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The Casentino and its story

These verses remain the most poignant and most enduring memorial of Campaldino; rounding the awful human tragedy of the day with the terror of the mountains and the floods—with the overwhelming power of those mysteriously moved forces of Nature amid which his little torch of faith is man’s only safety. And the littleness of it in time, the quick recurrence of the green springing years bringing new hope and life to those left behind on earth, is told in that saddest word of the forgotten spirit: “Giovanna, o altri, non ha di me cura”.

You may follow to-day the course of the dying Ghibelline warrior over the fields once sprinkled with his blood to his place of death. Or if you take the high road towards Bibbiena and turn off about three miles beyond Poppi at the bridge which crosses the Archiano, and keeping the edge of the stream between the slender ranks of the poplars, you will quickly reach the spot where it loses itself and its vocabol in Arno. As a rule the Archiano is no more than a shallow rivulet, rippling merrily into the fuller current of the “royal river.” In the summer, when the rocky crannies where the hermits nest far aloft are parched and moistureless, it shrinks to a mere trickle. But the great tongue of shingly beach which runs out just at the meeting of the streams tells its tale of swollen waters. Here on the whitened stones one sits and thinks of that b1ind stumble, the gasp of Mary’s name, the fall in the sweating moment before the breaking of the storm. Then the sudden loosing of the rains, the down rush of the spate that nothing could hold in, the rigid body swept into the Arno, its arms unclasped, tossed over and over by shore and deep, and buried and wound at last in the drift of weeds and mud.

At all times this is a lonely and meditative place. To-day a solitary peasant guides his oxen in the field dose by, and stops to watch the stranger passing. We are in December. The water flows dark and quiet, contained within its narrow channel. A white fog lies upon the tree tops and everything is very still. But up there on the unseen heights the north wind is already unchained, and will tear up the shroud an hour hence, and toss up the great billows into the wild blue, ready for the morrow’ s snowstorm. But when summer comes again, six months hence, with its sudden clouds, the nightingales, hidden in that grove of trees, now leafless and dim, beside the water’s edge, will be singing the lament of Buonconte, loud and piercingly, as on that June evening long ago when the storm had passed away, and all the heavy odours, loosened by rain from grass and weeds, will float up like incense on a dead man’s grave. At no moment of the year can the place be other than sad.
We have far over-passed Poppi and must return on our steps. But before ascending to the Castle, there is another reminiscence of Campaldino to be related, the authority for which is that inimitable chronicler of anecdotes, Franco Sacchetti. Many years after the battle, on a day in March, two ladies, riding together for diversion, chanced to pass by Certomondo. One was the Lady Gherardesca, daughter of Conte Ugolino della Gherardesca, and wife of Guido di Battifolle; the other Manentessa, daughter of Buonconte da Montefeltro, and married to Conte Guido Salvatico. Their conversation is an interesting example of party spite, translated from men’s swords to women’s tongues. “Oh, Madonna,” said the daughter of the Guelf chief who had been starved to death in the Hunger Tower of Pisa to the daughter of the Ghibelline leader who had been slain at Campaldino, “look  how fine is this grain and this grass ‘here where the Ghibellines were overthrown by the Florentines. I am sure that the soil still feels that fatness.” And Buonconte’s daughter quickly replied: “Fine is it in good sooth; but we might die of hunger ere we had it to eat.”

