The Story of Perugia

All rights reserved
First Edition, February 1898
Second Edition, December 1898
Third Edition, April 1900
Fourth Edition, May 1901

The Story of Perugia
by Margaret Symons
and Lina Duff Gordon
Illustrated by M. Helen James

London: J. M. Dent & Co.
Aldine House, 29 and 30 Bedford Street
Covent Garden W.C.

1901

PREFACE

WHEN but a little while ago we undertook to write a “guide book” to one of the better known towns of Central Italy, we realised perhaps imperfectly how wide and full was the field of work which lay before us. The “story” of Perugia is, like the story of nearly all Italian towns, as full and varied as the story of a nation. Every side-light of history is cast upon it, and nearly every phase of man’s policy and art reflected on its monuments. To do justice to so grand a pageant in a narrow space of time and binding was, we may fairly plead, no easy task; and now that the work is done, and the proofs returned to the printer, we are left with an inevitable regret; for it has been impossible for us to retain in shortened sentences and cramped description the charm of all the tales and chronicles which we ourselves found necessary reading for a full knowledge of so wide a subject.

If this small book have any claim to merit it is greatly due to the faithful and ungrudging help rendered to its authors throughout their study, by one true guide; by many old friends; and by the inhabitants of the town whose name it bears for title. We can never adequately express our sense of gratitude to the people of Perugia, to whom we came as utter strangers, but who received us with such great courtesy and kindness as to make our stay and study in their midst a pleasure as well as an education.

Our book is intended for the general traveller rather than for the student. We have offered no criticism, and have quoted whenever we could from the pages of contemporary chronicles. We have dealt with Perugia as with the heroine of a novel, describing her particular progress, and not confounding it with that of neighbour towns, equally important in their way, and each struggling, as perhaps only the cities of Italy knew how to struggle, towards an individual supremacy in a state lacerated by foreign wars and policies.

In dealing with one of the most vivid points in the history of the town—the Rule of the Nobles—we have, with some diffidence, incorporated into our narrative the words of one who had already drawn his description of the subject straight from the original source, treating it with such a powerful sympathy as it would have been impossible for us to rival. For further knowledge of this terrible period we can but refer the student to the chronicle of Matarazzo. (Archivio Storico, vol. xvi. part 2.)

With the art of Umbria we have dealt only shortly, and from the point of view of sentiment rather than that of criticism. For a severe and thorough knowledge of the technique and use of colours employed by the men who lived through such scenes as we have described in chapters II. and III. we must refer the reader to the works of other authors. For our dates, and facts in reference to art, we have relied on Kugler, Crowe and Cavalcaselle, Rio, Vasari and the local writers, Mariotti, Lupatelli, Mezzanotte, etc.

It remains to give a list of the books which we have consulted for the history. Amongst these are the Perugian chronicles contained in the Archivio Storico d’Italia; Graziani, Matarazzo, Frolliere, and Bontempi; Fabretti’s chronicles of Perugia, and his “Vita dei Condottieri, etc.”; and the local histories of Ciatti, Pellini, Bartoli, Mariotti, and Bonazzi. Villani and Sismondi have been consulted; Creighton’s “History of the Papacy during the Reformation,” and von Ranke’s “History of the Popes.”

Of the purely local histories mentioned above Bonazzi’s is the most important. His two bulky volumes are excellent reading in spite of his sarcastic and often unjust bitterness against the clerical party. A number of local pamphlets, the names of whose authors we cannot here enumerate, have been used for various details, together with other books on a variety of subjects, such as Dennis’ “Etruria,” Broussole’s “Pélerinages Ombriens,” Hodgkin’s “Italy and her Invaders,” etc., etc.

When all is told, by far the most valuable and trustworthy authority on Perugian matters is Annibale Mariotti. A local gossip who combines with his gossiping qualities an exquisite sense of humour, and a real genius for investigation in matters relating to his native town, is the person of all others from whom to learn its actual life and history. Mariotti is an eminent specimen of this class of writers, and no one who is anxious to understand the spirit of Perugia should omit a careful study of his works on the Popes, the People, and the Painters of Perugia.

For personal help received we have the satisfaction of offering in this place our sincere thanks to Cav. Giuseppe Bellucci, professor at the University of Perugia, whose wise and kindly counsel has led us throughout to an understanding of countless points which must, without him, have remained unnoticed or obscure. Our notes on the museum are practically his own. We would mention also with grateful thanks Dr Marzio Romitelli, Arcidiacono of the cathedral of Perugia, who generously opened his library to us, and many of whose suggestions have been of service to us. To Count Vincenzo Ansidei, head of the Perugian library, our sincere thanks are offered here.

We must further acknowledge the help of Signor Novelli of Perugia; of Mrs Ross, Mr Hayllar, and Cav. Bruschi, head of the Marucelliana Library at Florence. Lastly, of Mr Walter Leaf and Mr Sidney Colvin in the revision of proofs.

The comfort of our quarters in the Hotel Brufani needs no description to most Italian travellers, who are already familiar with that delightful house; but we are glad to mention here our appreciation of the care and thoughtful kindness shown to us by our English hostess in the Umbrian town. The courtesy received by us at headquarters from the Prefect of Umbria and Baroness Ferrari his wife, made our stay, from a purely social point of view, both easy and delightful.

To close these prefatory notes we can but say how sincerely we trust that the following pages may serve only as a preparation, in more capable hands, for further and far fuller records of a city whose history is as enthralling to the student of men as its pictures and position must ever be to the lover of what is beautiful in nature and in art.

August 21st, 1897.
Am Hof. Davos.

CONTENTS

ILLUSTRATIONS

The Story of Perugia

CHAPTER I
The earliest Origins of Perugia and growth of the City

SOMETIMES in a street or in a country road we meet an unknown person who seems to us wonderfully and inexplicably attractive. Perhaps we only catch a passing vision; the face, the figure passes us, oftener than not we never meet again, and even the memory of the vision which seemed so full of life, so strong, and so enduring, passes with the years, and we forget. But had we only tried a little, it would, in almost every instance, have been possible to follow the figure up, to learn what we wanted to know about it, to understand the reason why the face was full of meaning to us, and what it was which went before and gave the mouth its passion, the eyes their pain and sweetness. In nine cases out of ten we can, in this nineteenth century, discover the birth and parentage, the loves and hates, of any human being we may wish to know. But this is not the way with cities, and although they attract us in almost precisely the same fashion as people do, we cannot always trace their earliest origins. There are certain towns we come across in travel, of which we know very well that we want to know more. Perugia is one of these. It at once catches hold of one’s imagination. No one can see it and forget it. A breath of the past is in it—of a past which we dimly feel to be prehistoric. Boldly we set to work to learn its history, and at first this seems an easy matter: the later centuries are a full and an enthralling study, for as long as men knew how to write they were certain to write about themselves, and the writers of Perugia had a wide dramatic field to work upon. But then come the records which are not written—which, in fact, are merely hearsay; and further even than hearsay is the period when we know that men existed, but which has no history at all beyond a few stone arrow heads, and bits of jade and flint. Yet, to be fair to a place of such extraordinary antiquity as this early city of the Etruscan league, one is unwilling to leave a single stone unturned, and in the following sketch we have gathered together, as closely as we could, the earliest facts about a city which attracts us, as those unknown people attract us whom we meet, admire, and lose again in the crowd.

“It seems,” says Bonazzi, the most modern historian of Perugia, “that in the earlier periods of the world all this land of ours (Umbria) was covered by the sea, and that only the highest tops of the Apennines rose here and there, as islands might, above the waves. Then other hills arose, a new soil was disclosed, and great and horrid animals, whose teeth were sometimes metres long, came forth and trod the terrible waste places. In the silence of these squalid solitudes, no voice of man had yet been heard, and the stars went on their way unnoticed, across the firmament of heaven....”

But Bonazzi’s science, though highly picturesque, was not entirely correct, and the following account, written by an inhabitant of Perugia who has studied the history of his town and neighbourhood with faithful precision and from the darkest periods of their existence, may well be inserted here.

“The city of Perugia,” Prof. Bellucci writes, “is built upon a piece of land which was formed by a large delta of the primeval Tiber. In very early times (during the period known as pliocene) the Tiber, before running into the sea, formed in the central basin of Umbria an immense lake. The soil of which the actual plain of Umbria is now composed, and the numerous low hills which surround it, are made up either of river deposits such as sand and rubble left behind by the rush of waters, or else by clay deposits which slowly formed themselves in the quiet bosom of the lake. The date of these deposits is shown by the fossil remains which are found in them: elephants, rhinoceros, hippopotamus, stags, antelopes, hyenas, wild dogs, &c., all of which indicate a much warmer climate than that of the present day. In the period following on this, the great lake of Umbria began to empty itself; and as the soil washed gradually away, the waters forced a passage through the mountains below Todi, and from that time onward the Tiber gradually assumed its present course. The characteristic fauna of this second period distinguishes it from the first. Numerous remains found in the primitive gravel deposits of the Tiber prove the existence of man in our neighbourhood during both these periods (namely the paleolithic and neolithic). But the final drying up of the great lake basin or valley of Umbria was a very slow process, and even in Roman times the extent of these stagnant waters was so wide that the present town of Bastia on the road to Assisi was surrounded by them on every side and went by the name of Insula Romana. The final drainage of the lake was not completed till some time in 1400, when the river Chiagio burst through the rocky dykes under Torgiano and lowered the level of the water by four metres. Thus central Umbria at last assumed its present aspect. We stand upon the hill-top at Perugia where once thousands of years ago the turbid waters of the Tiber rushed along, and at our feet stretch the green and fertile fields of Umbria, all the fairer for the fertilising waters of that mighty lake which, in the dim and distant past, had covered them completely.”

We have no definite date or name for those first men who came to live in this strange marshy wilderness. We have only the relics of their patient industry. An inexhaustible store of arrow-heads and other barbarous stone implements is found in all the hills around Perugia, and splendid hatchet heads of jade upon the shores of Trasimene. No doubt these men lived in holes and caves, perhaps at the foot of this hill where the present city of Perugia stands, or a little to the west of it, but their history is dark and very far away. Dark too and far away, as far as written facts remain, is the history of that almost more mysterious race of men which followed on the prehistoric one, namely, the Etruscans.

This is no place in which to discuss the origin of that extraordinary people whose language and parentage, though they lived and laboured side by side with the most cultivated and inquisitive of European nations, is practically dead to us. It is enough at this point of our history to note that the Etruscans were the first to seal their personality, with the seal of a visible and tangible intelligence, upon this corner of the world, and it is quite probable that they made one of their earliest colonies upon the jutting spur of a line of hills which would have attracted them upon arrival. It is certain that in course of time Perugia became one of the most powerful cities of the Etruscan league. Her museums are full of the pottery, tombs, inscriptions, toys, and coins of the mysterious nation (see Museum, chapter XI.).

Innumerable myths grew up around the foreign people, and individual historians described their advent in individual places and pretty much at random. The earliest chroniclers of Perugia, ignoring the men who had perhaps existed for centuries before this unknown nation landed,—ignoring too, the other settlers,—pounced upon a plum so precious and romantic to stick into the pie of legends that they were concocting; they

peeled and stoned the plum to suit their fancy, and having done so, stuck it in with many others to swell the list of dubious tales in their long-winded manuscripts. As these chroniclers were nearly always monks, it was natural enough that they should form their shambling history on the one great history that they possessed, i.e., the Bible. To them the Etruscans were easily and most satisfactorily explained: they descended from the first man, Adam, and they were the sons of Noah. Nay, the monks made an even happier hit, for they declared that Noah in person climbed the Apennines and pitched his tent upon the spur of hill where the present city stands! We can well imagine the old monk Ciatti, one of the earliest historians of Perugia, sitting before his wooden desk upon some dreamy night in May, his Bible propped before him, all Umbria asleep beneath the stars outside his window, and compiling the following entrancing legends concerning the Etruscans and their leader: “Serious writers hold Janus to be the same as Noah, who alone among men saw and knew all things during the space of six hundred years before the Deluge and three hundred years after the Deluge. The ancient medals which show the two faces of Janus are engraved with a ship, to denote that he was Noah, who, entering an ark in the form of a ship, was saved by divine decree from the universal Deluge.”[1] Ciatti next goes on to give a delightful description of the arrival of Noah and his sons; “they penetrated,” he says, “into Tuscany,[2] where, fascinated by the loveliness of the country, the agreeable qualities of the soil, the gentle air and the abundance of the earth, they determined to remain; but feeling uncertain where they should fix their dwelling, they were advised by certain augurs to build Perugia on the spot where it now stands.” Some say that the name Perugia comes from the Greek word for “abundance.” Certainly Ciatti was able to weave this fact into his legendary web: “Whilst, waiting for the Augurs,” he writes, “two doves passed by them, flying to their nest, one carrying a branch loaded with olives and the other an ear of corn. Soon after there came a big wild boar carrying on his tusks a bunch of grapes. They took these signs to mean good omens, and they decided to build Perugia on the spot.”

Ciatti must have been an honest chronicler. Had we been given his early possibilities of making history in our own fashion, we must inevitably have told a credulous public that the ark itself rested upon the spurs of the Apennines and disgorged its contents on the hill where stands the present city of Perugia. But Ciatti withheld his hand from this, and we too must bare our heads before the fact of Ararat, and only hold to that of Noah, in his five-hundredth year or so, wandering unwearied forth to form a mighty nation on the coasts of Italy!

But before leaving Ciatti and his early myths, we must do him the justice to say that he was not utterly ignorant of a dim nation and of dimmer monsters living perhaps before the days of the Deluge. The old monk, like other wise historians, sets to work to hunt up the heraldry of his native city, and thus he explains the origin of the griffin on the city arms. The enthralling hunt described savours surely of something in an even earlier age?

“Now it so happened that, when the people of Perugia and of Narni were at the height of their prosperity, they became consumed by a very warlike spirit, and cultivated freely all military exercises, and on one occasion they challenged each other to a trial of prowess in a celebrated hunt. They agreed to meet in the mountains round about Perugia, which were then the haunt of fierce and terrifying wild beasts, and having come to that mountain which now takes its name from the event (Monte Griffone) they found there a griffin, which the Perugians captured and killed. After some dispute the monster was divided, the skin and claws being best worthy of preservation were taken by the Perugians, whilst the body fell to the people of Narni. In memory of this occurrence the Perugians took for their arms a white griffin—white being the natural colour of that animal—while the people of Narni took a red griffin, corresponding to the part which had fallen to their share, on a white field.”[3]

But, to pass from the realms of myth to those of reality, it seems quite certain that the Etruscans—or Rasenae as they are sometimes called—spread themselves over a large part of Italy, building and fortifying their cities, making roads and laws and temples, and casting the light of an older art and civilisation upon the land to which they came as colonists. One of the chief of their cities was Perugia. Fragments of the old walls, built perhaps three thousand years ago, still stand in places, clean-cut, erect, and menacing, around the Umbrian city.

The lives of the Etruscans can only be studied through their art, and Perugia holds an ample store of this in her museums. There, in those rather dreary modern rooms, stone men and women smile upon their tombs, and the sides of these tombs bristle with long inscriptions written in an alphabet that we can partly read, but in a language that we cannot understand. Mirrors, and beautifully painted pots, children’s toys and ladies’ curling-tongs—the Etruscan dead have left no lack of records of their ways of living. But, strong as was their personality, another and a stronger force had struggled through the soil of Italy. Rome had arisen to shine upon the growing world. It remained for Rome to leave the stamp of veritable history upon the city of Perugia.

Throughout the early history of Rome, we catch dim rumours of an occasional connection or warfare with this corner of Etruria. It is not till 309 B.C. that we have any distinct mention of Perugia in connection with Rome. In that year the Roman Consul, Fabius, fought a battle with the Etruscans under the walls of the town. The Etruscans lost the day, Perugia and other cities of the League sued for a truce with Rome which was granted to them. Fabius entered Perugia “and this was the first time,” says Bartoli, “that the banner of foreigners had waved across our city.” Perugia bitterly resented the rule of the foreign power, and, breaking her truce, she made several passionate efforts to regain her freedom. But in vain. Her blood, perhaps, was old, and grown corrupt, the blood of Rome was new and palpitating. She was again and again overcome by Fabius. In 206 B.C. we find her, not exactly submitting to Rome, but playing the part of a strong ally, and cutting down her woods to help in the building of a fleet for Scipio. Her history continues dark—overshadowed by that of Rome. We hear a faint rumble of the Roman battles. We catch dull echoes of Hannibal and Trasimene, for Trasimene is very near Perugia. Did some of her citizens creep down perhaps, and get a vision of the fight? Did any of those much-bewigged Etruscan ladies, who we know were very independent in their ways, tuck up their skirts and follow through the woods to have a look at the elephants and shudder at the swarthy African?

