upon this occasion that he first conceived the design of writing his history, we shall give our readers his account of it in his own words.

In the year 1300, Boniface the Eighth, who then filled the papal chair, proclaimed a plenary indulgence, says our author, "for every Roman, who during thirty days, and for all other persons of whatsoever nation, who during fifteen days, successively, in the said year, should visit the churches of the blessed apostles St. Peter and St. Paul." Multitudes flocked to the celebration of this jubilee from all parts of Christendom; and it was the most wonderful thing ever beheld, that, throughout the year, there were at Rome two hundred thousand pilgrims in addition to the constant inhabitants, without reckoning those who were on the roads coming and returning, and they were all (both horses and men) amply provided with victuals of all sorts, with great regularity, and without any noise or bustle. And to this, adds the historian, I can myself bear witness, who was present and saw it. Now, having undertaken this blessed pilgrimage to the holy city of Rome, seeing with my own eyes the noble antiquities which are therein, and reading the records of the great actions of the Romans written by Virgil, and by Sallust, Lucan, Titus Livius, Valerius, Paulus Orosius, and other masters of history, who have described little things as well as great, even those relating to the further ends of the world, in order to give memory and example unto posterity, I took from them my style and method of writing, albeit I were not a disciple worthy to perform so great a work. But considering that our own city of Florence, the daughter and the workmanship of Rome, was then in her ascension, and disposed to the achievement of great fortunes, as also that Rome was in her decline and diminution, it appeared to me convenient to collect in this new chronicle all the acts of the said city from its commencements, as far as it was possible for me to search for and discover them, and to follow up the same with the histories of times past and present, and of those to come (so long as it shall please God) both of the acts of the Florentine people, and of all other notable occurrences throughout the whole world, of which I may be able to obtain any knowledge; God granting his grace; in the hope whereof I have entered upon this undertaking, duly considering my own poor skill as that upon which I could place no reliance. And thus, through the mediation of Christ, in the year of his incarnation 1300, I, being returned from Rome, began to compile this book, to the glory of God and of the blessed Saint John, and in commendation of our city of Florence.-Lib. iv. cap. 36.

Very shortly after he had taken this commendable resolution, in the summer of the same year 1300, broke out that dreadful division of the Guelph faction into the parte nera and parte bianca, (the black and the white party,) which he deplores with all the feeling of a good citizen. The origin of that maladetta briga' is traced to a private feud which took place in the neighbouring city of Pistoja;

VOL. IX. NO. XVIII.

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Pistoja: but, although the history of that eveut deserves to be remembered, not only on account of the tremendous consequences which it carried in its train, but also as being extremely characteristic of the barbarous manners of the age, and the factious spirit of the nation, in which it occurred, we cannot here afford space for its relation.*

To proceed with the history of our author. It appears that, in the ensuing year 1301, he was present at the grand public entry of Charles de Valois into Florence to attempt the restoration of tranquillity, in which, from his general spirit, it may be believed that he cordially assisted; but in vain; since the year after witnessed the banishment of the chiefs of the parte bianca, and among others, of the illustrious poet Dante, from Florence. In 1804, he undertook a journey to Flanders; probably on some commercial concerns, though it has been conjectured that he was induced by the desire of seeing foreign countries, or of escaping the calamities to which he was an unwilling witness in his own. However it be, we owe to this journey some very interesting particulars respecting the wars of Philip le Bel with the Flemings, which are not to be met with in the French historians. He tells us (lib. viii. cap. 78.) that he visited the field of battle at Mons en Puelle, a few days only after that celebrated and sanguinary contest, and while the dead bodies were still lying on the ground unburied. How long he remained in those parts is uncertain; nor does his name occur again in any memorial of the times until the year 1316, when he was appointed for the first time to the office of prior; and it gives us some little light into the zeal and ardour with which he collected all the information he was able about the affairs of foreign nations, however widely dispersed, to find that one of his colleagues was Pela Balducci, who furnished him with all that he has written concerning the mercantile privileges conferred by the King of Tunis; and another Pace di Certaldo, author of a Storia della Guerra di Semifonte,' from which it appears that Villani was in the habits of a regular interchange with him of historical records and monuments. In the same manner, he collected from a Florentine of the house of Bastari, who was brought up in his infancy at the court of Cassano Imperatore de' Tartari,' (Ghâzan Khân, the seventh king of Persia of the race of Jenghiz,) and was, about the year 1299, sent by that conqueror on an embassy to the pope, a variety of very curious information respecting his sovereign, and the manners

