Florence and Northern Tuscany with Genoa Part 4

The quarries are worked for money, not for art. The stone is cut not that Rodin may make a splendid statue, but that some company may earn a dividend. As you climb higher and higher, past quarry after quarry, it is a sense of slavery and death that you feel. Everywhere there is struggle, rebellion, cruelty; everywhere you see men, bound by ropes, slung over the dazzling face of the cliffs, hacking at the mountains with huge iron pikes, or straining to crash down a boulder for the ox wagons. As you get higher an anxious and disastrous silence surrounds you, the violated spirit of the mountains that has yielded itself only to the love of Michelangelo seems to be about to overwhelm you in some frightful tragedy. In the shadowless cool light of early morning, these pallid valleys, horrid with noise of struggle and terror, the snorting of a horse, the bellow of a bullock in pain, seem like some fantastic dream of a new Inferno; but when at last the enormous sun has risen over the mountains, and flooded the glens with furious heat, it is as though you walked in some delirium, a s.h.i.+ning world full of white fire dancing in agony around you. You stumble along, sometimes waiting till a wagon and twelve oxen have been beaten and thrust past you on the ascent, sometimes driven half mad by the booming of the dynamite, here threading an icy tunnel, there on the edge of a precipice, almost fainting in the heat, listening madly to the sound of water far below. Then, as you return through the sinister town of Torano with its sickening sights and smells, you come into the pandemonium of the workshops, where nothing has a being but the shriek of the rusty saws drenched with water, driven by machinery, cutting the marble into uniform slabs to line urinals or pave a closet. At last, in a sort of despair, overwhelmed with heat and noise, you reach your inn, and though it be midday in July, you seize your small baggage and set out where the difficult road leads out of this spoiled valley to the olives and the sea.

It was midday when, in spite of the sun, I set out up the long hill that leads to La Foce and Ma.s.sa from Carrara. It is a road that turns continually on itself, climbing always, among the olive woods and chestnuts, where the girls sing as they herd the goats, and the pleasant murmur of the summer, the song of the cicale, the wind of the hills, cleanse your heart of the horror of Carrara. Climbing thus at peace with yourself for a long hour, you come suddenly to La Foce, a sort of ridge or pa.s.s between the loftier hills, whence you may see the long-hidden sea, and Montignoso, that old Lombard castle still fierce above the olive woods, and Ma.s.sa itself, Ma.s.sa Ducale, a lofty precipitous city crowned by an old fortress. Who may describe the beauty of the way under the far-away peaks of marble, splendid in their rugged gesture, their immortal perfection and indifference! And indeed, from La Foce all the noise and cruelty of that life in the quarries at Carrara is forgotten.

As you begin to descend by the beautiful road that winds along the sides of the hills, the burden of those immense quarries, echoing with cries of distress inarticulate and pitiful, falls away from one. Here is Italy herself, fair as a G.o.ddess, delicate as a woman, forlorn upon the mountains. Everywhere in the quiet afternoon songs come to you from the shady woods, from the hillsides and the streams. Something of the simplicity and joy of a life we have only known in our hearts is expressed in every fold of the mountains, olive clad and terraced with walks and vines, where the husbandman labours till evening and the corn is ripe or reaping, and the sound of the flute dances like a fountain in the shade. And so, when at evening you enter the n.o.ble city of Ma.s.sa, among the women sitting at their doors sewing or knitting in the sunset, while the children, whole crowds of them, play in the narrow streets, their laughter echoing among the old houses as the sun dances in a narrow valley, or you pa.s.s among the girls who walk together in a nosegay, arm in arm, or the young men who lounge together in a crowd against the houses watching them, there is joy in your heart, because this is life, simple and frank and full of hope, without an afterthought or a single hesitation of doubt or fear.