We cannot tell. The next clear point in her history is a terrible one for Perugia. She fell, but she fell by a mighty hand, by that of the emperor Augustus. In the year 40 B.C. the Roman Consul, Lucius Antoninus, who, it may be said, was defending the liberty of Rome whilst Mark Antony lay lost in a love-dream upon the banks of Nile, took refuge within the walls of Perugia from the pursuit of Octavius (Augustus) who then laid siege to the town. For seven months the brave little city held out, but she was reduced to such a terrible distress of famine that Lucius at last gave way, and opened her gates to the conqueror. Octavius entered Perugia covered with laurels. The citizens prayed for mercy. He spared most of the men and women, but he excepted three hundred of the elders and saw them singly killed before his eyes. When they prayed for grace he merely tossed his head back and repeated: “They must die.” This ordeal over, Octavius decided to postpone the sack of the city until the following day. But one of its citizens, Caius Cestius Macedonicus, hot with all the shame of the thing, got up at night and made a funeral pyre of his house. He set fire to its walls, and as it burned he stabbed himself and died there. The flames spread through the city, and before the morning Perugia was burned to the ground. Nothing remained of all its buildings except the temple of Vulcan, and in memory of this fire the town was afterwards dedicated to Vulcan instead of to Juno to whom it had formerly belonged. Octavius returned to Rome bearing before him the image of Juno, which alone had been saved from the flames. Some years later he agreed to rebuild the city, and hence the letters Augusta Perusia over her gates.

* * * * * * * *

So laying aside for ever Perusia Etrusca, that city of strange beasts, strange people, and strange myths, we face Perusia Augusta, or the Perugia of Rome.

For some centuries, strange as it may appear, the powerful old Umbrian hill-town seems to have fallen contentedly asleep under the rule of her great protector. It was, as we know, the policy of Rome to adopt the laws and customs of the people whom she conquered rather than to change them, and indeed the alteration seldom went further than in name. The Etruscan rulers therefore took the titles of Roman governors, they did not really alter, and it is probable that the laws of the very earliest settlement have never really become extinct. The Lucumo of the Etruscans was in all probability the descendant of the earliest prehistoric village chief, who developed into the Diumvir or representative of the Roman Consul pretty much as the present Sindaco succeeded to the position of the Podestà of the middle ages.

Rome had always loved and studied the religions of the older people, and Bonazzi infers that Rome “delighted in nursing on the breast of her republic those great masters of Divinity who could be made such powerful political instruments for her service.” The Romans must have intermarried freely with the Etruscans; the mixture of names and lettering upon their tombs points to this fact. But the strong fresh blood of the younger race seems to have overcome that of the more corrupt one. Other tribes and other tongues pressed in upon the first inhabitants and gradually the language, yes, and the memory of the strange and fascinating people, died.

Of the Roman occupation little trace can be found in the architecture of the city, beyond the walls and gates and the inscriptions over some of these, together with a sorry fragment of a Roman bath. It must be remembered that the entire city was burned to the ground after the siege—burned with all her wealth of monuments and temples—and it does not seem as though the Romans did much to beautify her with grand buildings. Having no old buildings to use as raw material, they were probably content at this period to build strong walls and houses suitable for a fortified town, thus fostering the warlike character of her inhabitants which was to prove so great a point in following centuries.[4]

Roman rule was a very real piece of history, but it is not possible to say that the period of myth and darkness had wholly passed away. We possess a certain knowledge of the Roman government, but the shadow of the Gothic and Barbarian night closes in upon it like a heavy pall; and the next clear and startling point about Perugia is her recapture by Belisarius followed by the siege of Totila (or Baduila).

During those terrible centuries when Italy was being ravaged by perpetual invasions, her lands devastated by war and plagues and famine, and her cities, as one historian says, “no longer cities, but rather the corpses of cities,” we find scant mention of actual harm done to Perugia, for it was the north which suffered first. However, as the Goths pressed southward upon Rome, as Rome herself wavered and sank beneath the weight of the northern hordes, and of her own corruption, we gather that the Umbrian cities too became a prey to the barbarians, and that Perugia suffered the fate of all her neighbours. Her historians seek in vain for stated records of this time where all is darkness, but some dim facts shine out, among them the steady growth of Christianity within the city.

The first important date we find follows nearly six hundred years after her capture by Augustus. It was in 536 A.D., that Justinian, who had conceived the mighty plan of recovering Africa from the Vandals and Italy from the Goths, sent one of his best generals, Constantine (under Belisarius), into Umbria to occupy the cities there. Constantine made Perugia his headquarters and for a while his possession of the town seems not to have been disputed by the Goths. Witigis left her on one side as he passed with his armies down to Rome, and it remained for the indomitable Totila to wrest her (in 545) from the power of the Byzantine Empire. Totila is a most prominent figure in the history of the city, and many are the myths which centre round him. He first attacked Assisi, and having conquered her, he turned his greedy gaze upon the fair hill city opposite and instantly desired to possess her also. But realising the strength of her position, which was largely increased by the occupation of a Byzantine general, he determined to get her by foul means rather than fair, and so he bribed one of her citizens to murder Cyprian, who was then the general in command. The citizens rose in eager revolt against this treachery, and Totila soon found that he had undertaken no light thing when he came to besiege the town. Indeed tradition says that the said siege lasted seven years, and however much this may have been exaggerated, it is certain that it was made a hard one for the Goth. Perugia was taken by storm, but after fearful fighting; she fell, but she was upheld to the last by a new power, namely that of her faith. The story of S. Ercolano, the faithful Bishop of the Perugians, is told in another place ([see pp. 245-246]). It has been admirably illustrated by Bonfigli, it has been described and hallowed in a hundred ways throughout the city’s chronicles, and it is vain for modern historians to tell us, as they are inclined to do, that Totila never set foot in Perugia. Bonfigli’s fresco is terribly convincing in itself, as are also the naïve and delightful records of Ciatti and Pellini. Among the people of the town Totila has become one of its most important facts, and they declare that his wife lies buried close to the Ponte Felcino together with her husband’s hidden treasure.

Gothic rule was short. Infinite and hurried changes follow on this period. We next hear of the city in the hands of the Lombards. The Lombard occupation is almost as dark as the Gothic.[5] In 592, Perugia became a Lombard Duchy ruled by the Duke Mauritius, who turned traitor to his trust and delivered the city to the Exarch of Ravenna. The news of the Duke’s treachery spread northward. Agilulf, King of the Lombards, came hastening down to recapture the city with a mighty army, and he made Mauritius pay for his treachery with his head. This was in 593. A few years later Perugia was restored to the Empire, but at the beginning of 700, she, like many other cities of Italy, attempted to shake herself free from Byzantine rule. It is probable that she did not really succeed in doing so, but this point is at any rate a great crisis in her history, for it is the first time that we find her at all tangibly connected with the Head of the Christian world—with that power of the Church which was to prove, throughout her future, alternately her safeguard and her scourge.

It was about 727 that Leo the Isaurian, Emperor of the East, terrified by certain evils in his kingdom which he took to be signs of Divine anger, made his famous decree against the worship of images. This proved of course a most unpopular edict in Italy, and the reigning Pope opposed it by every means in his power. Many of the most powerful cities joined him, amongst them Perugia, and Greek rule in Italy, already on the wane, was greatly weakened, but we do not hear of any settled breach with the Empire for many years to come. Perugia was, as we shall see, merely advancing towards her own liberation, but the acquired protection of the Popes proved useful to her in her next great crisis.

In 749 Ratchis, King of the Lombards, laid siege to the city, and her fall seemed inevitable. Then, in the moment of her great need, with the Lombard army beating in her very doors, the reigning Pope, S. Zacharias the Greek, accompanied by all his clergy, and by many of the Roman nobles, arrived at her gates, and in words of extraordinary sweetness pleaded her cause with Ratchis. We do not hear what phrases the old man may have used to check a man on the verge of a great victory. We only hear that the Lombard king knelt down and kissed the feet of the Pope. “Thou hast conquered me,” he said, very simply, and then he withdrew from the battle, and S. Zacharias passed into the city, and was received with universal joy by her citizens. And not only did Ratchis abandon the siege of a town which he so greatly coveted, but, his whole soul being moved by this new power, he renounced his kingdom and his crown and retired to the monastery Monte Cassino, where he became a monk, living there until he died.

Thus closes another chapter of Perugian history. Within a space of three hundred years, roughly speaking, she had changed the nationality of her rulers four successive times, whilst she herself may be said never to have changed. Her internal history, her internal government, had all along continued pretty much on the first lines. Her entire future policy proves this. In all the small wars which follow, and which lead to her final supremacy over every other city in Umbria—cities which at the outset had been as strong as herself, and even stronger, we trace this masterful and incontestable personality—the personality of the griffin which the old Etruscan settlers captured thousands of years before upon the hill-tops and chose for their city arms.

* * * * * * * *

In all the intense complication of the times which follow it is almost impossible to unravel the exact position of individual towns. At one moment we find Perugia belonging apparently to the Duchy of Spoleto, at another joined to the Tuscan League, at another putting herself under the protection of the Pope, whilst all the time nominally belonging to the Empire. Bonazzi remarks that one result of the perpetual conflict between Emperor and Pope was the liberty left to the citizens; in another place he says that in the scant documents which contain her early history, “Perugia is always mentioned alone, always managing her own affairs.” The said management dated back in all probability to that of the very earliest settlement, which was mainly agricultural, and managed by chiefs or a Village Council. As the town grew, so likewise did the numbers of its rulers. In Perugia, as in other places, the original Village Council, which was first held in the public square, was abandoned as politics grew complicated. The Consuls, ten in number, two to each Porta or gate, met in council on the steps of the first Cathedral. The finest architectural building in Perugia is notably the Palazzo Pubblico, but long before the construction of this palace there was another building which served the same purpose close to the Duomo in which the different protectors of the city met. We do not propose to trace the form of government here. Suffice it to say that, in Perugia as elsewhere, we find the usual titles of Consuli and Podestà, then of the Heads of City Guilds, the Priori (a very strong power in Perugia), Capitano del Popolo and Capitano della Parte Guelfa; all of whom recur again and again in her chronicles, playing important parts as peace-makers or as arbitrators in her turmoils and dissensions.

The historians of Perugia, naturally enough perhaps, tend to speak of her as of an independent Republic, but this she never was. She had her own rulers, she grew powerful and individual, she finally became a great capital, but she was never a free state like Florence or Rome. Something in her extraordinary position, something in the character of her people, warlike and tenacious from the first, proved her final force. Great wandering hordes and armies thought twice before they attacked her walls. Thus she enjoyed long periods of ease, and in her stormy breast she nurtured the ferocious families which were to prove her strength, but equally her bane in later years.

Being utterly cut off from mercantile expansion or commerce of an ordinary sort, she used her concentrated force in subduing neighbouring towns, and thus extending her dominion over Umbria. Her power soon became recognised, and many little towns and hamlets sent envoys to present acts of submission to the growing power. When these were given freely she received them graciously, and when withheld she sometimes showed a power of rapacity and cruelty which is well nigh inconceivable.

Her history is full of wars against Siena, Gubbio, Arezzo, Città di Castello, Todi, Foligno, Spoleto and Assisi, all chronicled at great length by her proud historians. We have collected a few scattered facts relating to these, which cast some light upon the character of the Perugians, who, as their power strengthened, began to show, not only a tyrannous disposition, but an occasional spark of the grimmest humour. Leaving aside other events, such as the encroaching power of the Pope, we may now glance at some of these.

The first act of voluntary submission came from the island of Polvese in 1130, and was received with great solemnity in the Piazza di San Lorenzo and in the presence of all the inhabitants of the city. A little later more than nine hundred of the people of Castiglione del Lago came to place their land on the shores of Trasimene under the protection of Perugia. Città di Castello and Gubbio followed suit, and many of the smaller towns and hamlets. But, if submission was sweet, blows, one surmises, were well nigh sweeter to the fierce and savage owners of Perugia, and horrid were the skirmishes—one can scarcely call them battles—which ensued from time to time when towns resisted or rebelled against them.

Assisi and Perugia were ever an eyesore to one another, and their inhabitants scoured the plain between them like packs of wolves. In one of these savage little contests tradition tells us that a certain Giovanni di Bernadone, a youth of only twenty summers, was taken prisoner by the Perugians and kept a year in the Campo di Battaglia. The Palace of the Capitano del Popolo in the Piazza Sopramuro now covers the place where the youth was chained, and we may look on it with veneration, for he was no other than that sweetest soul of mediæval history, St Francis of Assisi.

When Città della Pieve dared to rebel, the action of Perugia was prompt and effective. “Most gladly did the youth of Perugia—hot with the dignity of their city, and by no means disposed to forgive those who despised or disobeyed her—assemble in arms,” says Bartoli. The army thus assembled was instantly sent to the recalcitrant city, but the Pievese had scarcely caught sight of it hurrying towards their gates, than they sent their Procuratore, Peppone d’Alvato, to sue for peace and beg forgiveness for their misdeeds. This was kindly granted, but Peppone, accompanied by some hundred and thirty Pievese, was forced to come to Ripa di Grotto and there listen to the reproaches of the Podestà of Perugia, whilst the Bishops of Perugia and of Chiusi, the Provost of S. Mustiola, and the Arciprete of Perugia, sitting on high chairs, surrounded by various grandees, were in readiness to enjoy the spectacle. All were dressed in their finest, but we are told that the Arciprete of Corciano threw all his neighbours entirely into the shade by the splendour and the brilliancy of his many-coloured garments.[6] Peppone kneeling at the Bishop’s feet with his hand on the gospels, swore faith and loyalty to the Perugians, and we hear that the Pievese returned home “rejoicing” at the pardon obtained in this most humiliating fashion. This last fact we may take the liberty to doubt, but it is certain that the Perugians enjoyed the whole episode immensely, neither did they consider the humiliation of their enemies complete. A further punishment had yet to be thought of, and at last a brilliant plan was resolved on. The Piazza of San Lorenzo needed paving, and the Pievese were told that they must provide all the necessary bricks for this purpose, and this “puerile waspishness,” as Bonazzi describes it, so delighted the hearts of the Perugians that, as we learn, not even the death of the great foe of the Guelph cause, Frederick II., “was able to give them a keener sense of joy.”

Perugia and Foligno had always regarded each other with undisguised dislike, skirmishing about and exchanging insults wherever they happened to meet. Once the people of Foligno had come bare-footed, and with a sword and knife hung round their necks, to implore pardon of Perugia, but they revolted again, and the Perugians continued to attack and to molest them. Three times in a single year (1282) their lands were devastated, and finally the town was taken, and the walls demolished, and imperative orders were issued absolutely forbidding these to be rebuilt on the western side. At last Pope Martin IV., amazed and disgusted by the behaviour of a people to whom he was honestly attached, interfered, but Perugia continued to molest her unhappy neighbour with a quite peculiar animosity, whereupon the Pope, angered beyond measure by their disobedience, excommunicated them. “Into such a passion did the Pope fall with the people of Perugia,” says Mariotti, “that he issued a most severe excommunication against them.” It was just at the time of the Sicilian Vespers. The Perugians, irritated by their sentence of excommunication, determined to celebrate a kind of mock vespers on their own account. Gregorovius says that this is the first instance recorded in history of this strange form of popular demonstration. “They made a Pope and Cardinals of straw, and dragged them ignominiously through the city and up to a hill, where they burned the effigies in crimson robes, saying, as the flames leapt up, “That is such-and-such, a Cardinal; and this is such-and-such, another.”

A strange scene, truly, in a half-civilised city! But political and religious causes came between and put an end to these half childish squabbles. A little later the Pope forgave the Perugians, and they continued their evil ways, and persisted in destroying the peace of the Umbrian towns.

Arezzo had the satisfaction of a victory over Perugia in 1335, and in defiance and derision she hanged her Perugian prisoners with a tabby cat hung beside them, and a string of lasche dangling from their braces.[7] But pranks like these were not allowed to pass unnoticed, and Perugia did not fail to grasp her finest banner with the lion of the Guelph all rampant on a field of gules, and hurry out to subdue her insolent neighbours. The people of Arezzo were humbled to the dust, but by means too barbaric to be here described.

Thus one by one the cities of Umbria became sufficiently impressed by this forcible fashion of dealing with insurrection, and they recognised that it would be wise, though it might not be pleasant, to swear allegiance to the imperious city. Gualdo next gave up her keys, together with Nocera, but the latter found it impossible to suppress a few oaths whilst signing the documents, and there was a loud wail over the laws imposed upon them.

“ ... e diretro le piange
Per grave giogo Nocera con Gualdo,”

says Dante, referring to the subject in the “Paradiso.”

Perugia’s culminating success seems to have been at Torrita in 1358, when the Sienese were defeated, and forty-nine banners brought back tied to the horses’ tails, and the chains of the Palace of Justice torn away and hung in triumph at the feet of the Perugian griffin. Even the powerful Florence accepted Perugia’s help in the Guelph cause, and so early as 1230 arbitrations had been exchanged for the purpose of settling all questions of commerce between the two cities.[8]

All these victories, these repeated successes, tended

to increase Perugia’s independence of spirit, and she was very careful that no one, not even the Pope, should infringe on her rights, or dispute her authority. Her attitude towards the Church is somewhat difficult to understand. It seems to have mystified Clement IV., for he expresses his “dolorous wonder” that the Perugians, who were such devoted allies of the Holy See, could sometimes behave so wickedly towards the clergy. And, curiously enough, the Perugians, lovers of processions, of patron-saints, miracles, and all the rest, could, and did, make laws to exclude all ecclesiastics from having anything to do with their charitable institutions or donations to Churches.[9]

We find them protesting both with menaces and oaths against any usurpation of the clergy, “In the names of Christ, the Virgin, S. Ercolano, and S. Costanzo.” Even the Pope was taught a lesson, for when John XXI. in 1277 asked for some lasche from the Lake of Trasimene, the Perugians called a general council in which it was resolved that the said lasche should be sent to His Holiness, but accompanied by the syndicate in order to show the Pope that the fish was the property of the city, and a gift from its citizens merely given to him for his Good Friday dinner!

