Take this quiz to enter the drawing for a free book

Celebrating

To celebrate this blog's second anniversary, I've decided to give away one copy of my novel, A Thing Done, to someone who is  brave enough to take this little quiz.  It can be the winner's choice of a Kindle edition, a Nook edition, or a paperback (unless you live somewhere other than the US, in which case I don't want to fork over the money to ship a paperback, so it will have to be Kindle or Nook).  If you want it sent to somebody else as a holiday gift, no problem.  I will let this contest run until December 10 before choosing a winner.

If you're not sure of all the answers, try anyway.  You've got nothing to lose.  And since some answers may be debatable, or the questions a bit sneaky, winners will be determined by use of a complex algorithm.  (No, I have no idea what I mean by that either, but you can get away with just about anything if you use a complex algorithm.  Just ask Amazon.  Or Goodreads.)  Comments count.  Creativity counts.  Flattery counts.   Becoming a blog follower counts.  Give me your answers in the Comments section, or send them to me privately if you prefer.  (And try not to look at any previous comments containing the answers!  Honor system applies.)

Ready?  Okay.  Think hard about the 13th century, about Florence, about Dante.  Once you've projected yourself back to then and there, you're all set to proceed.  It's short - only three questions.  Good luck! 

Question the First:  

I'm going to give you two lists, each describing an individual in late 13th century Florence.  Then I'm going to give you a list of political parties.  See if you can figure out which political party each individual belongs to.

If you are the First Individual:

• You think the Pope is a really great guy.
• You're a fan of Count Guido Guerra, who's the cousin of Guido Novello (who you don't like very much).
• You think Emperor Frederick II was the Antichrist.
• Your fortress has square crenellations.
• You fight under a banner that sports a fleur-de-lys.
• You're from Florence, or from Lucca.
• When you look back on the 1216 fracas that was the subject of A Thing Done, your sympathies are with Buondelmonte and the Donati.
• You really respect Charles of Anjou.  Or at least you'd like to keep him on your side.
• You'd love to exile your opponents and tear down their towers, houses, and businesses.

If you are the Second Individual:

• You think the Emperor is a really great guy.  When there is an emperor, at least.
• You're a fan of Count Guido Novello, who's the cousin of Guido Guerra (who you don't like very much).
• You think Emperor Frederick II was the Wonder of the World.
• Your fortress has swallowtail crenellations.
• You fight under a banner that has an eagle on it (even though it looks like a scrawny chicken about to be plucked)
• You're from Pisa, Siena, or Arezzo.
• When you look back on the 1216 fracas mentioned above, your sympathies lie with Oddo Arrigo dei Fifanti, the Lamberti, and the Amidei.
• You hold Farinata degli Uberti in high regard. 
• You'd love to exile your opponents and tear down their towers, houses, and businesses.

If you are the Third Individual:  

• You'd rather the Pope didn't put your city under interdict, and you wish the Emperor would just occupy himself elsewhere and stop appointing vicars.
• You don't really care much about any of the Conti Guidi.
• You suspect Fred II was a heretic, but he was also pretty cool in a lot of ways.
• You don't have a fortress.  You have a perfectly good house, thank you.
• You prefer not to fight.  Somebody's got to keep the shops open.
• You're Florentine.  You're not nobility, and you're not a mere laborer, either.  You might even have a surname, or be about to acquire one.
• When you look back on 1216, you think, "What were they thinking?!?"
• You respect anybody who can hold his own against the magnates.
• You wish you could exile all the big shots at once, rent out their towers and houses, and take over their businesses. 

And here are the political parties (only three will apply, but I like to provide lots of choices):

1. Primo Popolo
2. Whigs
3. The Silly Party
4. Guelfs
5. Tories
6. Christian Democrats
7. Libertarians
8. Ghibellines
9. The Tea Party
10. Communists

Assign one party to each of the three individuals.  Easy-peasy, eh?  Try the next one:

Question the Second:

All you Dante scholars, here's your chance.  Dante's Commedia is divided into three parts:  the Inferno, the Purgatorio, and the Paradiso.   Tell me to which of those three regions of the afterlife Dante assigned each of the following: 

1. Brunetto Latini, philosopher, civil servant, and Dante's mentor
2. Alexander the Great, world conqueror
3. Ciacco, notorious glutton
4. Paolo and Francesca, famous lovers
5. Mosca, whose comment provided the title for A Thing Done
6. Jason of the Argonauts, adventurer and fleece fancier
7. Pope Celestine V, who abdicated
8. Brutus, Roman patriot who killed Julius Caesar
9. Helen of Troy, problematic beauty
10. Ulysses, extremely clever Greek guy
11. Filippo Argenti, Dante's neighbor
12. Frederick II, either Antichrist or Wonder of the World

Helen, Celestine, Alexander, Frederick

 So far, so good.  Now, for our last question of the day, an easy one:

Question the Third:

I'm going to list eleven women who were important in Dante's life in one way or another.  Then I will list several possible roles for these women.  Match each name with the role she played in Dante's life.  (It is possible for an answer to be used more than once.  In fact, it's downright necessary.)

Here are the women, in alphabetical order:

1. Antonia
2. Beatrice
3. Bella
4. Fioretta
5. Gemma
6. Gentucca
7. Lapa
8. Lisetta
9. Lucia
10. Tana
11. Violetta

And here are the possible roles:

• Muse and inspiration
• Mysterious woman mentioned in Dante's writing (and scholars would just love to know more about her)
• Stepmother
• Mother
• Half-sister
• Wife
• Daughter
• Favorite saint

That's all there is to it.  Have fun, send me your answers, and we'll see who takes the prize.  Good luck!