There is little to be seen at Ma.s.sa that is not just the natural beauty of the place, set like a flower among the woods, that climb up to the marble peaks. Not without a certain interest you come upon the Prefettura, which once was the summer castle of Elisa Baciocchi, Napoleon's sister, who as a gift from him held Lucca, and was much beloved, from 1805 to 1814. And joyful as the country is under that impartial sun, before that wide and ancient sea, among her quiet woods and broken shrines, it is not without a kind of hesitation and shame almost that you learn that the great fortress which crowns the city is now a prison in which are many half-witted unhappy folk, who in this transitory life have left the common way. It is strange that in so many lands the prison is so often in a place of the greatest beauty. At Tarragona, far away over the sea looking towards Italy, the hospital of those who have for one cause or another fallen by the way is set by the sea-sh.o.r.e, almost at the feet of the waves, so that in a storm the momentary foam from those restless, free waters must often be scattered about the courtyard, where those who have injured us, and whom in our wisdom we have deprived of the world, are permitted to walk. It is much the same in Tangier, where the horrid gaol, always full of groans and the torture of the bastinado, is in the dip of the Kasbah, where it joins the European city with nothing really between it and the Atlantic.

In Ma.s.sa these prisoners and captives can see the sea and the great mountains, and must often hear the piping of those who wander freely in the woods. Even in Italy, it seems, where the criminal is beginning to be understood as a sick person, they have not yet contrived to banish the older method of treatment: as who should say, you are ill and fainting with anaemia, come let me bleed you.

It is at Ma.s.sa that on your way south you come again into the highroad from Genoa to Pisa, for while, having left it at Spezia, you found it again at Sarzana, it was a by-road that led you to Carrara and again to Ma.s.sa Ducale. Now, though the way you seek be the highway of the pilgrims, it is none the better as a road for that. For the wagons bringing marble to the cities by the way have spoiled it altogether, so that you find it ground with ruts six inches deep and smothered in dust; therefore, if you come by carriage, and still more if you be _en automobile_, it is necessary to go warily. On foot nothing matters but the dust, and if you start early from Ma.s.sa that will not annoy you, for in the early morning, for some reason of the G.o.ds, the dust lies on the highway undisturbed, while by ten o'clock the air is full of it. It is a bad road then all the way to Pietrasanta, but most wonderful and lovely nevertheless. For the most part the sea is hidden from you, for you are in truth on the sea-sh.o.r.e, though far enough from the waves, a land of fields and cuc.u.mbers coming between road and water. Swinging along in the dawn, you soon pa.s.s that old castle of Montignoso, crumbling on its high rock, built by the Lombard Agilulf to hold the road to Italy. Then not without surprise you pa.s.s quite under an old Albergo which crosses the way, where certainly of old the people of Ma.s.sa took toll of the Tuscans, and the Tuscans taxed all who came into their country. Then the road winds through a gorge beside a river, and at last between delicious woods of olives full of silver and golden shade most pleasant in the heat, past Seravezza in the hills, you come to the little pink and white town of Pietrasanta under the woods, at noon.

Pietrasanta is set at the foot of the Hills of Paradise, littered with marble, planted with figs and oleanders, full of the sun. For hours you may climb among the olives on the hills, terraced for vines, s.h.i.+mmering in the heat; and resting there, watch the sleepy sea lost in a silver mist, the mysterious blue hills, listening to the songs of the maidens in the gardens. Thus watching the summer pa.s.s by, caught by her beauty, lying on an old wall beautiful with lichen and the colours of many autumns, suddenly you may be startled by the stealthy, unconcerned approach of a great snake three feet long at least, winding along the gully by the roadside. Half fascinated and altogether fearful, you watch her pa.s.s by till she disappears bit by bit in an incredibly small fissure in the vineyard wall, leaving you breathless. Or all day long you will lie under the olives waiting for the coolness of evening, listening to the sound of everlasting summer, the piping of a shepherd, the little lovely song of a girl, the lament of the cicale. Then returning to Pietrasanta, you will sit in the evening perhaps in the Piazza there, quite surrounded by the old walls, with its mediaeval air, its lovely Municipio and fine old Gothic churches. Here you may watch all the city, the man and his wife and children, the young girls laughing together, conscious of the shy admiration of the youth of the place; and you will be struck by the beauty of these people, peasants and workmen, their open, frank faces, their grace and strength, their unconcerned delight in themselves, their air of distinction too, coming to them from a long line of ancestors who have lived with the earth, the mountains, and the sea.