These somewhat petty hostilities did not, however, materially affect the relations between the Papacy and the citizens of Perugia, and all through the twelfth and thirteenth centuries they remained on very friendly terms with one another.

We have thought it best to give a general sketch of the growth of the city, its customs and its wars, before touching on one of the chief characteristics of its history, namely, its close connection with the Papacy. It will, therefore, be necessary to glance back over some centuries, in order to follow the steps by which the power of the Popes arose in Perugia.

At first Papal authority was purely nominal. To the small towns of Italy, living each their concentrated and oftentimes tempestuous lives apart, the great Emperors who passed down to Rome in search of crowns from the hands of Popes, must have appeared as ghosts, their documents as unsubstantial as themselves. The fact that one of these, Pepin, conceded large grants of land in Umbria, including Perugia, to a Pope who never came to look at them, must have seemed to the Perugians as little beyond a phantom transaction after all. We next hear of Charlemagne in 800 confirming an act by which Perugia, together with a number of other towns and territories, was placed under the alto dominio of the Holy See. In 962, Otto I. again confirmed the donation, but the iron hand of Papal power was not felt for many centuries in the rising town; and indeed, however deep the designs of the Church may have been from the very beginning, they were well concealed, and the first Popes who visited Perugia did so in the fashion of people starting on a summer excursion, and not at all in the character of conquerors. They would come to the city with all their suite of Cardinals and favourites, and take up their abode in the cool and spacious rooms of the Canonica, which, as Bonazzi with imperial pride declares, “became the Vatican of Perugia.”

Yet it is certain that the policy of the Holy See was deep, and that the growing capital of Umbria appeared no plaything in its eyes. The geographical position of the city—perched as it is on a hill which commands the Tiber and overlooks the two great highways from the Eternal City to the North and to the Eastern Sea—made it a most desirable possession for the Popes, and it was inevitable that Perugia should, sooner or later, submit to, or come into direct conflict with, the power of Papal rule. The open acknowledgment of such a situation was merely a question of time.

Innocent III., who has been called the founder of the States of the Church, was the first Pope who came into direct personal contact with the Perugians. He accepted from them an offer to be their Padrone, and to exercise temporal power among them. Half playfully, though with what deep and powerful designs we may divine, he called the citizens his “vassals,” and to a certain extent they were willing to submit to his authority; but in so doing they were careful to wring from their “Padrone” a promise that their rights and privileges should be respected. Thus for the time they steered clear of the danger of subjection, continued to govern themselves, and preserved that free and independent spirit which hitherto, and in spite of every obstacle, had marked them as a race. Innocent was beloved by the citizens. He came amongst them at a time of much civil discord, when the nobles and the people were preparing for open strife. “He was a peace-maker,” says Bartoli, “and he kept his eye on all things; and on this city he looked with a peculiar partiality.” The Pope was anxious to promote the Crusades, and was on his way to Pisa to try to make a peace between the Genoese and the Venetians, whose quarrels interfered with his schemes, when he fell ill at Perugia, and died there in 1216.[10]

No sooner had he breathed his last than all his Cardinals hurried into the Canonica to elect his successor, and such was the impatience of the citizens that they even set a guard over these princes of the Church, and kept them short of food in order to hurry their decision. We are not therefore surprised to read that the Papal Throne remained vacant for the space of one day only, and that in consequence of this event the Perugians claim the privilege of having invented the Conclave.

Honorius III. succeeded Innocent, and he attempted, but without success, to heal the ever-widening breach between the nobles and the people. We have described something of the wars outside, but Perugia herself within her walls was a veritable wasp’s nest during this period of her steady rise. Her inhabitants became more restless and unmanageable every year. In their perpetual broils the nobles fought beneath their emblem of the Falcon, and the popolo minuto (common folk), who sided with them, received the unamiable title of Beccherini.[11] The two extremes in the social scale joined hands in a perpetual opposition to the popolo grasso (well-to-do burghers), who were called Raspanti (raspare, to claw), a name probably suggested by their emblem of the Cat.

Honorius in his plan of dealing with the complicated situation can scarcely be described as disinterested; whilst apparently patching up peace, he really attempted to force an acknowledgment of papal power. His policy however, was fruitless, and the nobles resorted to the usual expedient of retiring to their country castles, for, as Bonazzi says, they “preferred to tyrannise alone in the silence of their isolated strongholds rather than to divide their forces in the capital of a powerful federation.” But the situation threatened to become intolerable, and we read that through the years from 1223 to 1228 a “perfect pandemonium reigned in and about the city.” Cardinal Colonna was sent to try and restore the balance between the rival factions, but, finally, Gregory IX. was forced to come in person, and through his influence the banished nobles were recalled from exile, and a certain degree of peace restored.

Gregory paid many visits to Perugia, much to the annoyance of the Romans, who expressed their wonder that the little hill-town with nothing but its brown walls, towers, and landscape to recommend it, should be preferred by him to the plains and palaces of the Eternal City. This fact is recorded about the year 1228, when Gregory IX. was making an unusually long stay in his excellent and quiet quarters in the Canonica (at S. Lorenzo). The Romans were well aware, Bartoli says, that it was because of their ill-behaviour that he had retired into private life far away in the Umbrian city, and they even accepted as a judgment on their evil ways a certain most horrible inundation of the Tiber which befell them at that period. Deputies hurried across the land from Rome with supplications to the Pope to return to his people, and Gregory went, but he quickly returned to Perugia. The fame of S. Francis of Assisi was then at its height. Gregory felt inquisitive, but not altogether certain of the truth of the tales which were spread abroad concerning this wonderful man. He made numerous enquiries and sent his Cardinals to Assisi to gather all the information they were able to collect about the Saint. But the final manner of the doubting Pope’s conversion is described with such marvellous and touching piety in the “Fioretti” that we have inserted it at length in our description of the place where it occurred.[12] In the same year and place Gregory canonized S. Francis, “to the splendour of religion,” says one historian. He also canonized S. Dominic and Queen Elizabeth of Hungary, he sent missions into the land of the unfaithful, and gave indulgences of a year and forty days to all who would give money to the building of S. Domenico. So we may fairly say that he did not waste his time, but that he managed to get through a large amount of business during the time that he spent in Perugia.

* * * * * * * *

It is difficult to define the exact mutual relations of Pope and city in any corner of Italy, but it is certain that Perugia found Papal power useful to her in many ways, and that on whatever side she happened to have a quarrel on hand, she always turned to the Papal See for help and arbitration. In spirit she was always Guelph, fighting under the emblem of the Guelph lion, and full of Guelph interests. Yet, although openly exercising self-government, almost in the manner of a free republic, under the protection and nominal rule of the popes, she was at the same time patronised by the emperors. In 1355 we read that her ancient privileges were confirmed and new ones granted by the Emperor Charles IV., who seems to have considered it worth his while to gain the friendship of her citizens.

Up to this period we have only had to deal with pleasant passing visits of the popes who sojourned in the city for a while. The time came, however, when the noose which Innocent had so lightly cast about their necks began to pull and tighten. The Perugians revolted hotly against the Popes of Avignon, who, incensed at their rebellion, attempted to check it by every means in their power. To understand the painful struggles which follow, it is necessary to remember that the end of the fourteenth and the whole of the fifteenth centuries were the most prosperous period in Perugia’s history. She had grown steadily and uninterruptedly both in power and riches, and in spite of terrible obstacles, ever since the day when the Romans rebuilt her walls more than fifteen hundred years before. In these two centuries she erected her public buildings, extended and settled her government, coined money, started her university, settled with her habitual promptitude all suspicion of rebellion, became one of the Tre Communi of Florence, Siena and Perugia, and whilst achieving all these things she continued to foster the passionate feuds and hopeless enmities between the different factions which we have described above. Having grown strong and prosperous it was natural that she should resent any open attempt of a foreign power to subject her, and such an attempt came in the middle of the fourteenth century from the Papal See.

In 1367 the Spanish Cardinal Albornoz was busily employed in recovering the States of the Church. Perugia was at that time faithful to the Pope, and she received the Cardinal with due honours and gave him valuable help, especially in an expedition against Galeotto Malatesta of Rimini. Her goodwill however was of short duration, for the citizens saw themselves despoiled of Città di Castello and of Assisi during the Cardinal’s campaigns, and this they would not brook. They therefore sent a strong army at once towards Viterbo, but it was beaten back with heavy loss, and Urban V.’s authority was again firmly rooted at Perugia. He sent his brother, Cardinal Angelico, Bishop of Albano, as Vicar General to represent him in the city. Thus the authority of the popes crept in upon the town, and authority of some kind became every year more necessary as the voice of the people grew and strengthened and as the exiled nobles quarrelled outside the walls. Papal authority was finally represented in 1375 by an imperious French abbot, known in Perugian annals as Mommaggiore, whose doings and buildings have been described in another place. ([See pp. 184-186].) The yoke that Mommaggiore—“that French Vandal, that most iniquitous Nero,” as the chroniclers call him,—put upon the neck of Perugia, proved unbearable to every party, and all the different factions for once joined together to break it. Florence and other cities, castles, and fortresses which had “unfurled the banner of liberty,” joined in the revolt, and in 1375 the abbot was driven in a very undignified fashion from the city. A republic was then declared and the whole town rejoiced at having broken away from the thraldom of the Popes of Avignon. In vain did Gregory XI. call the people of Perugia “sons of iniquity”; in vain did he hurl the most terrible excommunications against them;[13] the feud between the city and the Pope was only laid to rest when the latter died. It had lasted long, and had produced something worse even than the struggle of two strong powers, for it had served to increase the terrible civil discord within the town. With the accession of Urban VI. a treaty was concluded, and Perugia acknowledged his right of dominion. In 1387 Urban arrived in the city, and as he entered the gates a white dove rested on his hat and refused to be removed by the servants who ran forward to deliver His Holiness from the unexpected visitor. It answered the Pope’s touch however, and was handed to his chaplain, and everyone accepted the event as an excellent omen. We will not linger to judge of its excellence, we can only say that the bird heralded an entirely new chapter in the history of the town, which hitherto had developed under general influences and many different hands. Her coming history is that of single influences, of personalities, or, in other words, of despots. The time had come when Perugia was to show the fruit of her stern ambitious character in the individual men whom she had reared. The names of Michelotti, Braccio Fortebraccio, Piccinino and of the noble families of Oddi and of Baglioni are familiar to all who have merely turned the pages of her history. Perugia, like other towns of Italy, had at the end of the fourteenth century reached a point of internal strife from which strong personalities could easily rise up to dispute or to control the existing government. Why it was exactly that the Popes did not from the first forcibly interfere with the turbulent doings of these men, it is difficult to tell. They were constantly coming to the city, constantly appealed to by the citizens and nobles, for ever interfering both by menaces and arms, but it was not till more than a century of blood and tyranny had passed, not till the glory of the town was already on the wane, that the power of the Church came down to crush Perugia like a sledge-hammer.

Strangely enough it was a Pope who first gave the city away into the hands of a private person or Protector.

CHAPTER II
The Condottieri and the Rise of the Nobles

“The confusion, exhaustion, and demoralisation engendered by these conflicts determined the advent of Despots.... The Despot delivered the industrial classes from the tyranny and anarchy of faction, substituting a reign of personal terrorism that weighed more heavily upon the nobles than upon the artizans and peasants.... He accumulated in his despotic individuality the privileges previously acquired by centuries of consuls, podestàs, and captains of the people.”—See “Age of the Despots,” J. A. Symonds.

DEEP gloom closed in upon Perugia towards the end of the fourteenth century. The breach between the nobles and the people continued to widen. Sometimes one party was driven out of the city, sometimes another. Now and again both parties were recalled, and a compact of peace arranged by an arbitrary person from outside. But this last arrangement produced an even more terrible state of affairs, and crime and bloodshed were the inevitable result. We read of deaths by hundreds and not tens—cruel and indescribable deaths, which make one shudder—and already in the thick of the strife the names of Oddi and of Baglioni are stamped upon the records.

One of the strangest points in the history of the city at this time was the fashion in which these feuds between the rival factions were met by them. Whichever party was weakest retired for the time to the country, leaving the city to their rival till time should favour their own cause.[14]

Bonazzi gives an almost extravagant account of the boorish manner of the exiled nobles’ lives. Down in the open country they hunted the abundant wild boar and devoured his flesh when they came home at night. They slept in dark and cavernous halls, and were out at dawn across the fields and forests, killing, hunting, fighting, according to the order of the day. Yet, although they were banished from the walls of their native town, they continued to molest and to disturb the citizens, and whenever the opportunity occurred, in they came again, sometimes openly, sometimes after the manner of thieves. We read of their entering the city at night across the roofs, robbing the cellars and granaries, and murdering such citizens as ventured to interfere.

Sometimes the order was reversed: the nobles got possession of the town, and the people were forced into the country. The terrible unrest of such a state of things may easily be imagined, and, added to these great evils, or, probably, produced by them, came the devastating plagues which ravaged the cities of Italy at the end of the fourteenth century, and the almost equal scourge of mercenary soldiers and private bands of foreign adventurers, who roamed through the rich, ill-governed towns and villages fighting for one family or another, or else engaged in pillaging upon their own account.[15]

In all these quarrels, in all this turmoil and confusion, whichever party happened to be uppermost, the person to appeal to was the Pope, and endless were the messages sent down from Rome. At last, in 1392, both sides seemed to have wearied for the moment of the incessant strife (the nobles at this time were masters of the city, the Raspanti were away in exile), and when the Pope, Boniface IX., appeared in person, he was received with enthusiasm. We hear that the Priori and the treasurers of the city robed themselves in beautiful new scarlet mantles, the “companies” of the different gates danced through the streets with unmitigated joy, and the people went forth in crowds to meet him. But the breach between the factions was too wide, the situation too complicated for a Pope, who arrived merely in the character of a peacemaker, to grapple with successfully. The presence of Boniface brought no peace, and he retired into the monastery of S. Pietro, which he hastily converted into a fortress, demolishing its tower in his eagerness to secure his own personal safety; and there, as he nervously wondered what next he had better do, he heard the cries of “Down with the Raspanti!” answered by “Death to the nobles!” borne in upon the breeze.

Finally, in a manner peculiar to the Perugians, they met together in council to dictate the action of the person they had called in to act for them, and it was settled that the Pope should have full power as arbitrator of peace between themselves and the Raspanti. The Pope did exactly as he was asked. He recalled the Raspanti, and they entered the city on the 17th October 1393, not merely as a body, but headed by a powerful personality—Biordo Michelotti, one of Perugia’s greatest citizens, and the first of the condottieri who ever got rule in the city.

Exiled in early youth from his native town, Biordo Michelotti had chosen the career of a condottiere, and roamed through the length and breadth of Italy, fighting the battles of different princes. Some say he had fought for the French king against the English. He was essentially a captain of adventure. His manner was kindly, he was brave, honest, frank, and popular among the people wherever he happened to go. Beloved all over Umbria, many of the towns which directly opposed Perugia’s tyrannical rule had submitted to that of Biordo. All these successes did not, however, satisfy the man in him, for the ruling ambition of his life was to get the dominion over his native city, and events were now combining to procure for him his heart’s desire. The Raspanti rallied round him in their exile, and he became their leader, and the champion of their liberty. The nobles, seeing the power of his popularity, offered him bribes to keep out of their way. But Biordo lay low in his fortress at Deruta, and when the Pope’s offers of peace arrived he hailed them with delight. A month later he entered Perugia at the head of about 2000 Raspanti, who had been exiled from their homes for years. They at once visited the Pope in token of homage and gratitude, and their new lease of power within the city was opened by the re-election of the priors, who were chosen half from the burgher faction and half from the nobility. By this means it was hoped that a lasting reconciliation might be made and an evenly balanced government established. Yet such seemed impossible. Peace endured for the space of one short month, and at the very first opportunity—on the occasion of Biordo’s absence from the city—the smouldering fires of party feuds burst out in flames as rampant as before. One of the Raspanti was murdered by the nobles, and, just as the Podestà was preparing to pass sentence on the assassin, Pandolfo dei Baglioni, “that Perugian Satan,” as Bonazzi calls him, interfered on behalf of the criminal.[16] Whereupon the Raspanti vowed vengeance, assassinated Pandolfo and Pellini Baglioni on their own threshold, and murdered sixty of their clan. The Ranieri, another noble family, with their friends, took refuge in the strong Ranieri tower, where they were forced to go without food for three days. At last the people dragged them before the Podestà, but as he refused to execute them, the unhappy noblemen were conveyed back to their tower, where they were finally butchered, and their bodies thrown out of the windows.

