Lombard towns of Italy

Preface

This volume completes the trilogy which I set myself, more than ten years ago, to write upon the most interesting cities and towns of Italy outside of the half-dozen commonly visited by travellers in making the " grand tour " : a task inspired by the desire to bring to a more intimate knowledge of Anglo- Saxon readers the countless beauties and delights — natural, historic and artistic — of the most important of those hundreds of wonderful places in the peninsula which had theretofore escaped the attention of the general voyageur. Thus was born the " Hill Towns of Italy," describing the cities of the Apennines, north of Rome, from sea to sea; there followed the " Plain-Towns of Italy," covering the second most interesting region of the kingdom, — Venetia ; but if I characterise the district portrayed in this final volume — Lombardy — as only third in Interest and fascination, I shall be met with a chorus of objections demanding for It the first or the second place. The truth is, as I have found, that there can be no real rank amongst those three most alluring provinces of " that Enchanted Land, whose beauty is Inexhaustible, and whose boundless Interests touch, and will always touch, men and women who perceive the deepest concerns of the human soul." 1

When we come to the cities of Lombardy, nevertheless, we should stop to remember that — aside from all those delights of artistic beauty and historical association which are common to the whole three regions — they have exercised upon the progress of civilisation an Influence so unique and

1 W. R. Thayer ; in his " Italica."

vii

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PREFACE profound that its impress Is still visible upon our modern institutions; an influence which was so prominent a factor in the making of those institutions that it should be carefully noted in advance by every traveller and student.

The cause of the deviation made by these towns in the current of history, of their marked acceleration of the progress of mankind, was the descent from the north of that remarkable Teutonic race, the Lombards, to impose upon the petrifying Roman customs their own free and untrammelled ideas of life. As Lord Lindsay put it: "The freedom of the North, the civilisation of the South, and the Christianity of the East, are the three elements from the commixture of which the character and history of Europe spring; and Italy was the field where these elements first met, and began to amalgamate. The invasion of the Lombards, in 568, may be considered as the preliminary step to this consummation. They were a noble race, of pure morals, and a bold, manly, generous, and even romantic character ; presenting the strongest possible contrast to the corrupt and degenerate Romans, whom they held in utter contempt." ^

The Lombards were not, therefore, the quite wild and savage people that they are often represented to be, but a nation sufficiently developed to have attained that extraordinary individuality which was the first to resist the influences of ancient Rome, and to force upon her Immemorial systems their own Ideals of government, art, and living. Here was the first assertion — at least since the long-dead, ancient republics of Greece and Rome — of the rights of the individual man, as against centralised, autocratic rule, and the privileges of class and clergy. To this daring Teutonic race we owe, therefore, the beginnings of modern human liberty and Individual freedom, of the sanctity of person and of property, of

2 Lord Lindsay ; in his " Lombard Architecture.'"

PREFACE IX

decentralised, representative, laissez-faire government; — initiated by them in these cities of north-Italy a hundred years or more before their cousins, the Anglo-Saxons, began a similar revolution in Roman Britain. The towns of Lombardy, fortunately preserved mostly intact under the preceding Goths, — w^ho had themselves been absorbed by the ponderous ancient Roman system, — thus took the lead in the advancement of free government and personal rights, and held it for centuries before the whole of Europe; resisting with heroic valour, as self-governing republics, the endless aggressions made upon their liberties by emperors, popes, and neighbouring tyrants; until the fiery spirit instilled by the Teutons found its supreme expression in that glorious Lombard League which annihilated at Legnano, in 1176, the armed hosts and the aspirations of Frederick Barbarossa.

With the end of the second League and the final suppression of imperial designs, the Lombard cities did — it is true, exhausted by the long strife of Guelf and Ghibelline — succumb to their own despots; and the Visconti obtained sway, from Milan and Pavia, over all that part of the province which was not grasped by the splendid Gonzaghi of Mantua: the one family becoming by all means the most powerful, and the second pre-eminently the most magnificent — in princely living, in culture, and the use of the reborn arts — of all the tyrannies that sprang from Italian soil. But now there emerged into the sunlight the second fruits of the northern towns' absorption of the Lombard spirit, even more important — if possible — to the world at large : the beginnings of modern civilisation.

