Neroccio. The five frescoed putti above and the scene of the reception of the Stigmata are probably by Girolamo del Pacchia. On the right wall are two admirable frescoes by Girolamo who, like all true Sienese, was never so truly inspired as when painting Catherine. In the first, she is saving two Dominican friars from a band of robbers by her intercession. In the second, she is visiting the convent of Santa Agnese of Montepulciano, and when she stoops to kiss the foot of the dead virgin it moves itself to meet her lips, while “a very white manna falling like heavenly dew” descends upon her. Here the painter has combined two different legends about her visits to Montepulciano. The two girls kneeling on the left are Catherine’s two nieces (Lisa’s daughters) whom she placed in the convent; the young man in the foreground is apparently Neri di Landoccio. On the left wall we see her raising up Messer Matteo di Cenni, the Rector of the Casa della Misericordia, “a notable servant of God and very devout to this Virgin,” when he lay dying of the pestilence; her figure is full of wonderful dignity and sweetness. This also is by Girolamo del Pacchia. The fresco representing the Saint at Florence, assailed by the Ciompi, is by Ventura Salimbeni.

We go up the stairs—which, without unduly stretching a point, we may surely imagine to be those up which Monna Lapa saw her little daughter ascending without touching the ground. On the left, we enter a small oratory, which was one of the rooms of the Benincasa family—probably that in which they took their meals together. The frescoes, by the modern Sienese painter, Alessandro Franchi, represent legendary scenes of Catherine’s childhood and life in the family, and her earliest visions before her public life began. They are at least unpretentious and devout in sentiment, and the one in which the worthy dyer finds his daughter at prayer, with the mystical dove hovering over her head, is decidedly pretty. The picture over the altar, of her receiving the Stigmata, is perhaps by Girolamo di Benvenuto. The little cell beyond is the chamber which was made over to her as her own, when her father was convinced that she was following a supernatural call. Under the wooden covering of the floor is the very pavement upon which her feet trode, and, shown beneath bars and glass, is the hard pillow of bricks upon which her head rested when she slept. Out of the little window above it, she gave food to the poor—for these rooms are practically on a level with the upper street. In a glass case certain relics of hers are preserved; her scent-bottle for the sick; the lantern which she carried when she visited the plague-stricken or went to the hospital after dark; the handle of the stick with which she walked—the stick we see sometimes in her pictures; her veil and a piece of her hair-shirt; and the covering in which her head was brought from Rome to Siena.

At the head of the stairs, on the right, is the door opening out upon the little side street that runs off from the steep Costa Sant’ Antonio, by which the house is more usually entered. It bears the inscription “The house of Catherine, the Spouse of Christ,” and when we mount up into the little court and loggia, we may read another hard saying on our left: “Living, I beheld Him whom I loved.” The design of the court and loggia is ascribed to Baldassare Peruzzi. Here are two oratories. The first—which is said to have been Monna Lapa’s kitchen—is now somewhat gorgeously decorated in the style of the Renaissance; the ceiling and pavement (which latter is kept covered) belong to the end of the sixteenth century. Over the altar, the picture representing the reception of the Stigmata—which we find repeated in one form or another in each of these chapels—is by Fungai. The pictures—with fine Renaissance pilasters between—date from the latter part of the sixteenth century onwards, and represent scenes from St Catherine’s life, with other Saints and Beati of Siena. In contrast with those in the lower oratory, they are largely concerned with her later life and with her public actions; her saving the souls of the tortured felons; her freeing a woman from an evil spirit (by Pietro Sorri); her persuading the Roman People to submit to Pope Urban (by Alessandro Casolani); and her inducing Gregory to return to Rome. The more artistically important of the series are her mystical marriage with Christ, by Arcangiolo Salimbeni, and her canonisation by Pope Pius II. (with the Blessed Bernardo and the Blessed Nera of the Tolomei below), by Francesco Vanni. The second oratory—the Oratorio del Crocifisso—was built in the sixteenth century on the site of the garden of the family. Over the altar is the sacred Crucifix from Santa Cristina at Pisa—a painting ascribed to Giunta Pisano—praying before which, on the Fourth Sunday in Lent, 1375, in that little church on the banks of the Arno, Catherine is said, like Francis of Assisi, to have received in her flesh the ultimo sigillo. “I saw,” she told Frate Raimondo, “our Crucified Lord coming down upon me surrounded by a great light. Thereat by the force of my spirit, that desired to go forth and meet its Creator, my body was constrained to rise. Then from the marks of His most sacred wounds I saw descend upon me five bloody rays, which were directed towards the hands, the feet and the heart of my body. Wherefore, knowing the mystery, I cried out suddenly, ‘Ah, my Lord God, I beseech you, let not these wounds appear outwardly in my body; it is enough for me to have them internally.’ Then whilst I was yet speaking, before those rays reached me, their blood-red colour changed to a marvellous brightness, and in the semblance of pure light they came to the five parts of my body, to wit, the hands, the feet, and the heart.”[109]