Images in this post are in the public domain, except for the photo of the bust of Helen of Troy, which is licensed to Yair Haklai, and the photo with the swallowtail crenellations, which is licensed to Chfono.  Both are under the Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 Unported license, Wikimedia Commons.

Epic fail (or, Florence changes the locks)

It happened in November, 1266.  Historian Ferdinand Schevill calls it "a fatal act of pusillanimity".  Historian John M. Najemy says it was "an incomprehensible mistake".  Machiavelli observed that the perpetrator "decided to save himself by fleeing rather than fighting", having "abandoned [the city] out of vileness."

Giovanni Villani, writing perhaps three decades after the event, says that the man in question "had done very foolishly in departing from the city of Florence, without stroke of sword and not driven thence" -- an act which ultimately left him "gloomy and shamed," but "after a thing ill-judged, and worse carried out, repentance is in vain."

So who was the guy who got such consistently bad press, and what exactly did he do, or fail to do?

That would be the Ghibelline leader, Guido Novello.  He is not to be confused with the better-known historical figure of Guido Novello da Polenta, who Automatic Translation would probably render as New Guy of Cornmeal Grits; that was a later Guido.  Nor is he to be confused with his cousin, Guido Guerra, who fought for the opposite side -- though I have seen him so confused, in history books that ought to know better, thus causing the whole Guelf-Ghibelline thing to make even less sense than it actually did, which is going some.

Guido's family was the Conti Guidi, the counts who from ancient times had held sway in the Casentino region (the upper Arno valley in eastern Tuscany).  There they maintained several strong castles, including this one at Poppi, which has a very cool museum about the Battle of Campaldino and is a fascinating place to visit:

This particular version of the castle is a little later than Guido Novello's time, but it was built over a previous fortress and was held by the Conti Guidi.

The Conti Guidi consisted of many families, and by the middle of the 13th century, some were solidly Ghibelline while others espoused the Guelf party.  Their heraldic devices tended toward the use of red and white, and lions of white on red or red on white, sometimes separate, sometimes merged:

In this illustration you see another Guidi device (St. Andrew's cross, quartered, red and white, and no, that's not proper heraldic language), on the flag that's falling from the tower.  Here a Florentine army is destroying another castle belonging to the Conti Guidi, considering it a threat; this incident took place in 1153.  The castle was called Monte di Croce.  (You can see this device also in the illustration at the top of this post.)

Though Guido had some Guelfs cluttering up his family tree, he himself was staunchly, yea even rabidly, Ghibelline (meaning, to oversimplify, one who backed the emperor in the empire's ongoing squabbles with the papacy over various manifestations of temporal power).  He was married to an illegitimate daughter of the late (by 1266) Emperor Frederick II, making him the brother-in-law of Manfred, who at that time was the voice of the empire.  Two of his children were named Federico and Manfredo.  (This reminds me a lot of the scene in Life Is Beautiful, the film set in Italy in 1939 in which the character played by Roberto Benigni is trying to figure out the politics of a man he has just encountered.  The question resolves when the man calls his children:  "Benito!  Adolfo!")

Federico, by the way, ended up in Dante's Purgatorio among the sodomites.

Here's the situation, as briefly as I can tell it (HUGE oversimplification alert):

Guelfs and Ghibellines in Florence have been duking it out (and this is before Florence had dukes) for quite a while, first with one party in power, then the other.  When one party is in power, the other is in exile (at least the more important members are), and the winners are gleefully trashing the homes, businesses, and fortified towers of their absent adversaries.  In 1250, the Primo Popolo, a group of non-noble, non-magnate, and emphatically non-feudal businessmen representing Florence's rising commercial sector took advantage of the chaos and took over the government.  They had a great ten-year run, with many accomplishments, but the nobles who ran the two major parties, whether in town or in exile, never stopped trying to make a comeback.

In 1258, the Ghibellines were in exile, mostly living in the Ghibelline city of Siena.  The Primo Popolo was drawing closer to the Guelf party because war was brewing with Siena over control of nearby territories.  This war, which deserves a bunch of blog posts all of its own, took place in 1260, and to the surprise of the Florentines (and quite possibly everybody else as well), the Ghibellines, including the Sienese and the Florentine exiles, won the day.  Back came the Ghibellines, out went the Guelfs, and the Primo Popolo might as well never have existed.

Battle of Montaperti

Ghibelline rule was harsh and unpopular.  The Ghibelline general who had spearheaded the victory at Montaperti was made vicar-general for all of Tuscany, and he appointed Guido as podestà (mayor and head magistrate) for Florence.  This turned out to be almost as much of a headache as an honor, partly because Guido was stuck with paying and supporting all the German mercenaries who had made the Ghibelline victory possible.  Guido applied drastic taxes, and the Florentine people resented it - and him, and his party.  Eventually  Manfred recalled the general, having need of him in Sicily, and Guido got bumped up to the vicar-general job.  It didn't make his life any easier.

Meanwhile, the Florentine exiles, and their Guelf counterparts elsewhere in northern and central Italy, had not been idle.  They wanted to eliminate the threat of Manfred, and eventually, at the battle of Benevento, they did.  (They also eliminated Manfred.)

