Alamanni

“ Very different from shadows were the two Arnulfing brothers, as they warred with Hunald, Duke of Aquitaine (son of their father’s old troubler Eudo) , with Odilo, Duke of Bavaria, with the heathen Saxons, with the restless and disloyal Alamanni. Of the two brothers, Pippin seems to have been somewhat the gentler. It was Carloman the strong and stern warrior, who, infuriated by the faithlessness of the Alamanni, entered their territory, called a muster of their warriors at Cannstadt (near Stuttgart) , and then surrounding them by his Franks, disarmed them, and slew many of their leaders. ”

“ Fair is youth and void of sorrow;
But it hourly flies away.
The next, composed by Antonio Alamanni, after Lorenzo's death and the ominous passage of Charles VIII., was sung by masquers habited as skeletons. The car they rode on, was a Car of Death designed by Piero di Cosimo, and their music was purposely gloomy. If in the jovial days of the Medici the streets of Florence had rung to the thoughtless refrain, 'Nought ye know about to-morrow,' they now re-echoed with a cry of 'Penitence;' for times had strangely altered, and the heedless past had brought forth a doleful present. ”

“ The tribe was continually engaged in conflicts with the Romans, the most famous encounter being that at Strassburg, in which they were defeated by Julian, afterwards emperor, in the year 357, when their king Chonodomarius was taken prisoner. Early in the 5th century the Alamanni appear to have crossed the Rhine and conquered and settled Alsace and a large part of Switzerland. ”

“ Tiraboschi places them at the head of that class of poetry. The reader will find an analysis of these satires, with some extracts, in Ginguéné. [770] The twelve satires of Alamanni, one of the Florentine exiles, of which the first edition is dated in 1532, though of earlier publication than those of Ariosto, indicate an acquaintance with them. They are to one another as Horace and Juvenal, and as their fortunes might lead us to expect; one gay, easy, full of the best form of Epicurean philosophy, cheerfulness, and content in the simpler enjoyments of life ”

“ The money of the great seduced them to abandon truth and the people without whom genius is neither great nor productive. Pleasure for courtiers was their only aim. The country was dying, but no voice sang the hymn of death; no one gave history those pages of heroism which save the dignity of vanquished nations. On the contrary, Giovio with unblushing brow eulogized his golden pen; Casa sang in honour of the Charles V. whom he had once satirized. Alamanni apologized to the emperor for his famous verse saying that it is the poet’s office to lie, and Cellini himself could write:—“I work for pay.” ”

“ Shortly after his accession he routed the Alamanni on the Lacus Benacus (some doubt is thrown upon this) ; in 269 a great victory over the Goths at Naïssus in Moesia gained him the title of Gothicus. In the following year he died of the plague at Sirmium, in his fifty-sixth year. He enjoyed great popularity, and appears to have been a man of ability and character. ”

“ Two incursions of the Alamanni into Raetia and Italy were repulsed, the latter with great slaughter. But the emperor recognized that the security of Italy could no longer be guaranteed and so he ordered the fortification of the Italian cities. The imposing wall which still marks the boundary of part of ancient Rome was begun by Aurelian. A horde of Vandals were beaten and driven out of Pannonia and a victory was won over the Goths in Moesia. But the exposed position of Dacia, and the fact that it was already in large part occupied by the barbarians, induced Aurelian to abandon it altogether. ”

“ One of these, loosely related to the Arthurian cycle without ever being embodied, is of Giron; and this was put into Italian stanzas by Luigi Alamanni (1495-1556) . An industrious and capable man of letters, [34] who spent much of his life in France, he was a convinced classicist. His Gyrone il cortese (Paris, 1548; Venice, 1549) , though it was written long after Ariosto had secured fame by quite other methods, shows that he felt the obligation of a single story, distinct from a cycle, to keep narrative sequence. ”

“ But theirs could not be called true satire. Pure satirists, on the other hand, were Antonio Vinciguerra, a Venetian, Lodovico Alamanni and Ariosto, the last superior to the others for the Attic elegance of his style, and for a certain frankness, passing into malice, which is particularly interesting when the poet talks of himself.
In the 16th century there were not a few didactic works. In his poem of the Api Giovanni Rucellai approaches to the perfection of Virgil. His style is clear and light, and he adds interest to his book by frequent allusions to the events of the time. ”

