On the day after the feast of St. Bartholomew the Apostle, did the good King Lewis pass out of this world, and in the year of the incarnation of our Saviour, the year of grace 1270 (the 25th August). And his bones were put in a casket, and borne thence, and buried at St. Denis in France, where he had chosen his place of sepulture; and in the place where they were buried God has sithence performed many fair miracles in his honour, and by his merit.
THE CANONIZATION OF ST. LEWIS
After this, at the instance of the king of France, and by command of the pope, came the archbishop of Rouen, and Brother John of Samois, who has since been made bishop, they came to St. Denis in France, and there remained a long space to make inquisition into the life, the works, and the miracles of the saintly king. And I was summoned to come to them, and they kept me two days. And after they had questioned me and others, what they had ascertained and set down was sent to the court of Rome; and the pope and the cardinals looked diligently into what had been sent to them, and according to what they saw there they did right to the king, and set him among the number of the confessors.
From Chronicle, in Memoirs of the Crusades, trans. Sir Frank Thomas Marzials (Everyman’s Library [1908]).
Pope Boniface VIII
GIOVANNI VILLANI
Early fourteenth century
AFTER the said strife had arisen between Pope Boniface and King Philip [IV] of France, each one sought to abase the other by every method and guise that was possible: the pope sought to oppress the king of France with excommunications and by other means to deprive him of the kingdom; and with this he favoured the Flemings, his rebellious subjects, and entered into negotiations with King Albert of Germany, encouraging him to come to Rome for the imperial benediction, and to cause the kingdom to be taken from King Charles, his kinsman, and to stir up war against the king of France on the borders of his realm on the side of Germany. The king of France, on the other hand, was not asleep, but with great caution, and by the counsel of Stefano della Colonna and of other sage Italians, and men of his own realm, sent one M. William of Nogaret of Provence, a wise and crafty cleric, with M. Musciatto Franzesi, into Tuscany, furnished with much ready money, and with drafts on the company of the Peruzzi (which were then his merchants) for as much money as might be needed; the Peruzzi not knowing wherefore. And when they were come to the fortress of Staggia, which pertained to the said M. Musciatto, they abode there long time, sending ambassadors and messages and letters; and they caused people to come to them in secret, giving out openly that they were there to treat concerning peace between the pope and the king of France, and that for this cause they had brought the said money; and under this colour they conducted secret negotiations to take Pope Boniface prisoner in Anagna, spending thereupon much money, corrupting the barons of the country and the citizens of Anagna; and as it had been purposed, so it came to pass; for Pope Boniface being with his cardinals, and with all the court, in the city of Anagna, in Campagna, where he had been born, and was at home, not thinking or knowing of this plot, nor being on his guard, or if he heard anything of it, through his great courage not heeding it, or perhaps, as it pleased God, by reason of his great sins—in the month of September, 1303, Sciarra della Colonna, with his mounted followers, to the number of three hundred, and many of his friends on foot, paid by money of the French king, with troops of the lords of Ceccano and of Supino, and of other barons of the Campagna, and of the sons of M. Maffio d’Anagna, and, it is said, with the consent of some of the cardinals which were in the plot, one morning early entered into Anagna, with the ensigns and standards of the king of France, crying, “Death to Pope Boniface! Long life to the king of France!” And they rode through the city without any hindrance, or, rather, well-nigh all the ungrateful people of Anagna followed the standards and the rebellion; and when they came to the papal palace, they entered without opposition and took the palace, forasmuch as the present assault was not expected by the pope and his retainers, and they were not upon their guard. Pope Boniface—hearing the uproar, and seeing himself forsaken by all his cardinals, which were fled and in hiding (whether through fear or through set malice), and by the most part of his servants, and seeing that his enemies had taken the city and the palace where he was—gave himself up for lost, but like the high-spirited and valorous man he was, he said, “Since, like Jesus Christ, I am willing to be taken and needs must die by treachery, at the least I desire to die as pope”; and straightway he caused himself to be robed in the mantle of St. Peter, and with the crown of Constantine on his head, and with the keys and the cross in his hand, he seated himself upon the papal chair. And when Sciarra and the others, his enemies, came to him, they mocked at him with vile words, and arrested him and his household which had remained with him; among the others, M. William of Nogaret scorned him, which had conducted the negotiations for the king of France, whereby he had been taken, and threatened him, saying that he would take him bound to Lyons on the Rhone, and there in a general council would cause him to be deposed and condemned. The high-spirited pope answered him, that he was well