Battle of Benevento

They had a lot of help from Charles of Anjou, but that's another story.

So here's Florence, with Guido the Ghibelline in charge, and suddenly the tide has turned in favor of the Guelfs, with Manfred out of the picture.  Guido is desperately trying to hold on.  He waffles between trying to win over the people by restoring some of their privileges (you know, the ones he took away from them in the first place), and trying to stomp on them so hard that they can't offer any resistance.  Nothing was working.  Also, the pope (Clement IV) had insisted on putting two Bolognese nobles, who were also friars of a peacekeeping order, one each Guelf and Ghibelline, in as a sort of podestà committee.

These two had put in place a council of 36 men, nobles and non-nobles, Guelf and Ghibelline, and with a greatly increased representation for the guilds, not insignificantly including a federation and military alliance of the guilds, designed to protect the populace should anyone attempt to take over lordship of the city.  The 36 let some Guelfs back in and arranged some peacemaking marriages between the parties (see my earlier blog posts on that, here and here). 

And that brings us up to the moment:  Guido is hard-pressed for money, he's unpopular, and when the 36 refused to approve a tax to allow Guido to pay off his Germans, he lost his cool completely.  He had assembled a formidable Ghibelline army, drawing on Ghibellines from elsewhere in Tuscany, because he knew he was losing control of the situation.  Now, with this provocation,  Florence's Ghibellines, led by the Lamberti, rioted and assaulted the guildhall where the 36 were meeting.  Villani says they were yelling, "Where are these 36 thieves?  We'll cut them to pieces!"

The 36, quite naturally, ran for their respective homes.  Guelf and Ghibelline forces squared off in the streets.  As Villani puts it, with typically Florentine priorities, "All the shops were closed, and every man flew to arms."

Members of the populace gathered in one spot and started to erect barricades.  Guido's force advanced against the people, and some of his Germans managed to get inside the barricades.  The people, however, defended their makeshift fortress with crossbows and by hurling missiles from towers and houses.  Many of Guido's men died there.

Guido realized he wasn't getting anywhere, so he reversed his banners and headed to the palace where the podestà committee was, and demanded the keys of the gates of the city so he could depart.  He also demanded an escort from among the 36, fearing that the people would attack him with missiles hurled from their houses, and so he had on one side Cerchio dei Cerchi, and on the other Uberto de'Pucci, two great leaders.  The friars yelled from the palace that Uberto and Cerchio should persuade the count to return to his house.  They even promised to pay the soldiers themselves.

But Guido was having none of it.  He wanted out, and out he went, with his Germans and his Ghibellines.  They wound their way around to a gate and as Villani says, "sallied forth," and as they were leaving, "stones were cast upon them", but they proceeded to Prato, where they arrived in the evening of St. Martin's Day, 11 November, 1266.

Why did he go?  Some say he intended all along to return from a more strategic direction - that it was only a temporary retreat.  Others accused him of cowardice.  Villani says that having reached Prato, Guido "perceived that they had done very foolishly in departing from the city of Florence without stroke of sword and not driven thence, and they perceived that they had done ill, and took counsel to return to Florence the following morning."  However it was, the next morning Guido (and his Germans and his Ghibellines) rode back to Florence, armed to the teeth, and demanded entry.

And now it was the Florentines who were having none of it.  Fearing Guido's vengeance, they had agreed not to open the gates.  Florence was surrounded by strong walls and full moats.  The Ghibellines tried to storm the gate, but they were repulsed by crossbows and other missiles.  (See illustration at top of post.)

(Here I am reminded a bit of the taunting scene from Monty Python's Monty Python and the Holy Grail, which can be viewed here:)

As Machiavelli put it, "His plan did not succeed, for the people who had been able to drive him out only with difficulty were able to keep him out with ease."  That's what those walls are for, I guess.

And that was it for Ghibelline control in the city of Florence, henceforth solidly the Guelfest of the Guelf.  Ghibelline power ended, for Guido and all the others, not with a bang but with a whimper.


Images in this post are in the public domain, with these exceptions:  both coats of arms involving lions are licensed to Sailko via the Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 Unported license, Wikimedia Commons.

"Get 'em drunk and then trash the flag!"

This is a post about military strategy.  Mind you, military strategy is not really my thing.  In fact, when I read books with lovingly written, detailed battle scenes in them, I tend to skim those parts, looking for the really necessary bits (who won, who was brave and who was cowardly, who was clever and who was stupid, who's dead) and then, armed with the requisite information but not drowned in the particulars, I get on with the story. 

But I did find one example of a seriously clever bit of medieval mayhem that intrigued me.  It has to do with the lead-up to the famous Battle of Montaperti, in which the outnumbered army of Siena somehow managed to inflict a resounding defeat on the Florentines on September 4, 1260.  And it involves two men who were fighting on the same side.

Battle of Montaperti

Siena, which was of a Ghibelline persuasion, was aided by German mercenary troops sent by King Manfred of Sicily, natural son of the late great Emperor Frederick II and the closest thing to an imperial voice to be found at that time.

Manfred of Sicily

Also assisting were the Ghibellines from Florence, exiled from their city, many of them temporarily resident in Siena, under the formidable leadership of the commander Farinata degli Uberti.