A much more minute, and therefore more valuable, account of it than that given by Villani, is to be found in a very curious original history of the same period, whose author is unknown, and which is published and cited under the title of Historie Pistojesi anonyme, ovvero delle cose avvenute in Toscana dal 1300 al 1348.'

and

and customs of the Tartar nations, which, on comparison with the oriental historians, will be found to be remarkably correct. The miraculous conversion of Sultan Ghâzan to christianity is, indeed, a manifest fable; but it is not at all improbable that the Florentine envoy related it for the purpose of rendering his mission more acceptable. In other respects, the character of Ghâzan Khân, certainly one of the greatest and most enlightened princes of his race, as it is given by Major Price from the Habeib-Usseir, corresponds in a striking manner with that which Villani extracted from his conversations with his friend Bastari. The year 1317 was happily distinguished for a general pacification, obtained by the mediation of Robert of Naples, between the Guelphs and Gibellins throughout Tuscany, when Villani was sent in conjunction with two others as proveditori of a treaty between his native city and the Ghibelline state of Pisa.

We need not follow him through all the offices of state which from this time he is found to have filled at different intervals with equal honour to himself and advantage to his countrymen. His military employments do not appear to have been very frequent, but he took the field in the year 1323, during that most unfortunate campaign against Castruccio, Lord of Lucca, which had nearly terminated in the destruction of the army of the Florentines and the subversion of their liberties. In his honest and minute account of these transactions, he presents us with a very lively picture of the alternation of ignorant terror and vain confidence displayed in the conduct of an unwarlike populace, unexpectedly called to take arms in defence of their independence: lively, indeed, is his whole history of this very romantic war, which lasted with little intermission during the life of Castruccio, and during which, with an occasional mixture of extreme folly, perverseness, and vain glory, were called out all the best energies and noblest exertions of the Florentine character. The account of Castruccio himself is an honourable instance of that great historical quality which we have before attributed to Villani, of impartiality and candour even towards his enemies. Of the pride and presumption which were prominent features in his character, indeed, he affords some memorable examples; but when he comes to relate his death, which he does with many interesting particulars, he adds the following description of his person and qualities.

This Castruccio was very well made in person, sufficiently tall and active, neat and not corpulent, of a fair complexion verging towards paleness, with strait light hair and a gracious countenance. He was about 47 years old when he died. A short time before, knowing his death to be approaching, he said to many of his most intimate friends: "I see that I am going to die; e morto me di corto vedrete disasroccato;" incaning,

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meaning, in his native Lucchese dialect," and when I am dead, you will shortly see a great revolution of affairs." And he prophesied truly, as we shall soon have occasion to see. And, as we have been informed by his most private friends and relations, he confessed himself and received the sacraments and holy unction devoutly but, nevertheless, he rested under a great error, inasmuch as he never acknowledged that he had offended God by the offence he had committed against holy. church, satisfying his conscience that he had acted justly.

Now this Castruccio was a valiant and magnanimous tyrant, wise and crafty and enterprising and industrious, and accomplished in arms and provident in the art of war, and very adventurous in his undertakings, and much feared and redoubted, and in his time he did many great and notable things, and was a great scourge to his fellow citizens and to the Florentines and Pisans and Pistolese, and all the inhabitants of Tuscany for the space of fifteen years that he ruled over Lucca ; and* he was somewhat cruel in putting men to death and torture, ungrateful for services received in his distresses and necessities, fond of new people and new friends, and very vain glorious of his state and signory; insomuch that he believed himself to be lord of Florence, and king over all Tuscany. The Florentines were so much overjoyed at his death, that they could scarcely believe it possible; but as soon as the news was made certain, it came into the mind of me, the author of this book, to make record of a circumstance which happened to me respecting it.