These loving kinswomen, as they returned to Poppi, must have crossed the bridge which is said to have been built by Count Guidoguerra a century before their time, and which still spans the Arno with its picturesque and hoary arches, beneath the town The suburb on the left bank, Ponte a Poppi, is an ancient growth, but is uninteresting and most squalid. Its houses have been a good deal modernised. Little else is changed since the Countesses rode across with their hawks and pages. On a bright morning the water would have danced and sparkled in its stony bed just as it does to-day, and the bare-legged women who kneel and wash in the stream or cross the strand balancing bundles on their heads had ancestresses in the fourteenth century who did just the same. The same steep flagged path ascends between the houses and is seen above the lower roofs, winding up to where the hill-top is ridged with churches and habitations, overtopped by the towering Castle. But one misses to-day in the setting of ancient walls, of rusty roofs and grass.-grown slopes, the brilliant colour and splendour of the medioeva1 figures. No more processions of proud horsemen pass up and down. But the place is alive with memories of some of the most thrilling moments in the story of the Conti Guidi. Over the bridge and up the causeway clattered that recreant “County Guy,” Guido Novello, fleeing from the slaughter of Campaldino below. Up here in 1343 the courteous Simone di Battifolle conducted the fallen Duke of Athens to choose between humiliation or a dungeon in the tower above. But most tragic of all was that last scene in the story of the Guidi when Count Francesco, having looked out from his castle upon the Florentine army stretched out below in a great half moon, reaching from Certomondo to Fronzola, descended to the bridge to treat with its commander, Neri Capponi, who has himself related the story. “‘Can it be,’ said the Count, ‘that your Signory will not leave me this dwelling, which has been ours for 900 years. Do as you will with the rest.’ I answered him: ‘Do not imagine it. You have not borne yourself in such wise that my Signory wish to have you as a neighbour. They would be very willing that you should be a great lord in Germany.’ He angrily replied: ‘And I should like to have you there.’ Whereat I laughed.” So amid the scorn of the citizen victors for the arrogant pretensions of this relic of feudalism, the last of the Guidi was compelled to surrender possessions, castle, everything, even the consolation of revenge upon two prisoners whom he was keeping in a dungeon at Pratovecchio and would have conveyed secretly away with him, had not Neri discovered and rescued them. Then came the final scene when, accompanied by his family and retainers, and followed by a mournful procession of thirty mules bearing the scanty remains of his wealth, the Count descended the hill for the last time and passed out of the home of his fathers for ever.
The hill-top is still encircled by the remains of the old walls and defences built by Simone di Battifolle in 1261, when he and Guido Novello ruled here together, and which were so strong that they resisted the repeated attacks of d’Alviano in 1490 and thus saved the Casen­tino from falling altogether into the power of the Vene­tian invaders. You enter through an ancient gateway, which is defended by the ruins of a massive bastion and by a tall bell-tower. Just within the gate is the Abbey of S. Fedele, founded by the Conti Guidi in the twelfth century for monks of the Vallombrosan Order. It was originally a dependency of the great Abbey of Strumi, which lay about half a mile away to the north of Poppi, and which enjoyed at one time great wealth and importance. Strumi produced, not a Pope indeed, but an anti-Pope, John of Strumi, the Abbot, being promoted to that ambiguous honour by Frederick Barbarossa. But the new monastery at Poppi flourished at the expense of the rnother house; Strumi felI into decay and the monks finally abandoned it and transferred themselves to S.Fedele, and nothing is now left of the original abbey but some fragments of old building used as a farmhouse. Nor does the daughter monastery exist any more, having been long ago suppressed. The church is a large building, restored in the eighteenth century; the altar­pieces it contains are of little interest, with the excep­tion of a large Madonna and Child, of the pre-Giottesque period, exceedingly stiff and unnatural, but noble in feeling and design, especially in comparison with the two vulgar seventeenth or eighteenth century figures of saints, between which the ancient panel is most incon­gruously fitted. There is also a large painted crucifix of the fourteenth century. Andrea del Sarto was painting an Assumption for this church when he died; his widow, the fair-haired woman with the inexpressive face whom he has portrayed for us, was paid seventy lire for it, the price stipulated by the monks. The picture has now passed to Florence. Many of the Conti Guidi were buried in the cloisters of the adjoining monastery, but their tombs were destroyed by order of Pius V.