Farinata degli Uberti

These are the two guys we're interested in here.  If you look at the literature and the contemporary and near-contemporary histories, you'll find Farinata described as proud, arrogant, heretical, great-souled, partisan, unbending, courageous.  He certainly was one of the mightiest opponents the Guelfs of Florence ever had to deal with.  When the Guelf party finally achieved its ascendancy, the Uberti were not only banished from the city for decades - explicitly excluded from future amnesties and pardons - but their properties were torn down, and the vast open space that resulted (rare in the crowded Italian cities of that time) was never built on again - today it is the Piazza della Signoria.

Manfred, on the other hand, was described as handsome and blonde, of noble appearance, and courtly in his manners.  In the case of this particular story, "blonde" may be the most important attribute.  He was the son of Frederick and his beloved Bianca Lancia, who Frederick may or may not have married when she was on her deathbed, and he spent most of his life squabbling with close relatives over various titles.  But that's another story, if not several.

(Actually, Farinata was blonde, too.  That's where the name 'Farinata' comes from - it means his hair was the color of ripe wheat.  His birth name was Manente.)

The situation, according to chronicler Giovanni Villani (1280-1348, so he was close to being contemporary), was this:

 All was not mellow between Siena and Florence.  (It seldom was, actually.)  The disgruntled Florentine exiles (who were Ghibellines, remember?) living in Siena, under the leadership of Farinata, decided to send a delegation to Manfred to ask for military support to help them win back Florence.  They sent a contingent of their finest, staunch Ghibellines all (and thus, loyal supporters of Manfred, who was the emperor's son).  But Manfred ignored them.  He made them wait, and wait, and wait.  He had other irons in the fire, and helping the Florentine exiles was not his highest priority, Ghibellines or not.

The ambassadors, who had hoped to come away with 1,500 horsemen to shore up their cause, became impatient and decided to go home.  But as they were leaving, Manfred promised them a paltry 100 horsemen, German mercenaries.  The ambassadors were inclined to refuse such an insulting offer, but, being prudent, they first consulted with Farinata.  I don't know whether Farinata was part of the delegation or whether they had to send a messenger to him, but in any case, they got their answer.

And what did the proud Farinata say?  Did he urge them, as they must have expected, to turn up their noses at such an insulting offer?

No.  He said, according to Villani, "Be not dismayed, neither refuse any aid of his, be it never so small.  Let us have grace of him to send his standard with them, and when it be come to Siena we will set it in such a place that he must needs send us further succour."

The plot thickens.

So, Manfred, probably relieved not to have an argument on his hands, gave them the 100 horsemen (whose salaries the Ghibellines in Siena would, of course, have to pay), and he let them carry his standard, which bore this device:

When the Florentine Ghibs returned to Siena with this meager force,"great scorn," says Villani, "was made thereof by the Sienese, and great dismay came upon the Florentine refugees" who had definitely hoped for something better.

We've now arrived at May, 1260, and Florence is starting to make hostile forays against Siena.  In fact, a large Florentine army wound up camped outside Siena, with its carroccio (a four-wheeled chariot painted red, drawn by a great pair of oxen covered in red cloth, and bearing the great standard of Florence, which was red and white).  Here's a picture of a carroccio, though not Florence's:

By this time the Florentine exiles must have been wondering what Farinata had been thinking.  But thinking he was, and so it came to pass that one day the exiles provided the Germany mercenaries - all 100 of them - with a great feast, including lots and lots of wine.  Let's return to Villani for the particulars:

"Having plied them with wine till they were drunk, in the uproar they incited them to arm themselves and mount on horseback to assail the host of the Florentines, promising them large gifts and double pay; and this was done craftily by the wise, in pursuance of the counsel of Farinata degli Uberti...

The Germans, beside themselves and hot with wine, sallied forth from Siena and vigorously assailed the camp of the Florentines, and because they were unprepared and off their guard, holding as nought the force of the enemy, the Germans, albeit they were but few folk, did great hurt to the host in that assault, and many of the people and of the horsemen made a sorry show in that sudden assault, and fled in terror, supposing that the assailants were more in number."

The Florentines, however, took a second look and realized they had just been attacked by a mere handful of inebriated Germans, so they turned around and fought them after all, despite that ignominious beginning.  Not a single German survived.

The triumphant Florentines, having captured Manfred's banner, proceeded to drag it through the camp on the ground and then carry it back to Florence.  It was not long after this that the Florentine army returned home, at least for the time being.

Was Farinata distraught at this treatment of his Germans and of Manfred's banner?  Not our über-Ghibelline.  Everything was going exactly according to plan.

Because - wait for it - no way could Manfred sit still for this insult.  That was his very own banner, after all.  Enraged, he sent 800 German horsemen at his own cost (with a little help from the Sienese) for a period of three months, along with Count Giordano, his marshall, to lead them.  All these men, with horses, equipment, etc., arrived in Siena by the end of July, and there was much rejoicing.

More stuff happened before the Battle of Montaperti actually took place, but this shrewd move on Farinata's part was what made the difference.

So in this case, military strategy had nothing to do with shield walls, well-placed archers, heavy artillery, careful deployment of cavalry and infantry, or any of the other things generals traditionally do.

It was simply, "Get the Germans drunk, send them off to do something suicidal, and make absolutely sure the banner gets trashed."   That much, I can understand.

Images in this post are in the public domain, with the exception of Manfred's device, which is licensed to Adelbrecht via the Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 Unported license, Wikimedia Commons.