pleased to be condemned and deposed by Paterines [heretics] such as he, whose father and mother had been burnt as Paterines; whereat M. William was confounded and put to shame. But afterwards, as it pleased God, to preserve the holy dignity of the popes, no man dared to touch him, nor were they pleased to lay hands on him, but they left him robed under gentle ward, and were minded to rob the treasure of the pope and of the Church. In this pain, shame, and torment the great Pope Boniface abode prisoner among his enemies for three days; but, like as Christ rose on the third day, so it pleased Him that Pope Boniface should be set free; for without entreaty or other effort, save the divine aid, the people of Anagna beholding their error, and issuing from their blind ingratitude, suddenly rose in arms, crying, “Long live the pope and his household, and death to the traitors”; and running through the city they drove out Sciarra della Colonna and his followers, with loss to them of prisoners and slain, and freed the pope and his household. Pope Boniface, seeing himself free, and his enemies driven away, did not therefore rejoice in any wise, forasmuch as the pain of his adversity had so entered into his heart and clotted there; wherefore he departed straightway from Anagna with all his court, and came to Rome to St. Peter’s to hold a council, purposing to take the heaviest vengeance for his injury and that of Holy Church against the king of France, and whosoever had offended him; but, as it pleased God, the grief which had hardened in the heart of Pope Boniface, by reason of the injury which he had received, produced in him, after he was come to Rome, a strange malady so that he gnawed at himself as if he were mad, and in this state he passed from this life on the twelfth day of October in the year of Christ 1303, and in the church of St. Peter, near the entrance of the doors, in a rich chapel which was built in his lifetime, he was honourably buried.
This Pope Boniface was very wise both in learning and in natural wit, and a man very cautious and experienced, and of great knowledge and memory; very haughty he was, and proud, and cruel towards his enemies and adversaries, and was of a great heart, and much feared by all people; and he exalted and increased greatly the estate and the rights of Holy Church, and he commissioned M. Guglielmo da Bergamo and M. Ricciardi of Siena, who were cardinals, and M. Dino Rosoni of Mugello, all of them supreme masters in laws and in decretals, together with himself, for he too was a great master in divinity and in decretals, to draw up the Sixth Book of the Decretals, which is as it were the light of all the laws and the decretals. A man of large schemes was he, and liberal to folk which pleased him, and which were worthy, very desirous of worldly pomp according to his estate, and very desirous of wealth, not scrupulous, nor having very great or strict conscience about every gain, to enrich the Church and his nephews. He made many of his friends and confidants cardinals in his time, among others two very young nephews, and his uncle, his mother’s brother; and twenty of his relations and friends of the little city of Anagna, bishops and archbishops of rich benefices; and to another of
his nephews and his sons, which were counts, as we afore made mention, to them he left almost unbounded riches; and after the death of Pope Boniface, their uncle, they were bold and valiant in war, doing vengeance upon all their neighbours and enemies, which had betrayed and injured Pope Boniface, spending largely, and keeping at their own cost three hundred good Catalan horsemen, by force of which they subdued almost all the Campagna and the district of Rome. And if Pope Boniface, while he was alive, had believed that they could be thus bold in arms and valorous in war, certainly he would have made them kings or great lords. And note, that when Pope Boniface was taken prisoner, tidings thereof were sent to the king of France by many couriers in a few days, through great joy; and when the first couriers arrived at Sion, beyond the mountain of Brieg [Sion under Brieg], the bishop of Sion, which then was a man of pure and holy life, when he heard the news was, as it were, amazed, and abode some while in silent contemplation, by reason of the wonderment which took him at the capture of the pope; and coming to himself he said aloud, in the presence of many good folk, “The king of France will rejoice greatly on hearing these tidings, but I have it by divine inspiration, that for this sin he is judged by God, and that great and strange perils and adversities, with shame to him and his lineage, will overtake him very swiftly, and he and his sons will be cast out from the inheritance of the realm.” And this we learned a little while after, when we passed by Sion, from persons worthy of belief, which were present to hear. Which sentence was a prophecy in all its parts, as afterwards the truth will show, in due time, when we narrate the doings of the said king of France and of his sons. And the judgment of God is not to be marvelled at; for, albeit Pope Boniface was more worldly than was fitting to his dignity, and had done many things displeasing to God, God caused him to be punished after the fashion that we have said, and afterwards He punished the offender against him, not so much for the injury against the person of Pope Boniface, as for the sin committed against the Divine Majesty, whose countenance he represented on earth.