That of the old Romans, as modified by the Lombards, had been within their stout walls safely preserved during these centuries of the Dark Age; some branches of ancient art and science had, indeed, perished, — but not by fault of

X PREFACE

the Lombards, under whom " the Italians enjoyed a milder and more equitable government than any of the other kingdoms which have been founded on the ruins of the Western Empire;"^ the citizens, however, zealously keeping alive what handicrafts, what branches of art and the applied sciences, were left to them, reinvlgorated from their quondam decadence by the admixture of the powerful northern blood, had striven vigorously and continuously to improve their knowledge, to better their conditions of life, and to beautify their cities. The same fierce Lombard genius that kept them enviously at war with each other during the generations preceding the Oath of Pontida, incited each town to endeavour to exceed its rivals in aggrandisement; each was a burning centre of civic life, that strove to outdo its neighbours in building, in the embellishment of its arts, in the wealth and the ostentation derived from its handicrafts and its knowledge of the sciences.

When we stop to think that in these cities of northern Italy, during all that terrible Middle Age, remained practically the only salvation from the feudalism which was destroying culture everywhere else In Europe, — reducing human life to a system of wild country serfs dependent upon savage baronial castles, — we realize how infinitely we are indebted to them for the preservation, first, and later the renovation, of civilised existence.

To this period we owe the many superb examples oflFered us by the cities of the plain of the so-called Lombard- Romanesque architecture, civic and ecclesiastical, — which was the result of the Lombard art superimposed upon and altering the decadent Roman. Although the Lombard dynasty ceased to rule toward the end of the eighth century, upon the coming of Charlemagne, the art of Its j)eople — by then

s Gibbon.

PREFACE XI

thoroughly mixed with, and predominant amongst, the old Romans — continued to rule until the trecento. The Lombards, in spite of their addiction to country-life, were powerful builders, and changed the features of the dying Roman architecture in accordance with their temperament. Above all — and this is our chief debt to them in the realms both of art and of religion — they revolutionised the form of the Christian church; shaping it into the beautiful edifice that still symbolises to us the tenets and the traditions of our faith.

Such a daring metamorphosis of the long-established Catholic forms and prejudices was only to be expected from those remarkable men who first insisted upon entire freedom from churchly rule and clerical privileges. " Whatever merit " — said Gibbon — " may be discovered in the laws of the Lombards, they are the genuine fruit of the reason of the Barbarians [precisely as was the common-law of the Anglo- Saxons], who never admitted the bishops of Italy to a seat in their legislative councils." The Lombards altered the early Roman church, — naught, as all know, but an adaptation of the heathen basilica to the uses of Christian worship, — into our present and millennium-old type of cathedral, with its entrance-porches, aisles, upper-galleries, clerestorywindows, side-chapels, transepts, apse, and surmounting dome. They also introduced the use of' bells, and the bell-tower. The finest remaining example of their earlier churches still fortunately remains in excellent condition, — S. Michele of Pavia.

To all of the cities of the old Lombard kingdom, — seething, as they had been so long. In the envious strife not only of arms but of material and artistic aggrandisement, — there needed but the advent of the trecento artists from Tuscany and from the slowly dying Byzantium to kindle the fire of the Renaissance, whose fuel had been thus preparing.

ifli PREFACE

From Padua to Pavia, the blaze burst forth with quick intensity. Although the towns of that section of the realm which came subsequently under Venetian sway and are hence now called Venetia, were foremost in leading the early Renaissance, the latter attained its splendid perihelion in the more western region covered by this volume: at Lodi, .for instance, with its beautiful Incoronata, at Mantua, with its marvellous Reggia, and at Pavia with its incomparable Certosa, probably the supreme monument of the Renaissance. Western Lombardy possesses also an unparalleled work of the earlier period, in those masterpieces of painting which Masolino of Florence, the inaugurator and teacher of the more highly developed schools of the quattrocento, laid upon the walls of the Collegiate church and baptistery of Castiglione Olona. And at Saronno, near-by, we behold the crowning works of the most beautiful school of the cinquecento, — Leonardo da Vinci's, — in the magnificent frescoes of Luini and Gaudenzio Ferrari.