Women and Children Last: Peacemaking Marriage IV

In this last of four posts talking about Florentine peacemaking marriages in the 13th century, we will be discussing another couple joined together in the spate of peacemaking marriages between Guelfs and Ghibellines in the year 1267.

For a bit of background on the political environment that made these alliances seem desirable and useful at the time, see my first post on the subject.

For the fate of a couple joined in 1239, see this post.

For more on another couple also joined in 1267, see this post, which details the marriage of the sister of the husband in this post.


The Third Couple

For this post we will concentrate on the union of Ravenna Donati with messer Azzolino di Farinata degli Uberti.

First, the bride.  Ravenna Donati was the daughter of the prominent Guelf, Simone Donati, and she was sister to the soon-to-be-notorious Corso Donati and his brothers Sinibaldo, Maso, and Forese (the latter a poet and a friend of Dante's).  She was also sister (or possibly half-sister) to Piccarda, whose story we'll touch on briefly a bit later.

Messer Simone Donati was a knight, well respected throughout Tuscany.  He was, of course, among the Guelfs exiled after the battle of Montaperti, and in 1267 was only recently returned to his city.  He had lost property to the tune of 2,200 lire in that Ghibelline victory and its aftermath.

Simone served as podestà in Arezzo and other cities on several occasions - a prestigious and lucrative "guest mayor" position always given to an outsider, in the interest of finding someone nonbiased.  (Sometimes it worked.)  He spoke for the city (and for his party and his sesto or zone of the city) at the peace negotiations with Cardinal Latino beginning in 1279.  Much earlier, in 1261, he and Bonaccorso Adimari (see mention of him in the first post of this series) were ambassadors to Conradin, legitimate son and heir of the late Frederick II, trying unsuccessfully to persuade the young man to join them in taking up arms against his uncle Manfred.

Conradin

Simone had a reputation for being ethically challenged.  He was entangled in legal issues in Florence and was ordered, in 1277, to stop interfering in the affairs of the Pinti hospital.  During one stint as podestà in Parma, it is said that he falsely accused a man of stealing horses and put him to the torture, the better to have his way with the unfortunate man's attractive daughter.

Some say this man was the Simone Donati who took part in the famous Gianni Schicchi swindle (see this post for more on the Gianni Schicchi story).

So that's Ravenna's daddy. What about messer Azzolino's?

The Ghibelline chief Farinata degli Uberti was discussed at some length in the previous post, so I won't describe him again here.  He died in 1264, so this marriage must have been negotiated by whoever was the new head of the Uberti family - possibly Azzolino himself - or by someone like the new leader of the Guelfs, Guido Novello (more about Guido in the first post of this series).

Farinata degli Uberti

In any case, Azzolino and Ravenna were wed.  At the same time, Azzolino's sister Beatrice married Guido Cavalcanti (see last post).  Soon afterwards the peace broke down, and Azzolino - and, presumably, his family - had to flee Florence.  Azzolino was among the Ghibellines plotting to re-take the city, and there was a price on his head.  He and Ravenna managed to produce two children before he was captured:  a son, Lapo, and a second child, Ytte or Itta, who some historians believe was a boy and some think was a girl.

But captured Azzolino was, along with his brothers Neracozzo and Conticino and another man, messer Bindo de' Grifoni da Fegghine.  The prisoners were held in Florence pending the advice of the podestà, messer Bernardo d'Ariano, who advised that they were to be treated as traitors to the crown (the relevant crown being on the august head of Charles of Anjou, by then King of Sicily).

Charles of Anjou (and crown)

This wasn't good news for the Uberti brothers.  (At least three other brothers, Lapo, Federigo, and Maghinardo, remained safe.  One, Maghinardo, was still alive in 1282.)
The youngest, Conticino, was spared because of his youth, but he died in prison a short time later.

Ravenna was said to have pleaded for her husband's life, but to no avail.  It's reported that as Azzolino and his brother Neracozzo were being led to their execution, Neracozzo asked his brother "Where are we going?"  Azzoline replied, "To pay a debt left to us by our fathers."

After her husband was decapitated in May of 1270, Ravenna returned to her father's house.  Her children were considered part of her husband's family and not hers, and they did not accompany her.  It seems doubtful that she ever saw them again.  The older child could not have been more than three at the time.

Simone promptly married her off again, this time to a wealthy banker named Bello Ferrantini (the Donati often married for money, being chronically short of that commodity).  To judge from his will, Bello was a generous and thoughtful man, providing well for his wife, his sister and her daughter, and many friends and relatives.

Unfortunately Bello's will had to be put into use fairly soon.  He died in 1277, leaving Ravenna with a son and two daughters.

Ravenna took the children and retired to a Dominican convent, San Iacopo at Ripoli.  Her brother Corso, his eye still on Bello's money, initiated a long and vitriolic dispute with the convent over the control of Ravenna's inheritance.

It isn't clear that Corso had any right to those funds, though he and his father Simone had been named among the children's guardians in Bello's will.  The legal imbroglio ended five years later with Corso and the convent splitting the money.

Meanwhile, Ravenna had at one point left the convent.  By this time her son, also named Simone, had died, and only the two girls, Mataleona and Margherita, were left.

It appears that the girls stayed in the convent, which probably suited Corso, who would have begrudged the money to dower them.  Their mother eventually joined them.  A historian describes her as "weak-willed," but her choices were limited.  ("Exasperated" comes to mind as a possibility.  It can't be fun to watch your abbess and your brother arm-wrestling over your children's future.)

