Last Things First: Notes On Sources: Landucci, Cordero, Villari

Here is a quick mention of sources from a modern biography in English on the life and times of Dominican Friar Girolamo Savonarola. This listing follows the narrative of Lauro Martines in his penetrating study Fire In The City, concerning the capture and interrogation of Lamberto dell' Antella in the summer of 1497, and their consequences, and the subsequent execution of a number of prominent Florentines.

This post lists the sources of a number of topics in Martines' account of this brief but tumultuous set of events. That is followed by brief looks at a number of prominent sources for this situation as listed by Martines in his account. Footnotes and Sources, yay! At the top, after a brief look at Luca Landucci, The first block of text are notes, pages, and sources, with their locations in cited texts following that author's name (and sometimes the publication date). Again, a topic is followed by page number in Martines (2006), followed by the source listed in the footnotes there in Martines as an authors's name, and that source's page number(s). Then after a break, a brief look of a number of other secondary sources and accounts listed here, as well as an excerpt from Martines' bibliography.

As Luca Landucci appears here, as a Florentine chronicler living in the city during these times, his voice, like Cerretani, should be shown to also hold a prominent place in understanding the waves of change then. An apothecary who wrote a diary 1450-1516, Landucci in particular, helps us see the arcs of change in the city's moods precisely because he himself believed Savonarola was an agent of change for the good restoration and rennovation of Florence and the Church. Later, when like so many, he heard the 'confession' of the Friar read out in public (April 19, 1498), this news made him, along with many others, greatly dismayed. Of course, we are lucky to have other chroniclers and analysis as well.

Lamberto dell 'Antella wanted to return, and his confession: p. 183 : Villari II, iii-xv.
Cambi and Pucci confess names: p. 184 : Cerretani, 236-7; Parenti (Schnitzer) 206-7; Landucci (1927), 125; Manfredi in Capelli, 382-5.
Nicolo Ridolfi conspirator:p. 186-7: Bullard, 268; Rao, 75-6.
Lorenzo Tornabuoni conspirator: Landucci (1927), 126; Cerretani, ibid; Rao 166-7; Guicciardini, Storie 143; Villari II, xxxii-iii ; De Roover, 367, 370.

empty city of summer's august pestilence: p. 189: Nardi, Istorie, 130-3.
Claim that dell'Antella story was fake news: p. 190: Cerretani, ibid.
trial read out as evidence, an open vote held description : from Parenti (Schnitzer), 207-8.
decision made, it was appealed: But there was a law enacted March 1495: p. 192: Cadoni, Provissioni, 111-18; Guicciardini, Storie, 139-44; Martines (1968), 494.
Vespucci's further argument: p. 193: Guicciardini, 141.
Also, other views Fachard Consulte, (2002), 509, 511, 509-14; Cerretani, 238, Martines (1968), 441-5.
That night: pp. 194-6;  Cambi, 113; Cerretani, 237-40; Villari II, xlix; Fachard (2002), 511-12; Parenti (Schnitzer), 211; Guicciardini 141-2.
the executions: Cordero thought Savonarola meant justice meant the deaths of the conspirators, p.197: Cordero IV, 102-24; rumor of Cerretani, 238.
Machiavelli (Discoursi i, 45) thought this was a turning point for Savonarola, Martines thinks not, p. 198.
But S asked for mercy in other cases: Weinstein, 'The Prophet'.
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Cordero, Franco. 1986-88. Savonarola. 4 vols. Rome and Bari.

Landucci, Luca. 1927. A Florentine Diary from 1450 to 1516. Trans. Alice de Rosen Jervis. London and New York.

Villari, Pasquale. 1930. La storia di Girolamo Savonarola e de' suoi tempi. New ed. 2 vols. Florence.

In his bibliography, Lauro Martines prioritizes the many sources that he uses and singles out one recent study for both praise and intense criticism.

"The most ambitious study in recent times ... well researched and ... is often brilliant, as in the tracking of Savonarola's canny rhetorical dodges. But the entire work is also self-destructive... Cordero so detests the Friar that he is constantly... in the ring with him ... hoping for a knock-out blow.... on the brink of losing all objectivity, as he scorns, derides, and highlights Savonarola's  posturing, inconsistencies, illogicalities, egomania, bad faith, and rhetorical violence." [p. 313]

What Martines calls Cordero's 'Freudian approach', limits him to abusing his subject, he says while going on to point out a number of some of the harsh epithets Cordero uses to describe Savonarola's actions and behaviors. Still, Martines calls his one of the 'best and most complex of the narratives' that are to be found.

