Val d'Arno: Ten Lectures on the Tuscan Art Directly Antecedent to the Florentine Year of Victories; Given Before the University of Oxford in Michaelmas Term, 1873Ruskin, John
History
Val d'Arno: Ten Lectures on the Tuscan Art Directly Antecedent to the Florentine Year of Victories; Given Before the University of Oxford in Michaelmas Term, 1873
Ruskin, John
Art -- Italy -- Tuscany
234. Of the character of their enemy, Charles of Anjou, there will
remain on your minds, after careful examination of his conduct, only
the doubt whether I am justified in speaking of him as Christian against
Infidel. But you will cease to doubt this when you have entirely entered
into the conditions of this nascent Christianity of the thirteenth
century. You will find that while men who desire to be virtuous receive
it as the mother of virtues, men who desire to be criminal receive it
as the forgiver of crimes; and that therefore, between Ghibelline or
Infidel cruelty, and Guelph or Christian cruelty, there is always this
difference,--that the Infidel cruelty is done in hot blood, and the
Christian's in cold. I hope (in future lectures on the architecture of
Pisa) to illustrate to you the opposition between the Ghibelline Conti,
counts, and the Guelphic Visconti, viscounts or "against counts," which
issues, for one thing, in that, by all men blamed as too deliberate,
death of the Count Ugolino della Gherardesca. The Count Ugolino was
a traitor, who entirely deserved death; but another Count of Pisa,
entirely faithful to the Ghibelline cause, was put to death by Charles
of Anjou, not only in cold blood, but with resolute infliction of
Ugolino's utmost grief;--not in the dungeon, but in the full light of
day--his son being first put to death before his eyes. And among the
pieces of heraldry most significant in the middle ages, the asp on the
shield of the Guelphic viscounts is to be much remembered by you as a
sign of this merciless cruelty of mistaken religion; mistaken, but not
in the least hypocritical. It has perfect confidence in itself, and
can answer with serenity for all its deeds. The serenity of heart never
appears in the guilty Infidels; they die in despair or gloom, greatly
satisfactory to adverse religious minds.
235. The French Pope, then, Urban of Troyes, had sent for Charles of
Anjou; who would not have answered his call, even with all the strength
of Anjou and Provence, had not Scylla of the Tyrrhene Sea been on his
side. Pisa, with eighty galleys (the Sicilian fleet added to her own),
watched and defended the coasts of Rome. An irresistible storm drove her
fleet to shelter; and Charles, in a single ship, reached the mouth of
the Tiber, and found lodgings at Rome in the convent of St. Paul. His
wife meanwhile spent her dowry in increasing his land army, and led it
across the Alps. How he had got his wife, and her dowry, we must hear in
Villani's words, as nearly as I can give their force in English, only,
instead of the English word pilgrim, I shall use the Italian 'romeo' for
the sake both of all English Juliets, and that you may better understand
the close of the sixth canto of the Paradise.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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