Poppi loses on closer acquaintance the enchant­ment which distance lends it. But it is a picturesque enough little hill town. The long main street lined with arcaded houses, between which narrow, black-browed alleys run steeply down the hillside, leads to the central piazza and the seventeenth cen­tury oratory of the Madonna del Morbo, built to commemorate the liberation of the town from two dread­ful visitations of the plague. It contains a very sacred picture of the Madonna, which is said to possess the gift of healing, and is kept strictly veiled; it has no artistic value. The ugly Church of the Propositura, San Marco, on the left, has nothing in it of interest. The church of the Augustine nuns, beneath the castle on the east side, contains a very charming example of the polychromatic terra-cotta work of the later Della Robbia school. It is a Nativity; the Virgin, and St. Joseph adoring the Babe, with St. Francis and another Franciscan saint kneeling on either side in front. The shepherds, with their crooks and lambs, are entering on the scene behind, and in the distance they are seen again with their flocks listening to the angelic message. A wreath of dancing angels, small figures, appears upon a cloud above the stable. The sentiment of the whole scene is sweet and touching, and the little subjects in the predella below, divided by pilasters decorated with rich arabesques in white on a blue ground, are enchant­ingly graceful, more particularly the Annunciation and the Salutation. The subdued colour of the whole piece is very decorative; there is none of that gaudi­ness which is so disagreeable in some of these polychromatic reliefs. Another work of the san1e school, the Madonna giving her girdle to St. Thomas, used to be on the front of a house just below the gate of the town; it has now however been removed, but is, I believe, to be placed in the castle. The town possesses a library of considerable value, consisting partly of the old library of the monks at Camaldoli, and con­taining some illuminated manuscripts and a number of early printed books.

The Castle stands on a rise above the town, on the verge of the hill, whence its lofty tower dominates all the country round. It is a splendid and imposing building, and remains to-day a witness to the power and opulence of the great Conti Guidi. It was built by the brothers Guido Novello and Simone di Battifolle, who lived in it in great magnificence, so that the ex­pression became proverbial in Florence: Tu stai più ad agio che ’l conte in Poppi.‘ “ You are in greater ease than the Count in Poppi.”

Whilst he was vicar in Florence, Guido Novello stripped the city of its arms and harness of war and carried them hither and furnished his castle with them, as well as with all those taken from the Guelfs at the battle of Monta­perti. Villani relates that one day the Baron, then at the climax of fortune and pride, was exhibiting his armoury to his uncle, Count Tegrimo of Porciano, and asked him what he thought of it. “The said Count Tegrimo responded promptly and unexpectedly with a witty and noteworthy jest, and said: ‘It appears to me very good, only I understand that the Florentines lend at heavy interest.’” The prophecy contained in the old man’s words was too well fulfilled later. In 1290, a year after the battle of Campaldino, the Florentines having spoilt all the country of the Aretines, entered the Casentino again and laid waste the lands of Guido Novello “and destroyed his fortress and palace of Poppi, which were very strong and wonderful.” Count Guido di Battifolle, son of Simone, rebuilt the castle. In gratitude for his services to the Guelf party, Florence had granted him a sum for repairing the damage done to the Guidi possessions after Campaldino. The builder was Lapo, father of Arnolfo da Cambio, according to Vasari, who also says that Arnolfo designed the Palazzo Vecchio in Florence after the likeness of that in the Casentino. Vasari errs however in making Arnolfo Lapo’s son, as he was apparently only the pupil of the elder architect, but there is certainly some such relationship between the two works of their hands. The massive walls and battlements and soaring tower of the feudal strong­hold, which unite the grim and heavy character proper to the mediaeval Tuscan with a Gothic grace of orna­mentation, make it seem a smaller version of the great palace of the Florentine people. A noticeable feature of Poppi Castle is the proportion of the eastern façade, which is narrower than the other three sides of the building, so that when seen from the valley road below, the flanks slope slightly outwards from it with peculiar effect.(1)

(1)This was probably for some purpose of defence. Can it be that the castle archers were thus able to shoot from a wider front than they would present to the missiles of a besieging foe?