Being a Florentine, and seeing my country in great disturbance through the persecution inflicted by him on our community which it seemed impossible that we should surmount, I wrote a letter to my devout friend, Master Dionysio dal borgo a San Sepolcro, master of divinity and philosophy in the University of Paris, wherein I lamented our condition, and prayed that he would instruct me how soon our adversity should come to its close; which letter of mine he answered in brick, saying, "I see Castruccio dead; and at the end of the war you will obtain possession of the Signory of Lucca by the hand of one who shall bear for his arms sable and gules, with great affliction and great expense and shame to our community, and you shall govern it but a short time." This letter I received from Paris in those days when Castruccio had won Pistoja as above related; so I wrote back to the master how Castruccio was in greater pomp and state than he had ever been, whereto he answered, "at present I shall again affirm that which I wrote to you by a former letter; and if God hath not changed his judg ments and altered the course of the heavens, I see Castruccio dead and buried." And when I received this letter, I showed it to the priors my colleagues, (being then a member of that body,) and it so happened that Castruccio had then actually died a few days before, and the judgment of Master Dionysio was accomplished as a prophecy in all its parts.-Lib. x. cap. 85.

This is a pretty fair specimen of our author's credulity in matters

The conjunction made use of in the original is never changed from 'and' to 'but,' so that it is not easy to discover from the text at what point Villani begins to speak in terms of disapprobation.

of

of astrology, in which science various passages of his work evince him to have been a firm believer. It must be remembered, how ever, that it was a science so fully established in those days in the judgments both of the learned and of the unlearned, that to disbelieve, would have been regarded as a proof of incredulity deserving of punishment in that circle of Dante's Inferno to which the poet has doomed Farinata and Cavalcante, the Emperor Frederic, and the Cardinal Ubaldini.

The year after Castruccio's death, the Florentines entered into a treaty for the purchase of Lucca from certain German adventu rers who had seized it in the name of the Emperor Lewis of Bavaria; and Villani was appointed one of the commissioners to conduct the negociation. To his great displeasure, however, it was long before any thing could be done towards the accomplishment of this important purpose, owing to the over-reaching disposition which his countryinen displayed on the occasion. It seems not improbable that they might have relied on Master Denys's prediction so strongly as to indispose them for listening to reasonable terms of accommodation.

In 1341, he was again appointed to the office of treating for the purchase of Lucca which had then fallen (by the chances of the times, so fertile in revolutions among all the little states of Italy) into the hands of Mastino della Scala, lord of Verona; but the year following was witness to a revolution in Florence itself, so extraordinary that, in preparing to relate it, the author himself is constrained to doubt whether posterity will yield credit to the tale. This was the usurpation of the Signory of Florence by the Duke of Athens, who had been sent thither as lieutenant to the Duke of Calabria, by virtue of a voluntary compact entered into some time before for the sake of their defence against the common enemy Mastino, who then aspired to the dominion of Tuscany. The account of this French adventurer's tyranny, in which he found means to maintain himself, for the space of nearly a twelvemonth, is among the most interesting portions of the work; and the particulars which Villani gives of the character and conduct of the despot, who (to the greater disgrace of the Florentines) was a very contemptible being, and governed rather by the basest views of selfinterest than by the principle of a splendid ambition, afford a favourable specimen of his patriotic spirit as well as of his historical ability.

Shortly after he was condemned to suffer a sad reverse of fortune. The failure of the great commercial company of the Bardi, the circumstances and causes of which are detailed with great perspicuity and intelligence by the historian, involved with it the ruin of many others of the first houses of trade in Florence, and GG 3

among