Horrified by these fresh atrocities, and again in search of peace, the Pope loaded his mules and retired with his Cardinals to Assisi. The tumults were just subsiding when Biordo Michelotti returned, and this time he took absolute possession of the city. He met with no sort of opposition. The ring-leader of the nobles, Pandolfo Baglioni, was dead, and the Pope for the minute encouraged the attempt towards peace. Biordo used his power well, and every year his fame and honours increased. To the delight of the Perugians, he succeeded to the command of Sir John Hawkwood over the Florentine forces, and everywhere he pushed the interests of the town, wisely concluding a treaty with Gian Galeazzo Visconti, the powerful lord of Milan (1395).

The Pope, in the meantime, began to regret the encouragement he had given to this very popular hero. His jealousy was roused, and he hired a condottiere for a month, in order to fight the Perugians. The hostilities, however, ended with the month, and nothing was accomplished beyond a demonstration of the Pontiff’s jealousy. But there was someone else beside the Pope who witnessed the honours paid to Biordo with a jealous hatred, and this was the Abbot of S. Pietro. “The wicked Abbot,” as the people called him, belonged to the noble family of the Guidalotti, and he probably felt that the power of his family was too much overshadowed by Michelotti. He had fresh cause to murmur, therefore, when Biordo married Bertolda Orsini of Rome, and the Lords of Urbino, Camerino, San Severo, Gubbio, and other towns came up to offer the happy pair rich presents, and to wish the bride-groom well. Biordo’s marriage was a splendid pageant. The city decked herself magnificently to do him honour, and all the people of the country round sent offerings of grain, and wine, and eggs, and cheese, everything which their small farms produced, to show their leader how they loved him.

The Abbot sat at his window, and with no kindly eye he watched the entry of the young bride, close by the monastery walls. Madonna Contessa Orsini came in escorted by the Florentine and Venetian ambassadors. Her dress was made of cloth of gold, she wore a garland of wild asparagus around her head, and jewels sparkled in her hair. The Abbot noted all these things, he saw the women of Perugia running out to meet her, he saw them throw flowers in her path, and then he returned to his cell to brood upon his horrid plans of vengeance. For he had determined to place the town once more beneath the sway of the Church, and in this way to gain for himself a Cardinal’s hat, as it was probably the Pope himself who urged him to the deed.

On Sunday, in the month of March 1398, while the citizens were attending a sermon at S. Lorenzo, the Abbot arrived on horseback at the Guidalotti palace on Colle Landone, to collect his fellow-conspirators, and some twenty of them proceeded to Biordo’s house on Porta Sole. Word was sent up to Michelotti that there was important news for him, and he, suspecting nothing, hurried down to meet the Abbot with a courteous greeting. The Abbot stepped forward, took his hand, and kissed Biordo, at which sign the rest of the conspirators fell upon their victim and stabbed him with their poisoned daggers, hitting him such grievous blows that soon he lay weltering in a pool of blood. The conspirators had first intended openly to announce the deed in the piazza, but their courage failed them and the Abbot merely muttered the news to the passers-by as he slunk away to S. Pietro with a few companions. Two of the braver of the assassins, however, stayed behind and, coming into the piazza, cried: “We have slain the tyrant.” The citizens, who were at mass, rose with one accord from their devotions, to avenge the death of their beloved leader, and leaving the preacher to continue his sermon to an empty church, they hurried to arms. The Abbot meanwhile hastened from his monastery at S. Pietro to a still safer refuge at Casalina. As he fled he looked back upon the city whose hero he had murdered, and he saw the flames and smoke break out from the palace of those same Guidalotti he had hoped to benefit, whilst the news of the death of his old father and many of his family in the carnage of that day was brought to him as a sorry consolation for his crime.

Biordo’s blood was gathered together by the citizens and put into a little silver basin, and above it they placed the banner of Perugia with the white griffin upon a crimson field; and as one chronicler informs us, a heart of stone must have melted at the sight of it.

Thus perished the first of that extraordinary series of men who took upon themselves the terrible task of governing single-handed the city of Perugia. Nearly all died by violence, but the violence done to Biordo was a cruel wrong. A short interval follows, and then the greatest name, perhaps, of all the city’s chronicles comes up upon the scene, namely, that of Braccio Fortebraccio di Montone.

The Perugians suspected the ungracious part that the Pope had played in the murder of their leader, and the suspicion made them restless and dissatisfied. It was probably owing to this that they fell a prey to the cunning wiles of the Duke of Milan.

Gian Galeazzo had ingratiated himself with the citizens some time previously by giving them grain during a time of famine, and he now came forward to reap the benefit of his charity by getting himself accepted as Lord of Perugia, which would facilitate his designs on Tuscany. Perugia’s connection with Milan, however, only lasted four years. On Gian Galeazzo’s death, in 1402, the Duchess of Milan made peace with Boniface IX., and restored Bologna, Perugia, and Assisi to the Church. The Perugians submitted to the Pope (they seem not to have been consulted in the matter of the donation), but with the strict understanding that the exiled nobles should keep at least twenty miles distant from the city. Boniface agreed to this arrangement. Other popes before him had tried to patch up peace between the parties, but he had not the courage to attempt such difficult experiments. It remained for Braccio Fortebraccio to tear through the tangled network of Perugian politics, to unite within himself the powers of both parties, and as the city’s despot to raise it to “unprecedented glory.”

Braccio Fortebraccio was born at Montone in 1368. He was the son of Oddo Fortebraccio, Lord of Montone, and of Jacoma Montemelini, his wife, of a noble Perugian family. During his youth the Raspanti were dominant in the city, and the boy grew up as an exile. He had only his sword and an immense ambition with which to force his way to future power. It was at that time the fashion for young noblemen to win fame for themselves by the life or trade of the condottieri. Braccio therefore joined the famous Italian company of S. George, led by Alberigo di Barbiano, whose advent crushed the foreign captains of adventure whose lawless mercenaries had sent terror throughout the rich plains and villages of Italy during the fourteenth century.

In the tents of Alberigo, Braccio di Montone and Sforza Attendolo[17] learned together the science of warfare. Thence they two went forth to fight the battles of princes, kings, and popes; to create two separate methods of combat, and to fill all Italy with tales of their great valour and their rivalry. Braccio’s ambition grew with his success, and he soon aspired to acquiring the whole of Italy. His first step towards this very large design was the capture of his native city of Perugia. But as he represented the party of the nobles, the Raspanti manfully resisted any efforts he made to approach them. “It is better even to submit to foreign rule than to make peace with the nobles,” they said; and thus it came about that they gave themselves over to Ladislaus, King of Naples, and remained for some six years in connection with the kingdom of Naples. When Ladislaus died in 1414, the Perugians were seized with terror, but the nobles saw their opportunity, and all things seemed to favour the scheme of Fortebraccio.

Braccio had joined the service of Pope John XXIII., and by him had been made governor of Bologna; but when the Pope was deposed by the Council of Constance, Braccio’s allegiance ended, and he at once sold the Bolognese their liberty, and with the 82,000 florins which he gained by this transaction he collected a strong army, the exiled nobles flocked to his standard, and they marched at once upon Perugia.

At the news of Braccio’s approach terror and consternation spread through the city. The gateways were built up, and the magistrates forbade anyone to leave the town. But the Perugians, “being the most warlike of the people of Italy,” as Sismondi says, could not resist so grand a chance of fighting, and seeing Braccio’s men clustering around the city’s walls, they jumped down from the ramparts into their midst, and took the soldiers unawares by the suddenness of their attack. This was no real battle, but tumults of the sort were the order of the day. In the dead of night men would rush in panic into the piazza, not knowing what had brought them there, and only conscious of one fact: their desire to make a fierce stand for their liberty. Braccio made a fruitless effort to penetrate into the heart of the city, and was driven back ignominiously. The women threw down stones and boiling water on the assailants, whilst they goaded their own men to fight, crying aloud, “Now is your time to wound the enemy,—at him with your swords your teeth and nails!”

At last the Perugians called in the help of Carlo Malatesta, Lord of Rimini, and on the 15th of July 1416, the two armies met between the Tiber and Sant’ Egideo on the road to Assisi. The greatest generals of Italy and her best soldiers, says Sismondi, took part in the fierce fighting of that day. The parties closed in deadly conflict; for seven hours they fought beneath the burning sun, and the heat was increased by the dense dust that filled the air. “Most dolorous were the sighs which were heard to issue from the helmets,” says Fabretti. Braccio was a wise general. He had carefully prepared beforehand countless jars of water for the refreshment of his men and horses after each skirmish, and this in the end was the cause of his victory. The Tiber was flowing five hundred paces from Malatesta’s soldiers, and they finally could bear the terrible thirst no longer but hurried down to drink. Braccio seized upon this moment in which to swoop upon the enemy with all his force. The day was won. Carlo Malatesta and his young nephew Galeazzo Malatesta, were taken prisoners, and it “was strange to note that the humblest of Braccio’s soldiers were driving prisoners before them like a herd of cattle.”[18]

When the Perugians heard of the defeat they immediately sent ambassadors to offer the government of their city to Braccio. They seem after all their previous fighting, to have at once submitted to their fate, which as it turned out, was an excellent piece of good fortune for them. They made preparations to welcome their new despot in a manner worthy of the man. Fine carpets, brocades, and long gold chains, were hung from the palace windows, flowers lay thick upon the pavement from S. Pietro to S. Lorenzo, whilst elegant gold and silver vases were placed in the windows of the Palazzo Pubblico. “Evviva Braccio, Signore di Perugia,” they shouted as he entered, and thus the die was cast.

Anxious to conciliate both parties in the city, Braccio assumed the attitude of Father of his Country and succeeded in inspiring the people with an unusual sense of admiration. Master of all Umbria and Prince of Capua, many towns acknowledged his dominion, and even Rome was forced to accept him at one period as her lord. It is, therefore, scarcely to be wondered at that Perugians have never ceased to lament that Braccio died before accomplishing his vast designs for conquering all Italy, for they feel that they only just missed the chance of rivalling the glory of imperial Rome.

There are infinite records concerning the personality of this extraordinary man.

“He was of medium stature,” says Campano, “with a long face and highly coloured, which imparted great majesty to his appearance. His eyes were not black, but very brilliant; they sparkled with fun, yet with a certain gravity. His figure was partly deformed and scarred by wounds. Whether grave or gay he was always high bred, so that his very enemies confessed that among any number of persons he would always be recognised as leader and chief.”

In the following lines Campano sums up his character:—

“Braccio was grave and kindly of speech, without artifice or trickery, a gift of nature rather than acquired, though improved by some study. None could soothe an angry person with more grace than Braccio, none could exhort and inflame his followers with more vehemence and ardour to the combat. He was beloved by his soldiers, being neither haughty nor rough spoken, and he united military severity with a certain civil modesty and a courtier-like manner.”

One of the most delightful traits of Braccio’s character was an intense hatred of idleness, and city-loafers he nicknamed “I consumatori della piazza” (wearers out of the pavement of the public square). He encouraged the Perugians to play as well as fight, and it was he who revived the ancient game of the “Battle of the Stones.” His soldiers would often join in the sport, and great was the joy of the citizens when the latter were vanquished. Braccio himself was not allowed to play; he would watch the game from an upper window, and much as he often desired to join, his companions prevented him, for it seldom happened that less than twelve men lay killed or wounded at the end of the day. This extraordinary and barbarous game deserves an account in any history of Perugia. It dates back to Roman times, and the credit of playing the “fiercest game in Italy” belonged to Perugia alone, and was believed to be the reason why her people were “of such commanding mould both in spirit and in body.” Even the children joined during the first two hours, so as to make them strong and warlike from their infancy.

On the Sundays and feast-days of March, April, and May, and into the middle of June, the citizens met in the Campo di Battaglia, on the road to Monte Luce, and there formed themselves into two parties, one remaining on the level of the square, the other just below. Till nightfall each party fought to drive the other off the ground, and whichever side managed to gain the middle of the square, carried off the palm of victory. This wonderful “game” must have looked like a miniature battle of a somewhat prehistoric kind; for the combatants were all swathed about the neck, their legs encased in thick leather stockings, stuffed with deer’s hair and protected by greaves; thickly padded round the body under their cuirasses, their feet in shoes of linen cloth wrapped three times round and stuffed again with the hair of deer. The warlike youths and men wore on the top of everything else a helmet which projected forward in the shape of a sparrow-hawk’s head, and thus protected, they were able to watch the stones flying about their heads without being blinded. They were called the “Armati,” and were led to combat by “Hurlers” (lanciatori), who wore a lighter apparel, and threw the stones with extraordinary ability, thereby exciting the citizens to combat. Old men sat at their windows watching the fight with breathless interest. If they saw that their side was losing, they would sometimes tear off coat and mantle, hurry downstairs, and utterly regardless of their age, fling themselves into the thick of the fight. “It was a very beautiful spectacle,” exclaims Campano, “to witness the fall, first of this one, then of that, as they were wounded and tumbled to the ground, whilst others, protected by a shield, hurled themselves upon their adversaries with the weight of their entire bodies, diving in and out among the crowd and dealing blows upon their eyes and faces with shield and sword and buckler.”

To us it seems strange that at a time when the feuds of centuries lay smouldering and ready to burst out at the smallest provocation, no rancour, no ill-will, seemed to be harboured by the relations of the men who fell dead or wounded in one of these terrible “games.”

Besides encouraging sports, fighting wars, and arranging civil matters, Braccio had a passion for building. He rebuilt the city walls in many places. He added the loggia to the front of the Cathedral, that the citizens might have a pleasant shelter in the square in which to discuss and settle their affairs, and it was he who conceived a rather novel and practical piece of engineering by bolstering up the houses of the Piazza Sopramuro with strong walls from beneath.[19] The vanity of the Perugians was immensely flattered by all the great doings of their new leader, and their pride knew no bounds when, on the Feast of S. Ercolano, the neighbouring towns sent in their banners with extraordinary pomp in token of their absolute subjection to the city’s rule. So delighted indeed were the people, that they at once sent a message to the Pope to ask him to confirm Braccio’s dominion in Perugia. The request was met in stony silence. The Papal See was jealous of Braccio Fortebraccio, yet it could not do without him, and so, for the time, it smothered its wrath and mortification. Martin V. was in need of Braccio’s sword to help in regaining the lost possessions of the Church, and he sent for him to Florence to sign the necessary agreements. The visit was disastrous, for even the Florentine street boys exulted in the popularity of the hero:

“Braccio valente
Vince ogni gente
Papa Martino
Non val un quattrino”

they sang in high, shrill voices below the windows of His Holiness. The insult stung and rankled.

“Papa Martino non val un quattrino,” muttered the Pope in a miserable voice as he paced up and down, complaining to his secretary.

In 1423 Braccio had reached the height of his power, but his ambition soared still higher, and at this turn in his life his character seems to have undergone a change. His vast plans for conquering Italy had unhinged him, and he became cruel where formerly he had been kind, and deaf to the counsels of his friends. The simplest and the quietest of his days had been spent at Perugia, where his memory still lingers like the aureole around some conquering saint. But looking out across the plains and mountains of Umbria and towards the Marches which were already his, Braccio dreamed his mighty dream: that of becoming king of a united Italy. Aquila alone resisted his power, and in the year 1423, he set out for his last venture. It is said that before he started he left to the care of his wife, Nicolina da Varano, a little casket, with the injunction that she should not open it until after his death, or his return home. When Braccio died Nicolina opened the casket and she found inside a black veil and a sceptre. It was thus the dead man told his wife that the battle of Aquila decided whether she should be a powerful queen or an unhappy widow.

The siege of Aquila lasted for a whole year, and finally, in May 1424, a decisive battle took place in the plain below the town, between Braccio and Caldora, who came to fight him in the name of Martin V. It was a great fight, and it ended in a tragic manner: Braccio, the beloved of the Perugians, got his death-wound at the hands of a Perugian citizen, a Raspante, who had never forgiven the return of the nobles to Perugia.

Caldora tended Braccio during his last hours with every possible care. The doctors hoped to save him, they said that the wounds in his head and throat were curable, but Braccio wished to die; he was determined not to survive his defeat. He refused all nourishment and during the three days that he lingered, he never spoke a single word. His dream had faded, and his courage gone.[20]

In the papal circle there was great rejoicing at the news of Braccio’s death, for Martin V. knew well that Umbria was once again his own. The Pope indeed was small-minded enough to harbour his enmity to the very last. Instead of allowing the fallen captain to be quietly buried, he had him placed in unconsecrated ground outside the walls of Rome. The bones of the great Braccio had but a troubled career. They were brought to Perugia by Niccolò Fortebraccio, and deposited for a while in the Church of S. Costanzo, where they were met by the municipality and the whole city and then carried in triumphal procession to the Church of S. Francesco al Prato. All the shops were closed as the bones passed up the streets, no bells were rung, horses and men were draped in black. In this century, by a piece of rather questionable taste the bones of the hero were once more taken from their Church, and may now be stared at, like the bones of the Etruscan ladies, under a bit of glass in the museum of the University. Under them are written in Latin the following lines: “O you who pass by, stay and weep. I, born in Perugia, was received in Montone as an exile. Mars subjected to me my native land of Umbria, and Capua too. Rome obeyed me, the world was the spectator and Italy the stage. But Aquila mocked my fall, wherefore my weeping country locked me into this small urn. Ah! Mars raised me up, Mors brought me low. Therefore pass on.”

