ITALIAN MANNERS IN THE YEAR 1300. THOUGH the Italian manners and customs in the fourteenth century were such as we should now term rude and unpolished, they were very different from those which had prevailed a hundred years before. "In those times," says a writer about the year 1300, speaking of the age of Frederic the Second, "the manners of the Italians were rude. A man and his wife ate off the same plate. There were no wooden handled knives, nor more than one or two drinking cups in a house. Candles of wax or tallow were unknown; a servant held a torch during supper. The clothes of men were of leather unlined; scarcely any gold or silver was seen on their dress. The common people ate flesh but three times a week, and kept their cold meat for supper. Many did not drink wine in summer. small stock of corn seemed riches. The portions of women were small; their dress, even after marriage, was simple. The pride of the men was to be well provided with arms and horses: that of the nobility to have lofty towers, of which all the cities in Italy were full. But now, frugality has been changed for sumptuousness; every thing exquisite is sought after in dress-gold, silver, pearls, silks, and rich furs. Foreign wines and rich meats A are required. Hence usury, rapine, fraud, and tyranny." "The conquest of Naples," says Mr. Hallam, "by Charles of Anjou, in 1266, seems to have been the epoch of increasing luxury throughout all Italy. His Provençal knights, with their plumed helmets and golden collars-the chariot of his queen, covered with blue velvet and sprinkled with lilies of gold, astonished the citizens of Naples." Some years later we find Lionel, Duke of Clarence, on his marriage with Violante Visconti, bestowing three hundred rich dresses on the minstrels, &c.; while on the same occasion Froissart receives from Count Amadeus, of Savoy, "a handsome cotte-hardie (a sort of dress common to men and women), with twenty florins of gold+." This was in 1368; and seven years afterwards was solemnized the marriage of the incomparable Madonna Taddea, of Este, with Francesco Novello da Carrara; of which Gataro has left us the following description:-" On Sunday, the 7th of June, the bride and bridegroom entered Padua, amid a great concourse of citizens, arranged in six divisions. The lady was escorted by many gentlemen, clothed in sendal, taffeta, and other silks; their horses in housings of the same, all marching in military * Ricobaldi. Hallam's Middle Ages, vol. i. array, with lances, banners, and music. In this manner they gained the great square, where they wheeled off to the right and left, while the lady Taddea advanced upon a white palfrey, arrayed in scarlet, under a canopy lined with vair*. Six gentlemen led her palfrey; and she was followed by the learned doctors of the university, in white robes with great hoods: so that never did lady appear with greater magnificence. She alighted at the stairs of the great hall of the tribunal, and, followed by the most distinguished of her train, ascended and took her seat within. They then tore off their upper dresses of silk, and threw them, with the banners and housings, among the crowd below. They then appeared in partycoloured dresses of scarlet and azure, and leaving the hall, came in procession down the street Del Traghetto. Dances, banquets, jousts, and tournaments, were kept up for several days." But we must return to the beginning of the fourteenth century. * Gray squirrel's skin. 81 ITALIAN REVENGE. A. D. 1300. WITH Conradin expired the house of Swabia; and the Ghibelins, who had been its supporters, consequently lost ground before their enemies, the Guelfs. Their animosity, instead of having ended with its original cause, only acquired fresh heat, and public names became the inciters to the revenge of private injuries. Unmolested by foreign enemies, the intractable and vindictive Italians directed their strength against each other, and distracted their country with civil commotions. In Bologna, Florence, Pistoia, and many other cities, the enmities of private families became the origin of dreadful popular tumults. A few of these instances may be mentioned, as showing the excesses into which the leaders of the times were hurried by the unrestrained violence of their passions. Imilda de' Lambertazzi, a young Bolognese lady of noble birth, had formed an attachment to Bonifazio Gieremei, by whom her affection was returned. Their houses had long been at enmity, and Imilda's brothers, discovering that Bonifazio had dared to aspire to her hand, concerted the most deadly revenge. They learnt that he had sought a private interview with their sister, and hurrying home, they fell on him and despatched him with their poisoned daggers. Imilda, who had fled at the sound of their footsteps, returned at length to seek her lover, too sadly foreboding his fate, and traced him, by the stains of blood which marked the ground, into a deserted court, where her brothers had thrown the senseless body. With a faint hope that life might not be quite extinguished, she sucked his poisoned wounds, and in thus doing, found her own death. This dreadful occurrence was the signal for declared war between the Gieremei and the Lambertazzi. A contest of forty days took place in the streets, when the Lambertazzi, with all their Ghibelin adherents, were driven from the city. Florence, the most interesting and most virtuous of all the Italian states; whose princes were merchants, and whose merchants were princes; whose nobles and citizens united, heart and soul, to repel foreign tyranny, and whose very fall was marked with the glory of a setting sun-Florence was no less the victim to party spirit and dissensions. The names of Guelf and Ghibelin first disturbed the repose within her walls on the occasion of a domestic quarrel between two of her noblest families. The account given by Machiavelli of the origin of this feud affords such a curious picture of the times as to deserve insertion. |