Savonarola continues to be controversial and to excite great passion. Part of this must be the human attraction toward that rare dynamic of multiple characteristics within a person, or in society, struggling against each other, tumbling into view, and then being swept aside. This one which was able to simultaneously engage Christian mystical elements with some balance of political power, mixed in a charismatic figure, who gave voice and organized, on multiple levels, and who was able to bring his solution front and center to the table of public discourse. Eventually his voice was stopped. But not his controversies. Twenty years later, Martin Luder, a Bible professor in Wittenburg would argue against many of the same injustices that Savonarola had argued. But Luther didn't see himself acting as a prophet.

Luca Landucci is described by Martines as often siding with Savonarola, if only in admiration at what the lowly friar could accomplish. But, again from his bibliographic heading, Martines says, even Landucci's "... allegiances were occasionally split, such as over the executions of August 1497." [p. 313]

But Martines gives prize of place to Pasquale Villari for leading his list of 'best and most complete of narratives' in the scholarship of the modern period going over the rich, complex and erudite material  of Florence in those longer ago days. Villari's story was published in 1859 and generated much excitement and interest in the friar for his own times, sending historians back to the archives to find more.
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Martines, Lauro: Fire In The City: Savonarola and the struggle for the soul of Renaissance Florence ; Oxford University Press, New York, 2006 

Polyneices and Jocasta Speak On Exile via Euripides, Phoenissae, i

From the Greek text of Euripides as found in the tufts.edu collection. What follows here is the reunion of mother and child. As lain out before, this is a dialogue presented by Euripides in his Phoenissae. This dialogue also is what Francesco Filelfo chose to introduce the concept of exile in his dialogue from the fifteenth century. This bit of conversation begins here with a rush of words from Polyneices (lines 358-78) presented in English from a twentieth century translation by Peter Burian and Brian Swann and published by Oxford University Press (1981). There follows a rough translation of the rapid-fire back and forth between mother and son as she looks to learn the son's motives and experience. This will continue later, along with Filelfo's latin rework of the same bit of dialogue.

Scene. Jocasta, at the palace gate in Thebes, hears at length the Chorus of women there calling to her, asking why she takes so long to hold her son in her arms. She sees him, she greets him, she tells him she grieves. She tells him his father, blind, looks to escape life, cursing his children. She has to tell the son, she knows, already, he is married, grieving that she could not host his wedding. She tells him that regardless of why, all these burdens fall on her.

Euripides has his chorus leader step forward, almost reassuringly, to remind that this is indeed how women respond when their life turns upside down, and they have to explain again.

"The pains of childbirth are frightening and painful/ for women. And so all women worship their children."

Polyneices steps forward warily.

Mother, after careful thought, I have come/
carelessley among my enemies. But no one/
can choose not to love his own native soil./
He who says otherwise loves words, not truth./
I was so frightened, I came in such fear that some ruse/
of my brother would ruin me, that I walked through this city/
clutching my sword, turning my head this way and that./
Only one thing gave me comfort: your truce, and your pledge/
that let me pass through ancestral walls. I came/
weeping, seeing after so long the seats and altars/
of the gods, the gymnasia where I was seated,/
the waters of Dirke. I have been exiled from these,/
living in a strange land, my eyes streaming tears --/
but I go from one grief to another, I see you,/
your hair cropped close, dressed in black robes./
O, my sorrows! How strange and monstrous, mother,/
is hatred within families./ [lines 358-78]*
...

His mother Jocasta thinks it's wrong for the gods to destroy this family, where the son forced himself on the mother, so that she gave birth to children she knows are called wrong. But that's all done.

ἀτὰρ τί ταῦτα; δεῖ φέρειν τὰ τῶν θεῶν. 

What's to do about it? One must bear these things from the gods.
The thing she wants to know though she doesn't want to hurt him in asking.

 ἃ χρῄζω: διὰ πόθου δ᾽ ἐλήλυθα.

