44] Florentines certainly aided him in other extortions and dishonesties in France and in Flanders, and it was the bank of the Peruzzi which paid the sum by means of which the constables of Philip the Fair, and chief among them the Tuscan knight and financier Musciatto Franzesi, accomplished the attempt on Pope Boniface VIII. in 1303 at Anagni.[45] New oppressions arose under Philip VI., in whose person the line of Valois ascended the French throne. He not only again debased the coinage for the necessities of the English war, but also extorted a heavy forced loan from all foreign merchants and bankers, and furthermore assisted the Duke of Athens, after his expulsion, in his reprisals against the Florentine trade. But notwithstanding all partial losses, and the great catastrophes which befell the Florentine trade in the same century, it remained, even in the following, mistress of the French money transactions, and, in certain respects, of French trade.

The Florentine money market suffered the severest blow from England. At the end of the twelfth century there were already Florentine houses of exchange in London, and if Pisans, Genoese, and Venetians managed the trade by sea in the times of the Crusades, it was the Florentines mostly who looked after financial affairs in connection with the Papal chair, as we have seen. Numerous banks appeared about the middle of the thirteenth century, among which the Frescobaldi, a family of ancient nobility, and as such attainted by the prosecutions against it, took the lead, and were referred to the custom-house of the country for re-imbursement of the loans made to the kings Edward I. and II. Later, the two great trading companies of the Bardi and Peruzzi came into notice, and with their money Edward III. began the French war against Philip of Valois. But even in the first year of this war, which began with an unsuccessful attack upon Flanders, the king suspended the payments to the creditors of the State by a decree of May 6, 1339. The advances made by the Bardi amounted to 180,000 marks sterling, those of the Peruzzi to above 135,000, according to Giovanni Villani,[46] who knew only too well about these things, since he was ruined by them himself to the extent of ‘a sum of more than 1,355,000 gold florins, equivalent to the value of a kingdom.’ Bonifazio Peruzzi, the head of the house, hastened to London, where he died of grief in the following year. The blow fell on the whole city, for, as may be supposed, numerous families were interested in the business of the great houses, which not only counted a number of partners or shareholders, but had also money from all sides, from the city and from foreign countries, to keep as deposits or to invest profitably. The injury to credit was very threatening. In the year 1326, the fall of one of the oldest and most important of the banking companies, that of the Scali, Amieri, and Petri, had occurred just as the war against Castruccio, the lord of Lucca, took an evil turn. But the position of affairs was now far more critical. Both houses began at once to liquidate, and the prevailing disturbance contributed not a little to the early success of the ambitious plans of the Duke of Athens. The real bankruptcy ensued, however, in January 1346, when new losses had occurred in Sicily on account of the measures of the French Government which we have already mentioned. The banks of the Acciaiuoli, Bonaccorsi, Cocchi, Antellesi, Corsini, da Uzzano, Perendoli, and many smaller ones, as well as numerous private persons, were involved in the ruin. ‘The immense loans to foreign sovereigns,’ adds Villani, ‘drew down ruin upon our city, the like of which it had never known.’ There was a complete lack of cash. Estates in the city found no purchasers at a third of their former value; those in the country were disposed of at two-thirds their value, and fell even lower than this. The chronicler who gives us this sad information was imprisoned for debt on account of the failure of the Bonaccorsi, whose partner he was.

As the first result of these misfortunes was the impoverishment of numerous families, the community at large was soon involved in it; as the revenues diminished quickly with the public affluence, money was only to be obtained at unheard-of usurious interest, and the prestige of the Florentine trade lost considerably in foreign countries. The famine and pestilence of 1347 and 1348, the oppressions of the mercenary bands and the heavy expenses caused by them, the cost of the war against Pope Gregory XI., and finally the tumult of the Ciompi, left Florence no peace for a long time. The aristocracy, which came into power in 1382, at last succeeded in restoring the equilibrium, opening new resources to industry and trade, and rendering the old connections again secure. Thus, at the beginning of the fifteenth century industry was again flourishing in all its branches in Florence, financial operations were extended, and foreign countries filled with Florentine banks and mercantile houses. After the fall of Pisa the last restrictions on navigation were removed, and it was no longer necessary, as in past times, to hire French vessels in Aiguesmortes for conveyance to the insecure and small roadsteads of Motrone or Pietrasanta, or to conclude treaties with the Sienese for the use of the bad and pestilential harbour of Talamone. The number of Florentine settlements and offices had been already very considerable a century earlier. In London the most important firms had their representatives, Bruges was the chief place for Flanders, and we shall see how these connections lasted to the time of the greatest splendour of the Medici. France is frequently mentioned. The official representatives of the Florentine nation resided in the capital, while numerous houses established themselves in Lyons, in Avignon (since the removal of the Papal chair to this town), in Nismes, Narbonne, Carcassonne, Marseilles, &c. Large transactions were made in Upper Italy at Venice and Genoa, at Castel di Castro in Sardinia, in Apulia, Barletta, and at Palermo in the island of Sicily; Rome and Naples saw in the fifteenth century the greater part of the banking business and a considerable portion of other trade in Florentine hands. There were Florentine colonies in Majorca, at Tunis, at Chiarenza in the Morea, in Rhodes under the supremacy of the Knights of St. John, and in Cyprus under that of Guy de Lusignan; while Florentine merchants carried trade into Asia Minor, Armenia, the Crimea, far into Central Asia and Northern China. The house of the Peruzzi alone had sixteen counting-houses in the fourteenth century, from London to Cyprus.

