The Story of Siena and San Gimignano

“Here she gave a little cross of silver, that she had threaded to her rosary, to Jesus Christ in the shape of a poor man, who afterwards told her that He would show it on the Day of Judgment to all the world.

“Here she gave her vest to Jesus Christ in the shape of a poor man, who afterwards robed her with an invisible robe whereby she never again suffered cold.

“Here Jesus Christ appeared to her surrounded by light, as she was wishing to descend by this place and go back to her house; and when straightway she fell to the ground thereat, He opened her breast and put there His own heart, saying, ‘Lo, most dear daughter mine, even as the other day I took from thee thy heart, so now do I give thee Mine own, by the which shall thou ever live.’

“While she was leaning in ecstasy against this pilaster, a candle that was there alight, in honour of some saints, fell upon the veils of her head and entirely burnt itself out upon them, without doing any harm or making any mark.

“While her confessor, Frate Raimondo, was celebrating Mass at the altar of the holy Apostles Peter and Paul, she remained at the foot of this chapel and desired to be fed with the Holy Communion; but because it was late, and the confessor knew not that she was there, she stayed there patiently; then did Jesus Christ in person communicate her with part of the Host consecrated at that Mass, and the confessor, not finding it, remained much afflicted until it was revealed to him by her.”

To many of us these things may seem mere priestly legends, and we may find, even in Catherine’s more solemn revelations, but little to meet our daily needs. Assuredly, few would maintain that Christ actually appeared, objectively, to His servant – that she walked with Him in aught save the spirit – that He spoke words to her otherwise than in her own heart. Yet, who shall set limits to the potential ascents of the human spirit when held so slightly by its mortal velo, when so little encumbered or shadowed by the nube di sua mortalità as was that of Caterina Benincasa? In those mystical suprasensible regions – during that half hour in which there is silence in Heaven – Catherine was a voyager alone, a sure wanderer in fields where our footsteps to-day cannot tread even in imagination. Let us adapt to ourselves the word of Frate Raimondo: “We are in the valley, and we presume to judge concerning what is on the summit of the Mountain.”

CHAPTER VIII

The Last Days of the Republic

FABIO DI PANDOLFO PETRUCCI had been expelled from Siena in September 1524, by a temporary alliance of all factions in the State. Of the three chief leaders in the revolution, Giovanni Martinozzi belonged to the Monte de’ Nove, Giovanni Battista Piccolomini to the Gentiluomini, while Mario Bandini was a grandson of Andrea Todeschini Piccolomini and therefore associated to the Monte del Popolo. Mario, who was a young man of about twenty-three, was at the head of the Libertini, an association of the most ardent republicans in Siena, who had sworn relentless and perpetual enmity to all who should attempt anything against the liberties of the Republic.

There were solemn religious processions, with the “Madonna delle Grazie” carried through the city in thanksgiving for the liberation of Siena from tyranny. But the Noveschi were by no means prepared to relinquish their prepotency. They rallied round Alessandro Bichi, who, with the favour of Pope Clement VII. and the Florentines, backed by the authority of the French who, under the Duke of Albany, were marching through Tuscany against the imperial forces in Naples, assumed the position from which the Petrucci had fallen. The three Monti were reduced to one, the Monte de’ Nobili Reggenti, and the power of the Balìa was vested in a select committee of sixteen, of which Alessandro was the recognised head. By common consent of contemporary writers, he was an able and high-minded man, with no blot upon his character – save this fatal usurpation of his country’s liberties. At the suggestion of the Medicean rulers of Florence and with financial aid from them, he was beginning to build a fortress or citadel on the hill of San Domenico to secure his hold, when the Battle of Pavia (February 1525) overthrew the power of France and made the Emperor, Charles V., arbiter of the destinies of Italy. The Libertini, headed by Mario Bandini and Girolamo Severini, saw that the time had come to deliver the Republic. Both parties entered into negotiations with the Emperor, through his vicar in Lombardy and his ambassador in Rome; Charles took Siena under his protection for the sum of 15,000 ducats. The appearance of the imperial commissaries in Siena gave the occasion for the rising. On April 6th, 1525, while Alessandro Bichi was counting out the money to them in the palace of the Archbishop, a band of Libertini headed by Giovanni Battista Fantozzo burst in and stabbed him to death. In the meanwhile the populace had risen throughout the city at the call of Mario Bandini, while the Mangia Tower rang out the alarm. The mercenaries of the guard of the Piazza held the openings to the Terzo di San Martino for the Noveschi, with artillery, but appear to have made little real resistance; comparatively few persons had been killed on either side, when evening saw the Libertini masters of the situation. The body of Alessandro was quietly conveyed to Sant’ Agostino and buried there.