These are the things I want: across desire and having come.
She wants to know what was the longing like, the reasons for return.
__________

Polyneices answers, he'll tell her and not leave things out.
What is your plan, what are such things to me, mother, dear.
__________

Jocasta will ask first then, what a thing it is to be deprived of one's country? A great badness?
__________

μέγιστον: ἔργῳ δ᾽ ἐστὶ μεῖζον ἢ λόγῳ.
The biggest. And it's bigger in doing than in telling.
__________

τίς ὁ τρόπος αὐτοῦ; τί φυγάσιν τὸ δυσχερές;
What was the turn of it? What is it they run from?
Literally, those let go, what do they flee?
__________

ἓν μὲν μέγιστον, οὐκ ἔχει παρρησίαν.

The biggest is in not keeping all speech.
__________

δούλου τόδ᾽ εἶπας, μὴ λέγειν ἅ τις φρονεῖ.
The lot of a slave you say, not to speak what's on your mind.
__________

τὰς τῶν κρατούντων ἀμαθίας φέρειν χρεών.
The follies of the strong must be carried.
__________

καὶ τοῦτο λυπρόν, συνασοφεῖν τοῖς μὴ σοφοῖς.
and such misery, to join with the unskilled rather than with those skilled.
__________

ἀλλ᾽ ἐς τὸ κέρδος παρὰ φύσιν δουλευτέον.
another is that the reward of slavery is against nature.
__________

αἱ δ᾽ ἐλπίδες βόσκουσι φυγάδας, ὡς λόγος.
But hopes nourish exiles, so it's said.
__________

καλοῖς βλέπουσαί γ᾽ ὄμμασιν, μέλλουσι δέ.

Beautiful to have seen especially with the eyes, as intended.

In other words, hopes are better realized, rather than just wanted.

To be continued...
________________________________________
*Euripides, Phoenician Women ; translated Peter Burian and Brian Swann; Oxford University Press, 1981, NY

Letters: Erasmus to Rhenanus c. 15 October 1518, ii

More from the letter of Desiderius Erasmus to his friend Beatus Rhenanus.

"... on my lame horse rode quickly to the Count of Neuenahr's... staying at Bedburg... [where] I stayed five days very pleasantly, in such peace and quiet... I completed a good part of the revision -- I had taken that part of the New Testament with me...."

And with good company there, felt well enough to go on to visit the Bishop of Liege, and then return healthy and ready for his friends in Brabant.

"What dinner-parties, what felicitations, what discussions I promised myself! But ah, deceptive human hopes! ah, the sudden and unexpected vicissitudes of human affairs! From these high dreams of happiness I was hurled to the depths of misfortune." 

Readied for the next day's travel with a pair of horses and a carriage, again, a potential delay threatened to disrupt Erasmus' forward motion.

"That night a wild hurricane [sic] sprang up, which had passed before the next morning. Nevertheless I rose after midnight, to make some notes for the Count; when it was already seven o'clock and the Count did not emerge, I asked for him to be waked. He came, and in his customary sly and modest way asked me whether I meant to leave in such bad weather, saying he was afraid for me. At that point, my dear Beatus, some god or bad angel deprived me, not of the half of my senses, as Hesiod says, but of the whole.... I wish that either my friend had warned me more sharply or that I had paid more attention to his most affectionate remonstrances! I was seized by the power of fate: what else am I to say? I climbed into an uncovered carriage, the wind blowing 'strong as when in the high mountains it shivers the trembling holm-oaks.' It was a south wind and blowing like the very pest, I thought I was well protected by my wrappings, but it went through evereything with its violence."

Cold and wet he arrived in Aachen where he was taken by a priest to the house of a friend reccommended by the Count.

"There several canons [priests] were holding their usual drinking-party. My appetite had been sharpened by a very light lunch; but at the time they had nothing by them but carp, and cold carp at that. I ate to repletion. The drinking went on well into the night. I excused myself and went to bed, as I had very little sleep the night before.... [next] day at the Vice-Provost's house ... there was no fish there apart from eel... the fault of the storm... I lunched off a fish dried in the open air, which the Germans call Stockfisch, from the rod used to beat it... but I discovered that part of this one had not been properly cured. ...The weather ... appalling, I took myself off to the inn and ordered a fire to be lit. ... I began to feel very uncomfortable... went to the privy.... inserted my finger in my mouth, and the uncured fish came up, but that was all. I lay down afterwards, not so much sleeping as resting, without any pain in my head or body; then, having struck a bargain with the coachman over the bags, I received an invitation to the evening compotation. I excused myself without success."

