The Guilds of Florence

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Methuen & Company, 1906 - 622 pages

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Page 509 - ... about 1420. Within three days later our slave Martha died. On the 1st of April my daughter Sandra, and on the 5th Antonia. We left the house and went into one opposite. In a few days Veronica died. Again we moved and went to live in Via Chiara. Here Vandecca and Pippa were taken ill, and on the 1st of August both went to heaven. They all died of the plague. Heaven help them...
Page 11 - The general course of changes that occur in states is from a condition of order to one of disorder, and from the latter they pass again to one of order. For as it is not the fate of mundane affairs to remain stationary, so when they have attained their highest state of perfection, beyond which they cannot go, they of necessity decline. And thus again, when they have descended to the lowest, and by their disorders have reached the very depth of debasement, they must of necessity rise again, inasmuch...
Page 583 - To the right hand I turned, and fixed my mind On the other pole attentive, where I saw Four stars ne'er seen before save by the ken Of our first parents. Heaven of their rays 25 Seemed joyous. O thou northern site! bereft Indeed, and widowed, since of these deprived.
Page v - Rome — and, as our author tells us in his preface, "the cumulative energies of the Florentines had their focus in the corporate life of the trade-associations, and in no other community was the guild-system so thoroughly developed. " It had much to do in making the city the beautiful and famous municipality it became. After an introduction on Florentine commerce and industry, and on the general history of the guilds, these are considered in groups and separately. Chapters follow on the life and...
Page 269 - Being beholden for their supplies of pigments to the apothecaries and their agents in foreign lands" on their own petition they had become enrolled members of that guild in 1303. This guild relationship endured for more than two and a half centuries, furnishing innumerable points of magnetic contact between Science and Art. The artist members (known from 1349 on, as "The Company of Saint Luke") stood...
Page 117 - Soccebonel runs to the cutter, runs hither and thither in his despair. At last he is told that these Florentine cloths do not grow in water, and one man tells him about a person who bought a braccio of Florentine cloth, kept it in water, and by next morning it had shrunk so that there was none left. But whoever searches the mercantile codes amidst the dust of libraries and archives will find that they all concur in condemning such tricks. All of these papers, each of which begins, " In the name of...
Page 582 - ... lugubrious obsequies in the chill twilight of the Laurentian sepulchre, with the remains of the Magnifico were laid to rest the memories of a whole age radiant with youth and glory. With Lorenzo there disappeared the world of the Renaissance, for but a little time...
Page 286 - I saw Bellincion Berti walk abroad In leathern girdle, and a clasp of bone; And, with no artful colouring on her cheeks, His lady leave the glass. The sons I saw Of Nerli, and of Vecchio, well content With unrobed jerkin; and their good dames handling The spindle and the flax ; O happy they ! Each sure of burial in her native land, And none left desolate a-bed for France.
Page 33 - THE Origin of the Florentine Guilds has been rightly traced to the Corporations of Merchants and Artisans, which existed in Rome under Numa Pompilius. They were called " Collegia " or " Corpora Opificum et Artificium.
Page 102 - ... centuries a great change occurred. The. renovation of manners and customs, already panting towards a freer life, that became entirely unbridled in the Renaissance, had weakened faith and discouraged religion. It seemed as though the people no longer understood any but worldly pleasures. The letters of Mazzei, the good notary of Prato, the wise man of '• rough soul and frozen heart,

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