The next day, the General Council of the Campana annulled all that had been done in Siena since the passage of the Duke of Albany, dissolved the Monte de’ Nobili Reggenti, created a new Collegio di Balìa, divided the government equally between the three Monti (the Dodicini, who had by this time lost all importance, being included in the Monte del Popolo), and appointed a magistracy of fifteen, afterwards twenty-one, Conservatori di Libertà. Alessandro’s son Antonio Maria Bichi, Giovanni Martinozzi, Lattanzio Petrucci and a number of other Noveschi left the city, and were put under bounds. Siena was once more a free Republic under the protection of the Emperor.

It was not hard for these Noveschi to gain the ear of Clement VII. and the aid of the Florentines. The Medicean Pontiff looked with jealous eyes upon the fair dominion of the Republic, and early in 1526 he declared war against Siena, with the professed object of restoring these exiled citizens to their country. The Balìa hired soldiers under Giulio Colonna and others, and prepared for a stout resistance. Two conspiracies were discovered to betray Siena to the Pope, and for his share in one of them Luzio Aringhieri – bastard son of that Messer Alberto whose glory is writ large upon the Duomo – was beheaded in front of the Palazzo. Then Andrea Doria with the papal fleet seized Talamone, while the Sienese contado was simultaneously invaded by the pontifical army under Count Virginio dell’ Anguillara and Count Lodovico of Pitigliano, and the Florentine army under their commissary, Roberto Pucci. Attempts to capture Montalcino and Montereggioni having failed, the two armies united before the walls of Siena itself, their main force taking up its position outside the Porta Camollia. Realising too late that the Pope had not made all these warlike preparations for their benefit, but was meditating the complete subjugation of the Republic, the leaders of the fuorusciti– Aldello Placidi and Giovanni Martinozzi – left the pontifical camp and went back, one to Rome, the other to Florence, rather then witness the ruin of their native land.

While the papal artillery thundered away unceasingly from the side of Camollia, the Balìa elected seven deputies to direct solemn processions with prayers and litanies, and decreed the renewal of the donation of Siena to the Madonna. A devout lady whom the citizens held to be endowed with prophetic spirit, Margherita Bichi, the widow of Francesco Buonsignori, declared that it was the Blessed Virgin’s will that the feast of her Immaculate Conception – which, it may be remembered, had not yet been proclaimed an article of faith – should ever after be solemnly celebrated in this her chosen city, “and further that Mary Immaculate willed that next Sunday all the Magistrates in whose hands was the lordship of the city should go to the Cathedral, having confessed and communicated, to that Image to which at other times they had presented themselves, and there they should have the Mass of the Immaculate Conception celebrated and then should confirm and renew the donation of the city to its true Patroness.”112 On the day appointed the Priors and Captain of the People, followed by the members of the Balìa and the Nine of the Guard with all the other officials, assembled at the Palazzo and, preceded by a great banner upon which was depicted the Assumption, moved in procession to the Duomo. There – after the votive Mass of the Immaculate Conception had been sung – the Prior of the Concistoro, stepping up to the altar, solemnly, in the name of the Republic, renewed the donation and surrendered the keys of the gates to the officiating priest, the canon Giovanni Pecci, who formally accepted and then gave them back.