He went anyway. There was plenty of food but he still felt sour and drank only 'a little warmed ale.' When he came back out again 'his empty body shivered fearfully in the night air.' But by next morning he had the urge to move again.

"... I mounted my horse, who was lame and ailing, which made riding more uncomfortable. By now I was in such a state that I would have been better keeping warm in bed than mounted on horseback. But that district is the most countrified, roughest, barren, and unattractive imaginable, the inhabitants are so idle; so that I preferred to run away."

He felt he could not depend on those locals in Aachen to care for him, because they were so idle. Afraid of the bandits that he thought were plentiful there, even this fear was driven out of his mind because of his illness. He went from Aachen to Maastricht (some seven or eight miles) where he stopped for a drink and then rode on to Tongeren another three miles.

"This last ride was by far the most painful to me. The awkward gait of the horse gave me excruciating pains in the kidneys. It would have been easier to walk, but I was afraid of sweating, and there was a danger of the night catching us still out in the country."

Here he took some more ale and went to bed. In the morning he got up again to keep going but, mounted on a horse, he fainted. He was roused and put in a carriage to be delivered almost to St Troad [Sint Truiden] where he again found a bed to sleep in and arranged for passage the following day. Here he also learned that he had also missed finding the Bishop of Liege who he said he'd wanted to meet with on this journey. By the time he reached Louvain he had broke an ulcer and after a night's rest, called the surgeon. He applied poultices and told the servants on the way out that Erasmus had the plague. He didn't but boils and a fever. After two more 'medical opinions' Erasmus remained unconvinced and decided to trust it to God. In three days he had an appetite and then got back to his studies.

___________________________________
Huizinga, Johan: Erasmus and the Age of Reformation  with a selection from the letters of Erasmus ; (reprint), Bibliobazaar, Charleston, SC, 2008

Fresh Results of the Unpopular Misrule of Empire from the US: news October 2017

After catastrophic hurricane Irma devastated Puerto Rico and the US Virgin Islands, the Trump Administration in DC proposed loans. But very little else to the shock and dismay of everyone. Inrastructure there struggles after six weeks to reach even 20% of what it was prior to the hurricane and, Trump's hand-picked contractor to work on the electrical grid there in Puerto Rico seems ill-equipped.

Loading PR with more debt is shameful. I cannot believe that is the current proposal https://t.co/S0HYsOQfr5

— Chris Hayes (@chrislhayes) October 12, 2017

The fires in northern California have been the state's worst on record.

California’s fires are now the worst in state history.
-21 dead
-670 missing
-3,500 structures
-170,000 acres burnedhttps://t.co/X9xPZxozNM pic.twitter.com/MG7KMQPEvB

— Eric Holthaus (@EricHolthaus) October 11, 2017

Here's a view of a neighborhood in Sata Rosa, CA.

Widespread destruction at Hidden Valley neighborhood in Santa Rosa pic.twitter.com/1RtkMAy05d

— Brian van der Brug (@bvdbrug) October 10, 2017

________________________________________________
Catalonia has been threatening to secede from the rest of Spain for a month.

Tens of thousands take to streets of Barcelona after court orders detention of two Catalan separatist leaders https://t.co/1QEeRISlv9 pic.twitter.com/8dIJ6BhJKa

— AFP news agency (@AFP) October 18, 2017

Daesh lost their capital in Raqqa and sent many fighting for them home.

Thousands of ISIS fighters surrender in Kurdistan. Their leaders told them to, they said. https://t.co/sT8gfXPAXT

— New York Times World (@nytimesworld) October 10, 2017

Immediately Iraq began marshalling its forces for a concerted attack on the Kurdish people in the north. Turkey says it will coordinate.

Iran and the Kurds https://t.co/mDUGgdkJvP via @ForeignAffairs

— neditsimple (@neditssimple) October 9, 2017

Someone is trying to overthrow Qatar. Saudi Arabia seems to have motive, means and opportunity all sewn up.

