It might have been supposed that all accounts between debtor and creditor had been cancelled by the plague; but so many fraudulent bankruptcies had previously occurred and so unwholesome a system of mercantile credits had been allowed that it became an article of swindling speculation, and large orders were frequently given on long credit with a sole view to future insolvency. As a remedy there was now published a decree forbidding any citizen to buy or sell on credit, not only in the state itself but within a hundred miles of Florence, on pain of losing his reputation and a fine equal to the amount of the purchase money. Nor were sumptuary laws forgotten; for riches and luxury required control, and a check was therefore placed on the expense of marriage ceremonies which now were frequent in consequence of augmented wealth and thin population; but as these could not at once raise citizens to the state new scrutiny-lists became requisite for three years, which from necessity admitted the nobles to many public offices both in town and country.[f] FOOTNOTES [12] [Hunt says: “Dante tells the feelings which were roused by the coming of the king. He seemed to come as God’s vicegerent, to change the fortunes of men and bring the exiled home; by the majesty of his presence to bring the peace for which the banished poet longed, and to administer to all men justice, judgment, and equity.”] [Illustration] CHAPTER VI. THE VANGUARD OF THE RENAISSANCE [Sidenote: [_ca._ 1250-1400 A.D.]] We have seen much in recent chapters of the trials and disasters of Florence. We now have the more agreeable task of recording her triumphs. The record of petty quarrels and more pretentious warrings, through which Florence has thus far been called to our attention, might well have blinded our eyes to the observation of a remarkable culture development which went on coincidentally with these political jarrings. In point of fact, there was a most extraordinary intellectual development taking place in Italy in the later centuries of the so-called dark ages, and the focus and centre of that development was Florence; in proof of which that city now gave to the world within a single century a school of writers, led by Dante, Petrarch, and Boccaccio, who virtually stamped the Italian language for the first time as a literary medium, and whose works marked the highest development of Italian creative genius. And contemporaneous with these writers were the artists Cimabue and Giotto, who gave an altogether similar impulse to art. All these men were Florentines, and so greatly did their influence preponderate over that of any other Italians of the epoch that Symonds[b] is fully justified in saying: “It may be affirmed without exaggeration that, prior to the close of the fifteenth century, what we called Italian genius was in truth the genius of Florence.”