That the rebirth and high development of arts and civilisation occurred in the towns of Lombardy during the three centuries subsequent to their submission to local despotisms, shows not only how much their energies were then turned in that direction, but also how beneficent were those despotisms in their effect upon the masses, and in their paternal encouragement of all the best in art. The same jealousies that had kept the communes at fraternal strife, now incited their tyrants to exceed each other in the display of dilettanteism and in a cultured magnificence of life and surroundings. We cannot be too thankful that at precisely this period of Italian history the revenues of many cities were placed in a few princely hands, able to disburse them without question. Thus only could the Visconti and the Sforza have raised the Cathedral of Milan and the Certosa of Pavia, and

PREFACE xiii

the Gonzaghi have erected that stupendous pile known as the Reggia; thus only could Mantegna and Giullo Romano have flourished at Mantua with their numerous pupils, Isabella d'Este have adorned her enchanted Grotta and Paradiso, and Leonardo have formed under the patronage of the Moro that glorious school which gave us Luini, Ferrari, Borgognone, and many others.

Of these three great despotisms which possessed Lombardy proper during the Renaissance, and which so remarkably advanced the artistic progress of mankind, the two of Milan, owing to their greed of territory, perished successively amidst a rain of blood, leaving their dominions to the desolating rule of Spaniards and Jesuits for two hundred years ; only the Gonzaghi had sufficient wisdom to weather the storms of the early clnquecento, and continue their benign rule over the Duchy of Mantua till the extinction of the family-line. In which feat of political equilibration an important part was played by that paragon of womankind, " the ideal woman of the Renaissance," — Isabella d'Este ; whose sagacity in affairs of state was only paralleled by her remarkable ascendancy over the leading artists, litterateurs and dilettantes of that extraordinary epoch. Thus was Raphael's pupil Romano able to complete his decoration of the Reggta, and construct that amazing Palazzo del Te which still fortunately remains to us Intact, — the ideal princely villa of the Renaissance.

It is unnecessary to add, in concluding, that Milan was

omitted from the list of cities herein described ( as was Venice

from the "Plain-Towns of Italy"), not only because it

would require a volume in itself, but because this work is

intended precisely to cover all the other towns of Lombardy : *

*The town of Como, however, was also omitted, because it belongs to that mountainous region of the great lakes which is quite extraneous from Lombardy proper.

xiv PREFACE

in the hope that it may both be of some aid to travellers, beyond the restricted limits of the " Baedeker," and also enable those who do not travel to glean a little of the Lombard beauties from my pages. With the same desire to help those vv^ho may follow me, I have taken pains, as heretofore, to give the names and qualities of those inns which I found by personal experience to be what a traveller in that province can best expect, with regard to cleanliness, proper prices, and a good Italian table.

Contents

I. Bergamo the Lower i

II. Bergamo the Upper 35

III. MONZA AND THE IrON CrOWN 73

Chapter I

" Far to the right where Apennine ascends Bright as the summer Italy extends; Its uplands sloping deck the mountain's side Woods over woods in gay, theatric pride ; While oft some temple's mould'ring top between With venerable grandeur marks the scene."

Goldsmith's "Traveller"

As " Apennine " may be said to signify " little Alp," these words of the poet well apply to Bergamo and her neighbouring scenery; for, though now a plain-town, the original little burg still perches high upon her wooded foot-hill, lifting above trees and battlements the mouldering roofs of her grand old Christian temples. She is, then, a bifold city, — with a strange, bifarious personality. To the modern Italian Bergamo means the recent, wide-spread boroughs on the plain, vomiting black smoke from scores of factories, humming with industrial life ; to the traveller and the aesthetic it means that ancient picturesque hilltop, — on which Manzoni placed some scenes of the " Promessi Sposi " — and the wondrous productions of its great, bygone artists, which are amongst the most purely beautiful of all the schools. As Verona attained the supreme development of gorgeous colouring, so did Bergamo reach the nadir of ideal, perfect loveliness. At her name there rise before us a crowd of painted forms of such ineffable beauty, that they could come only from the opened vault of paradise, with a burst of celestial music. To three sublime painters this glory of Bergamo

X

IS due, — Jacopo Palma, " il Vecchio," Lorenzo Lotto, and Andrea Previtali.^

Bergamo, though strictly a Lombard town, both in situation and affiliation, was the fourth of the subject Venetian cities that sat at the foot of the Alps, curiously equidistant from each other, along the northern edge of the plain. As Brescia lies midway between Lakes Garda and Iseo, so Bergamo, farther to the northwest, sits midway between Lakes Iseo and Como, just at the converging mouths of two charming Alpine valleys, — the Val Seriana and Val Brembana. At the head of the latter its highway from Bergamo crosses an easy pass to the spacious Valtellina, so long renowned for its wine; whose road in turn, by the famous Ortler Pass, reaches German lands.