Then in the early morning, perhaps, you will enter S. Martino and hear the early Ma.s.s, where there are still so many wors.h.i.+ppers, and then, lingering after the service, you will admire the pulpit, carved really by one of those youths whose frankness and grace surprised you in the Piazza on the night before--Stagio Stagi, a native of this place, a fine artist whose work continually meets you in Pietrasanta. Indeed, in the choir of the church there are some candelabra by him, and an altar, built, as it is said, out of two confessional boxes. In the Baptistery close by are some bronzes, said to be the work of Donatello, and some excellent sculptures by Stagio; while, as though to bear out the hidden paganism, some dim memory of the old G.o.ds, that certainly haunts this shrine, the font is an old Roman _tazza_, carved with Tritons and Neptune among the waves; but over it now stands another supposed work of Donatello, S. Giovanni Battista, reconciled, as we may hope, with those whose wors.h.i.+p he has usurped.

The facade of S. Martino is of the fourteenth century, as is that of S.

Agostino, its neighbour, where you may find another altar by Stagio.

Then it may be at evening you seek the sea-sh.o.r.e, that mysterious, forlorn coast where the waves break almost with a caress. It was here, or not far away, somewhere between this little wonderful city and Viareggio, then certainly a mere village, that Sh.e.l.ley's body was burned, as Trelawney records.[15] "The lovely and grand scenery that surrounded us," he says, "so exactly harmonised with Sh.e.l.ley's genius, that I could imagine his spirit soaring over us.... Not a human dwelling was in sight.... I got a furnace made at Leghorn of iron bars and strong sheet-iron supported on a stand, and laid in a stock of fuel and such things as were said to be used by Sh.e.l.ley's much-loved h.e.l.lenes on their funeral pyres.... At ten on the following morning, Captain S. and myself, accompanied by several officers of the town, proceeded in our boat down the small river which runs through Via Reggio (and forms its harbour for coasting vessels) to the sea.[16] Keeping along the beach towards Ma.s.sa, we landed at about a mile from Via Reggio, at the foot of the grave; the place was noted by three wand-like reeds stuck in the sand in a parallel line from high to low-water mark. Doubting the authenticity of such pyramids, we moved the sand in the line indicated, but without success. I then got five or six men with spades to dig transverse lines. In the meanwhile Lord Byron's carriage with Mr. Leigh Hunt arrived, accompanied by a party of dragoons and the chief officers of the town. In about an hour, and when almost in despair, I was paralysed with the sharp and thrilling noise a spade made in coming in direct contact with the skull. We now carefully removed the sand. This grave was even nearer the sea than the other [Williams's], and although not more than two feet deep, a quant.i.ty of the salt water oozed in.

"... We have built a much larger pile to-day, having previously been deceived as to the immense quant.i.ty of wood necessary to consume a body in the unconfined atmosphere." Mr. Sh.e.l.ley had been reading the poems of "Lamia" and "Isabella" by Keats, as the volume was found turned back open in his pocket; so sudden was the squall. The fragments being now collected and placed in the furnace here fired, and the flames ascended to the height of the lofty pines near us. We again gathered round, and repeated, as far as we could remember, the ancient rites and ceremonies used on similar occasions. Lord B. wished to have preserved the skull, which was strikingly beautiful in its form. It was very small and very thin, and fell to pieces on attempting to remove it.