The news of Braccio’s death caused the utmost consternation in Perugia. If the great captain had saved the town at a critical point, he may also be said to have created a situation which was perhaps a still more critical one for her citizens. Braccio was a noble. With his advent in Perugia the party of the nobles had returned. Terrible things were in store for the city. For a little while, and partly through the efforts of a rather complicated personality, they were postponed, but the time of terror was at hand.

When Braccio died at Aquila, the Perugians prepared to defend themselves they knew not well from what. “Each man,” says Graziani, “furnished himself with flour, the ditches and walls were repaired both of the city and the territory around it, and every one left the open country and took refuge in fortresses and city palaces.” Two courses lay open to them, and of the two they selected that which seemed least evil. They submitted themselves once more to the power of the Pope; and on July 29th, 1424, the delighted Martin entered Perugia as its acknowledged lord and ruler.

Like many famous people of that day Martin had studied at the Perugian University, and perhaps he had preserved an affection for the city which he had known in his youth. Anyhow, the terms of peace which he concluded with the citizens were very mild, and as usual, all the privileges obtained from Innocent III. were preserved. But this time it was through the nobles that the Pope had been called into the city. The thin end of the wedge was surely and irretrievably driven in, and the power of the nobles was as a matter of fact secure. The Pope himself fostered the growing power, and amongst others, who on the occasion of his advent received rich possessions from him, was Malatesta Baglioni. Martin handed Spello over to his rule, and thus helped to enrich a family whose members were for a period to wrest the power from the Church itself, and to set the town ablaze with crime and bloodshed.

The nobles remained at the head of affairs, but, as we have said, there was one strong personality—a Perugian citizen, Niccolò Piccinino—who made a last effort, as Braccio Fortebraccio and Michelotti had done before him, to become that strange creation of the day: a condottiere despot.

Niccolò Piccinino was a follower of Braccio di Montone, and his name remains stamped on the pages of history for successfully leading the Braccian troops to battle, and following out the famous tactics of his master. For twenty years Piccinino maintained a constant rivalry with Francesco Sforza, as Braccio Fortebraccio had done before him with Attendolo Sforza, the ancestor of a line of dukes. The ancestry of Niccolò is both humble and obscure.[21] Some tell us he was the son of a Perugian butcher, others say, of a peasant from Calisciana near the city, but it is difficult to get any satisfactory information about him; he was practically little beyond an adventurer. As quite a boy he left his home in the Umbrian hills, and started out to seek his fortune amongst the captains of adventure in the north. Later in life his career became closely linked with that of Fortebraccio, who loved him because of his bravery and enthusiasm for the soldier’s career. Nature had not fitted Niccolò for the camp. His health was bad, he was paralysed in one leg and had to be lifted on to his horse, and because of his miniature figure he got the nickname of “Piccinino” (the Tiny One); but the small body contained an undaunted spirit, and his tactics in the field were quick and decisive. He never knew when he was beaten, but would turn to strike again while the enemy were boasting of their victory. On one occasion Piccinino crept into a sack and had himself carried across the battlefield on a man’s shoulder. The enemy (probably Francesco Sforza) imagined him to be at that moment in an opposite direction, and the sudden appearance of Piccinino’s head from out of the sack, his piercing eyes gazing at them over his carrier’s back, caused general consternation among the soldiers. Whether this strange manœuvre won the day history does not record.

In 1440 Piccinino made a desperate effort to win for himself the government of Perugia, but Papal power was too deeply rooted in the city, and he had to rest content with the title of Gonfaloniere of the Holy Church—Supreme Magistrate of the City but acting in the Pope’s name.

Perugia had a terrible time under this ecclesiastical and military yoke. Three masters pulled her different

ways: Piccinino, the Pope, and the nobles, and each of these three imposed taxes for their different uses. Piccinino’s is an unsatisfactory career. It is that of a man pouring old wine into new bottles; the trade of the condottiere ruler was practically dead. The Pope’s tactics were unsatisfactory also. He tried to conciliate two parties. He encouraged and patronised the nobles and pandered to the populace by encouraging all kinds of extravagant superstition. There is a horrid tale about the burning of a witch at this time; and religious processions assumed such monstrous length that the streets could hardly hold them, and we read that the leading men got entangled in the tail of the procession which had not been able to leave the piazza before those who had left it long ago returned to the starting-point. Passion-preaching, too, became the fashion, accompanied by grotesque miracle-plays in which a barber from S. Angelo represented our Saviour; and all those things only served to increase the morbid passions of the people. In this complicated situation the nobles came off best, and their power grew and strengthened rapidly; but the power was evil. As for the attitude assumed by the former rulers of the city, it is difficult to judge. A sort of stupor seems to have fallen on the hitherto vigilant Priori. A feeble effort was made in 1444 to drive out the tormentors by payment of a large sum of money to mercenary soldiers, but these only took the pay and continued to enjoy themselves at the expense of the town.

Hitherto, at least, the nobles had been one party, fighting for one cause. But now that the cause was won, now that their own supremacy had been attained, they began to fight amongst themselves. They hated each other with a mortal hatred. We no longer hear of fights between nobles and burghers, but of passionate blood-feuds between the nobles themselves: between the Oddi, Corgna, Staffa, Arciprete, Baglioni, and others, and next we read of cousins murdering each other for the sake of mere ambition. The slightest pretext is seized upon for a skirmish between the men who, through centuries, had stood together in opposition to the outside world. A hundred instances are given of their quarrels at this period. The Della Corgna by way of an example, are one day preparing to enhance the solemnity of a feast-day by decorating the Arco dei Priori with box and laurel boughs, and are interrupted in their pious labours by the Degli Oddi, who begin to pull down the decorations. There is some dispute about precedence, in their quarter of the city—some trifling question as to which family has most right to manage the local festival, a bitter fight ensues, and the whole town is in a tumult.

Again on another occasion, one of Ridolfo Baglioni’s bastard sons wounds a certain Naldino da Corciano, a friend of the Degli Oddi, and Naldino hurries off to show his bleeding face to his allies. The Oddi, mad with fury, rush all armed to the piazza, striking at every Baglioni adherent whom they meet upon their way. The Baglioni are not slow to appear, as ready for the fight as anybody. The shops are closed, the citizens arm themselves, a procession wending its way to the Duomo is thrown into utter disorder, and even the women thrust their heads out of the windows and throw down jugs and tiles and pitchers into the street below. The Bishop, the Priori, and the learned doctors of the law leave their houses and exhort the nobles to lay down their arms; and after a while a truce is obtained, and the hubbub for the time subsides.

Such scenes as these were of almost daily occurrence in the city, and it was in vain that the Pope, both by foul means and by fair, attempted to calm the frantic passions of the rivals.[22] It was in vain that S. Bernardino, carrying his crucifix before him, came to preach of brotherly love and unity, in vain the Blessed Colomba uttered mysterious warnings. It was too late either for Pope or Saint to check so strong a flood as the ambition of men like the Oddi and the Baglioni. All over Italy at this period the character of individual families had grown too strong for outer influences to crush it, and the heads of the Guelph families were everywhere attempting to form themselves into ruling princes. In the case of this struggle at Perugia the most successful of the combatants were the Oddi and the Baglioni. The struggle between them was a struggle unto death. Now one was driven from the city gates, and now another; but finally, in 1488, the Oddi were ousted altogether, and from that minute until the time when the great Farnese Pope came down with guns and stones and every implement of war as well as curses, to quell them, the members of the Baglioni family became the dominant faction of the city. They left their country houses for ever. They fixed their mighty eyries on the south side of the city, about where the modern Prefettura stands to-day; from thence they dominated all the town, and there they lived their wild ill-regulated lives, mingling the most exquisite luxury with cruel vice. They were a splendid and a beautiful race of men, and Italy rang with their great names, but their rule was horrible.

“As I do not wish to swerve from the pure truth,” says Matarazzo, who himself adored them, “I say that from the day the Oddi were expelled our city went from bad to worse. All the young men followed the trade of arms. Their lives were disorderly; and every day divers excesses were divulged, and the city had lost all reason and justice. Every man administered right unto himself, propriâ autoritate et manu regiâ. Meanwhile the Pope sent many legates, in order that the city might be brought to order; but all who came returned in dread of being hewn in pieces; for they threatened to throw some from the windows of the palace, so that no cardinal or other legate durst approach Perugia, unless he were a friend of the Baglioni. And the city was brought to such misery that the most wrongous men were most prized; and those who had slain two or three men walked as they listed through the palace, and went with sword or poniard to speak to the podestà and other magistrates. Moreover, every man of worth was downtrodden by bravi whom the nobles favoured; nor could a citizen call his property his own. The nobles robbed first one and then another of their goods and land. All offices were sold or else suppressed; and taxes and extortions were so grievous that every one cried out. And if a man were in prison for his head, he had no reason to fear death, provided he had some interest with a noble.”

CHAPTER III
The Baglioni. Paul III. and last years of the City

SO after centuries of steady struggle fate had at last decreed that the nobles should have their way. Because the way of the Baglioni is the most picturesque point in all the annals of Perugia, because it was crowned by one of the most horrible domestic tragedies of Italian history, and because, moreover, it happens to have been so admirably and so vividly recorded, we are sometimes inclined to regard it as the most important fact about the town. We must, however, remember that it was only one of the infinite points which make the city’s history, and that the rule of the Baglioni covers a period of not more than fifty years.

By a rare coincidence it happened that exactly at this period, i.e., during the ascendency of the Baglioni, there was living in the city of Perugia a scholar by name Matarazzo or Maturanzio.[23] This scholar took upon himself to record day by day the extraordinary exploits of a family in whose good looks and deeds of violence, their jousts and subterfuges, he may be truly said not only to have delighted but to have revelled. To understand the Baglioni and the fashion in which they were regarded by the men of their day: terror, hatred, fear, and a cringing admiration being pretty well mixed, one must study the chronicles of Matarazzo in the original.[24] But as it would be impossible, and even impertinent for us to try and retell the tale of this tragic history in new English words, we have quoted at length the words of one who studied it faithfully and recorded it with a strange vibrating echo of the original language.[25] We have merely inserted here and there a few notes and details which seemed to add to the narrative.

“It is not until 1495 that the history of the Baglioni becomes dramatic, possibly because till then they lacked the pen of Matarazzo. But from this year forward to their final extinction, every detail of their doings has a picturesque and awful interest. Domestic furies, like the revel descried by Cassandra above the palace of Mycenæ, seem to take possession of the fated house; and the doom which has fallen on them is worked out with pitiless exactitude to the last generation. In 1495 the heads of the Casa Baglioni were two brothers, Guido and Ridolfo, who had a numerous progeny of heroic sons. From Guido sprang Astorre, Adriano—called for his great strength Morgante—Gismondo, Marcantonio, and Gentile. Ridolfo owned Troilo, Gianpaolo, and Simonetto. The first glimpse we get of these young athletes in Matarazzo’s chronicle is on the occasion of a sudden assault upon Perugia made by the Oddi and the exiles of their faction in September 1495. The foes of the Baglioni entered the gates and began breaking the iron chains, serragli, which barred the streets against advancing cavalry. None of the noble house were on the alert except young Simonetto, a lad of eighteen, fierce and cruel, who had not yet begun to shave his chin. In spite of all dissuasion, he rushed forth alone, bareheaded, in his shirt, with a sword in his right hand and a buckler on his arm, and fought against a squadron. There at the barrier of the piazza he kept his foes at bay, smiting men-at-arms to the ground with the sweep of his tremendous sword, and receiving on his gentle body twenty-two cruel wounds. While thus at fearful odds, the noble Astorre mounted his charger and joined him. Upon his helmet flashed the falcon of the Baglioni with the dragon’s tail that swept behind. Bidding Simonetto tend his wounds, he in his turn held the square. Listen to Matarazzo’s description of the scene; it is as good as any piece of the Mort Arthur: “According to the report of one who told me what he had seen with his own eyes, never did anvil take so many blows as he upon his person and his steed; and they all kept striking at his lordship in such crowds that the one prevented the other. And so many lances, partisans, and cross bow quarries, and other weapons made upon his body a most mighty din, that above every other noise and shout was heard the thud of those great strokes. But he, like one who had the mastery of war, set his charger where the press was thickest, jostling now one and now another; so that he ever kept at least ten men of his foes stretched on the ground beneath his horse’s hoofs; which horse was a most fierce beast, and gave his enemies what trouble he best could. And now that gentle lord was all fordone with sweat and toil, he and his charger; and so weary were they that scarcely could they any longer breathe. Soon after the Baglioni mustered in force. One by one their heroes rushed from the palaces. The enemy were driven back with slaughter; and a war ensued which made the fair land between Assisi and Perugia a wilderness for many months.” It must not be forgotten that at the time of these great feats of Simonetto and Astorre young Raphael was painting in the studio of Perugino. What the whole city witnessed with astonishment and admiration, he, the keenly sensitive artist-boy, treasured in his memory. Therefore in the St George of the Louvre, and in the mounted horseman trampling upon Heliodorus in the Stanze of the Vatican, victorious Astorre lives for ever, immortalised in all his splendour by the painter’s art. The grinning griffin on the helmet, the resistless frown upon the forehead of the beardless knight, the terrible right arm, and the ferocious steed—all are there as Raphael saw and wrote them on his brain. One characteristic of the Baglioni, as might be plentifully illustrated from their annalist, was their eminent beauty which inspired beholders with an enthusiasm and a love they were far from deserving by their virtues. It is this, in combination with their personal heroism, which gives a peculiar dramatic interest to their doings, and makes the chronicle of Matarazzo more fascinating than a novel.”

Matarazzo was not alone in his admiration for the Baglioni. He tells us that whenever the “magnificent Guido,” his son Astorre, or his nephew Gianpaolo walked in the piazza every citizen paused at his work to admire them, and if perchance a stranger passed through Perugia he was certain to make every effort to see them. The soldiers would hurry from their tents to see Gianpaolo go by, and anyone walking by this noble’s side seemed dwarfed and insignificant by reason of his great stature and his noble form. Gismondo, another of Guide’s sons, was universally admired for his splendid horsemanship. He would make his horse leap into the air, while he sat straight and square in the saddle, not stirring hand or foot. The citizens looked on marvelling at these feats of skill and daring. Gismondo was slim, and walked with the lightness of a cat, so that no man in Perugia, however quick of hearing, knew when he was coming. The richest and perhaps the handsomest of the Baglioni family was young Grifonetto Baglioni, whose beauty Matarazzo compares to Ganymede. He was the son of Grifone and Atalanta Baglioni, and nephew to Guido and Ridolfo. His father had been stabbed at Ponte Ricciolo in 1477, and he lived with his young mother in one of the most beautiful houses in Perugia. This palace had been commenced by Malatesta Baglioni and finished by Braccio Baglioni, who, because of the court of learned men he gathered round him, and the splendid festivals with which he honoured the lovely ladies of the city, was called “Lorenzo il Magnifico di Perugia.” The palace was entered by a large and richly-ornamented hall, hung with beautiful pictures. At the opposite end of the room was a painting of a woman of most venerable and majestic bearing, and over her head the word Perusia. This grave and queenly lady commanded a view of all the celebrated men of the Umbrian city, for on one side of the wall were portraits of the famous captains of adventure, and on the other those of the most learned of the doctors and scholars, with their names and a description of their mighty deeds written in full below them. Grifonetto lived in great magnificence. “He kept numbers of horses, Barbary steeds, to run in the races, jesters and other properties pertaining to a gentleman. He even kept a lion; and all who went to the house compared it to a king’s court.”

“In 1500, when the events about to be related took place, Grifonetto was quite a youth. Brave, rich, handsome, and married to a young wife, Zenobia Sforza, he was the admiration of Perugia. He and his wife loved each other dearly, and how, indeed, could it be otherwise, since ‘l’uno e l’altro sembravano doi angioli di Paradiso?’[26] At the same time he had fallen into the hands of bad and desperate counsellors. A bastard of the house, Filippo da Braccio, his half-uncle, was always at his side, instructing him not only in the accomplishments of chivalry, but also in wild ways that brought his name into disrepute. Another of his familiars was Carlo Barciglia Baglioni, an unquiet spirit, who longed for more power than his poverty and comparative obscurity allowed. With them associated Girolamo della Penna, a veritable ruffian, contaminated from his earliest youth with every form of lust and violence, and capable of any crime. These three companions, instigated partly by the lord of Camerino and partly by their own cupidity, conceived a scheme for massacring the families of Guido and Ridolfo at one blow. As a consequence of this wholesale murder, Perugia would be at their discretion. Seeing of what use Grifonetto by his wealth and name might be to them, they did all they could to persuade him to join their conjuration. It would appear that the bait first offered him was the sovereignty of the city, but that he was at last gained over by being made to believe that his wife, Zenobia, had carried on an intrigue with Gianpaolo Baglioni. The dissolute morals of the family gave plausibility to an infernal trick which worked upon the jealousy of Grifonetto. Thirsting for revenge, he consented to the scheme. The conspirators were further fortified by the accession of Jeronimo della Staffa, and three members of the house of Corgna. It is noticeable that out of the whole number only two—Bernardo da Corgna and Filippo da Braccio—were above the age of thirty. Of the rest, few had reached twenty-five. At so early an age were the men of those times adepts in violence and treason. The execution of the plot was fixed for the wedding festivities of Astorre Baglioni with Lavinia, the daughter of Giovanni Colonna and Giustina Orsini. At that time the whole Baglioni family were to be assembled in Perugia, with the single exception of Marcantonio, who was taking baths at Naples for his health. It was known that the members of the noble house, nearly all of them condottieri by trade, and eminent for their great strength and skill in arms, took few precautions for their safety. They occupied several houses close together between the Porta San Carlo and the Porta Eburnea, set no regular guard over their sleeping-chambers, and trusted to their personal bravery and to the fidelity of their attendants. It was thought that they might be assassinated in their beds. The wedding festivities began upon the 28th of July, and great is the particularity with which Matarazzo describes the doings of each successive day—processions, jousts, triumphal arches, banquets, balls, and pageants.”