The prudence and careful calculation which were in general characteristic of the Florentine trade prevailed in everything relating to the transmission and receipt of money and the term of payments. Not only have we general rules from Balducci Pegolotti, in the first thirty years of the fourteenth century, as to how they should proceed in calculating the money to be paid abroad, but detailed notes on the fluctuations of the money market in consequence of fairs, expeditions of galleys, regular proceedings of the State, purchase of wool, etc., in the most important places, as Naples, Genoa, Bologna, Venice, Avignon, Paris, Bruges, Barcelona, etc. The Papal court, with which such extensive business was pursued—whether Rome or Avignon, or for the time another town, were its residence—seemed to the experienced Florentine to deserve especial remark. ‘Wherever the Pope goes, money is dear, because from all sides one has to pay so much to him. When he goes away, an ebb sets in, because the members of his court, if they are not rich, must borrow.’ The times when the bills fell due were regulated generally by the distance. An order drawn at Florence on Pisa or Venice was due on the fifth day after the money was paid in; in Rome and Genoa it was the fifteenth day; in Naples the twentieth; in Provence, Majorca, and France, the sixtieth; in Flanders the seventieth; in England the seventy-fifth; and in Spain, after three months. The contracting parties could, however, make arrangements at will.[47] According to the report of an annalist,[48] seventy-two exchange houses and tables were counted in Florence, in the Mercato Nuovo and its vicinity, in the year 1422, and the sum of money in circulation was calculated at two millions of gold florins; while the value of the wares, the letters of credit, and other property defied calculation.

While industry 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 Ghiellines on Campaldino in 1279; that on St. Anne’s day the expulsion of the Duke of Athens; St. Victor’s day the victory over the Pisans in 1364. Church festivals were frequently united with mysteries in Carmine, Sto. Spirito, San Felice, &c.; representations which we find shared in by the highest classes, and customary even in the second half of the fifteenth century. Various kinds of amusements took place in the open air; and the history of the Carraia bridge tells of the accident which occurred on May 1, 1304, when the bridge fell in, during a representation of the infernal regions by means of a grand apparatus.

May 1, the Calendimaggio, was the high day for the people, and the green branches on the door-posts have preserved the name of May in Italian as well as in German (and in English). It was on this day that Dante first saw Beatrice Portinari at an entertainment for children. Among the popular festivals were the Epiphany (Befana), celebrated by processions and masquerades, which are still carried on; and the Ferragosto, the Roman August holidays, where a donkey-race took place, with a buffalo-race as counterpart. Public games in which physical strength and, still more, agility were brought into play, delighted high and low. Among these were calcio and maglio: the first of which was played on the large oblong square, afterwards shut in by rows of houses which bears the name of Prato d’Ognissanti; the latter in the vicinity of the Piazza San Marco, where the Via del Maglio still reminds us of it. In the one game the feat consisted in throwing a ball with the hand; in the other it was propelled by a wooden hammer weighted with iron. We shall speak farther on of the tourneys, exercises, and festivals of the high, and the merry popular gatherings of the potenze. There was never a lack of music. The trumpeters and other musicians of the Signoria were never absent from any procession, and cheerful tunes accompanied every festival. Boccaccio’s tales and the frescoes in the Camposanto of Pisa show how music formed an integral part of social life. The most renowned instrumental performer who flourished in the second half of the fourteenth century, Francesco Landino, enchanted all by his delicate performances on the harpsichord, even in his old age and blindness.

Such were life and manners in the times preceding the rise of the Medici to power. The original simplicity no longer existed, and could no longer exist; but, in the tone and conduct of public as well as private life, the good old traditions still retained their influence. When the Romans and Neapolitans mocked at the frugal habits of the Florentines, the Florentine, seeing the anarchy and degeneracy of the former, and the effeminacy and instability of the latter, could point to his beautiful city, and the order in his private life, in which, though everything was conducted with the most scrupulous economy, the necessaries of life, and, in many cases, its luxuries, were always to be found. In Florence we find no Roman and no Neapolitan in trade and industry; but in both Naples and Rome, the principal business was in the hands of the Florentines, whose gains were profitable to their native city. Among these, in the fourteenth century, none was so conspicuous as Niccolò Acciaiuoli, who became a great and influential man at the court of Anjou, and lord of extensive possessions in Apulia and Greece, but whose heart belonged to his native city, in the neighbourhood of which he prepared his family vault. The heroic times of the Farinata, Cavalcanti, and Donati were past; but the Florentine of the later times combined the citizen and the great lord, the merchant, statesman, and patron of art, in a harmonious whole, to a degree never surpassed by the denizen of any other country.