Meanwhile the papal bombardment continued day after day, answered back by the artillery of the Sienese. The Portone beyond the gate of Camollia was a heap of ruins, but the guns had been badly placed and did little further harm to the walls; the Sienese, under Enea Sacchini, had made a number of successful sorties, and the pontifical generals were not prepared to venture upon a general assault. An attempt at intervention by an imperial agent, Don Hugo de Moncada, failed. Then on July 25th, the feast of St James and St Christopher, the forces of the Republic, under Giulio Colonna and Giovanni Maria Pini, suddenly issued out of the Porta Camollia and fell upon the enemy, while a smaller body of horse and foot sallied out of the Porta Fontebranda, drove the irregular cavalry of the Conte dell’ Anguillara in headlong flight before them and took the “blind Papal Florentines,” quei Papal Fiorentini ciechi (as the people sang of them), in the flank. Seized by a sudden panic, the whole army broke and fled in hopeless confusion, leaving their camp and artillery – the latter captured by Mario Bandini at the head of a band of young Libertini. Anguillara, the pontifical general, “a very fat man and with little foresight in war,” as a contemporary calls him, led the rout half dressed; while the Florentine commissary, Roberto Pucci, after some better show of valour, made the best of his way to Poggibonsi. As for the rank and file, pursued for only one mile, they ran for ten. The Sienese re-entered the city in triumph, with the captured guns and banners; three days of thanksgiving and festivity followed, and votive pictures in San Martino and the little oratory in Salicotto still tell the tale. “You know,” wrote Francesco Vettori to Machiavelli, “that I unwillingly allow myself to believe anything supernatural; but this defeat seems to me to have been as extraordinary – I will not say miraculous – as anything that has happened in war from 1494 to now; and it seems to me like certain histories that I have read in the Bible, when a terror entered into men so that they fled and knew not from whom.”113

With the imperialists ravening like hell-hounds in Rome and Florence in revolt against the Medici, Pope Clement soon had his hands too full of more deadly business to interfere with Siena. But the Sienese returned to their mad factions. Some of the fuorusciti under Giovanni Martinozzi harried the Valdichiana, and Francesco Petrucci made a temporary reappearance upon the scenes, threatening Massa. Within the city the Popolani, led by the Libertini, were attempting to keep down the Noveschi. In July 1527 – practically on the anniversary of the great victory of the past year – there was a sanguinary tumult, in which the populace sacked the houses of the leading Noveschi, murdered the younger Pietro Borghesi and a number of others in cold blood. The Monte de’ Nove was deprived of any share in the government and annulled, the old Monte de’ Riformatori being revived in its stead, and the government was divided between the three Monti – Popolani, Gentiluomini (with Dodicini), Riformatori. Some of the Noveschi were incorporated into the two latter Monti, but the greater part – the Petrucci, Borghesi, Bichi, Placidi, Bellanti, Bulgarini, and the like – was “for ever” admonished and excluded. A number of them were declared rebels and their goods confiscated. Thus permanently ended the supremacy of the Monte de’ Nove in the Republic of Siena, the State remaining in the hands of the Popolani and Riformatori. Several of the leaders of the Noveschi were given offices in the Papal States, Aldello Placidi being made Senator of Rome and Fabio Petrucci Governor of Spoleto.

Alfonso Piccolomini d’Aragona, Duke of Amalfi, a grand-nephew of Pius III., who was a persona gratissima with the people, was now appointed Captain-General of the forces of the Republic. Siena threw herself into the arms of the Caesarian Majesty of the Emperor and the Catholic Majesty of Spain, combined in the person of Charles V. The Emperor – to whom Siena was the key of Tuscany – sent a garrison of Spanish soldiers, with a series of vicars or governors, beginning with Don Lopez de Soria, who reformed the government again and readmitted the Noveschi, headed by Francesco Petrucci. These, however, no longer held their old position, and were only allowed a fourth part of the Balìa. There were furious tumults again in 1530, when Francesco Petrucci and Giovanni Maria Pini (the hero of the victory at the Porta Camollia) led the Noveschi, and Mario Bandini, as usual, headed the popular opposition, which readily got the upper hand. In one of these Giovanni Martinozzi was killed. An imperial army under the command of the overbearing young Ferrante Gonzaga threatened the city in consequence; Ferrante arrested Mario Bandini, who had come out to confer with him on behalf of the Popolani and Riformatori, but he was unable to reform the government in the favour of the Noveschi. His successor, the popular Marchese del Vasto, succeeded in effecting a compromise.

Trouble of another kind arose in 1535. A number of artisans and small shopkeepers, butchers, tailors, and the like, with other restless spirits among the lower orders, formed themselves into an association known as the Bardotti. There were a few more or less educated men among them, who fired their imaginations by reading Livy and Machiavelli, and at last they attempted a revolution, demanding tribunes after the old Roman model. The thing was a ludicrous failure, and Mario Bandini, upon whose support they relied, told them plainly to go back to their shops, and let affairs of State alone. It was on this occasion that the painter Pacchiarotti, who had posed as one of their leaders in the secret conventicles of the wine cellars, was so terrified that he hid himself in the vaults under the Osservanza, and even climbed into a tomb and lay by a corpse for security.