In the Via Benincasa to the right of the door of the church—over which is a bust of Catherine by Giacomo Cozzarelli, who is said to have designed the loggia—are the rooms belonging to the “Nobile Contrada dell’Oca.” In the Sala delle Adunanze, you may see the trophies that their fantini, or jockeys, have won in the race for the Palio.

The Contrada should be visited on the Sunday after the feast of Santa Caterina. The whole Via Benincasa is decorated—ammaiata, as they say in Siena—with bunting, with the flags of their own and the allied contrade, with brackets to hold lights and with white wooden geese in every form of flight or rest, but always combined with a green perch and a red bracket to give the Italian tricolour which is also the divisa of the Contrada. The corners of the streets that lead into the Via Benincasa are guarded by larger wooden geese of this type, set upon the walls of the houses, while at the bottom of the street, at the church, the way is closed by a temporary tabernacle and altar. From earliest morning, Mass is offered up unceasingly in the three oratories, while the figurino (the gaily decked representative of the Contrada) and the alfieri, waving their banners and preceded by a band, march through the city, to pay honour in this fashion to the houses of their friends and the headquarters of the allied contrade. All through the day the throng moves unceasingly through the street and the sacred house, until in the evening there is the procession. Starting from the parish church of Sant’ Antonio, it makes its way down the steep, densely packed Via Benincasa. Following the band, comes the figurino; then a long train of little children dressed as saints and angels—foremost among

them being a group of three, a little boy, a little girl, and an elder girl, representing the Sposalizio of Caterina with the divine Bambino under the patronage of the Madonna. The brothers of the Company of St Catherine follow, bearing the silver bust of their patroness, with the priest of the Contrada. The end of the procession is brought up by the picturesque young Ancients, waving and tossing up their banners in the approved Sienese fashion, until all the steep, crowded Via Benincasa seems a whirling mass of colour.

And St Catherine’s power of healing factions in her native city has not yet ceased. In this present year of grace, 1902, on the day in which the popolani of the Oca celebrated the feast of their glorious patroness, there was a solemn reconciliation between them and the rival Contrada of the Torre, the healing of the famous feud of many years’ standing. I am writing too soon after the event to know whether the peace has proved durable!

Upon the hill above Fontebranda rises the great red brick church of San Domenico—after the Duomo the most important Gothic ecclesiastical building in Siena. It dates almost from the very beginning of the Dominican order, being begun shortly after 1220, though not finished until the middle of the fifteenth century. St Dominic himself may be said to have presided over its beginning, and the Angelical Doctor has walked in the cloisters where once the convent was. The soaring Campanile was raised in 1340. Though considerably altered—in the sixteenth century it was used as a fortress from which the Spanish soldiery might command the city—it is always the same building that St Catherine knew, and that is so intimately connected with the events of her life; presumably there are few buildings in Italy so quick with the living spirit of one woman. Her beloved Dominicans, alas, are here no longer; the convent was suppressed by the French invaders at the beginning of last century, and, after the restoration of the Austrian Grand Dukes, the Benedictines were substituted for the Dominicans. The black monks have gone too—leaving a few to serve the church—and the convent has been transformed into barracks for the cavalry of modern Italy.