Qatar deflation deepens as real estate market weakens https://t.co/r2bIvXSb6g pic.twitter.com/ndYYzfbhUm

— Reuters Top News (@Reuters) October 14, 2017

Elections are annulled in Kenya and put off in the DRCongo. Meanwhile tensions boil in Nigeria and Cameroon.

As secession calls in Catalonia and Kurdistan make headlines, movements also gain steam in Nigeria and Cameroon https://t.co/z6moxt0MFw

— New York Times World (@nytimesworld) October 9, 2017

An unimaginably huge exodus is occurring out of Myanmar the last month as whispers of genocide spread.

UN says some 582,000 #Rohingya refugees have now fled Myanmar for Bangladesh since late August pic.twitter.com/X9THgbF3hN

— AFP news agency (@AFP) October 18, 2017

A massive explosion rocked Somalia, with more to follow. Four US soldiers were ambushed and killed in Niger so that news has overtaken the news cycles for many days in the states, but little about Somalia is heard.

Somalia truck bomb death toll jumps to 358 dead https://t.co/wXSd2sGYIL pic.twitter.com/4pw8O7kLzq

— FRANCE 24 (@FRANCE24) October 21, 2017

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This new Congress in Washington, DC is so ineffectual it can't renew basic help for poor kids and their families.

Now that is CHIP has expired, here's when states run out of federal money to cover kids h/t @larry_levitt https://t.co/qx6DbmvYCv pic.twitter.com/MoNknxoBtq

— Ninja Economics (@NinjaEconomics) October 11, 2017

Even though now that the KOCH's have bankrolled half of Congress, and their current allies like the Mercer's continue to use the President thru his 'ex-advisor' Bannon, the richest in charge think that US government deficits don't matter anymore.

Now that Republicans control all levers of power in D.C., the Koch brothers have changed their tune on the deficit. https://t.co/hGQcYWs57r

— The Intercept (@theintercept) October 13, 2017

And it has big plans for the annual ALEC party next year scheduled for Trump Hotel in DC.

ALEC helps lobbyists influence public officials. The Trump Hotel is hosting its 2018 gala. https://t.co/V5Mya0KQlN by @lhfang @nicksurgey

— The Intercept (@theintercept) October 11, 2017

The current Administration is also establishing a pattern of leaving old friends behind.

UNESCO says it regrets U.S. decision to leave its organization https://t.co/me7uHenPtt pic.twitter.com/rYlJHDsATO

— Reuters Top News (@Reuters) October 12, 2017

Letters: Erasmus to Rhenanus c. 15 October 1518, i

At the height of his fame, fall brought Desiderius Erasmus back to teach in Louvain. He didn't like the constant change much. In a letter to an old friend dated c. October 15, 1518, he describes miserable iterations of his frequent travel itinerary. He had come to Louvain by 1516, then, as now, a university town. But, unhappy with that role in that place, he would continue to travel to see if he could find a more suitable locale to do his work.

Mention must be made that this letter comes thru the transmission of Johann Huizinga's 20th century classic Erasmus and the Age of Reformation that first appeared in Dutch in 1924. It is Huizinga's choice of letters that were published with later editions of this penetrating biography, that also brings an emotional, psychological insight to the man. It seems suitable then to begin to look at this figure from a nearly interior point of view by including one of these sections where the great man simply suffers hardship and tells it in confidence.

The hardships of the journeys did make Erasmus sore, irritable, sick with fever. Of course, he would survive nearly twenty years more. Still it's easy to imagine him, bouncing on horseback or riding in a close packed carriage, thinking of his years, or, of thirty years before, when his parents had died of the plague, along with so many others he'd known since. Writing to his friend Beatus Rhenanus, a close follower and helper to Erasmus in all his work at that time, we get an intimate view here of the famous Dutch intellectual and Renaissance man stripped of much of the discerning subtlety that had made him famous. This also includes a river trip down the Rhine river.