Two other routes from Bergamo, slightly longer but of more level grade, have also for many centuries led travellers to the Valtellina and the north; one up Lake Como on the west, to the end of the valley, the other by Lago d'Iseo to its eastern confines. By Lake Como and the Val Brembana, trade also crossed the Engadine, and the Spliigen Pass to Switzerland. So Bergamo was favourably situated of old; yet she seems never to have possessed then a population of the present size, — - about 50,boo. Her restriction to the narrow hilltop was a drawback to growth; and she was perhaps too near the metropolis of Milan, — which lies no farther to the southwest than Brescia does to the southeast.

Bergamo was certainly too unimportant in Roman days

1 Lotto, according to Corrado RiccI, was born at Venice ; but Palma, Prevltali, Cariani, Moroni, Girolamo da Santa Croce, Talpino, Bissolo and several other prominent masters, were all born either in Bergamo or in its environs; and after wandering away — mostly to Venice — to receive their artistic training, returned to combine their ideas in the brilliant school famed for "the purity of its traditions."

to attract the attention of historians. We know that she was a Roman municipium, but few mentions of her descend to us from ancient annals ; — a fortunate people, indeed. About the nearest that she came to being embroiled in Imperial troubles was on the occasion of the rebellion of Aureolus, in 268, against the Emperor Gallienus; their decisive battle, which routed the insurgent, was fought only 13 miles away, at a bridge over the Adda, known ever since as Pons Aureoli — which has been corrupted into Pontlrolo. The Adda IS next the Adige in size, and surpasses the MIncIo in strategic Importance, being the outlet of Lake Como, and dividing the plain with an unfordable current; It formed the ultimate border of Venetian territory; and when Napoleon came to destroy the Republic, It was at another bridge over this stream that he fought a critical battle, — the battle of Lodi, — so critical, Indeed, that he was obliged, It is often said, to lead his troops In person, to gain the passage. I have often pondered over the different course that history would have taken, if the Conqueror had that hour fallen slain into the Adda.

Among the saintly legends descending to us from Imperial times Is that of St. Grata, who about 300 " was the daughter of St. Lupo, Duke of Bergamo, and St. Adelaide, both of whom she converted to the faith. When St. Alexander, one of the Theban Legion, suffered martyrdom, she herself wrapped the head in fine linen and reverently buried his body. On the death of her father, St. Grata succeeded him, and governed her people well, setting them an example of good works. She built churches and hospitals, and did all in her power to further the spread of Christianity. She died at length in peace and prosperity." ^ — A singular story, both

2E. A. Greene's "Saints and their Symbols."

in its peaceful termination and In its idea of a woman ruling Roman Bergamo as a duchess.

Roman peace and prosperity were soon ended, however; together with Verona, Vicenza, Padua, and so many other cities, Bergamo was destroyed by Attila; and it must have been a very thorough destruction, since it has left us practically no fragments of the ancient buildings. But that Bergamo soon rose again, is shown by the fact that she became the capital of a Lombard duchy. In 894 she was conquered by Arnolfo of Germany, with Berengarlus; but this subjection lasted only a few years.^ In the 12th century, after the enjoyment of nearly three centuries of independence and democratic rule, she was drawn into the long struggle between Guelfs and Ghibellines. It was at Pontida, only a few miles from Bergamo, that her consuls in 1167 met those of the other plain-towns to form the first Lombard League, and swore to struggle unitedly against the devastating power of Frederick Barbarossa ; — a convention to which Italians always look back with emotion, as the first impulse towards a united Italy!