From Chronicle, trans. R. E. Selfe, P. H. Wicksteed, ed. (London: Constable, 1906).
Dante Alighieri
GIOVANNI VILLANI
Fourteenth century
IN THE said year 1321, in the month of July, Dante Alighieri, of Florence, died in the city of Ravenna, in Romagna, having returned from an embassy to Venice in the service of the lords of Polenta, with whom he was living; and in Ravenna, before the door of the chief church, he was buried with great honour, in the garb of a poet and of a great philosopher. He died in exile from the commonwealth of Florence, at the age of about fifty-six years. This Dante was a citizen of an honourable and ancient family in Florence, of the Porta San Piero, and our neighbour; and his exile from Florence was by reason that when M. Charles of Valois, of the house of France, came to Florence in the year 1301 and banished the White party, as has been aforementioned at its due time, the said Dante was among the chief governors of our city, and pertained to that party, albeit he was a Guelph; and, therefore, for no other fault he was driven out and banished from Florence with the White party; and went to the university at Bologna, and afterwards at Paris, and in many parts of the world. This man was a great scholar in almost every branch of learning, albeit he was a layman; he was a great poet and philosopher, and a perfect rhetorician alike in prose and verse, a very noble orator in public speaking, supreme in rhyme, with the most polished and beautiful style which in our language ever was up to his time and beyond it. In his youth he wrote the book of The New Life, of love; and afterwards, when he was in exile, he wrote about twenty very excellent odes, treating of moral questions and of love; and he wrote three noble letters among others; one he sent to the government of Florence complaining of his undeserved exile; the second he sent to the Emperor Henry [VII] when he was besieging Brescia, reproving him for his delay, almost in a prophetic strain; the third to the Italian cardinals, at the time of the vacancy after the death of Pope Clement, praying them to unite in the election of an Italian pope; all these in Latin in a lofty style, and with excellent purport and authorities, and much commended by men of wisdom and insight. And he wrote the Comedy, wherein, in polished verse, and with great and subtle questions, moral, natural, astrological, philosophical, and theological, with new and beautiful illustrations, comparisons, and poetry, he dealt and treated in one hundred chapters or songs, of the existence and condition of Hell, Purgatory, and Paradise as loftily as it were possible to treat of them, as in his said treatise may be seen and understood by whoso has subtle intellect. It is true that he in this Comedy delighted to denounce and to cry out after the manner of poets, perhaps in certain places more than was fitting; but may be his exile was the cause of this. He wrote also the Monarchy, in which he treated of the office of pope and of emperor. (And he began a commentary upon fourteen of his aforenamed moral odes in the vulgar tongue which, in consequence of his death, is only completed as to three of them; the which commentary, judging by what can be seen of it, was turning out a lofty, beautiful, subtle, and very great work, adorned by lofty style and fine philosophical and astrological reasonings. Also he wrote a little book entitled DeVulgari Eloquentia, of which he promised to write four books, but of these only two exist, perhaps on account of his untimely death; and here, in strong and ornate Latin and with beautiful reasonings, he reproves all the vernaculars of Italy.) This Dante, because of his knowledge, was somewhat haughty and reserved and disdainful, and after the fashion of a philosopher, careless of graces and not easy in his converse with laymen; but because of the lofty virtues and knowledge and worth of so great a citizen, it seems fitting to confer lasting memory upon him in this our chronicle, although, indeed, his noble works left to us in writing are the true testimony to him, and are an honourable report to our city.