"... Let me describe to you ... the whole tragi-comedy of my journey. I was still weak and listless, as you know, when I left Basle, not having come to terms witht the climate, after skulking at home so long, and occupied in uninterrupted labors at that. The river voyage was not unpleasant, but that around midday the heat of the sun  was somewhat trying. We had a meal at Breisach, the most unpleasant meal I have ever had. The smell of food nearly finished me, and then the flies, worse than the smell. We sat at table doing nothing for more than half an hour, waiting.... In the end nothing fit was served; filthy porridge with lumps in it and salt fish reheated not for the first time, enough to make one sick. ... a pretty story; that Minorite theologian with whom I had disputed heceitas had taken it on himself to pawn the church chalices. Scotist ingenuity! Just before nightfall we were put out at a dull village; I do not feel like discovering its name, and if I knew I should not care to tell you it. I nearly perished there. We had supper in a small room like a sweating-chamber, more than sixty of us, I should say, an indiscriminate collection of rapscallions, and this went on till nearly ten o'clock; oh, the stench and the noise, particularly after they had become intoxicated! Yet we had to remain sitting to suit their clocks." [p. 264]

Scotist ingenuity and heceitas refers cynically to the famed medieval scholiast and, the idea of Duns Scotus. Famous for among other things, coming up with the idea and proving for the Church, that there exists an essential, unique element that makes the individual itself. Erasmus can joke!

"In the morning while it was still quite dark we were driven from bed by the shouting of the sailors. I went on board without having either supped or slept. We reached Strasbourg before lunch at about nine o'clock; there we had a more comfortable reception ... as Schürer produced some wine.... Gerbel outdoing all the rest in politeness. Gebwiler and Rudolfingen did not want me to pay, no new thing with them. Thence we proceeded on horseback as far as Speyer; we saw no sign of soldiers anywhere, although there had been alarming rumours. The English horse completely collapsed and hardly got to Speyer; that criminal smith had handled him so badly that he ought to have both his ears branded.... At Speyer I slipped away from the inn and took myself to my neighbor Maternus. There Decanus, a learned and cultivated man, entertained me courteously and agreeably for two days." [p. 265]

From there he travels further on horseback north again to Worms and on to Mainz where his hosts, and Erasmus' journey, are more enjoyable. But by the time he gets to Cologne the weather had grown worse. He tries to set up a lunch and carriage and pair of horses for next day's travel. These all fall through and Erasmus strikes out on his own. This pattern would repeat. The rest of this letter, and others, will be continued later.
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Huizinga, Johan: Erasmus and the Age of Reformation  with a selection from the letters of Erasmus ; (reprint), Bibliobazaar, Charleston, SC, 2008


Since the original publication in 1924 by Charles Scribner's Sons, in New York, this book has gone thru numerous editions. It was translated for the 1924 edition into English by F. Hopman and was originally titled Erasmus of Rotterdam. The reprint I'm using seems exactly the same as the Dover (2001) and Harper  (1957) editions, but with different pagination and without an index. Without these other versions in front of me, I can't tell when the inclusion of the Erasmian letters occurred or what their date of publication is.

Papal Favorite Bartolomeo Flores Replaced: October 14, 1497

There had been reports at the Vatican that one of Pope Alexander VI's secretaries, now Archbishop of Consenza, Don Bartolomeo Flores, had been helping to reward himself through his position. In September, the pope at last relented and the order went out that Flores should be arrested along with his counsel and some secretaries. Just one of many glimpses at the inner workings of this Borgia papacy, here the story is its' own censorious responses to accusations of corruption aimed at this pope's own appointments. Again we are informed by Johann Burchard, from his voluminous chronici.

Flores was arrested in mid September, and he and his servants were taken to the Castel Sant' Angelo.

"Don Bartolomeo himself was escorted along the passage in the wall joining the castle and the palace by the prison captain and his men, and lodged under careful guard in the castle.  The pope had learned that his secretary had sent out many false and harmful papal briefs, forging their contents and instructions against His Holiness's wish or without his knowledge, and issuing them through his servants. Amongst these briefs was one dispensation by which a Portuguese nun, a legitimate member of the royal family, could lay aside her religious habit and vows and could contract a marriage with the natural and illegitimate son of the late king; another allowed that a person in subdeacon's orders could marry; whilst further briefs in great numbers, amounting in all it was said to around three thousand, authorized changes in the collation of expectancies, provided dispensations for ecclesiastical preferment, and gave exemptions from the jurisdiction of Ordinaries." [p. 149]

These last three examples give a great deal of insight to the mechanisms of power and its uses in eccesiastical realms of the time, and crucially what had to be recognized - at the highest levels - as clear abuses of that power. The 'collation of expectancies', reordering how money came in, in order to lead how it might be allocated could funnel all sorts of monies and projects. The 'providing of dispensations for preferment' was a widespread practice across Christendom, but so was the wait before a seat, or office could be authorized from Rome. Taking it upon himself to make such authorizations and the consequent complaints brought the spotlight on him.