 The large green which lies before the castle, shaded with trees and reminding one of the peaceful surroundings of an old English baronial mansion, was once the great courtyard or piazza, and was enclosed within strong wails. It was the joust and tilting ground, the campo franco or field where duels might be fought, and the place of games and merrymaking. The splendid façade of the Castle on this side, in the midst of which rises the tower, is probably a later addi­tion to Lapo’s origina1 building. The fine ornamenta­tion of the gothic windows has a very renewed look, but in only one has the old work been replaced by a modem copy; the others have been cleaned and repaired.

Passing through the low postern tower and across the now filled-in moat, you enter beneath a great arched portal guarded by the image of a 1ion sculptured in bas­- relief above it, a fifteenth century work, attributed to Jacopo Turriani. The dark and lofty castle hall, or cortile, of noble architectural form, is now in sad decay; the flag-stones are green and moist; the walls, plastered with the sculp­tured devices of the successive castellans and once richly frescoed above, are damp a n d crumbling. One’s voice echoes and is lost in the hollow silence of deep vaulted spaces. A massive wall encloses the lowest flight of the staircase, which ascends at a steep pitch to the gallery at the top, supported by arches in the wall, and has the remains of an ornate and graceful balustrade. This staircase is of later date than the great hall, as may be seen by the traces of old windows which it masks. The Castle is undergoing a very slow process of restoration, in the course of which a lower gallery on the east side has been pulled down under the probably mistaken impression that it did not belong to the original design of the building. 0ff the hall are prisons, still used, though the grimmer of the dungeons are left to the ghosts; one of them is confidently pointed out as the prison of Dante, who, if the vulgar are to be be­lieved, must have passed a great deal of time in the Casentino in confinement. Some gratings in the floor cover the openings to grue­some underground dun­geons and oubliettes, and a great stone table, upon which scourgings and various torments are said to have been inflicted upon offenders, adds to the grim impression of the place. Over this scene of baronial justice presides a colossal fresco, now almost indistinguishable, of the Madonna enthroned, with saints kneeling and standing around. On the left of the entrance there is a door leading into the old cistern or reservoir of the castle, a great vaulted underground chamber, still partly filled with water.

At the top of the long staircase stands an interest­ing statue of a warrior in armour, forming a caryatid, and popularly called Count Guidoguerra, who was, however, dead long before the castle was built. If one of the Guidi at all, it must be a much later Count. Passerini, the historian of the family, says it is Guido di Battifolle, who restored the castle. The staircase gives access to some fine rooms, showing remains of frescoes and decorations, much of which is sixteenth century work. The walls of the little chapel, however, are covered with fourteenth cen­tury paintings, by some follower of Taddeo Gaddi. They are usually attributed to Jacopo Landino, known as Jacopo del Casentino, a native of Pratovecchio. Vasari has included this artist in his lives of the painters, relating that when Taddeo Gaddi was working at La Verna, the superior of the convent placed the boy Jacopo with him to learn the art of painting, in which he succeeded so well that he was commissioned later to do many works in Florence and elsewhere as well as in the Casentino. There is little of his work now known. The one or two pictures to which his name is attached in public galleries seem to belong to the fifteenth century. The subjects represented here at Poppi are the Story of St. John the Baptist, the Death of the Virgin, the Presentation in the Temple, and scenes from the legend of St. John the Evangelist. The kneeling figures in the scene of John Baptist preaching are portraits of some of the Guidi, and the two foremost are in all probability Count Roberto di Battifolle, Petrarch’s friend, and his brother Count Carlo. Their heads are, however, scarcely distinguished from the conventional type which the painter uses for all the figures alike in these frescoes. The corresponding female figures in the fresco of Salome are no doubt the ladies of the family. In a passage or room now open on to the gallery there is a curious painting of a Love standing upon a fountain, with two figures below that seem intended for Dante and Beatrice. On the opposite wall appears a figure of Fortune on a wheel.