“ The Cardinal was greatly irritated, and cried out in a rage: “Go where you choose; it is impossible to help people against their will.” Some of his good-for-nothing courtiers who were present said: “That fellow sets great store on himself, for he is refusing three hundred ducats a year.” Another, who was a man of talent, replied: “The King will never find his equal, and our Cardinal wants to cheapen him, as though he were a load of wood.” This was Messer Luigi Alamanni who spoke to the above effect, as I was afterwards informed. ”

“ And in this contest Alamanni [
144
] women fought most ferociously, with the result that jokes were made about other ladies, who were very distinguished. Therefore, from this time on every woman, no matter what her origin, was prohibited from fighting in the arena.
On one occasion a good many images of Plautianus were made (what happened is worth relating) and Severus, being displeased at their number, melted down some of them. As a consequence a rumor penetrated the cities to the effect that the prefect had been overthrown and had perished. ”

“ Sonnets and canzoni, satires, romantic epics, eclogues, translations, comedies, he tried them all. His translation of the Antigone deserves commendation for its style. His Flora is curious for its attempt to reproduce the comic iambic of the Latin poets. If his satires dealt less in generalities, they might aspire to comparison with Ariosto's. As it is, the poet's bile vents itself in abstract invectives, of which the following verses upon Rome may stand for a fair specimen: [301]
Alamanni is said to have been an admirable improvisatore ”

“ His works are to be met with there more frequently than in any other city of Picenum. I shall speak of his merits in the Venetian school, and shall here only add, that he had for a pupil Pietro Alamanni, the chief of the painters of Ascoli, a respectable quattrocentista, who painted an altarpiece at S. Maria della Carità, in 1489. About this time also we find amongst their names a Vittorio Crivelli, a Venetian, of the family, as I conjecture, and perhaps of the school of Carlo. There is frequent mention of him in the Antichità Picene. ”

“ Forced by her father to forget her early love the poet Luigi Alamanni, and married to Leonardo Ginori, who had to fly to Naples to escape from his creditors, she was exposed to the persecutions of the Duke Alessandro de’ Medici, and was the innocent cause of his murder (see p. 263) . Her son Bartolommeo, famed for his strength and great stature, was chosen by Giovan Bologna for the model of the young man in his group of the rape of the Sabines. From him descended the Senator Carlo Ginori who founded the well-known china manufactory at Doccia near Florence in 1740. ”

“ Note 2. This painter was the pupil of Bertoldo, a man of simple manners and of some excellence in his art. The gallery at Bologna has a fine specimen of his painting. Michel Agnolo delighted in his society.
Note 3. Cellini says 'Summam.'
Note 4. This was the agreeable didactic poet Luigi Alamanni, who had to fly from Florence after a conspiracy against Cardinal Giulio de’ Medici in 1522. He could never reconcile himself to the Medicean tyranny, and finally took refuge in France, where he was honoured by François I. He died at Amboise in 1556. ”

“ When at the point of death, Nardi tells us that the poor young fellow begged his confessor, in the hearing of the Black Brethren, to inform the judges that he had been driven by fearful torture to inculpate Tommaso Soderini, who was innocent. The poet Luigi Alamanni was at his villa near Figline, and a friend took horse and rode hard to warn him of his danger. He got away to Urbino, but his cousin and namesake, who was at Arezzo, was seized, brought to Florence and beheaded, together with Jacopo Diaceto, in232 the courtyard of the Bargello on 7th June, 1522. ”

“ The Medici, on their return in 1532, declared him a rebel. He went back to France, where he served as ambassador for François I. to Henry II. He wrote “La Cultivazione” (1533) , a book about agriculture. He also wrote love songs, epigrams, satires, comedies, translations, and various other things. He died April 18, 1556. ”