Oddly, that was not Corso's only interaction with a convent concerning one of his sisters.  Another sister, Piccarda, had apparently made her vows and was living in the convent of Monticelli, when Corso forcibly removed her, so he could marry her to his ally Rossellino della Tosa.  She was wed against her wishes, and died soon afterwards.

Corso removing Piccarda from her convent

It was not a peacemaking marriage.  Rossellino was Corso's friend and ally - a friendship that survived the first eventual split in the Guelf party, though not the second.  By the time Rossellino and Corso were enemies, Piccarda had been dead for years.

Dante places Piccarda in the Paradiso, though at a relatively low level, because her vows (to become a nun) were in some respect unfulfilled, though not by her choice.  Dante causes Piccarda to proclaim her perfect happiness in her placement, because it is God's will, and she utters the famous phrase:  "E 'n la sua voluntade è la nostra pace:  ell' è quel mare al qual tutto si move ciò ch'ella cria o che natura face."  (And in his will is our peace:  he is that sea toward which all move that his will creates or Nature makes.)

Dante meets Piccarda in Paradise

One quick look back at Lapo, Ravenna's son by Azzolino.  Included in his grandfather's conviction for heresy in 1282, and condemned to die at the stake should he be taken in Florence, Lapo made his home elsewhere in Tuscany.  A poet, he later became friends with Dante during the great man's long exile from his troubled city.

And thus we end this series on peacemaking marriages, which seem to have resulted in very little peace.

May our own attachments fare better.


Images in this post are in the public domain by virtue of antiquity.

A Traitor Race: Peacemaking Marriage II

A wedding, and a wife repudiated

Last week I set out some of the background for the three specific examples of peacekeeping marriages I want to look at over the next three weeks.  If you missed it, scroll down or click here.  It will give you some insights into the power struggles, the Guelf-Ghibelline contests for dominance, the frequency of exile for the party out of power, and how often attempts were made to heal these rifts by crafting a marriage between a woman from one group and a man from the other.


The First Couple

The first couple I want to look at plighted their troth in the year 1239.  This union represented an attempt to bring Guelfs and Ghibellines together.  We do not know the given name of the bride, so I think we'll assign her one:  let's call her Lisetta.  No particular reason, just that it's a pretty name, and she needs a break, as you will see.

Lisetta was the daughter of the Guelf leader Ranieri dei Buondelmonti, who in turn was the son of the famous Buondelmonte dei Buondelmonti whose disastrous peacemaking betrothal in 1216 is the stuff of legend, and also the subject of my recently published novel, A Thing Done.  As the granddaughter of Buondelmonte, she well represented the Guelf party.  The chronicle tells us she was both wise and lovely.

Her betrothed was Neri Piccolino degli Uberti, the son of Iacopo, who was the son of Schiatta degli Uberti (also a character in my book, and Buondelmonte's nemesis).  Neri was brother to the great Farinata degli Uberti, the Ghibelline leader who Dante treats with such respect in his Divine Comedy (although he did respectfully install the great Ghibelline in the Inferno).

Dante encounters the great Farinata in Hell

So Lisetta and Neri were wed.  We do not know how old they were (though he was already a knight, so not just out of childhood).  We do know that it went badly very quickly, and we know that the Buondelmonti were still nursing a grudge over the events of 1216.

One version of the story says that the disaster happened at their wedding banquet, hosted by the Buondelmonti in Campo di Valdarno.  In this version, the banquet is a trap - the unsuspecting Ghibellines (Neri's family and allies - besides the Uberti, the Caponsacchi, the Amidei, the Fifanti, and other clans - and, presumably, Neri himself) attend, confident that the new marriage will prevent any untoward incidents.

They were wrong.  The chronicler known as Pseudo-Brunetto Latini tells us that at the end of the meal, someone (the bride's father, perhaps?) gave a signal, the Buondelmonti and their allies and their men turned on their unprepared guests, and before the melee was done, several men had lost their lives.  Among them, one of Schiatta's sons (Iacopo, Neri's father) and Oddo (Oderigo) dei Fifanti, also a player in the 1216 events.  They were killed by Simone Donati, a member of a family closely allied with the Buondelmonti.  You'll be hearing more about Simone in a later post. 

Another version says that the incident occurred two years after the wedding, but otherwise the particulars are similar.  This seems more likely to me, because the necrology at Santa Reparata (Florence's cathedral at that time) indicates Oddo's date of death as 29 November 1241. 

Whether the couple had two years of marriage or only a few hours, the chronicles report that once Neri returned from battling his in-laws, he repudiated his bride, saying harshly, "I do not want to beget sons of a traitor race."  (As far as we know he hadn't yet begotten any at this point.)  Lisetta returned to her father's house - we can only guess how she felt about any of this - and her marriage was annulled.

Her father Ranieri (who the stories suggest was the prime mover behind the ambush) then pledged her to another knight, Pannocchino de' Conti Pannucchiesci of Siena.  Lisetta protested; the prospect of being a countess was not enough to win her over.  This was not another peacekeeping marriage, but still, she had decided that her own peace was more likely to be kept if she entered a convent.  Nevertheless, she was wed against her will.

As the story goes, when the Count came to "take his joy in her in the way that was owed," she told him she could not enter into marital relations with him, because she was "already married to the wisest and best knight in Italy, messer Neri degli Uberti."  