"Notwithstanding the enormous fire, we had ample time e'er it was consumed to contemplate the singular beauty and romantic wildness of the scenery and objects around us. Via Reggio, the only seaport of the Duchy of Lucca, built and encompa.s.sed by an almost boundless expanse of deep, dark sand, is situated in the centre of a broad belt of firs, cedars, pines, and evergreen oaks, which covers a considerable extent of country, extending along the sh.o.r.e from Pisa to Ma.s.sa. The bay of Spezia was on our right, and Leghorn on our left, at almost equal distances, with their headlands projecting far into the sea, and forming this whole s.p.a.ce of interval into a deep and dangerous gulf. A current setting in strong, with a N.W. gale, a vessel embayed here was in a most perilous situation; and consequently wrecks were numerous: the water is likewise very shoal, and the breakers extend a long way from the sh.o.r.e. In the centre of this bay my friends were wrecked, and their bodies tossed about--Captain Williams seven, and Mr. Sh.e.l.ley nine days, e'er they were found. Before us was a most extensive view of the Mediterranean, with the isles of Gorgona, Caprera, Elba, and Corsica in sight. All around us was a wilderness of barren soil with stunted trees, moulded into grotesque and fantastic forms by the cutting S.W. gales. At short and equal distances along the coast stood high, square, antique-looking towers, with flagstaff's on the turrets, used to keep a look-out at sea and enforce the quarantine laws. In the background was the long line of the Italian Alps.

"... After the fire was kindled ... more wine was poured over Sh.e.l.ley's dead body than he had consumed during his life. This, with the oil and salt, made the yellow flames glisten and quiver.... The only portions that were not consumed were some fragments of bones, the jaw and the skull; but what surprised us all was that the heart remained entire. In s.n.a.t.c.hing this relic from the fiery furnace my hand was severely burnt; and had anyone seen me do the act I should have been put in quarantine."

Sh.e.l.ley's ashes were taken to Rome, and buried in the English cemetery there, a place he loved, that is perhaps the most beautiful of the beautiful graveyards of Italy.

Of Viareggio itself there is little to be said. It is a town by the seaside, full in summer of holiday-making Tuscans from Florence and the cities round about. A pretty place enough, it possesses an unique market-place covered in by ancient twisted plane trees, where the old women chaffer with the cooks and contadine. But nothing, as it seems to me, and certainly not so modern a place as Viareggio, will keep you long from Pisa. Even on the dusty way from Pietrasanta, at every turn of the road one has half expected to see the leaning tower and the Duomo. And it is really with an indescribable impatience you spend the night in Viareggio. Starting at dawn, still without a glimpse of Pisa, you enter the Pineta before the sun, that lovely, green, cool forest full of silver shadows, with every here and there a little farm for the pine cones, about which they are heaped in great banks. Coming out of this wood on the dusty road in the golden heat, between fields of cuc.u.mbers, you meet market carts and contadini returning from the city. Then you cross the Serchio in the early light, still and mysterious as a river out of Malory. And at last, suddenly, like a mirage, the towers of Pisa rise before you, faint and beautiful as in a dream. As you turn to look behind you at the world you are leaving, you find that the mountains, those marvellous Apuan Alps with their fragile peaks, have been lost in the distance and the sky; and so, with half a regret, full of expectancy and excitement nevertheless, you quicken your pace, and even in the heat set out quickly for the white city before you,--Pisa, once lord of the sea, the first great city of Tuscany.

FOOTNOTES:

[15] I no longer believe it is possible to be certain of the place. At any rate, all the guide-books, Baedeker, Murray, and Hare, are wrong, though not so far out as that gentleman who, having a.s.sured us that Boccaccio was a "little priest," and that Petrarch, Poliziano, Lorenzo, and Pulci were of no account as poets, remarks that Sh.e.l.ley's body was found at Lerici, and that he was burned close by.

[16] See Carmichael, _The Old Road_, etc., pp. 183-202.