“ Now there are robbers upon the high seas just as there are in the desert, and the small ship was seized by a pirate ship from Tunis, and all the crew were sent to Algiers and sold as slaves. Almansor was not so badly off as the Christians, because he was a Mussulman and a true Believer, but notwithstanding he began to abandon all hope of ever seeing his father’s house again. He had been purchased by a rich man, and for five years he lived with him, cultivating his garden and rearing his flowers. ”

“ At least I heard his name distinctly pronounced several times in a lot of talk in Malay language. Oh, yes, I heard it quite distinctly--Almayer, Almayer--and saw Captain C---- smile, while the fat, dingy Rajah laughed audibly. To hear a Malay Rajah laugh outright is a rare experience, I can as sure you. And I overheard more of Almayer's name among our deck passengers (mostly wandering traders of good repute) as they sat all over the ship--each man fenced round with bundles and boxes--on mats, on pillows, on quilts, on billets of wood, conversing of Island affairs. ”

“ These were happy days for poor Almansor, for the professor never sent him away empty-handed, but [Pg 171] gave him sometimes money, and sometimes underwear, and other useful things with which the doctor would not provide him. And so he lived for some years in the capital of France, without his longing for home ever growing less. When he was about fifteen years of age something happened which had a great influence upon his fortunes. The Franks, or the French as he was taught to call them, chose for their Emperor the general who had once made a pet of Almansor in Egypt. ”

“ As good luck would have it, I happened{351} to become acquainted with an Italian, captain of a Neapolitan galley, who by order of the Court had come to Malaga to carry the Bishop of that city to Naples; but that prelate not being ready to embark, he had come to Seville in the hopes of meeting with merchandize to freight his vessel for Italy. I met him by chance one day at a merchant’s house, and was delighted in having found a man who spoke Italian as well as myself. ”

“ The Franks, after an obstinate struggle, gave way; and the Alemanni, raising a shout of victory, impetuously pressed their retreat. But the battle was restored by the valour, the conduct, and perhaps by the piety, of Clovis; and the event of the bloody day decided for ever the alternative of empire or servitude. The last king of the Alemanni was slain in the field, and his people was slaughtered and pursued, till they threw down their arms and yielded to the mercy of the conqueror. Without discipline it was impossible for them to rally ”

“ The lightnings reveal swans, sleeping on the waves under clouds drunk with light, and their flaming trains blaze like gold after them in among the thick trees, [44] as goldfishes turn their burning backs out of the water,—and even around thy summit, Albano, the great eyes of the sunflowers turn on thee their fiery looks, as if kindled by the sparks of the glowworms.
"And in this kingdom of light," thought Albano, trembling, "the still angel of my future hides himself and glorifies it, when he appears. O where dwellest thou, good Liana? In that white temple? ”

“ When Lannoy was informed that the Duke of Albany had marched with a large force to Naples, he became seriously alarmed, and his first impulse, as François had anticipated, was to send baek all his soldiers tor the defence of the city; but he was earnestly dissuaded from the step by Peseara.
“The fate of Naples will be decided in Lombardy,” said this astute general. “If François is victorious, he will march off instantly to the south of Italy to complete his conquest. If we win, we have nothing to fear from Albany's expedition.” ”

“ Florence watched the old negro’s slow movements with restless eyes. “Here is Jenny, a Contessa, with a glorious palace in Genoa that her father must have bought her. Surely Aldrini had nothing. Have you seen the baby count’s pictures, Roma? They’re very cunning. I should think you’d go to Genoa and visit Jenny.”
“We must arrange that, Roma. It’s such an opportunity.” Though Mrs. Wanning addressed her daughter, she looked at her husband. “You would get on so well among their friends. When Count Aldrini was here you spoke Italian much better than poor Jenny. ”

“ How did the fire-mountains, and Rome's ruins, and her warm, golden-blue heavens, already unfold to him their splendor, when in fancy he led the suffering Liana before them, and her holy eyes refreshed themselves with measuring the heights! A man who travels with his beloved to Italy has in the very fact that he might do without one of the two, both double. And Albano hoped for this felicity, since all testimonies which he met with of Liana's restoration to health promised as much. ”