(And if you suspect that this account may have been written by an Uberti partisan, you're in good company.  A lot of historians think it may have come originally from a now-lost Uberti ricordanza, or family record.  I can certainly think of a few other things she might have said instead.)

The Count must have been rather taken aback by this, or by whatever she actually did say, but he kindly agreed to release her from her obligations and let her enter the convent.  She lived out her days in the convent of Montecelli, probably happy to be out of her family's reach, and thumbing her nose at the lot of them. 

Lest you think that was the end of it, fast-forward to the peacemaking efforts of papal legate Cardinal Latino Malabranca in 1279-80.  One of the Cardinal's main aims was to reconcile the Uberti with the Buondelmonti. The Uberti were in exile; the Cardinal made the decision to readmit many of the Ghibellines including some of the Uberti, but he drew the line at letting the sons of Farinata come back into the city.  The Uberti who did return made a sort of peace with most of the Buondelmonti.

Cardinal Latino Malabranca

But the sons of Ranieri dei Buondelmonti would not agree.  They accepted both exile and excommunication rather than end their quarrel with the Uberti, and they rode away from Florence, still proud, still angry.  Such was the power of long years of bitter hatred.


Next week, the second couple - one of the several couples united in a peacemaking effort in 1267.

Images in this post are in the public domain by virtue of antiquity.

Till Vendetta Do Us Part: Peacemaking Marriages I

"To the bride!"

Throughout the 13th century in Florence, every time the internecine violence reached a point where everyone agreed something had to be done, efforts to make peace - whether instigated from within the city or from outside - involved contracting marriages between the two warring families. 

In this post I'd like to give a little bit of background for this peculiar practice (which is certainly not unique to Florence, nor to the 13th century, but which still strikes me as a little strange, and probably thought up by somebody male.)  Imagine that you are a young (perhaps very young) woman in Florence.  You have been told all your life that the members of another faction are your bitter enemies, the devil incarnate.  Perhaps they have caused members of your family harm, or threatened to.  And now - suddenly - you're going to marry one.  You're going to have his children, and they and you will be under his absolute control.  If his family turns on yours again, too bad - your loyalties must now lie with your husband.

I'm going to list a few of the best-known occasions where this technique was employed through the century, mention a few specific pairings, and then, in my next few blog posts, I want to give a little post-wedding history for three of the couples.  But it won't make sense without a little historical and political background; hence the divided post.

We'll pass over the peacemaking marriage famously proposed in 1216, because I can't discuss it here without introducing spoilers for anyone who might want to read my book.   And I would really like for you to read my book.  Suffice it to say that a knight, one Buondelmonte dei Buondelmonti, in an effort to resolve a conflict, was betrothed to a young woman whose family was allied with the powerful Uberti family, and "happily ever after" is not exactly how it went.

Marriage of Buondelmonte, by Saverio Altamura (1858-60 ca.)

In spite of that, 23 years later the Buondelmonti and the Uberti tried it again.  This time it was a granddaughter of Buondelmonte, whose name we don't know, promised to Neri Piccolomino degli Uberti, the grandson of Schiatta degli Uberti (who's also in A Thing Done).

Do you think that turned out any better?  No?  Very good - full marks for that answer.  We'll return to the unfortunate couple in next week's post.  For now, we will take a look at the rest of the 13th century.

By 1267, when a whole cluster of these marriages appears, party lines have been more firmly drawn.  With the clarity of hindsight we can see that the Buondelmonti were ringleaders in the proto-Guelf (pro-papal) party, though it was not yet called that, and the Uberti were the stalwarts at the head of the proto-Ghibelline (pro-imperial) party, also not yet called that.   This party division was not specific to Florence; it was to be found across Italy.

In the 13th century Florence had a pattern of upheaval that consisted of first one party gaining the ascendancy and then the other.  The party on top typically would exile the leaders of the opposition, and then the prevailing party would seize and destroy (or redistribute) the property of the exiles, up to and including pulling down their towers and destroying their homes.

The Wheel of Fortune

Then, when the wheel of Fortune turned, the triumphant exiles would return and cast out the other guys, and would then have a go at the property their enemies had been forced to abandon (including getting as much of their own side's property back into the hands of its original owners as they could). 

This resulted in a lot of rubble in the streets and a lot of very annoyed people.  It could mean total ruin for a family, but often it did not, because even then wealthy Florentines tended to have investments outside the city.  And nobody ever bothered exiling anybody except the rich and powerful.

So the exiles would leave, grumpily making their way toward a nearby city with a government sympathetic to their party, or in some cases to their own country castles and lands, to set up a shadow government, try to attract allies, plot and scheme, and then, when they thought the time was right, to make their own bid for power.

The 1267 nuptials followed a six-year period of Ghibelline supremacy and Guelf exile.  The Ghibellines' triumph at the bloody battle of Montaperti on September 4, 1260 had naturally resulted in an exodus of Florentine Guelfs.

Battle of Montaperti

But on February 26, 1266, it was the Guelfs' turn to triumph, in the battle of Benevento, north of Naples.  Moreover, Manfred, the son of the late Emperor Frederick II, was killed in that battle, leaving the Ghibelline party not much to rally around in the way of an imperial force.