VI. PISA

I

To enter Pisa by the Porta Nuova, coming at once into the Piazza del Duomo, is as though at midday, on the highway, one had turned aside into a secret meadow full of a strange silence and dazzling light, where have been abandoned among the wild flowers the statues of the G.o.ds. For the Piazza is just that--a meadow scattered with daisies, among which, as though forgotten, stand unbroken a Cathedral, a Baptistery, a Tower, and a Cemetery, all of marble, separate and yet one in the consummate beauty of their grouping. And as though weary of the silence and the light, the tower has leaned towards the flowers, which may fade and pa.s.s away. So amid the desolation of the Acropolis must the statues of the Parthenon have looked from the hills and the sea, with something of this abandoned splendour, this dazzling solitude, this mysterious calm silence, satisfied and serene.

Wherever you may be in Pisa, you cannot escape from the mysterious influence of those marvellous ghosts that haunt the verge of the city, that corner apart where the wind is white on the gra.s.s, and the shadows steal slowly through the day. The life of the world is far away on the other side of the city; here is only beauty and peace.

If you come into the Piazza, as most travellers do, from the Lung' Arno, as you turn into the Via S. Maria or out of the Borgo into the beautiful Piazza dei Cavalieri, gradually as you pa.s.s on your way life hesitates and at last deserts you. In the Via S. Maria, for instance, that winds like a stream from the Duomo towards Arno, at first all is gay with the memory and noise of the river, the dance of the sun and the wind. Then you pa.s.s a church; some shadow seems to glide across the way, and it is almost in dismay you glance up at the silent palaces, the colour of pearl, barred and empty; and then looking down see the great paved way where your footsteps make an echo; while there amid the great slabs of granite the gra.s.s is peeping. It is generally out of such a shadowy street as this that one comes into the dazzling Piazza del Duomo. But indeed, all Pisa is like that. You pa.s.s from church to church, from one deserted Piazza to another, and everywhere you disturb some shadow, some silence is broken, some secret seems to be hid. The presence of those marvellous abandoned things in the far corner of the city is felt in every byway, in every alley, in every forgotten court. "Amid the desolation of a city" this splendour is immortal, this glory is not dead.

II

"Varie sono le opinioni degli Scrittori circa l'edificazione di Pisa,"

says Tronci in his _Annali Pisani_, published at Livorno in the seventeenth century. "Various are the opinions of writers as to the building of Pisa, but all agree that it was founded by the Greeks. Cato in his _Fragment_, and Dionysius Halicarna.s.sus in the first book of his _History_, affirm that the founders were the Pisi Alfei Pelasgi, who had for their captain the King Pelops, as Pliny says in his _Natural History_ (lib. 5), and Solinus too, as though it were indubitable: who does not know that Pisa was from Pelops?" Certainly Pisa is very old, and whether or no King Pelops, as Pliny thought, founded the city, the Romans thought her as old as Troy. In 225 B.C. she was an Etruscan city, and the friend of Rome; in Strabo's day she was but two miles from the sea; Caesar's time she became a Roman military station; while in 4 A.D. we read that the disturbances at the elections were so serious that she was left without magistrates. That fact in itself seems to bring the city before our eyes: it is so strangely characteristic of her later history.

[Ill.u.s.tration: PISA

_Alinari_]

But in spite of her enormous antiquity, there are very few left of her Etruscan and Roman days, the remains of some Roman Thermae, Bagni di Nerone near the Porta Lucca being, indeed, all that we may claim, save the urns and sarcophagi scattered in the Campo Santo, from the great days of Rome. The glory of Pisa is the end of the Middle Age and the early dawn of the Renaissance. There, amid all the hurly-burly and terror of invasion and civil wars, she s.h.i.+nes like a beacon beside the sea, proud, brave, and full of hope, almost the only city not altogether enslaved in a country in the grip of the barbarian, almost overwhelmed by the Lombards. And indeed, she was one of the first cities of Italy to fling off the Lombard yoke. Favoured by her position on the sh.o.r.es of the Tyrrhenian Sea, yet not so near the coast as to invite piracy, she waged incessant war on Greek and Saracen. Lombardy, heavy with conquest, fearful for her prize, which was Italy, was compelled to encourage the growth of the naval cities. It was on the sea that the future of Pisa lay, like the glory of the sun that in its splendour and pride pa.s.ses away too soon.