That same year the federated cities accomplished the extraordinary task of rebuilding Milan, which Frederick had razed to the ground ; and the next year they erected the new town of Alessandria — named after their ally, Pope Alexander III — as a fortress to contest the Emperor's southern trips. The Bergamasques fought famously beside their brethren, and became prominent also in the renewal of the League against Frederick^II, a half century later; but their city, probably from its lofty location, seems to have escaped the sieges and captures which visited Brescia. Although they thus freed themselves from Imperial oppression. It was only to fall into the covetous hands of that very town which they

3 Vide F. di Manzano's compilation of the " Annali di Friuili.*'

had helped to raise — Milan : a strange end to all their sacrifices and labours.

This change was accomplished at first by their own volition, without their perceiving its significance: the Delia Torre had become the supreme authority in Milan, by reason of leading the city's troops in the warfare against Frederick II ; and Bergamo, Lodi, Novara, Como, as well as a number of other neighbouring Guelf towns, deemed it wise to entrust to those leaders, about 1263, the command of their own forces, and to obtain their protection by electing them sovereign lords. " Thus began to be formed among the Lombard republics, without their suspecting that they divested themselves of their liberty, the powerful state which a century and a half later became the duchy of Milan. But the Pope, jealous of the house of Delia Torre, appointed Archbishop of Milan, Otho Visconti, whose family, powerful on the borders of the Lago Maggiore, then shared the exile of the nobles and Ghibellines." *

When Bergamo saw herself pass from the hands of the Delia Torre to those of Otho, without her own consent or opinion being asked, she realised what she had done, too late. She was so far west as to have escaped the clutches of Ezzelino da Romano, and be safe from those of the Delia Carrara or Delia Scala; but she paid for it by the tyranny of the Visconti.

Up to this time the Bergamasques had been violent Guelfs, — so much so, that the story is related that one citizen who discovered his guests to be Ghibellines, by the way they sliced their garlic, violated the sacred laws of hospitality and killed them on the spot. " Ghibellines cut fruit at table crosswise, Guelfs straight down. — Ghibellines drank out of smooth, and Guelfs out of chased goblets. Ghibellines wore

* Symonds' " Age of the Despots,"

white, and Guelfs, red roses. Yawning, passing in the street, throwing dice, gestures in speaking or swearing, were used as pretexts for distinguishing the one half of Italy from the other." *^ With partisanship reduced to such intensity. It can be conceived how the Bergamasques must have suffered on being transferred to the Ghibelline rule of the Visconti, subjected to Ghibelline nobles, banners, and emblems, and forced to subdue, conceal, and alter their own opinions. But the transition was duly accomplished; Bergamo became Ghibelline, and fought under the Visconti standard, to force other cities to the same yoke.

After Otho Visconti, Archbishop of Milan, had in 1277 suddenly seized and imprisoned the Delia Torre, his sole authority was recognised without trouble. Later he associated with him In the government his nephew Matteo, obtained from the Emperor the appointment of them both as Imperial Vicars, and secured the people's acceptance of Matteo as his heir. Both of these were very strong men, and Matteo became " the model of a prudent Italian despot. — He ruled his states by force of character, craft, and Insight, more than by violence or cruelty." ^ His successors followed his example. From 1302 to 13 10 he was temporarily ousted by the Delia Torre and the Guelfs; but with the advent of Emperor Henry VII In the latter year, his welcome by the Delia Torre, and his attempt to extort money from the Milanese, — the people rose, expelled Emperor and Delia Torre together, and recalled the Visconti.

Matteo's son Galeazzo succeeded him as despot In 1322, and Galeazzo's son Azzo followed, who subjugated ten neighbouring cities. Including Brescia, and left a large kingdom, at his death In 1339, to Lucchino, another son of Mat-

4a Symonds' " Age of the Despots." ^ Idem, teo. Lucchino secured possession of Parma and Pisa also; and was soon succeeded by his brother Giovanni. " The Visconti now took the place of the Delia Scala as by far the most powerful of all the houses of the Lombard plain. Giovanni held the lordship of sixteen flourishing Italian towns," ® — including Bergamo, Crema and Cremona. He was Archbishop of Milan as well as temporal ruler, — " the friend of Petrarch, and one of the most notable characters of the 14th century." '' Upon his death the huge domains were for a time divided, between the three sons of his brother Stefano : Bernabo received Brescia and the three cities last mentioned, Matteo the southern towns, and Galeazzo the western, while Genoa and Milan were to be ruled jointly. But the territories were soon reunited, by the master political craftsman of the trecento^ the ablest of all the Visconti, the greatest of all Italian despots, — Gian Galeazzo.