In April 1536 the Emperor himself came to Siena for a few days, and had a superb reception from the city, whose babes unborn were said to lisp the name of Caesar. These babes were destined to be disillusioned before they grew up to manhood. There were more tumults in 1539 between the Noveschi and the democratic orders, and Francesco Petrucci was again declared a rebel. The Duke of Amalfi was dismissed in 1541, and the Emperor sent two ministers, Monsignor Perrenot de Granvelle and Francesco Sfondrato of Cremona (both of them afterwards cardinals) to rule the city in his name. They reduced the Balìa to forty, dividing it equally between the four Monti, and reformed the State thoroughly and equitably, so that “for about two years the city lived better and more peacefully than it had done in any time past.”114 Then a change came. They were succeeded by Don Juan de Luna, a Spaniard, in 1543, who openly favoured the Noveschi, with whose aid, he imagined, he might rule Siena for himself under the Crown of Spain. He attempted to make a matrimonial alliance with the Piccolomini by offering one of his daughters to Giacomo di Antonio Maria; but his overtures were scornfully rejected. The Noveschi plotted to fall upon the people, to butcher their leaders at a bull-fight. That failing, in February 1546, trusting in Don Juan and his soldiers, they rose in arms, headed by Bartolommeo Petrucci, shouting “Imperio e Nove! Imperio e Nove!” But all the orders united against them, and they were repulsed, a number of them being slaughtered by the infuriated populace. Don Juan and his Spaniards evacuated the city, and the few Noveschi who had not fled were again deprived of the government, which was placed for three months in the hands of a committee of ten – three from each of the other Monti and the Captain of the People – to have the authority of the Balìa. The Archbishop Francesco Bandini, who was as much a peacemaker as his brother Mario was a firebrand, and Marcantonio Amerighi, were sent as ambassadors to explain to the Emperor what had happened. In this and the following year there were processions and festivities of all kinds in the Campo and throughout Siena, “the city being all joyous, thinking that they had conquered, and imagining that never again would any one molest it.”115

But in 1548, at the instigation of the exiled Noveschi, a famous personage came to represent the Emperor in Siena: Diego Hurtado de Mendoza, scholar, soldier, politician, the future author of the Guerra de Granada. He restored the Noveschi, reorganised the Balìa and the Signoria, and quartered Spanish soldiers in San Domenico, San Francesco, Sant’Agostino, and the Servi. He ruled the Republic in the most despotic fashion; he had brought with him a number of blank sheets of paper with the Emperor’s signature, and whenever he wanted anything from the Balìa or the Senate, he simply filled up one of these, and declared it was the will of Caesar. By his orders all the arms and weapons in Siena, both public and private, were collected in San Domenico, and all the artillery placed in its piazza by the side of the Campanile. The Balìa trembled before him, and instantly granted all that he demanded. He was, wrote a satirical poet of the epoch, “a foe to all Italy, to Heaven and to the World, and thought to make himself in Siena second to God.”116 A certain Tommaso Politi sent a letter to the Balìa, warning them that they were throwing away the liberties of their country; the servile Collegio handed over the letter to Don Diego, and the unfortunate writer was beheaded.

At last Don Diego announced that the Catholic Majesty intended to build a citadel at the walls of Siena, and that the Sienese themselves would have to supply what was necessary. At this, the unmistakable death-note to their liberties, even the servile Balìa was terrified, while a cry of dismay and horror rose from all the people, high and low; certain of the Noveschi alone were secretly favouring the project. The Concistoro decided to appeal simultaneously to Caesar and to the Blessed Virgin. Girolamo di Lattanzio Tolomei, and after him the historian Orlando Malavolti (the latter with a petition signed by more than a thousand citizens), were sent to the Emperor; while in Siena itself, Lelio Tolomei (Girolamo’s brother) delivered a passionate harangue to the Senate, and a solemn vow was made to the Madonna to marry every year, so long as the liberty of the Republic lasted, fifty poor maidens at the expense of the State, with a dowry of twenty-five gold florins each, and it was decided once more to renew the donation of Siena to her. This was in November 1550. On the Sunday after the decision had been taken, the Signori, headed by the Captain of the People, went in procession to the Duomo with the fifty maidens and the keys of the city. A solemn Mass of the Holy Spirit was sung, the Signori and others communicated, and then the Captain, Claudio Zuccantini, made “a most beauteous prayer,” in this wise: —