Already in the ninth century we hear of her prowess at Salerno, while in the tenth, having possessed herself of her own government under consuls, she sent a fleet to help the Emperor Otho II in Sicily. Fighting without respite or rest, continually victorious, never downhearted, she had opened the weary story of the civil strife of Italy with a war against Lucca, in the year 1004.[17] It was the first outburst of that hatred in her heart which in the end was to destroy her for she died of a poverty of love.

In 1005, still with her fleet engaged in Sicilian waters, the Arab pirates fell upon her, and, forcing the harbour, sacked a whole quarter of the city. For the time Pisa could do little against the foes of Europe, but in 1016 she allied herself with that city which proved at last to be her deadliest foe, Genoa the Proud, and the united fleets swept down on Sardinia for vengeance. It was this victorious expedition that aroused the hatred of the Pisans for Genoa, a jealousy that was only extinguished when at last Pisa was crushed at Meloria.

Many were the attempts of the Arabs to regain Sardinia, but Pisa was not to be deceived. Coasting along the African sh.o.r.e, her fleet took Bona and threatened Carthage. Yet in 1050 the Arabs of Morocco and Spain stole the island from her, only Cagliari holding out under the n.o.bles for the mother city. There was more than the loss of Sardinia at stake, for with the victory of the Arabs the highway of the sea was no longer secure, the existence of Pisa, and not of Pisa only, was threatened. So we find Genoa once more standing beside Pisa in the fight of Europe. The fleets again were combined, this time under the command of a Pisan, one Gualduccio, a plebeian. He sailed for Cagliari, landed his men, and engaged the enemy on the beach. The Arabs were led by the King Mogahid, Re Musetto, as the Italians called him. He was over eighty years old at the time, and though still full of cunning valour, attacked by the fleets in front and the garrison in the rear, his army was defeated and put to flight. He himself, fleeing on horseback, was wounded in two places, and falling was captured; and they took him in chains to Pisa, where he died. Thus Sardinia once more fell into the hands of Europe, and the island, divided in fiefs under the rule of Pisa,[18] was held and governed by her.

But Pisa was not yet done with the Arab. She stood for Europe. In 1063 she fought at Palermo, returning laden with booty. It was then, after much discussion in the Senate,[19] sending an emba.s.sy to the Pope and another to "Re Henrico di Germania," that she decided to employ this spoil in building the Duomo, in the place where the old Church of S.

Reparata stood, and more anciently the Baths of Hadrian, the Emperor.

The temple, Tronci tells us,[20] was dedicated to the Magnificent Queen of the Universe, Mary, ever Virgin, most worthy Mother of G.o.d, Advocate of sinners. It was begun in 1064, and many years, as Tronci says, were consumed in the building of it.[21] The pillars--and there are many--were brought by the Pisans from Africa, from Egypt, from Jerusalem, from Sardinia, and other far lands.

At this time Pisa was divided into four parts, called _Quartieri_. The first was called _Ponte_, the ensign of which was a rosy Gonfalon; the second, _di Mezzo_, which had a standard with seven yellow stripes on a red field; the third, _Foriporta_, which had a white gate in a rosy field; and the fourth, _Chinsica_ with a white cross in a red field.[22]

Nor was the Duomo the only building that the Pisans undertook about this time. Eight years later, the Church of S. Pietro in Vincoli, called to-day S. Pierino, was built on a spot where of old "there was a temple of the Gentiles" dedicated to Apollo; that, when the Pisans received the faith of Jesus Christ, they gave to St. Peter, the Prince of the Apostles. This church appears to have been consecrated by the great Archbishop Peter on 30th August 1119.