Matteo was assassinated by his brothers; Galeazzo died; Gian Galeazzo, as his only son, succeeded him in 1378 in possession of the western towns, and, by long deceiving his uncle Barnabo with a mask of timidity, finally induced the latter, in 1385, to come out of Milan with his sons, and greet his nephew as the latter passed by with an escort of horsemen. It was a fatal error; for Gian Galeazzo with a word to his soldiers seized Barnabo and the sons, entered Milan, imprisoned them, and declared himself sole ruler of the Visconti domains. Then began his endless, far-reaching, secret schemings to make himself the master of all Italy, by any means discoverable, — treachery, murder, bribery, the sowing of dissension and suspicion, the deception of friends and foes alike, the hiring of condottieri to make wars, etc., — means which resulted in the steady addition to his state of

6 Oscar Browning's " Guelfs and Ghibellines," ■^ Symonds' " Age of the Despots."

one city after another, until it extended from the Alps to the Umbrian plain, from Friuli to Piedmont and Liguria.

Gian Galeazzo was as limitlessly ambitious as Napoleon; his whole soul and being centred in empire alone; wine, women, music, the chase, hawking, riding, the play, amusements of any kind, were all alike distasteful to him, — ^who, a physical coward, passed his whole time in manipulating fearlessly the greatest captains and rulers of the age. " Pure intellect, in fact, had reached to perfect independence In this prince. — It was he who invented Bureaucracy, by creating a special class of paid clerks and secretaries of departments. By applying this mercantile machinery to the management of his vast dominions Gian Galeazzo raised his wealth enormously above that of his neighbours." ® He gathered by taxes and forced *' loans " some 2,000,000 florins per year, — more than even the income of the French King. " False and pitiless, he joined to Immeasurable ambition a genius for enterprise, and to Immovable constancy a personal timidity which he did not endeavour to conceal. The least unexpected motion near him threw him Into a paroxysm of nervous terror. No prince employed so many soldiers to guard his palace." ® And It is doubtful if any prince ever had so many deeds of blood and horror to damn his soul. He never went to his end, nor acquired a city, by direct means, or by warfare, if it were attainable by poison, treachery, or the stiletto. Except for his deportment, he was the archetype and incarnation of MachiavelH's ideal prince. ^°

" The systematic plans conceived by Gian Galeazzo for the enslavement of Italy — are scarcely more extraordinary

8 Symonds' " Age of the Despots." ® Sismondi's " Italian Republics." i<^ MachiavelH's " De Principatibus."

than the sudden dissolution of his dukedom at his death.*' ^°* When Florence awaited in dread the closing of the net, ever more closely drawn about her, when Venice watched with dismay the approaching loss of her mainland territories, when papal Rome trembled at the giant hand already reaching from Perugia and Siena, when Naples shuddered at her advancing doom, that would complete the Viper's consolidation of Italy, — suddenly, at only 42 years of age, the master tyrant died of the plague ; and they were freed. His dominions by his will were equally divided between the two legitimate infant sons, for whom the widowed Duchess Catherine was appointed guardian ; Giovanni Maria was to have Milan, and half the subject cities, including Brescia and Bergamo, — Filippo Maria, the other half, with Pavia for his capital. But — the renowned captains of adventure whom Gian Galeazzo had trained and held in leash, at the head of the forces which he had helped them gather, instantly disregarded this will and acted for themselves ; while in those cities which they did not seize, the old local tyrants bobbed up again.

In Bergamo the noble families of the Suardi and Colleoni made themselves masters of the town; but soon, aware of their isolated weakness, sold it to Pandolfo Malatesta, the condottierej who with his troops had grasped Brescia in the turmoil. Francesco della Carrara took Verona. The Duchess Catherine now made the error of calling the Venetians to her aid, — who expelled the Carrara from Verona, Vicenza and Padua, but kept the spoil for their own. Catherine was soon poisoned, and Giovanni Maria was murdered at Milan, where he had been indulging in the most inhuman atrocities ever known; then Filippo Maria, likewise a cruel degenerate but more crafty and ambitious, proceeded step by step to recover his father's dominions, by his father's methods,