"A secret consistory was held Monday, October 9th," while the man himself stayed locked in Castel San' Angelo in Rome. After the meeting where evidence was read and decided on, Flores was denied his post (by papal writ on 13 October), and all the other benefices he had set up. It was also decided for Flores to lose his office and orders, and be delivered to the secular authorties. This meant being handed over to the City Bargello, like a Chief of Police. But immediately, the pope's private chanberlain and a bishop-elect came to the Castle to ask the Bargello to keep him confined in the cell there. This was done and allowed.

"On the same day, after dinner and following these proceedings, all Don Bartolomeo's possessions were, on the pope's orders, carried from the apartment which he had become accustomed to use in the Vatican Palace and set down in the papal store-room by His Holiness's private servant." p. 150

Next day, the 14th, the pope had chosen another secretary and then a couple days later, another archbishop was appointed to Consenza, thereby splitting the 'duties' of Don Bartolomeo into separate domains. By the end of the month, Flores was further reduced and assigned to 'another more squalid dungeon,' in Gadrian's sepulchre called San Marocco. He was also

"... made to put on over his shirt a gown of coarse white cloth which fell in  heavy folds to just above the knees, and was provided with a pair of shoes of coarse leather, a loose cloak of rough green cloth that reached to the ground, and a white cap." p.151

Given three loaves of bread, a cask of water and a jug of oil, a Bible, a Breviary, and a copy of the epistle of Peter, a castellan was also assigned to bring him food and water once a day and there he was incarcerated for the rest of his life.He died there the following July. This Borgia pope, in addition to confiscating the property of Flores alos had his letters seized and used these as evidence to show how Flores had acted without the Pope's authorization, in settling a dispute with the the Monarchs of Spain and which is another story.
_______________________________________
pp. 148-51, Johann Burchard: At The Court of the Borgia translated for english, with introduction by Geoffrey Parker, The Folio Society, Ltd, 1963

Filelfo On Exile, The Case of Polyneices of Euripides: Contexts

Over the summer I've been gathering a number of the versions of a speech, and dialogue between a mother and son. There is no getting around it. The story this dialogue is pulled from is classic Greek tragedy. Euripides was not a fan of war or civil war and considered it a kind of curse for a nation or city, and did so in the strongest possible language. Just over 1850 years later, in the 1440's, an Italian included some of this dialogue in his own dialogue involving Italians talking about exile.

The setting for Francesco Filelfo's fictional dialogue On Exile  was a gathering of just a few gentlemen in Florence there discussing what to do in the future event of their own political exile. Crucially the very idea remains a future thought, a possibility, and not yet a reality for the conversants. This was not so for some of the other well-connected in those days. The setting for this fictional dialogue was during the time of the return of Cosimo de Medici to Florence in the 1430's, and just before many of the participants here were turned out.

This dialogue in four books itself was a new kind of fiction in literature. At once a gift (to a prospective patron), this book detailed the talk of an imaginary gathering ocurring a dozen years or more before the book's production. Full of wandering conversations presented in a loose, as-it-happens manner, it also, acts as a structured composition, all of which was also presented as reliable memory. More of the author's and this publication's contexts are here.

To show their weight, the conversants give examples from memory of books, past texts meant to support arguments of this or that position. And so, this dialogue presents both contrasting and comparing ideas pulled in from many places and times as the talk ranges across millenia.

In a substantial introduction himself, Filelfo provides the setting for his chosen recipient (the prospective patron) of this dialogue, and then, launches into a quick discussion between a father and a son, about the worries abounding in exile and things to remember when considering it. It is not long into this back-and-forth when the father here, Paolo Strozzi, seems to have assessed his son's worries and asks if he remembers the speech of Polyneices in Euripides. [i,57]
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Like I said, over the summer I've been gathering a number of the translations of this bit of dialogue between Polyneices and his mother Jocasta, produced in English in the modern era. They meet before the palace walls of Thebes. Polyneices has brought an army to take control what he thinks should be his city from the forces of his brother, Eteocles, with their father being kept 'buried behind bolted doors'. Jocasta, is the mother in this play of Euripides', called Phoenician Women, where Oedipus is their father. These sons now with armies set and ready for war are the sons of Oedipus, and his mother remains, Jocasta. Euripides has her explain at the very beginning of his play.