These two churches, and especially the Duomo, still perhaps the most wonderful church in Italy, prove the greatness of the civilisation of Pisa at this time. She was then a self-governed city, owing allegiance, it is true, to the Marquisate of Tuscany, but with consuls of her own.

Since she was so warlike, the n.o.bles naturally had a large part in her affairs. In the Crusade of 1099 the Pisans were late, as the Genoese never ceased to remind them,--to come late, in Genoa, being spoken of as "_Come l'ajuto di Pisa_"; and, indeed, like the Genoese, the Pisans thought as much of their own commercial advantage in these Holy Wars as of the Tomb of Jesus. In 1100 they returned from Jerusalem, their merchants having gained, _una loggia, una contrada, un fondaco e una chiesa_ for their nation in Constantinople, with many other fiscal benefits. Nor were they forgetful of their Duomo, for they came home with much spoil, bringing the bodies of the Saints Nicodemus the Prince of the Pharisees, Gamaliel the master of St. Paul, and Abibone, one of the seventy-two disciples of our Lord Jesus Christ.[23]

Encouraged by their success, not long afterwards, they, in their invincible confidence and force, decided to undertake another enterprise. Urged thereto by their Archbishop Peter, they set out, partly for glory, partly in the hope of spoil to free the thousands of Christians held captive by the Arabs in the Balearic islands. The fleet sailed on the 6th August 1114, the Feast of S. Sisto, the anniversary of other victories. There were, it seems, some three hundred s.h.i.+ps of diverse strength; and every sort of person, old and young, took part in this adventure. Going astray, they first landed in Catalonia and did much damage; then, "acknowledging their unfortunate mistake," they found the island, where, under Archbishop Peter and the Pope's gonfalone, they were entirely successful. They released the captives, and, amid the immense spoil, they brought away the son of the Moorish king, whom later they baptized in Pisa and sent back to the Moors. The Pisan dead were, however, very many. At first they thought to load a s.h.i.+p with the slain and bring them home again; but this was not found possible. Sailing at last for Ma.r.s.eilles, they buried them there in the Badia di S. Vittore, later bringing the monks to Pisa.

Now, while the glory of Pisa shone thus upon the waters far away, the Lucchesi thought to seize Pisa herself, deprived of her manhood. But the Florentines, who at this time were friends with Pisa, since their commerce depended upon the Porto Pisano, sent a company to guard the city, encamping some two miles off; for since so much loot lay to hand, to wit, Pisa herself, the Florentine captains feared lest they might not be able to hold their men. And, indeed, one of their number entered the city intent on the spoil, but was taken, and they judged him worthy only of death. But the Pisans, not to be outdone in honour, refused to allow him to be executed in their territory; then the Florentines bought a plot of ground near the camp, and killed him there. When the fleet returned and heard this, they determined to send Florence a present to show their grat.i.tude. Now, among the spoil were some bronze gates and two rosy pillars of porphyry, very precious. Then they besought the Florentines to choose one of these, the gates or the pillars, as a gift.

And Florence chose the pillars, which stand to-day beside the eastern gate of the Baptistery in that city. But on the way to Florence they encountered the Mugnone in flood, and were thrown down and broken there.

Hence the Florentines, that scornful and suspicious folk, swore that the Pisans had cracked their gifts themselves with fire before sending them, that Florence might not possess things so fair.

Other jealousies, too, arose out of the success of Pisa, though indirectly. For the Genoese, never content that she should have the overlords.h.i.+p of Sardinia, were still more disturbed when Pope Gelasius II., that Pisan, gave Corsica to Pisa, so that about 1125[24] they made war on her. The war lasted many years, till Innocent II, being Pope and come to Pisa, made peace, giving the Genoese certain rights in Corsica.

About this time S. Bernard was in Pisa, where in 1134 Innocent II held a General Council; not for long, however, for in the same year he set out for Milan to reconcile that Church with Rome.