Perugia, it seems, was turned into a veritable garden of loveliness on this occasion. Rich velvets, brocades, and tapestries hung from the palace windows, their gorgeous colours mingled with long trails of ivy, with many shrubs and the branches of blossoming trees, which also filled the streets. Colossal arches spanned the roads at the different gates into the city. All vied together to erect the finest arch; and one was hung all over with tapestries showing the military exploits of the young Astorre. As the Roman bride passed in, the ladies of Perugia went to meet her, offering her rich presents. Some were dressed in cloth of gold and silver, others in silk and velvet, and many of them were lovely to behold. But Lavinia Colonna excelled them all by the glory of her broidered gown, and by the pearls and jewels twisted in her hair. Simonetto Baglioni drove round the city in a triumphal car, and as he went he cast great quantities of sugared dainties to the crowd, thus trying, by every means in his power, to add to the merriment of the marriage-day, and to show that love and comradeship united the Baglioni family.

But down in the Borgo S. Angelo men were silent and morose, for they hated these tyrants of Perugia, and held aloof from all rejoicings. They had noted strange auguries of late, and a whisper went round that evil was impending. On the first night of the festivities a terrible storm arose, scattering the decorations in the whirlwind. It was an awful night, and the young Roman bride shuddered, as above the din of the storm, she heard the sinister roars of the Baglioni lions.[27] Lavinia and Astorre were lodged in the palace of their traitorous cousin Grifonetto, and neither dreamt of the treachery that was so near at hand.

“The night of the 14th of August was finally set apart for the consummation of el gran tradimento: it is thus that Matarazzo always alludes to the crime of Grifonetto, with a solemnity of reiteration that is most impressive. A heavy stone let fall into the courtyard of Guido Baglioni’s palace was to be the signal: each conspirator was then to run to the sleeping-chamber of his appointed prey. Two of the principals and fifteen bravi were told off to each victim: rams and crowbars were prepared to force the doors if needful. All happened as had been anticipated. The crash of the falling stone was heard. The conspirators rushed to the scene of operations. Astorre, who was sleeping in the house of his traitorous cousin Grifonetto, was slain in the arms of his young bride, crying, as he vainly struggled, ‘Misero Astorre che more come poltrone!’[28] Simonetto flew to arms, exclaiming to his brother, ‘Non dubitare Gismondo, mio fratello!’[29] He, too, was soon despatched.[30] Filippo da Braccio, after killing him, tore from a great wound in his side the still quivering heart, into which he drove his teeth with savage fury. Old Guido died groaning, ‘Ora è gionto il ponto mio,’[31] and Gismondo’s throat was cut while he lay holding back his face that he might be spared the sight of his own massacre. The corpses of Astorre and Simonetto were stripped and thrown out naked into the streets. Men gathered round and marvelled to see such heroic forms, with faces so proud and fierce even in death. In especial the foreign students likened them to ancient Romans. But on their fingers were rings, and these the ruffians of the place would fain have hacked off with their knives. From this indignity the noble limbs were spared; then the dead Baglioni were hurriedly consigned to an unhonoured tomb. Meanwhile the rest of the intended victims managed to escape. Gianpaolo, assailed by Grifonetto and Gianfrancesco della Corgna, took refuge with his squire, Maraglia, upon a staircase leading from his room. While the squire held the passage with his pike against the foe, Gianpaolo effected his flight over neighbouring house-roofs. He crept into the attic of some foreign students, who, trembling with terror, gave him food and shelter, clad him in a scholar’s gown, and helped him to fly in this disguise from the gates at dawn. He then joined his brother Troilo at Marsciano, whence he returned without delay to punish the traitors. At the same time Grifonetto’s mother Atalanta, taking with her his wife, Zenobia, and the two young sons of Gianpaolo, Malatesta and Orazio, afterwards so celebrated in Italian history for their great feats of arms and their crimes, fled to her country-house at Landona. Grifonetto in vain sought to see her there. She drove him from her presence with curses for the treason and the fratricide that he had planned. It is very characteristic of these wild natures, framed of fierce instincts and discordant passions, that his mother’s curse weighed like lead upon the unfortunate young man. Next day, when Gianpaolo returned to try the luck of arms, Grifonetto, deserted by the companions of his crime and paralysed by the sense of his guilt, went out alone to meet him on the public place. The semi-failure of their scheme had terrified the conspirators: the horrors of that night of blood unnerved them. All had fled except the next victim of the feud. Putting his sword to the youth’s throat, Gianpaolo looked into his eyes and said, ‘Art thou here, Grifonetto? Go with God’s peace: I will not slay thee, nor plunge my hand in my own blood, as thou hast done in thine.’ Then he turned and left the lad to be hacked in pieces by his guard. The untranslatable words which Matarazzo uses to describe his death are touching from the strong impression they convey of Grifonetto’s goodliness: ‘Qui ebbe sua signoria sopra sua nobile persona tante ferite che suoi membra leggiadre stese in terra.’[32] None but Greeks felt the charm of personal beauty thus.[33] But while Grifonetto was breathing out his life upon the pavement of the piazza, his mother, Atalanta, and his wife Zenobia, came to greet him through the awe-struck city. As they approached, all men fell aside and slunk away before their grief. None would seem to have had a share in Grifonetto’s murder. Then Atalanta knelt by her dying son, and ceased from wailing, and prayed and exhorted him to pardon those who had caused his death. It appears that Grifonetto was too weak to speak, but that he made a signal of assent, and received his mother’s blessing at the last: “And then the noble stripling stretched his right hand to his youthful mother, pressing the white hand of his mother; and afterwards forthwith he breathed his soul forth from his beauteous body, and died with numberless blessings of his mother instead of the curses she had given him before.”

“After the death of Grifonetto and the flight of the conspirators, Gianpaolo took possession of Perugia. All who were suspected of complicity in the treason were massacred upon the piazza and in the cathedral. At the expense of more than a hundred murders, the chief of the Baglioni found himself master of the city on the 17th of July. First he caused the cathedral to be washed with wine and reconsecrated. Then he decorated the Palazzo with the heads of the traitors and with their portraits in fresco, painted hanging head downwards, as was the fashion in Italy. Next he established himself in what remained of the palaces of his kindred, hanging the saloons with black, and arraying his retainers in the deepest mourning. Sad, indeed, was now the aspect of Perugia. Helpless and comparatively uninterested, the citizens had been spectators of these bloody broils. They were now bound to share the desolation of their masters. Matarazzo’s description of the mournful palace and the silent town, and of the return of Marcantonio from Naples, presents a picture striking for its vividness.[34] In the true style of the Baglioni, Marcantonio sought to vent his sorrow not so much in tears as by new violence. He prepared and lighted torches, meaning to burn the whole quarter of S. Angelo; and from this design he was with difficulty dissuaded by his brother. To such mad freaks of rage and passion were the inhabitants of a mediæval town in Italy exposed! They make us understand the ordinanze di giustizia, by which to be a noble was a crime in Florence.

“From this time forward the whole history of the Baglioni family is one of crime and bloodshed. A curse had fallen on the house, and to the last of its members the penalty was paid. Gianpaolo himself acquired the highest reputation throughout Italy for his courage and sagacity both as a general and a governor.”

Gianpaolo is the last member of the Baglioni brood who succeeded in ruling over his native city, maintaining the despotic traditions of his predecessors by a system of unconscionable brutality. The personality of this tyrant is strongly brought forward in Italian histories. Frolliere gives the following account of the fascination of the outward man:

“Gianpaolo during his life-time was the favoured one of Heaven and of fortune. He was handsome and of a gracious aspect, pleasant and benign; eloquent in his conversation, and of great prudence; and every gesture harmonised with his words and manner. In his desire to please all, even strangers, if perchance he was unable or unwilling to serve them, he showed himself so gracious and so willing, that they left him satisfied and pleased. He was much given to the love of women and he was greatly loved by them by reason of his delicate and lordly bearing. He was, indeed, a valiant and a gallant knight, of admirable and almost divine talent and resource, as was shown in many of his enterprises and his actions.”[35]

But there was a very different side to this in the character of Gianpaolo, and we hear that on one occasion

... “he had it in his mind to murder four citizens of Perugia, his enemies. He looked calmly on while his kinsmen Eusebio and Taddeo Baglioni, who had been accused of treason, were hewn to pieces by his guard. His wife, Ippolita de’ Conti, was poniarded on her Roman farm; on hearing the news, he ordered a festival in which he was engaged to proceed with redoubled merriment.”[36]

Gianpaolo was also a good diplomatist, as cautious as he was cruel, and one of the most striking pictures in Perugian history is that of his reception of Julius II. in 1506, on which occasion the Pope came to visit the tyrant in person. The Baglioni was perfectly well aware that Julius had come for the purpose of re-establishing papal dominion in the city; but he was too cautious to shove His Holiness over a wall which he was building at the time, and thus to counterfeit the papal plans and set all Italy ablaze with admiration at the audacity of his action:

“While Michelangelo was planning frescoes and venting his bile in sonnets, the fiery Pope had started on his perilous career of conquest. He called the cardinals together, and informed them that he meant to free the cities of Perugia and Bologna from their tyrants. God, he said, would protect His Church; he could rely on the support of France and Florence. Other popes had stirred up wars and used the services of Generals; he meant to take the field in person. Louis XII. is reported to have jeered among his courtiers at the notion of a high-priest riding to the wars. A few days afterwards, on the 27th of August, the Pope left Rome attended by twenty-four cardinals and 500 men-at-arms. He had previously secured the neutrality of Venice and a promise of troops from the French court. When Julius reached Orvieto, he was met by Gianpaolo, the bloody and licentious despot of Perugia. Notwithstanding Baglioni knew that Julius was coming to assert his supremacy, and notwithstanding the Pope knew that this might drive to desperation a man so violent and stained with crime as Baglioni, they rode together to Perugia, where Gianpaolo paid homage and supplied his haughty guest with soldiers. The rashness of this act of Julius sent a thrill of admiration throughout Italy, stirring that sense of terribilità which fascinated the imagination of the men of the Renaissance. Machiavelli, commenting upon the action of the Baglioni, remarks that the event proved how difficult it is for a man to be perfectly and scientifically wicked.”[37]

* * * * * * * *

“At last the time came for Gianpaolo to die by fraud and violence. Leo X., anxious to remove so powerful a rival from Perugia, lured him in 1520 to Rome under the false protection of a papal safe-conduct. After a short imprisonment he had him beheaded in the Castle of S. Angelo. It was thought that Gentile, his first cousin, sometime Bishop of Orvieto, but afterwards the father of two sons in wedlock with Giulia Vitelli—such was the discipline of the Church at this epoch—had contributed to the capture of Gianpaolo, and had exulted in his execution. If so, he paid dear for his treachery; for Orazio Baglioni, the second son of Gianpaolo and captain of the Church under Clement VII., had him murdered in 1527, together with his two nephews Fileno and Annibale. This Orazio was one of the most bloodthirsty of the whole brood. Not satisfied with the assassination of Gentile, he stabbed Galeotto, the son of Grifonetto, with his own hand in the same year. Afterwards he died in the kingdom of Naples while leading the Black Bands in the disastrous war which followed the sack of Rome. He left no son. Malatesta, his elder brother, became one of the most celebrated generals of the age, holding the batons of the Venetian and Florentine republics, and managing to maintain his ascendency in Perugia in spite of the persistent opposition of successive popes. But his name is best known in history for one of the greatest public crimes. Intrusted with the defence of Florence during the siege of 1530, he sold the city to his enemy, Pope Clement, receiving for the price of this infamy certain privileges and immunities which fortified his hold upon Perugia for a season. All Italy was ringing with the great deeds of the Florentines, who for the sake of their liberty transformed themselves from merchants into soldiers, and withstood the united powers of pope and emperor alone. Meanwhile Malatesta, whose trade was war, and who was being largely paid for his services by the beleaguered city, contrived by means of diplomatic procrastination, secret communication with the enemy, and all the arts that could intimidate an army of recruits, to push affairs to a point at which Florence was forced to capitulate without inflicting the last desperate glorious blow she longed to deal her enemies. The universal voice of Italy condemned him. When Matteo Dandolo, the Doge of Venice, heard what he had done, he cried before the Pregadi in conclave, ‘He has sold that people and that city, and the blood of those poor citizens ounce by ounce, and has donned the cap of the biggest traitor in the world.’ Consumed with shame, corroded by an infamous disease, and mistrustful of Clement, to whom he had sold his honor, Malatesta retired to Perugia, and died in 1531. He left one son, Ridolfo, who was unable to maintain himself in the lordship of his native city. After killing the papal legate, Cinzio Filonardi, in 1534, he was dislodged four years afterwards, when Paul III. took final possession of the place as an appanage of the Church, razed the houses of the Baglioni to the ground, and built upon their site the Rocca Paolina....

... “Ridolfo Baglioni and his cousin Braccio, the eldest son of Grifonetto, were both captains of Florence. The one died in battle in 1554, the other in 1559. Thus ended the illustrious family. They are now represented by descendants from females, and by contadini, who preserve their name and boast a pedigree, of which they have no written records.”[38]

* * * * * * * *

Thus the Baglioni practically killed themselves—stamped out their own power through their own passions. It remained for the Church to crush if possible the spirit of liberty and of self-government in the people of Perugia. It is as though a mighty wheel spun round and we next find the city wholly and entirely in the clutches of Rome.

When the last strong member of the terrible brood, Ridolfo Baglioni, forced his way back into Perugia with the evident intention of ruling there, he seems to have ignored the fact that he had something more powerful to face than the opposition of the people. Ridolfo set fire to the people’s palace, but he went much further, he assassinated the Pope’s Legate. This outrage gave the final push to Rome, who had so often and so impotently interfered before, and Paul Farnese, the reigning Pope, listened, we hear, with the profoundest displeasure to the account of this barefaced murder. He at once took the high hand. He sent troops from Rome to drive out Ridolfo, who retired before them to seek a better fortune elsewhere. He then had the walls of Spello, Bettona, Bastia, and other strongholds of Ridolfo Baglioni demolished, and finally, in order to make his policy more permanent and decisive, the great Farnese Pope arrived in person at Perugia.

Paul’s arrival is one of the most impressive points in the annals of the town. The rule of the Baglioni had been so powerful and so picturesque that in tracing it one is inclined to ignore the undercurrent of affairs in the city. As a matter of fact the old order of rule had not really died out under that of the nobles, and in the description of Paul’s reception we find the familiar names of companies and Priori occurring again and again with all their followers and titles.

The Perugians, wearied to death by the despotic rule of the nobles, hailed the advent of a much more despotic Pope with blind and excessive joy. Paul came in triumph, and in triumph he was received. Great arches were built for him and for his cardinals to pass beneath, and since the town had not sufficient money to spend on his reception they even melted down a beautiful silver ship belonging to the city plate chest. It was on the last day of August 1535, and at about midnight, that “His Blessed Holiness” arrived at the gates with fourteen cardinals and some companies of 600 or 700 horse and 700 infantry. The Pope rode up on horseback, dressed in scarlet. Drums and tambours heralded his approach. The cardinals rode by two and two. On either side of His Holiness rode his two nephews: the Cardinals Alexander Farnese and Guido Ascanio Sforza. The Priori, all in new and gorgeous robes, preceded by the Holy Eucharist, came out to meet him, and through their ambassador or nunzio they presented to His Holiness a silver basin containing the keys of the city. Then a learned doctor of the University delivered “a short but elegant address,” to which the Pope listened attentively, and for that night the Pope turned in to sleep in the monastery of S. Pietro. The following day he entered the city with extraordinary pomp and took up his abode in the Palazzo Pubblico, where the Priori had vacated their own rooms in order to give him proper space; and thither all the professors and all the members of the city guilds and confraternities arrived that afternoon to kiss his foot.