"Sun, flaring in your flames, what a harmful ray/ you hurled at Thebes that day when Kadmos quit/seaswept Phoenicia, and came to this country."

Kadmus married Harmonia, child of Kypris. and had a son Polydoros who fathered Labdakos, father of Laios. Laios married Jocasta, daughter, according to Euripides, of Menoikeus . Jocasta bore Laios a son that was later called 'Swell-foot', or Oedipus by the Greeks. The boy of course, was abandoned, and when found and raised, wondered who his real parents were. The day would come when Laios and Oedipus met on the road to Delphi at 'the split in the Phokis road', and the driver of King Laios' cart roared, "Out of the road, stranger! Make way for a king".

"... Then followed -- but why not steer straight/ to the point? Son killed father, took chariot and team... And somehow it happened that Oedipus/ my son understood the Sphinx song, and took/ the scepter of this country as reward, and took/ as bride her who bore him, the miserable man --/ and she who bore him did not know she was/ sleeping with her son. So to my child I gave birth/ to two children, two males, Eteocles/ and Polyneices the powerful,..." [lines 42-50. ]

The one brother left voluntarily to stay out of the other's way, and the other stayed in Thebes and, in time, brought all power to himself. Things grew so disparate and contrary that in time, Polyneices knew he had to return, and with an army. The scene is set and before battle is enjoined, the son approaches the gate to meet his mother to find a way to stop the coming carnage.

The story in Euripides moves right along with practiced rigor, tight, with damaging testimony and baleful warning. [The Greek text of Euripides is and follows here.] The dialogue of Filelfo overall, moves at a much more leisurely pace. But the presentation of this Euripidean dialogue within Filelfo's, is stark and comes like a hammer to the head. A modern English translation of Polyneices' initial speech to Jocasta will follow.

"..." 

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After long discourses and an argument with the character of Poggio Bracciolini over the benefits of abstenance from drink, Palla Strozzi the chief speaker in book i, returns to mention Polyneices again. This time it is in order to call him a liar for saying he received nothing from his patronym when he could not have married King Adrastus' daughter without such a name. More on this again when time permits.
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Filelfo, Francesco: On Exile,  Edited by Jeroen de Keyser and translated by W. Scott Blanchard, for The I Tatti Renaissance Library (ITRI); by The President and Fellows of Harvard College, USA 2013

pageturner chronicles: ii, 1502, 1519, 1497, 1470

Remembering Anne of Foix in Venice, August of 1502. From a previous post that extensively quotes Marin Sanudo.

Bernal Diaz remembers also how to tell a story, recalling the days before the Europeans' march to Tlaxcala in 1519.
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Filling an entire chapter, the episode in Florence involving the five executed for treason, in the early hours of 22 August 1497 is carefully lain out in Lauro Martines' work on Girolamo Savonarola. Weinstein handles the story more circumspectly as one of a series of hardships that added to the sense of a continued siege mentality for the city of Florence as a whole. His sources here remain plentiful and typical of the period. These include the 1930 bio of  Pasquale Villari, and the contemporaries Parenti and Guicciardini, as well as the works and testimony of Savonarola himself.

Weinstein: pp. 240-4
Martines: pp. 182-200

Lauro Martines spends quite a bit more time with the matter. Notes for his ch. 14, ... will go to a link found here.
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Savonarola spent the fall 1497 and the following winter, among other things, beginning to write his Dialogue on the Truth of Prophecy, an allegory where he disputes with the Seven Gifts of The Holy Spirit.
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another Bracciolini reference

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Popocatepetl in central Mexico just blew its top with two other eruptions and a dozen exhalations in the last few hours [edit 0800 GMT 06Oct17]. Here's a live cam on youtube with local audio.
Here's an article on Cortes at the foot of it boasting. Here's another of them before and a view of the Mexica ambassador trying to warn them.