The traces of the old lords have been everywhere overlaid by the later Florentine governors or vicars who ruled the Casentino after the expulsion of the Guidi, and made Poppi their palace. I sought long in vain for some device of the original House among the heraldic emblems which adorn the walls of the castle, inside and outside—the Marzocco of Florence, the Palle of the Medici, the hundred and one shields of cavaliers of noble Tuscan families, including several of glazed terra-cotta, surrounded by garlands of flowers and fruit, by the school of the Della Robbia. At last, at the top of the long flight of stairs, just at the turn, I discovered a worn stone ornament, sculptured with the original shield of the Conti, the Cross of St. Andrew, on a field still showing traces of blue colour. The later Guidi introduced a lion—or sometimes two lions—into their arms, which varied a good deal in the differ­ent branches of the family. The shield in its later form is, I believe, upon the arch at the foot of the staircase.

It is the romantic associations with the Guidi and their days that one seeks in this Castle, and naturally the first question is, Was Dante ever here? There exist two letters, addressed from Poppi, by the Countess Gherardesca, wife of Guido di Battifolle, to Margaret of Brabant, Henry VII’s Empress, which were found in a manuscript containing letters of Dante’s, and have therefore been conjectured to have been composed by him, in which case he must have been an inmate of the castle at the time. Apart from this doubtful evidence there seems no very good reason for supposing that he found shelter with a noble who was closely allied with the Republic which had exiled him, and who served it faithfully against Dante’s beloved Emperor.

A guest of a very different sort, the odious tyrant of Florence, Walter de Brienne, was certainly here, and the great chamber off the cortile, where the archives are kept, is supposed to be the scene of his ratification of the act of abdication. In spite of the horrors of blood from which he had barely escaped with his life out of the enraged city, the Duke at first refused to sign. Then said the Count: “My Lord Duke, if you will not observe that which you have sworn to the Florentines I will not for that reason use towards you any force or violence except that I will carry you back to Florence and there you can at your ease settle the matter with the city, as seems most good to you.” The hint was enough. The Duke delayed no longer, but taking up the pen, ratified his surrender of the office which he had so shamefully abused.

A later notability associated with the castle and with its last lord is Santi Cascesi, a boy of Poppi, whose story is one of the romances of history. About 1430 Ercole Bentivoglio, one of the great Bolognese House of that name, being in exile, spent some time at Poppi, where he fell in love with a beautiful carpenter’s wife, who in course of time bore a son. The boy was brought up by his supposed father, Agnolo Cascesi, and after the early death of the latter and of his mother, by Agnolo’s brother, Antonio. Re was much favoured by the Count of Poppi, who, when he was driven out of the Casentino, took the child with him to Bologna. Here Santi was seen by Annibale Bentivoglio, then lord of the city, who, pleased with his looks and manners, caressed him, saying: “Thou art one of us. I would have you come quickly to your rightful home.” But Antonio Cascesi, who was a man of substance and good standing, insisted on the boy being sent back to Poppi, and on his return apprenticed him to the Arte della Lana in Florence. Some years later Annibale Bentivoglio was murdered by his enemies, and the great party, of which he was the leader, was left without a head. Then the Count of Poppi, who had taken up his abode in Bologna, re­vealed that there was a son of Ercole Bentivoglio’s in existence. Whereupon the Bolognese sent messengers to Florence to seek out the youth, that they might set him in the place of his fathers at the head of the party. When Santi was told .who he was he was so deeply troubled for the shame of his mother that he could hardly be persuaded to consider the great fortune opened to him. His uncle, who was equally ignorant of the secret of his birth, was also much distressed at the revelation. But the Bolognese ambassadors, who looked upon the youth with the deepest devotion, de­claring that he so resembled Ercole that there could be no doubt about his parentage, were resolved to have him for their lord. They set before him all the honour and wealth and power that should be his, but the boy hesitated long, deterred by shame for his mother, and also by some fear, remembering the fate of all the last three successive heads of the Bentivogli, who had each died a violent death. Then the advice of Cosimo de’ Medici was sought, and Santi was taken to visit him. The wise Florentine gave judgment on the question in characteristic spirit; he refused to persuade the young man to go or to stay, but bade him go home and consider well to which part his heart inclined him, for accordingly it would appear whose son he was. For if he were the real son of the man of high race nature would draw him to Bologna and to great purposes; but if he were the son of the carpenter he would stay in Florence and content himself with little things. And in the end the influence of his great blood prevailed with the youth, and he agreed to go. Conducted by the chief nobles of Bologna, whom the city sent to accompany him, and followed by a splendid train, the young apprentice, now transformed into a prince, set forth to the scene of his great destiny, where he was met by all the people, who greeted him with the greatest enthusiasm. He was put in posses­sion of all the palaces and lands of Annibale Bentivoglio, and given chief office in the state, which he governed so well that he quickly won the love and esteem of the whole city. No fairy tale was ever more strange or more satisfactorily rounded off with “and lived happily ever after” than this story of real life.

