The Story of Florence. Gardner Edmund G.

The Story of Florence

translation.

11

"On that great seat where thou dost fix thine eyes, for the crown's sake already placed above it, ere at this wedding feast thyself do sup,

"Shall sit the soul (on earth 'twill be imperial) of the lofty Henry, who shall come to straighten Italy ere she be ready for it."

12

i. e. The Nativity of the Blessed Virgin.

13

Purg. VI.–

"Athens and Lacedæmon, they who madeThe ancient laws, and were so civilised,Made towards living well a little signCompared with thee, who makest such fine-spunProvisions, that to middle of NovemberReaches not what thou in October spinnest.How oft, within the time of thy remembrance,Laws, money, offices and usagesHast thou remodelled, and renewed thy members?And if thou mind thee well, and see the light,Thou shalt behold thyself like a sick woman,Who cannot find repose upon her down,But by her tossing wardeth off her pain."

– Longfellow.

14

"In painting Cimabue thought that heShould hold the field, now Giotto has the cry,So that the other's fame is growing dim."

15

The "Colleges" were the twelve Buonuomini and the sixteen Gonfaloniers of the Companies. Measures proposed by the Signoria had to be carried in the Colleges before being submitted to the Council of the People, and afterwards to the Council of the Commune.

16

From Mr Armstrong's Lorenzo de' Medici.

17

The Palle, it will be remembered, were the golden balls on the Medicean arms, and hence the rallying cry of their adherents.

18

The familiar legend that Lorenzo told Savonarola that the three sins which lay heaviest on his conscience were the sack of Volterra, the robbery of the Monte delle Doti, and the vengeance he had taken for the Pazzi conspiracy, is only valuable as showing what were popularly supposed by the Florentines to be his greatest crimes.

Скачать книгу