Sketches and Studies in Italy and Greece, Vol III | Page 3

and misconceived Gothic architecture, so they
took a feudal tincture from the nations of the North with whom they
came in contact. Their noble families, those especially who followed
the Imperial party, sought the honour of knighthood; and even the free
cities arrogated to themselves the right of conferring this distinction by
diploma on their burghers. The chivalry thus formed in Italy was a
decorative institution. It might be compared to the ornamental
frontispiece which masks the structural poverty of such Gothic
buildings as the Cathedral of Orvieto.
On the descent of the German Emperor into Lombardy, the great
vassals who acknowledged him, made knighthood, among titles of
more solid import, the price of their allegiance.[1] Thus the chronicle of
the Cortusi for the year 1354 tells us that when Charles IV. 'was
advancing through the March, and had crossed the Oglio, and was at
the borders of Cremona, in his camp upon the snow, he, sitting upon his
horse, did knight the doughty and noble man, Francesco da Carrara,
who had constantly attended him with a great train, and smiting him
upon the neck with his palm, said: "Be thou a good knight, and loyal to
the Empire." Thereupon the noble German peers dismounted, and
forthwith buckled on Francesco's spurs. To them the Lord Francesco
gave chargers and horses of the best he had.' Immediately afterwards
Francesco dubbed several of his own retainers knights. And this was
the customary fashion of these Lombard lords. For we read how in the

year 1328 Can Grande della Scala, after the capture of Padua, 'returned
to Verona, and for the further celebration of his victory upon the last
day of October held a court, and made thirty-eight knights with his own
hand of the divers districts of Lombardy.' And in 1294 Azzo d'Este 'was
knighted by Gerardo da Camino, who then was Lord of Treviso, upon
the piazza of Ferrara, before the gate of the Bishop's palace. And on the
same day at the same hour the said Lord Marquis Azzo made fifty-two
knights with his own hand, namely, the Lord Francesco, his brother,
and others of Ferrara, Modena, Bologna, Florence, Padua, and
Lombardy; and on this occasion was a great court held in Ferrara.'
Another chronicle, referring to the same event, says that the whole
expenses of the ceremony, including the rich dresses of the new knights,
were at the charge of the Marquis. It was customary, when a noble
house had risen to great wealth and had abundance of fighting men, to
increase its prestige and spread abroad its glory by a wholesale creation
of knights. Thus the Chronicle of Rimini records a high court held by
Pandolfo Malatesta in the May of 1324, when he and his two sons, with
two of his near relatives and certain strangers from Florence, Bologna,
and Perugia, received this honour. At Siena, in like manner, in the year
1284, 'thirteen of the house of Salimbeni were knighted with great
pomp.'
[1] The passages used in the text are chiefly drawn from Muratori's
fifty-third Dissertation.
It was not on the battlefield that the Italians sought this honour. They
regarded knighthood as a part of their signorial parade. Therefore
Republics, in whom perhaps, according to strict feudal notions, there
was no fount of honour, presumed to appoint procurators for the special
purpose of making knights. Florence, Siena, and Arezzo, after this
fashion gave the golden spurs to men who were enrolled in the arts of
trade or commerce. The usage was severely criticised by Germans who
visited Italy in the Imperial train. Otto Frisingensis, writing the deeds
of Frederick Barbarossa, speaks with bitterness thereof: 'To the end that
they may not lack means of subduing their neighbours, they think it no
shame to gird as knights young men of low birth, or even
handicraftsmen in despised mechanic arts, the which folk other nations

banish like the plague from honourable and liberal pursuits.' Such
knights, amid the chivalry of Europe, were not held in much esteem;
nor is it easy to see what the cities, which had formally excluded nobles
from their government, thought to gain by aping institutions which had
their true value only in a feudal society. We must suppose that the
Italians were not firmly set enough in their own type to resist an
enthusiasm which inflamed all Christendom. At the same time they
were too Italian to comprehend the spirit of the thing they borrowed.
The knights thus made already contained within themselves the germ of
those Condottieri who reduced the service of arms to a commercial
speculation. But they lent splendour to the Commonwealth, as may be
seen in the grave line of mounted warriors, steel-clad, with open visors,
who guard the commune of Siena in Ambrogio Lorenzetti's fresco.
Giovanni Villani, in a