Battle of Benevento

And yet the Ghibellines hung on in Florence, and the Guelfs didn't return for over a year.  It was a struggle for the Ghibellines, because the populace, weary of both the major parties, managed to move themselves into leadership positions, displacing the Ghibellines and resisting efforts by the Guelfs to take advantage of the Ghibellines' rudderless state and return.  It got to the point where the Ghibelline forces were mobilizing to square off against members of the populace, when a Ghibelline leader made what military strategists generally refer to as a Dumb Move.

Guido Novello, of the Conti Guidi (long a power in Tuscany), led his troops out of the city in order to come in again from a more strategic angle.  And while the Ghibellines were outside the city walls, the populace closed the gates.

Conti Guidi

Conti Guidi (variant)

Imagine that.  You try to get yourself into a better position, and while you're out maneuvering (and being out-maneuvered), those insolent plebs you were about to attack go and change the locks.  Machiavelli, who believed that Guido fled the city in fear of the people, says in his Florentine Histories, "...for the people who had been able to drive him out only with difficulty were able to keep him out with ease."

Chronicler Giovanni Villani says that when the dejected Ghibellines reached nearby Prato, "they bitterly reproached each other, but after a thing ill-judged, and worse carried out, repentance is in vain."  Hmmm.  "A thing ill-judged."  That would make a great title...

Thus did the Ghibellines go out with a whimper, never to have the rulership of Florence again.  Next the pope, Clement IV, persuaded the reluctant populace that they really should re-admit the exiled Guelf (pro-papal, remember?) party.  Popes in those days could be extremely persuasive; thus it was that the Guelfs returned, in April of 1267.

Clement IV, a persuasive pope

That sets the stage for the 1267 marriage contracts.  The defeated Ghibellines had trickled back, the Guelfs came home, and the pope wanted everyone to make peace.  

Among the couples united in that effort:  Iacopa, whose father was Guido Novello (remember the locked-out Ghibelline?), betrothed to Forese di Bonaccorso Adimari.  Bonaccorso, Forese's father, was caption of the Florentine Guelfs for over thirty years, so it doesn't get much Guelfer than that.  Bonaccorso's brother Bindo affianced Selvaggia degli Ubaldini, the daughter of a prominent Ghibelline house.

Adimari

Ubaldini

 Marriages were contracted between the Ghibelline Strinati family and the Guelf della Tosa.  That peace lasted for a time, but it must have been brittle - in 1301, we learn from chronicler Neri Strinati, the della Tosa attacked and robbed the Strinati houses, and "again in the same night the gang of the Medici [allied with the della Tosa] came to our house," where they stole everything that was left, and, as Strinati says in his Cronichetta, they "left the children, male and female, naked in their cribs, carrying off the clothing and bed linens."  One wonders if any of those children might have had a della Tosa grandmother.

della Tosa

Two other marriages were contracted at that time, both of which we will look at more closely in the next few blog posts:  Guido Cavalcanti (poet, and Dante's "first friend") was promised to Beatrice, daughter of the late Ghibelline leader Farinata degli Uberti (Guido Novello's predecessor); and Beatrice's brother Azzolino was given for wife Ravenna Donati.  Ravenna was the sister of Corso Donati, who I've often written about in these posts, and the daughter of Simone Donati, who played a role in the tale of the 1239 marriage that I'll recount in an upcoming post.  She was also a cousin of Dante's wife, Gemma Donati.

Cavalcanti

Donati

The Florentines were still at it in 1279, when the papal legate Cardinal Latino Malabranca Orsini arrived to make peace between warring factions (which by then included Guelfs arguing with other Guelfs, as well as Guelfs vs. Ghibellines).  Among the squabbling Guelf families he united were the Adimari (like Bonaccorso, above) and the Tosinghi; and the Donati (Ravenna's family) and the Pazzi.

Cardinal Latino

I have a theory that Gemma Donati's father Manetto promised his daughter to Dante (which he did in 1277, when Dante was 12 and Gemma probably younger) because he didn't want her to be available for such a peacemaking marriage.  As a leader in Florence and a prominent Guelf, he would have known early that efforts were afoot to have a papal peacemaker come to the city, and he also would have known that his own family would be one of the first to be considered for peacemaking unions.

I like to think that he wanted to spare his daughter such a fate, and so he arranged for her early betrothal to the poet-to-be, who lived a few doors down the street and was of a lower social station than the Donati.  Perhaps Manetto decided that to keep his daughter safe and nearby, he was willing to give the new couple a great deal of financial help, if needed, if it would keep her free of a union with a hostile family.  (He did indeed provide a lot of financial backing for Dante, all the way up to the point where Dante was exiled, and presumably assisted Gemma afterwards.)

In 1290, the Florentines were still making these marriages.  In that year, the priors not only mandated two marital liaisons between the della Tosa and the Lamberti, they actually pledged 1400 lire of the city's money toward the necessary dowries.  Such a deal - peace, if it works, and the woman's father doesn't even have to provide the dowry.


Next week:  the fate of Unknown Buondelmonti Lady and Neri Piccolomino degli Uberti.

Images in this post are in the public domain, with the exceptions of the heraldic devices of the Adimari, the Conti Guidi (two lions), the Cavalcanti, and the Ubaldini, which are from Wikimedia Commons, licensed under Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 Unported, created by Massimop; and the heraldic devices of the Uberti, the Conti Guidi (one lion) and the della Tosa, which are also from Wikimedia Commons and under the same licensing agreement, created by Sailko; and the picture of Pope Clement IV, also from Wikimedia Commons, same license, created by Marianne Casamance.