At the other end of the castle green stands an ancient tower belonging to another palace of the Guidi, of which nothing else remains except a fine sub­terranean cistern beneath the villa now occupying the spot. An underground passage once connected the two palaces and served as a hiding-place or means of escape in case of necessity. There still hangs about the old Devil’s Tower, as it is called, a grim legend of sin and revenge, belonging to the old Guidi days. A certain Contessa Telda, granddaughter of the second Simone di Battifolle, lived in this palace. By her great beauty and fascination she allured to her all the most desirable young men that carne that way, and each after passing a short time with her mysteriously disappeared. It was discovered that as soon as she tired of a lover she had him precipitated through a trap-door into the dungeons below and there killed. One day a beautiful youth of Poppi thus disappeared; whereupon his kinsfolk, rousing all the people of the town, attacked the palace, and, taking her prisoner, shut her up in the tower and left her to perish of hunger.

But strenuous times, whether for good or evil, are over for Poppi. The only event of historic interest connected with the little town in comparatively modem times was the tragedy of Tommaso Crudeli, the last victim of the Inquisition in Tuscany. This brilliant man of letters, who belonged to a very old family of Poppi, was cruelly imprisoned by the In­quisition in Florence in 1739 on account of his liberal opinions and his witty and somewhat free tongue. His treatment formed the subject of great protests from the British Ambassador. But more than a year passed before he was released, and when he carne out of his prison he was completely broken down in health. Re returned to his native town, and died there a year or two later at .the age of forty-five.

And now, in these days of civil peace and liberty, Poppi’s walls and towers and secret vaulted places have lost their significance and grown melancholy. The little town clinging perilously to the steep slopes beneath the castle, on a foothold cut out in the rock and walled up to save it from slipping down, is a sur­vival of the past. - Its lofty isolation, once its chief virtue, is become a defect. To sit proud and aloof upon a hill-top profits no one nowadays, and though the smooth, ribbon-like roads which score the plain beneath, running in all directions, unite Poppi with the outer world beyond the barrier of hills, she remains high and dry above the current of, life, with little to do but dream of the old joy of battle and hem vanished chieftains.

But over there on the eastern hill that other fortress of the past, still whole and unvanquished, looks down upon the dismantled citadel of the Guidi with the old reproach and admonition. The fabric raised upon the foundations laid by the apostle of poverty and humility has proved greater and more lasting than that based upon the shifting sands of earthly power and possession.

 On a mountain spur overhanging Poppi on the south a huge fragment of masonry midges the precipice, like the buttress of some “Dark Tower.” This is all that remains of the Castle of Fronzola which in Villani’s day was one of the strongest fortresses in Tuscany. There was a proverb which ran: “Quando Fronzola fronzolava, Poppi e Bibbiena tremava” (When Fronzola rustled, Poppi and Bibbiena trembled). The castle was seized from the Guidi in 1322 by Bishop Guido of Arezzo and held by his family, the Tarlati, for many years, and the two castles, but a mile and a half apart, snarled at each other like two angry dogs. The reward claimed by Count Simone di Battifolle for helping the Florentines to rid themselves of the Duke. of Athens was their aid against the Tarlati, and with 500 men sent by the Republic he laid siege. to he Rock in 1344, and at last drove out the foe. The castle was dismantled by Florence after the .expulsion of the Guidi from Poppi in 1440.

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dante, noyes, casentino