Her quarrel with Genoa was scarcely finished when Pisa found herself at war with the Normans in Southern Italy, defending heroically the city of Naples and utterly destroying Amalfi, the wonderful republic of the South.[25] Certainly the might of Pisa was great; her supremacy was unquestionable from Lerici to Piombino, but behind her hills Lucca was on watch, not far away Florence her friend as yet, held the valley of the Arno, while Genoa on the sea dogged her steps between the continents. Thus Pisa stood in the middle of the twelfth century the strongest and most warlike city in Tuscany, full of ambition and the love of beauty and glory. For it was now in 1152 that she began to build the Baptistery, and in 1174 the famous Campanile, a group of buildings with the Duomo unrivalled in the world.

Meanwhile the Great Countess of Tuscany had died in 1115; more and more Italy became divided against itself, and by the end of the century Guelph and Ghibelline, commune and n.o.ble, were tearing her in pieces.

Tuscany, really little more than a group of communes devoted to trade, with the great feudatories ever in the offing, without any real unity, slowly became the stronghold of the Guelphs. Only Pisa,[26] glorying in the strength of the sea and the splendour of war, was Ghibelline, with Siena on her sunny hills. Now, having won Sardinia for herself, her n.o.bles there established were, as was their manner everywhere, continually at feud. The Church, thinking to make Pisan sovereignty less secure, supported the weaker. Already Innocent III had, following this plan, called on the Pisans to withdraw their claim to the island. And it was a Pisan n.o.ble, Visconti, who, marrying into one of the island families related to Gregory IX, recognised the Papal suzerainty. Thus this family in Pisa became Guelph. But the other n.o.bles, among whom was the Gherardesca family, threw their weight on the other side, and so Pisa, who had ever leaned that way, became staunchly Ghibelline.[27]

The quarrel with Florence was certain sooner or later, for Florence was growing in strength and riches; she would not for ever be content to let Pisa hold her sea-gate, taking toll of all that pa.s.sed in and out. It was in 1222 that the first war broke out with the White Lily. Any excuse was good enough; the bone of contention appears to have been a lap-dog belonging to one of the Amba.s.sadors[28]. Pisa was beaten. In 1259, nevertheless, she turned on the Genoese and drove them down the seas.

But the death of Frederic in 1250 was the true end of the Ghibelline cause in Italy.

What then did Pisa look like in these the days of her great power and prosperity? She was a city, we may think, of narrow shadowy streets like the Via delle Belle Torri, full of refuse and garbage too, for then, as now in the remoter places, the household slops were simply hurled out of the windows with a mere _guarda_! called from an upper window. And to the horror of less fortunate cities, these streets were full of "Pagans, Turks, Libyans, Parthians, and foul Chaldeans, with their incense, pearls, and jewels." Yet though so good a Guelph as Donizo, the biographer of the great Countess, can express his horror of these "Gentiles," Genoa, too, must have been in much the same case; but then Genoa was Guelph, and Pisa Ghibelline. Yet then, as to-day in that quiet far corner of the city, in a meadow sprinkled with daisies, the great white Duomo stood a silent witness to the splendour of the n.o.blest republic in Tuscany.

But her day was too soon over. In 1254, Florence and Lucca met and defeated her. The Guelphs had won. In Pisa we find the government reformed, elders appointed, a senate, a great council, and Podesta, a Captain of the People. It seemed as though Pisa herself was about to become Guelph, or at any rate to fling out her n.o.bles. But in many a distant colony the n.o.bles ruled, undisturbed by the disaster at home.

And then, almost before she had set her house in order, the splendid victory of Monteaperto threw the Guelphs into confusion, and the banners of Pisa once more flew wide and far. But the fatal cause of the Empire was doomed; Manfred fell at Benevento, and Corradino was defeated at Tagliacozzo by Charles of Anjou, who, not content with victory, expelled the Pisan merchants from his ports. There was left to her the sea.