From Chronicle, trans. R. E. Selfe.
Inscription for a Portrait of Dante
GIOVANNI BOCCACCIO
c 1373
Dante Alighieri, a dark oracle
Of wisdom and of art, I am; whose mind
Has to my country such great gifts assign’d
That men account my powers a miracle.
My lofty fancy pass’d as low as Hell,
As high as Heaven, secure and unconfined;
And in my noble book doth every kind
Of earthly lore and heavenly doctrine dwell.
Renownèd Florence was my mother—nay,
Stepmother unto me her piteous son,
Through sin of cursed slander’s tongue and tooth.
Ravenna shelter’d me so cast away;
My body is with her—my soul with One
For whom no envy can make dim the truth.
Trans. D. G. Rossetti, in The Early Italian Poets (London: Smith Elder, 1861).
Giotto
LORENZO GHIBERTI
Fourteenth century
THE art of painting began to rise in Tuscany in a village near the city of Florence called Vespignano. There was born a child of marvellous talent who drew a sheep from nature. Cimabue, the painter, passing along the road to Bologna saw the boy sitting on the ground, drawing a sheep on a flat stone. He was seized with great wonder that the child, being of such a tender age, could do so well, seeming to have the gift from nature, and he asked the boy what he was called. He replied and said, “I am called Giotto, and my father is named Bondoni and lives in that house which is close by.” Cimabue went with Giotto to the father; he had a very fine appearance, and he asked the father for the boy. And the father was very poor. He gave the boy to Cimabue who took Giotto with him, and Giotto became the pupil of Cimabue.
He [Cimabue] followed the “Greek manner”; in this style he had won very great fame in Tuscany. Giotto made himself great in the art of painting. He brought in the new art, abandoned the stiffness of the Greeks, rose to fame most excellently in Tuscany. And he made the most notable works, especially in the city of Florence, and in many other places, and about him there were a number of disciples, all learned like the ancient Gr
eeks. Giotto saw in art what the others did not add to it; he brought into being art according to nature and gentleness with it, not exceeding measure. He was most expert in all aspects of art; he was an inventor and a discoverer of much knowledge which had been buried about the year 600. When nature wishes to grant anything, she grants it in truth without any stint. Giotto was prolific in everything; he worked in murals, he worked in oil, he worked on wood. He made in mosaic the Navicella of St. Piero in Rome and with his own hand painted the chapel and the altarpiece of St. Piero. He painted most nobly the hall of King Robert [of Sicily] with pictures of famous men. In Naples he painted in the Castello dell’ Uovo. He painted, that is, all by his own hand, in the church of the Arena of Padua, and by his own hand a Last Judgment. And in the Palazzo della Parte [Guelph] he did a story of the Christian faith, and many other things in the said palace. He painted in the church at Assisi [San Francesco] of the order of Friars Minor almost all the lower part. He also painted in Santa Maria degli Angeli in Assisi and in Santa Maria della Minerva in Rome a crucifix and a panel.
The works painted by him in Florence were the following. In the Badia of Florence, in an arch above the portal, our Lady, half-length, with two figures at the sides, very exquisitely, and also the great chapel and the panel. In the church of the Friars Minor [Santa Croce] four chapels and four panels. Very excellently he painted in Padua in the Friars Minor. Most skilfully in the church of the Humiliati [Ognissanti] in Florence, a chapel and a large crucifix, and four panels made very excellently; in one was shown the death of our Lady with angels and with the twelve apostles and our Lord round about, made most perfectly. And there a very large panel with our Lady sitting on a throne with many angels round about. And there over the door leading into the cloister, our Lady, half-length, with the Child in her arms. And in St. Giorgio a panel and a crucifix. In the Friars Preachers [Santa Maria Novella] there is a crucifix and a most perfect panel by his hand; also many other things there.
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