“If ever in times past, Immaculate Mother of God, our Patroness and Advocate, with compassionate prayers thou hast moved the mercy of thine only-begotten Son towards this thy most devout city, may it please thee to-day, more than ever before, to do so. For albeit thou hast saved it many times from various accidents and fearful wars, as from that of Montaperti and this other last of Camollia, never has there hung over it an affliction equal to this of to-day, when its only benefactor and protector, Charles V., desires to make in it a Castle. We cannot – and would not – resist him with any other means, save by thy welcome intercession with thy beloved Son, that He may infuse into him a more benign spirit towards this his most devoted city, especially as it has never sinned against his Majesty nor against the Sacred Empire.

“Take from him, in pity, such a thought, which befits not our sincere faith, and which brings with it the destruction of our honour, our dignity, our dear liberty, preserved until to-day under thy great guardianship and loving protection.

“Behold, most sacred Virgin, present before thee the hearts, the souls of thy Sienese people, repentant for all their past errors, kneeling and prostrate before thy throne to beg mercy and deliverance from the projected Castle. And I, as the least of all and thy servant, in the name of the Republic, by decree of the most ample Senate, make to thee a perpetual vow that – so long as, by thy intercession, our dear and sweet liberty shall last – fifty poor little maidens shall every year be married at the public expense, with a dowry for each of twenty-five florins, to thy greater glory and honour. Further, I consecrate to thee the city: I present to thee anew the keys, which were restored to us before, as to Her who is the safest and the most potent to guard them.

“Open with them the heart of Caesar, removing from it his unnecessary design. Dispose him rather to preserve us for those devout and faithful subjects that we have been and ever shall be, to his Caesarian Majesty and to the Sacred Empire. Lastly, take away from this most devoted People every memory of private injuries, and unite it with eternal peace and concord; to the end that, thus pacific and united, it may be able to serve God and thyself and his Caesarian Majesty, and to rejoice without end in our cherished liberty.”117

But the Emperor, to whom the possession of Siena was invaluable and who (since the fortresses of Livorno and Florence had been consigned to Duke Cosimo) had no other strong place in Tuscany, was resolute. He answered Malavolti graciously, assuring him that it was not to take away, but to maintain the liberty of Siena and to secure good government, that he was having this fortress built; but when, a little later on, more ambassadors arrived, “in mourning robes, as though in anticipation of the loss of their liberty,” he answered shortly that his imperial orders had been given, and refused to listen to any further representations on the subject. “We must drink this bitter chalice,” wrote Girolamo Tolomei, “and swallow this red-hot trivet.”

In the meanwhile, the foundations of the citadel had been laid on the Poggio di San Prospero, the site of the present Lizza, though the architect Peloro had, according to Sozzini, “made the design of such greatness for the benefit of his city, that his Catholic Majesty would not finish it in thirty years.” Dressed in red cloth, Don Diego came every day that he was in Siena to hurry on the work. But a weird figure rose up in the midst of it. The hermit Brandano had wandered through Italy preaching repentance, clothed in sackcloth with a halter round his neck, a Crucifix in one hand and a death’s-head in the other. On the eve of the sack of Rome he had appeared in the Eternal City, foretelling the scourge, denouncing Pope Clement and his cardinals. Beaten and imprisoned, he had next gone as a pilgrim to our Lady’s shrines in Spain, where he had been thrown into the dungeons of the Inquisition. Now he suddenly stood out on the hill-side, watching the builders at their work, chanting aloud in weird wailing tones the text of the psalm: Nisi Dominus aedificaverit domum, “Except the Lord build the house, they labour in vain that build it”; and then, when men stopped to listen, he cried again in a louder tone: Nisi Dominus custodierit civitatem, “Except the Lord keep the city, the watchman waketh but in vain.” Driven off the works, he returned again and again, declaring that he spoke by the will of God. Diego sent him to the galleys, but the Spanish commander at Port’Ercole found no cause in him and sent him back to Siena. Here he designed what Sozzini calls un bellissimo e notabil colpo, and hurled two huge stones at the head of a red-coated Spaniard, fondly imagining that he was the hated Diego. Arrested and brought before the governor, he calmly avowed his attempt to kill him for the sake of his fellow-citizens. Either an unwonted access of magnanimity or superstitious fear made the Spaniard spare his life, and he was merely banished from Siena on pain of death, the guards at the gates being bidden never to let him enter the city again.