Paul’s first visit to Perugia may be called a triumphal progress rather than anything else. He gave great gifts of grain to the city, and he conferred countless benefits upon its churches and its clergy. But he came to rule, and not to pamper or caress. For a time all went well. The convents and the monasteries grew fat and prosperous, the Baglioni were away, and the people apparently at peace; but storms were brewing. After three years of passive submission Perugia found cause to revolt against her new ruler as she had done against her old. In 1538 Paul III. sent out his decree for raising the price of salt by one half in all the pontifical states, and the Perugians revolted at once against an imposition which they had good reason to feel unjust.[39]

Revolution was declared. Alfano Alfani, the chief of the magistrates, tried to calm the fury of his countrymen, and at first only humble entreaties were sent down to Rome imploring Paul III. to remove a tax so odious to the people. But the Pope was too much in need of money to listen to these prayers. His only answer was an excommunication, which punishment was not unfamiliar to the people of Perugia. During the month of March 1539 the city lay under an interdict, no masses were said, no sacraments given, and the churches seemed as the monuments of a people long since dead. Every day the murmurings of the Perugians grew and strengthened, and finally they took the high-handed measure of arranging matters for themselves. They elected twenty-five citizens who were called “the twenty-five defenders of justice in the city of Perugia,” and before many days were out the “twenty-five” had obtained unlimited power. They exercised an independent and undisputed authority and pushed the priori entirely to one side. Their endeavours to protect their liberty and resist the Pope’s authority soon roused his anger. The Farnese was not a person to be trifled with, and this barefaced rebellion of the little Umbrian city had to be crushed by prompt and powerful means; so the Pope sent his son, Pier Luigi Farnese, at the head of 10,000 Italians and 3000 Spaniards to meet the rulers in the field.

A strange piece of history follows. The Perugians veer round utterly and call in as their leader Ridolfo Baglioni to help them against a Pope, whom but three short years ago they had welcomed as their best benefactor.

Ridolfo went forth to fight against the Papal troops with a mighty flourish of trumpets, but we only hear faint rumours of a skirmish near Ponte S. Giovanni where one or two men were killed, and a few more tumbled off their chargers. The whole account reads like a farce, and yet we know that men and women regarded it with deadly earnest at the time. The city was all unhinged. An extraordinary religious phase which had nothing to do with the Church came over her. The large crucifix which is still to be seen in S. Lorenzo, was placed above the main entrance to the Duomo, and here the people came to pray and tell their beads with an unwonted fervour. Continual processions wound their slow way up from S. Domenico to the Cathedral square, and we hear that the cries for mercy were deafening throughout the city.

On a dark night, by the flickering light of many torches, Maria Podiano, the Chancellor of the Commune, delivered a touching oration, and in the sight of all the citizens he placed the city keys at the foot of the great crucifix on the outside of the Cathedral—Christ was to be their defender, Christ their leader, to fight against a Pope![40]

But it was impossible that Perugia should be able to stand against such an army as that of Paul III., and Ridolfo Baglioni was the first to see that his side must lose. With less loyalty than might have been expected from this would-be despot of Perugia, he edged towards peace, and finally, on the 3rd June 1540, peace was concluded between Pier Luigi Farnese and Ridolfo Baglioni. Thus it happened that once again Perugia was cast under the shadow of Pontifical Rome. Neighbouring towns had abandoned her at the moment when she wrestled for her liberty; Ridolfo Baglioni had given her but a half-hearted help, and the Perugians were driven to confess that the only course which now lay open to them was an apology to the Pope. Twenty-five ambassadors were therefore sent to Rome. Dressed in long black robes with halters round their necks, the unhappy Perugian envoys crouched in the portico of S. Peter’s awaiting their absolution.

Pardon was obtained, but at a heavy price. The ambassadors returned home bearing the news that Paul had forgiven the city; but the titles of Preservers of Ecclesiastical Obedience, borne by the Pope’s magistrates, warned Perugia quite sufficiently that her old forms of government were wiped away for ever. A few days later and the foundations of Paul III.’s fortress were laid on the site of the razed palaces of the Baglioni, and the citizens were compelled to lend their help in the erection of this colossal stronghold which was to prove their bane for centuries to follow. On its inner walls it bore the following inscription, which fully indicated the feelings and intentions of the indomitable Farnese: Ad coercendam Perusinorum Audaciam.[41]

Writhing beneath the yoke of priests, the Perugians soon regretted even the rule of the Baglioni: “Help me if you can,” Malatesta Baglioni had cried as he lay dying at Bettona in 1531, “for after my death you will be made to draw the cart like oxen”; and Frolliere, chronicling these words, remarks: “This has been fulfilled to the last letter, for all have borne not only the yoke but the goad.”[42]

In the same year (1540) as that in which Paul III. laid the foundations of his famous fortress, a society, which proved of invaluable service in furthering the work and wishes of the Papacy, sprang forth into vigorous life, and gradually the chief power in Perugia fell into the hands of the Jesuits. These agents of the Pope proceeded to convert the city wholesale by means of religious ceremonies, general confessions, preachings in every square, and in all the corners of the streets, and colossal processions, headed by missionaries wearing crowns of thorns and bearing enormous crosses. Industries died out, poverty, famine, and pestilence decimated the city, and in 1728, from a petition presented to Clement X., it appears that Perugia was reduced to such a state of wretchedness as to bring tears to the eyes of those who remembered her former prosperity.

* * * * * * * *

The final history of Perugia, down to the present day, may be compressed into a very few lines. Up to the

end of the last century, she was practically ruled by the Popes, and was a city of the Papal States. Her immense convents and churches were filled with monks and nuns. In 1549, Julius III. restored to her some of her ancient privileges of which Paul had deprived her, and in some sort she regained her old forms of government, but she could never again be called by her historians an independent State. In 1797, during the general upheaval of Europe which followed the revolution in France, she underwent a quite new phase, and became a French Prefecture under the title of Departimento del Trasimeno. General la Valette levied tribute from the citizens, who were further harassed by the sudden break up of the Roman Republic and an Austrian occupation. After the Battle of Marengo, in 1800, Perugia ceased to be Pontifical, and in 1809 she was formally annexed to the French Empire, and made a canton of Spoleto under a sub-prefect. By Napoleon’s orders the convents of both sexes and of all orders were suppressed, the bishops and prelates were sent to Rome in carriage loads, and the poor monks and nuns were unfrocked and literally carted through the streets to their homes. When a turn came in the fortunes of the empire, Perugia became the victim of another change, and with the partial introduction of the papal sway, the monks and nuns returned to their convents.

In spite of its tyrannies, the Napoleonic occupation had given the Perugians a taste for better things than a papal despotism, and they never again found rest in the care of the Pope. They fretted and chafed under the Pope’s people; the Pope’s fortress became a veritable eye-sore to them, the daily sight of its walls burned into their hearts like red-hot nails, and whenever they could they pulled a part of it down.

At last, in 1859, they rose in open rebellion, and Papal troops were sent by Pius IX. to besiege the town. Some 2000 of the Swiss Guard, led by Colonel Schmid, arrived from Rome to quell the insurrection. Bonazzi gives a vivid account of the atrocities these men committed in the city. They killed all whom they laid hands on in their raids as they passed through the streets, crying aloud as they went that “their master the Pope had given them orders that none should be spared.” S. Pietro was forced, and, notwithstanding the protests of the Abbot and his monks, its vestments were torn to threads, gold and silver ornaments carried away, and not even the archives with their wealth of long accumulated missals escaped the vandalism of the papal troops. (See p. [162.])

In 1860 the Swiss were finally dislodged by Victor Emanuel’s envoy, General Manfredo Fanti; and, unarmed and closely guarded by a double file of the King’s soldiers, the last representatives of papal power were driven from the fortress of Paul III., and having passed a night in the cathedral, they were ousted for ever from the precincts of Perugia. Paul III.’s fortress had now been entirely pulled down by an infinite number of willing hands, and the present great buildings of the Prefettura, which represents the modern government of a prosperous town, took their place on the former site of the Baglioni palaces.

* * * * * * * *

With the loss of Perugia’s independent existence in 1540 the light of romance was lost to her history. But from that minute, and in spite of all her anguish and humiliation, she learned the final lesson of how to live at peace within herself, and be at peace with all her neighbours. This lesson she had never learned through all her battlings in the past. She had risen fighting, and fighting she had flourished. It would be inaccurate to say that fighting she fell.

Perugia never fell. She was merely caught and tamed. Anyone familiar with the cities of Umbria will at once recognise in this, their head, something forcible, strong, grand, and enduring, which neither nobles, emperors, nor popes were able to beat out of her; something which has kept her what she was at the beginning: Perugia, the city of plenty, and fitted her to be what she is now: Perugia the capital of Umbria; as grand in her unity with her great mother, as she was powerful in her strife.

CHAPTER IV
The City of Perugia

“C’est une vieille ville du moyen âge, ville de défense et de refuge, posée sur un plateau escarpé, d’où toute la vallée se découvre.”—H. Taine, Voyage en Italie.

HAVING glanced thus rapidly over the history of Perugia we turn with fresh interest to examine the city itself, and to trace through what remains of its earliest walls and houses, the character of those same fascinating, if pugnacious persons, who built those walls, fought over them, lived and died within them.

Perugia is an excellent mirror of history, combining on its surface not only a reflection of the immortal past but of a prosperous present, and with the exception of ancient Roman influences, which, for some obscure reason, have almost entirely vanished, it would be difficult to find a nest of man more perfect or unchanged in all its parts. Battered and abused by warfare and by weather the stones of the middle ages may be and are, but they have not been destroyed, and there is something grand and clean in the modern buildings which confirms, rather than destroys, the æsthetic charm and splendour of the old.

Perugia is very distinctly the living capital of the province. After travelling through Umbria and studying one by one the little dreamy old-world cities—each perched upon its separate hillside, which seem to have fallen asleep long centuries ago, letting the silence of

the grass close in on their paved streets, as the need of self-protection vanished—one returns to Perugia and recognises that she, at least, has never died. She is often very silent, very brown and grim; she has her dreams, but the hope in her: the desire for rule and power, has never really vanished. The most remarkable change about the town, if we are to take what we read of her history for certain fact, is the change in her people. The inhabitants of Perugia, in every class, are unmistakably gentle and amiable, both in mind and manner. They are courteous to strangers, kind, helpful and calm. Even the street boys ask one for stamps instead of pennies. In their leisure they are gay, and in their work persistent. They are never frantic or demonstrative. As one sits at one’s window on warm spring nights, one almost wishes the people in the street would either fight or sing, but they do neither. They take their pleasures calmly, and hang upon their town walls by the hour, gazing out upon a view they love. Perhaps in their inmost hearts they are counting the numberless little cities, all of which their fathers won for them in battles of the past. The fact of their supremacy may make them thrill, but there is nothing to mark their triumph in their faces.

This is no place in which to discuss the rapid change of personality in the Perugians. We note it as a fact, and pass to a description of the town itself, which certainly contains abundant marks of that same “warlike” character which time has washed away from the minds of its inhabitants.

The city is built, as we have shown in our first chapter, on one of the low hills formed after thousands of years by the silting up of the refuse brought down by the Tiber, and not, as one naturally at first imagines, on a spur of the actual Apennines which are divided from her by the river. Much of the power of the town in the past may be traced to her extraordinary topographical position. Perugia stands 1705 feet above the level of the sea, and 1200 above that of the Tiber. She stands perfectly alone at the extreme edge of a long spine of hill, and she commands the Tiber and the two great roads to Rome.[43] But looked at from a merely picturesque point of view, few towns can boast of a more powerful charm. Perugia, if one ignores her history, is not so much a town as an eccentric freak of nature. All the winds and airs of heaven play and rush around her walls in summer and in winter. The sun beats down upon her roofs; one seems to see more stars at night, above her ramparts, than one sees in any other town one knows of. All Umbria is spread like a great pageant at her feet, and the pageant is never one day or one hour like the other. Even in a downpour, even in a tempest the great view fascinates. In spring the land is green with corn and oak trees, and pink with the pink of sainfoin flowers. In winter it seems smaller, nearer; brown and gold, and very grand at sundown. On clear days one can easily trace a whole circle of Umbrian cities from the Umbrian capital. To the east Assisi, Spello, Foligno, Montefalco, and Trevi. The hill above Bettona hides the town of Spoleto, but its ilex woods and its convent of Monte Luco are distinct enough. To the south Todi and Deruta stand out clear upon their hillsides; and to the east the home of Perugino, Città della Pieve, rises half hidden in its oakwoods. Early in the mornings you will see the mists lift slowly from the Tiber; at night the moon will glisten on its waters, drawing your fancy down to Rome. Strange lights shine upon the clouds behind the ridge which covers Trasimene, and to the north the brown hills rise and swell, fold upon fold, to meet the Apennines. In autumn and in winter the basin of the old Umbrian lake will often fill for days with mists, but the Umbrian towns and hamlets rise like the birds above them, and one may live in one of these in splendid sunshine, whilst looking down upon a sea of fog which darkens all the people of the plain.

The inhabitants of Perugia swear by the healthy nature of their air, and indeed, were it not for the winds, the most fragile constitution would probably flourish in the high hill city. But it must be confessed that there come days when man and horse quiver like dead leaves before the tempest, and when the very houses seem to rock. Indeed, it would be almost impossible to exaggerate the arctic power of a Perugian whirlwind. Yet the average temperature is mild, and myrtles grow to the size of considerable trees in the villa gardens round the town.

To fully understand the city of Perugia, the marvellous fashion of its building, and the way in which its houses have become a part of the landscape and seem to creep about and cling to the unsteady crumbling soil, one should pass out into the country through one of its gates, and, rambling round the roads and lanes which wind beneath its walls, look ever up and back again towards the town. In this way only is it possible to understand what man can do with Nature, and how, with the centuries, Nature can gather to herself man’s handiwork and make of it a portion for herself. Birds and beasts have built in this same fashion, but rarely except in Umbria have men.

“The unstable quality of the soil on which Perugia is built,” writes Mariotti, “has made strong walls and very costly buildings a necessity,” and he goes on to point out the different and expensive ways in which the town has been bolstered up with solid masonry. The Etruscans were the first to recognise this necessity. They may have been a peaceful and a rather bourgeois set of human beings, differing in all ways from their combative successors, but they understood the science of building, and their walls, which encompassed only about one-third of the space covered by the mediæval town, remain a monument of splendid solid masonry wherever they can be traced.

The Etruscan walls are a marked feature of some Umbrian cities, and although it is rather the fashion to dispute their authenticity in Perugia, the bits which remain of them there are probably quite genuine. They have, however, become such a part of the mediæval and the modern town, and are often so embedded in later buildings, that without close study it is difficult to trace them; we have therefore marked their course in red on the map of the town.

Five of the present gates of the town, namely, Porta Eburnea, Porta Susanna, Porta Augusta, Porta Mandola, and Porta Marzia are the genuine old gates of the Etruscan town, and although the Romans altered them a little, enlarging them from below, a great part of their masonry is the work of the Etruscans, and from three to four thousand years old. Of these gates, the Porta Augusta is familiar to every one, as it is one of the most remarkable and impressive features of the town. Rome and the Renaissance have combined to give it a fantastic and a fascinating appearance, even as these same influences have made a miniature museum of the now disused Porta Marzia. Strangely enough the work of the Etruscan masons is far better preserved than any which followed them, and the great blocks of travertine neatly placed (as some suppose without mortar) on one another, are easily distinguishable from those built above and below them. Perugia always felt a certain respect for her oldest walls, and even in the fifteenth century, when she was in her prime, and bristling with new towers and churches, the work of the dead people was respected. In 1475 we read that a law was passed for the preservation of the Etruscan walls, as “they were very marvellous, and worthy to be preserved into all eternity.”

Beyond the city walls nothing remains of the Etruscans at Perugia, except what is found in their tombs. That the town was rich in temples and other beauties we may gather, but these, together with the houses, were

destroyed when Augustus took the town in 40 B.C., and when her devoted citizen, Caius Cestius, set fire to his native city, to cover her disgrace. Of the Roman occupation, which covered a period of many centuries, no trace remains in Perugia. The present town is therefore a monument of the purest mediæval building crowned by some rare and beautiful bits of Renaissance architecture.