The interior has been completely restored, but its original austere simplicity is still preserved. The picture over the third altar on the right in the nave, representing the Assassination of St Peter Martyr, and painted by Arcangiolo Salimbeni in 1579, is one of the most meritorious works of the later school of Sienese painters. Over the last altar on the right the altar-piece is formed of three different pictures by different artists and without the slightest connection with each other, save that they were all painted in the latter part of the fifteenth century; the Nativity of the Saviour is by Francesco di Giorgio, one of his best works, showing a curious imitation of Luca Signorelli in the adoring Angels and shepherds; above, the Pietà with Angels, St Michael and the Magdalene, is by Matteo di Giovanni; the predella—representing St Catherine’s visions, the Martyrdom of St Sebastian, the Massacre of the Innocents, St Dominic preaching, St Mary of Egypt—is ascribed to Fungai. Over the high altar the beautiful marble Ciborium, with the risen Christ above and the four Evangelists below, is the work of one of the chief Florentine sculptors of the latter half of the Quattrocento, Benedetto da Maiano. The two marble Angels, kneeling on either side of the altar, are also his. There is a fine view of the Duomo from the back of the choir. In the second chapel, to the left of the choir, is one of the loveliest and most characteristic pictures of the Sienese school—the “Santa Barbara” painted by Matteo di Giovanni in 1479. The Virgin Martyr of the Tower sits enthroned, in robes gorgeous with gold and embroidery, accompanied by St Mary Magdalene and St Catherine of the Wheels; two Angels crown her, two more make melody behind her throne. The faces of the three women—particularly the golden-haired maidens, Catherine and Barbara—are full of pensive sweetness; they have dreamed among the lilies all day and all night of love, such passionless love as that of which the Vita Nuova tells, while the faction fights have splashed Siena’s streets with blood, and in her palace chambers the things have been done of which her novelists speak. And, surely, when the Angels sing to their lutes or viols, it will be no hymn, but some such amorous canzone as that with which Casella refreshed Dante’s soul on the shores of Purgatory. The lunette above represents the Adoration of the Magi, and was especially stipulated for by the worthy bakers who gave Matteo the commission. The bright picture opposite shows a trace of the influence of Benozzo Gozzoli; it represents the Madonna and Child with Saints and Angels, with the Pietà and four Angels in the lunette, and was painted by Benvenuto di Giovanni in 1483. In the chapel beyond there is another Matteo di Giovanni: the Madonna and Child with Angels, St Jerome and the Baptist, in three divisions, with a rocky landscape background, damaged and neglected. In the chapel on the right of the choir, the Madonna of the Rosary—or rather the Deity with Saints, surrounding an old votive picture of the Madonna—is by Bazzi, the predella of the fifteen mysteries being by one of his pupils. The second chapel on the right belonged to the “German Nation” of the University of Siena, and is full of tombstones of noble young German students, who came to the famous Studio to acquire wisdom, and found a grave. One epitaph begins, Svevia me genuit, Senae rapuere sed ossa. The chapel has the pathos that inevitably clings to the thought of hopes cut short, of untimely death in a foreign land.

It is not for these things that we visit San Domenico to-day, but for the glorious chapel of St Catherine. Over it we read another of those hard sayings that sum up, mystically, the story of her inner life: “This chapel holds the head of Catherine. Dost thou seek her heart? Nay, that Christ bears inclosed in His breast.” The shrine itself, over the altar, which contains this sacred relic—sacred, surely, to all lovers of the noblest things in the literature of mysticism no less than to Roman Catholics—is a work of the third quarter of the fifteenth century, and is probably by Giovanni di Stefano. The frescoes on either side of it—representing the Svenimento, St Catherine fainting into the arms of her two attendant nuns, Alessia and Francesca, overcome by the glory of the vision of her celestial Bridegroom, and St Catherine miraculously fed with the Food of Angels in the Sacred Host—are by Bazzi, and were painted in 1526. Hardly elsewhere (save, perhaps, in the St Sebastian of the Uffizi painted in the previous year) has the wayward painter of Vercelli touched such a height of inspiration; in conception and execution alike, they are among the supreme triumphs of Italian art. The fresco on the left—representing the execution of Niccolò di Toldo, St Catherine ecstatically following the upward flight of the soul she has saved—is also Bazzi’s, but less excellent. It is overcrowded and badly composed, carelessly executed in parts; the brawny figure and bearded head of the victim hardly suggest the delicate young nobleman, the agnello of the Leggenda minore whose blood has been unjustly shed;[110] but nothing could be more beautiful than the kneeling figure of the Saint herself. The beautiful pilasters between the frescoes, and the Angels and Prophets under the arch, are likewise Bazzi’s. Bazzi left the work unfinished, and some fifty years after his death Francesco Vanni took

it up, in 1593. By Vanni (who, of course, will not be confused with Andrea di Vanni, Catherine’s contemporary and friend) is the picture on the right, painted in oil colours, where she is seen liberating a possessed woman from a demon; by him, too, are the figures of her two first biographers, the Blessed Raimondo da Capua and Frate Tommaso Nacci Caffarini, the authors of the Leggenda and the Leggenda minore respectively. Beautiful as the shrine is—and it would have been perfect in its harmony had only Bazzi completed the decorations—it is impossible at times not to feel that there is something more melodramatic in its treatment than quite accords with the simpler spirit of the dyer’s daughter of Fontebranda. The graffito work in coloured marble on the pavement represents Aesculapius among wild beasts. It is doubtful whether this is connected with the fact that several physicians of the Benzi family were buried in the chapel, or a part of the decorations in honour of the Saint.