But before entering into a description of the city, it may be well to insist once more on the fact already made plain in our history, that if men made Perugia, men also marred her.[44] The impatience of man is everywhere discernible in her streets her palaces and churches, and only the latest buildings have their towers and stones intact. The towers of S. Pietro, S. Domenico, and others have had their tops all truncated by popes, by nobles, and by people in moments of their fury or their vengeance. The city was built for warfare and defence, and not for beauty, luxury and peace. In these comparatively quiet times of ours we go about in foreign towns and look for art, and art alone. We seem to forget that art is but a small affair—a little landmark in the history of nations. There is an art in Umbria, an art so pure, so sweet, so tender that thinking of it we may easily forget the history of her men, or, if remembering, we seem to dream a dual dream. The art of Perugia was, maybe, the outcome of her almost fanatical religion, but the wars of her inhabitants have always been her life-blood. The very first walls were built for defence, or, as some say, to store the crops, the corn and hay, in; and the houses of the earliest mediæval town were also built purely with a view to personal safety and protection. Bonazzi gives a curious account of the growth of the city, and the almost fantastic fashion in which its inhabitants hammered its houses together, and then proceeded to live in them. “There were,” he says, describing the town in about 1100 and 1200, “few monuments or buildings of importance up to the sixteenth century. The houses were all on one floor, the sun barely reached them; some of them were of stone and bricks, but the greater part of mud, clay and straw. Hence incessant and considerable fires, increased by the lack of chimneys. And they were so inconveniently arranged that often eight or ten persons slept in a single room. A motto, a saint, some small sign took the place of our modern numbers, and the lamp which burned in front of the many shrines served to light the streets at nightfall. There were no flags or pavements then upon the streets, which took their names from the churches or houses of the nobles which happened to look down upon them; these were narrow and tortuous, simply because they grew without any method or premeditation, they were horrible to behold as all the dirt was thrown into them, and because of the herds of swine which passed along them, grunting and squeaking as they went.”[45] Bonazzi next goes on to trace the topography of the mediæval town, which was much smaller than the present one, and lacking in large monuments. There was no Corso in those days, no Piazza Sopramuro, no Palazzo Pubblico. Where the present cathedral now stands there was only the little old church of S. Lorenzo and a big and beautiful tower with a cock on the top of it. The towers of Perugia were a most marked feature of her architecture and, indeed, in old writings she is always mentioned as Turrena because of them.[46] “About this time,” says Bonazzi, “another great work began in our city, which was continued into the following centuries. The feudal lords who came in from their own places in the country to inhabit the town, brought with them each the tradition of his own strong tower in the abandoned castle. Great therefore was the competition between them of who should build the highest, and this each noble did, not so much for decoration as for a means of defence and of offence, and according to the amount of power possessed by himself or by his neighbour.... In the shadow of the massive feudal towers,” Bonazzi writes in another place, “like grass which is shaded by giant plants, rose the little houses of the poor. The more elegant houses were of terra-cotta (bricks) without plaster or mortar, and their windows were arched in the Roman fashion.[47] After 600 they were roofed with flat tiles in imitation of the Lombards.”

The city gates were always closed at nightfall, and some of the streets were blocked by means of huge iron chains which stretched across the road, preventing the passage of horse or carts, from one house to another. One can still see the hooks and holes belonging to these somewhat barbaric defences in some of the more solid houses of Perugia; and in the neighbouring town of Spello the chains themselves have been left hanging to one of the houses. In 1276 we read that the law of closing the city gates was abolished, but a little later on it was again found necessary to barricade the town at nightfall, and during some of the fights between the nobles in 1400 and in 1500 we hear of the difficulties which one or the other party had to combat in the “chains across their path.”

Strange scattered relics of this nest of mediæval man linger and come down to us even in the nineteenth century. Amongst these are the porte del mortuccio, or doors of the dead. All the best houses had these doors alongside of their house-doors, but they are bricked up now and quite disused, and might easily be ignored in passing through the streets. The porta del mortuccio is tall, narrow, and pointed at the top; it is, indeed, just wide enough to pass a coffin through. It seems that in very early days, even so far back as the Etruscans, there was a superstition that through the door where Death had passed, Death must enter in again. By building a separate door, which was only used by the dead, the spirit of Death passed out with the corpse, the narrow door was closely locked behind it, and the safety of the living was secured, as far as the living can secure, from Death. Other charming details of the mediæval city are the house doors. They are built of travertine or pietra serena, and have little garlands of flowers and fruit bound with ribbons, and delicate friezes above them. Some of them have very beautiful Latin inscriptions, which show a strong religious sentiment. We quote a few of them here: Janua coeli (door of heaven, over a church); Pulchra janua ubi honesta domus (beautiful the door of the house which is honest); A Deo cuncta—a domino omnia (all things from God); Ora ut vivas et Deo vives (pray to live and thou shalt live to God); Prius mori quam fædari (die rather than be disgraced); In parvis quies (in small things peace); Solicitudo mater divitiarum (carefulness is the mother of riches); Ecce spes I.H.S. mea semper (Christ always my hope).

Over one or two of the doorways in Perugia you will find almost byzantine bits of tracery with figures of unknown animals—beasts of the Apocalypse—carved in grey travertine all round them. One of the very earliest bits of mediæval building is the fragment of a door of this sort, belonging to the first palace of the Priori, which is now almost buried in the more modern buildings of the sixteenth century. There is another amusing procession of beasts over a gateway below S. Ercolano. These odd animal friezes were probably first designed for some sort of closed market where beasts were sold, and the old Pescheria has medallions of lasche on its walls.

As for the ways and manners of the people who inhabited this mediæval city, Ciatti and other writers supply us with plenty of fantastic information:

“Perugia lies beneath the sign of the Lion and of the Virgin,” Ciatti says in his account, which is as usual, unlike the account of anybody else, and highly entertaining, “and from this cause it comes that the city is called Leonina[48] and Sanguinia, and the habits of the Perugians are neither luxurious nor effeminate. Like those of whom Siderius writes, they came forth strong in war, they delighted in fish, were humorous in speech, swift in counsel, and loved the law of the Pope.... The women,” he continues with a certain monastic indifference to female charm, “were not beautiful, although Siderius calls them elegant;[49] the genius of Perugia was ever more inclined to the exercise of arms than the cultivation of beauty, and many famous captains have brought fame to this their native city through their brave deeds. In Tuscany the Sienese have the reputation of being frivolous, the Pisans astute and malicious, the Florentines slow and serious, and the Perugians ferocious and of a warlike spirit.”

Concerning the clothes and the feasts of this combative race of people who lived for warfare rather than for delight, we hear that they were accustomed to wear a great deal of fur, the nobles using pelisses of martin and of sable, the poor, sheep or foxes’ skins. The fur tippets still worn by the canons of cathedrals in Italian towns in winter are probably a remnant of these days. For the rest an adaptation of the Roman tunic was perhaps worn by the men, whilst the women kept to the tradition of the Etruscan headgear. “Victuals,” Bonazzi tells us, “were of a coarse description, more lard and pepper was eaten in those days, than meat and coffee in ours. But at the feasts of the priests and nobles an incredible quantity of exquisite viands was consumed; great animals stuffed with dainties were cooked entire, and monstrous pasties served at table, from which, when the knife touched them, a living and jovial dwarf jumped out upon the table, unexpected and to the great delight of all the company.”

* * * * * * * *

But from the Age of Darkness men awoke both in their manners and in their buildings. Perugia of the Middle Ages shook the sleep from off her heavy eyelids, and with that passionate impulse towards Light which was perhaps the secret of the Renaissance, she too strove toward the Beautiful, and in a hurried, fevered fashion, she too decked herself with fairer things than castle towers and hovels. The fourteenth and the fifteenth centuries were, as we know, the Age of Gold in later art, and Perugia, in spite of all her tumults, in spite of her feuds, and even her passionate religious abstinences, woke with the waking world. Most of her churches, and most of those monuments which mark her as a point for travellers, date from that period. “And at that time,” says the chronicler Fabretti, “there was so great a building going on in different parts of the city that neither mortar nor stones nor masons could have been procured even for money, unless a number of Lombards had come in to build. And they were building the palace of the Priori (Palazzo Pubblico), they were building S. Lorenzo, Santa Maria dei Servi, S. Domenico, S. Francesco, the houses of Messer Raniero ... the tower of the Palazzo, and numerous other houses of private citizens all at that same time.”

But it was not merely a love of beauty which prompted the Perugians to this sudden departure in the way of architecture; the spirit of the great saint of Umbria had much to do with it. In Perugian chronicles and histories we find a strange silence about the influence of S. Francis on a city which was only separated by some fourteen miles from Assisi. Yet it is not possible that so strong a force as that of this man’s preaching could have been kept outside the walls of the neighbour town, and Ciatti declares that at one time nearly a third part of the inhabitants of Perugia took the Franciscan habit. In 1500 and 1600 there were more than fifty convents in Perugia, many of which had sixty to eighty inhabitants, but that was during the rule of the popes. Of the great period of building in the fourteenth century, which included many fine churches and convents, the buildings of the people and not of the priests remain intact. The splendid Palazzo Pubblico and Pisano’s fountain in the square belong to this period. But because the work of the Renaissance is so conspicuous and charming we have described it in another place, and in our description of the town have lingered rather over the fragments of the Etruscan and the mediæval city.

As it would be impossible in this small book to give anything beyond a cursory sketch of all the different buildings of the town, we have decided to deal with the details of some of the principal ones, leaving the rest for the discovery of those whose leisure and intelligence will always make such exploration a delight. There is no lack of excellent guide-books to Perugia. Of the fuller and rarer ones we would mention those of Siepi and Orsini and the more modern one of Count Rossi Scotti. These are in Italian. Murray’s last edition of “Central Italy” contains clear and excellent general information, and there are several small local guides—the best of these by Lupatelli—which can be had in the hotel. No one who really desires to study the town should fail to read the fascinating books of its best lover, Annibale Mariotti; and the works of Conestabile and Vermiglioli are invaluable for students. All these can be had in the public library of the town where there is a pleasant quiet room in which to study them, and the excessive courtesy of whose head—Count Vincenzo Ansidei—makes research an easy pleasure there.

The topography of Perugia is simple: “The entire city,” says Mariotti, “since the very earliest days, was divided into five quarters or rioni, which from the centre, that is to say, the highest point of the town, and with as gentle an incline as the condition of the ground allows, stretch out in five different directions like so many sunbeams across the mountain side. These gates are: Porta Sole to the east, Porta Susanna to the west (formerly called Trasimene), Porta S. Angelo (formerly Porta Augusta) to the north, Porta S. Pietro to the south, and Porta Eburnea to the southwest. Each of these separate gates bears its own armorial design and colour. Porta Sole is white and bears a sun with rays; Porta Susanna blue, with a chain; Porta S. Angelo red, with a branch of arbutus; Porta S. Pietro yellow, with a balance, and Porta Eburnea green, with a pilgrim’s staff.”

Owing to the extraordinary situation of the town there are hardly any level squares or streets. The two considerable flat open spaces on either side of the Prefettura, the site of the Prefettura itself and of the hotel Brufani are artificial spaces, the result of the demolition of Paul III.’s fortress (see chap. vi.). We imagine that many intelligent persons have passed through the comfortable hotel of Perugia not realising at all the artificial nature of the ground on which it stands. The Corso and the Piazza di S. Lorenzo may be said to be the heart of the town; its pulse beats a little lower down in the Piazza Sopramuro where fruit and vegetables are sold and where there is a perpetual market-day.[50] The other big open square is the Piazza d’Armi, on a lower level of the hill and to the south of the town. There the cattle fair is held on Tuesdays, and there the beautiful white Umbrian oxen, with skins that are finer than the cattle of the plain, and the grey Umbrian pigs, and tall Umbrian men and girls can be seen in all their glory. Here too is the convent of S. Giuliana with its splendid cloisters and little Gothic campanile, and here above all do the soldiers of Perugia practice their bands, their horses, and their bugles every morning.

There are three things lacking in Perugia, as there are naturally in all hill-cities, and these are gardens, carriages, and running water. But all these wants have been delightfully overcome by the inhabitants. As a matter of fact, there are plenty of hidden gardens, behind the houses in the town, but in almost every house you will see that iron sockets or rings have been fastened to the walls below the windows, and in

these, pots of geraniums, daisies, and carnations are hung and tended with excessive care. Some of the better palaces or convents have stone brackets in the shape of shells for window gardens, and even in the dusk of grim December days the old stone walls seem green and living. The lack of carriages is really only felt in winter when the inhabitants seem to fall for the while asleep, leaving the streets to assume their mediæval character, and to be swept by winter hurricanes; in spring and summer the place is gay enough; indeed the Corso is a very good specimen of Umbrian Piccadilly on a fine May evening, and there are plenty of carriages in the tourist season. But go into any palace of Perugia and you will find the sedan chairs of our grandfathers ready for instant use, proving that carriages are quite a modern innovation in the town.

The need of running water is, of course, the most serious point about so big and prosperous a city, and a running stream to turn a paper mill would heal more ills than all her pictures and her wide calm view. The great rushing stream of the Tiber down at the foot of the hill seems like a sort of solemn mockery to people who have only wells and a little river from the hill to drink from and to wash their linen in. We have realized this on winter nights when the Tiber was out in flood in the moonlight down below our windows, and small drops freezing, one by one, on Pisano’s fountain behind us in the square.

Yet the town is prosperous. Its inhabitants and those of the commune have increased by some six thousand since the days of its first prosperity. Commerce, it is true, seems somewhat at a standstill. There is the commerce of travellers, which is by no means inconsiderable; and there is the commerce of Mind. This last Perugia has always had since the days when she grew powerful, and the University of Perugia has played a constant and important part throughout her annals. It was founded in the beginning of the fourteenth century, and its management, like other things in the city, was chiefly in the hands of the people and their representatives, the Priori. Five Savi, one from each rione, were told off to regulate its affairs and to elect its professors. Urban VIII. brought it under the management of the Church, but this did not in any way alter its first rules and laws. We hear that “the Emperor Charles IV. bestowed upon the University all those distinctions which were enjoyed by the most celebrated universities of the Empire,” and Napoleon confirmed these and added much to the magnificence of Perugia’s university. It was during the Napoleonic rule that the college was transferred from its old quarters in the Piazza Sopramuro to the vast new buildings at Montemorcino. Her three main branches of study are jurisprudence, science, and theology. Several of the popes studied in Perugia. S. Thomas Aquinas lectured here, and many distinguished men of science and of law passed through their first schools in the Umbrian hill town. The two great lawyers Baldo Baldeschi and Bartolo Alfani were students in the University of Perugia, and Alberico Gentile, who afterwards lectured in Oxford, studied here at the University. The affairs of war were never allowed to interfere with those of the mind, and we hear that a guarantee of safe conduct was given to any scholar who came here from a distance.

The arts of peace, such as the manufacture of wool and silken stuffs, were known in the middle ages in spite of the want of water (the hand and foot looms of Perugia are almost prehistoric in their simplicity), and in 1297 we hear of the magistrates of Perugia sending an embassy into Lombardy to fetch two friars thence who should teach their townsfolk the secrets of weaving. This art was zealously kept up for many years, but finally it fell into decay. A branch of it has lately been revived by a Milanese lady, and thanks to her efforts we are again able to buy the strange flame-patterned carpets which we find on the altars of so many of the older Umbrian churches.

Except in the Corso, life seems very quiet in Perugia. Yet though there is poverty, there is none of that feeling of decayed splendour, of arrested magnificence and luxury which we feel in so many cities of Italy. The Perugians were probably never very luxurious. There are one or two beautiful old palaces, but they are plain to look at, and the palaces of the nobles had a bad time of it and were constantly pulled to bits as their different owners were driven into the country. The town is a town of a strong people; it is dignified and peaceful. When the wind is not battering about its roofs and howling through its narrow streets one becomes aware of an extraordinary silence.

And in that silence the questions rise—one cannot stifle them: Where are the Beccherini and where are the Raspanti? Are the Baglioni really dead, and the Oddi, where are they? And the Flagellants and the Penitenti—have even their ghosts departed? Will not a pope ride in at the gates with his nephews and his cardinals and take up peaceful quarters in the grim Canonica? Will not some warlike Abbot come and batter down the church towers to build himself a palace? Will no procession pass us with a banner of Bonfigli, and women wailing that the plague should be removed?...

The snow falls silently upon the roads in winter. No blood of nobles stains it. In May all Umbria is green with crops. No condottiere comes to trample down the corn. But high upon her hill-top Perugia stands as she stood then, and in her silence seems to wait for something yet to come.

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Before closing this chapter we would once again repeat that no one with a few hours’ leisure should forbear to wander round the outer walls of the town before leaving Perugia. With only one break: that which is formed by the deep ravine (or bulagnjo in the local dialect) between Porta Sant Antonio and Porta S. Angelo, one can walk on quite good paths and roads under the outer walls of the entire city. The Via della Cuparella is a pleasant lane reached by passing out through Porta Eburnea. It skirts under the mediæval and Etruscan walls to the west of the town and re-enters the city again a little below Porta Susanna. This lane is one of the most sheltered corners in Perugia, and we have wandered up and down it in the early days of January, and found the sleepy lizards basking on its banks and yellow aconites in all the furrows. The trees bud early there; their young green shimmers like a vision of immortal youth against the grim walls of the mediæval and Etruscan city up beyond.

Another charming walk is that along the eastern side of the town, passing out through Porta S. Ercolano and through the Corso away along the broad high-road to the convent of Monte Luce, which is quite one of the most fascinating buildings of Perugia, with its front of white and rosy marble, its court-yard and rose window, and the splendid block of its nunnery walls covering the crest of the hill behind the church. The convent was built early in the thirteenth century on the site, some say, of an Etruscan temple dedicated to the Goddess Feronia, but more probably in the sacred wood or lucus from which it derived its name. It was one of the most prosperous convents of the country, and Mariotti gives a delightful account of a visit paid by the great Farnese Pope, Paul III., to its Abbess. The Pope, it seems, gave himself the permission to visit the nuns, who received him, “marvelling,” as the most learned nun of her day relates, “that the Vicar of God on earth should so far humiliate himself as to visit such vile servants, as we were.” The Pope came into the church and took the seat prepared for him in the choir, “all of his own accord, without being helped by anybody, and like a meek and gentle lamb ... and being seated, he said to the sisters, ‘Come everyone of you and kiss my foot.’ ” Then the Abbess and the sisters kissed the feet of the Pope. A long conversation and exchange of compliments followed, and finally at sundown the Pope departed, “very greatly edified.”