San Domenico should be visited on the day of St Catherine’s Feast, which in Siena is kept on April 29th. The nave is hung with the bright banners of the contrade; Mass after Mass is offered up without intermission throughout the morning at the shrine, while crowds of the devout humbly and silently approach the altar, to be fed with that Bread of the Angels, “which,” says the collect for that day, “sustained even the temporal life of the blessed Virgin Catherine.” The curtain is raised, and behind the gilded bars of the shrine the pale, strange face appears, its features still recognisable. The altar blazes with candles and glares with artificial lilies, while natural flowers, lilies of the valley and white roses—more fitting tribute to her who so loved the simple flowers of the field—are offered up at the chapel rails. And, in this sudden advent of reality, Bazzi’s beautiful melodrama palls.

In the sacristy, on this day, are shown certain other relics—her discipline; her portable altar-stone; the sacramental cloths which she made for it with her own hands; the bull from Pope Gregory at Avignon granting her the dispensation to have Mass upon it wherever she went; and one of her fingers. The latter relic is—somewhat unfittingly—carried in procession through the church at sunset. The sacristy contains a banner painted with the Assumption of the Blessed Virgin by Bazzi.

The chapel on the right of the entrance, the Cappella delle Volte, over which is a large painted Crucifix of the fifteenth century, was not separated from the rest of the church in the days of St Catherine, as it is now. It was the chapel in which she habitually prayed, and by one of its pillars she knelt always, to hear Mass in the church below. Here her visions came to her, here had she those strange mystical revelations of the Divine Word. “Disposing wondrous ascensions in her heart, Catherine went up these steps, to pray in the chapel to Christ her Spouse.” Thus runs the writing over the original steps, piously preserved and guarded by bars, on the left, by which Catherine mounted into the cell of mystery; not those modern ones by which we now go up into the little chapel that witnessed this wondrous union of a woman’s mind and heart with the suprasensible.

It is somewhat bare to-day, painfully coated with modern paint and whitewash. It is hung with paintings representing scenes from her life and death, of little value from an artistic point of view, though one—that of her walking with her Master and Spouse—has a certain pathos and sweetness. Two narrow pictures over the entrance—representing her giving the cross of her rosary, and clothing the Divine Beggar with her robe—are earlier and better than the larger canvasses. But over the altar is a priceless treasure, the famous portrait of her by her friend and correspondent Andrea di Vanni, perhaps painted in her life-time and in any case her authentic likeness, in which the mantellata is giving her hand to kiss to a kneeling follower of her own sex—in the way to which (when men were concerned) such exception was taken during her life. In the centre of the chapel a piece of the old pavement where she trode—walked with Christ, in the phrase of the legend—is religiously preserved. Elsewhere, marble tablets on the floor are marked with heart, cross or robe, and inscribed: “Christ changeth heart with Catherine”; “Catherine bestoweth her cross on Christ”; “Catherine clothes Christ with her robe.” For into this chapel, as into others, the beggars came—and among them the disguised Spouse of her soul. Still may we see the pillar against which she leaned in her ecstasies—the pillar that is idealised in Bazzi’s two frescoes on either side of the shrine below—though now it is covered and modernised like the rest of the chapel. An inscription hung upon it—a seventeenth century copy of one of much older date (but not earlier than her canonisation)—strikes the keynote of the whole chapel, and I will therefore translate it in full:—

“In this chapel, there befell many wonderful actions to St Catherine of Siena, among the which are those set down below, as the blessed Raimondo her confessor telleth, and they are also known by ancient tradition, besides the many others that befell in this present church.

“Here she was clothed in the habit of St Dominic, and she was the first virgin who up to that time had been thus clothed.

“Here she stayed apart to hear the divine offices, and here continually had she divine colloquies, conversing familiarly with Jesus Christ her Spouse. Here she said the divine office, she had frequent ecstasies, and for the most part in these she used to lean against this pilaster, in one of which ecstasies she was zealously portrayed by a painter on the wall outside of this chapel.[111] And from that time this pilaster has been, and still is formidable to the furies of Hell, and many persons possessed of devils have been delivered thereby.

“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

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