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The chapter then venerates the relics shewn as usual from the gallery above S. Veronica's statue. The custom of washing the altar is observed in the Latin church in those of the Dominicans and Carmelites; and also according to Benedict XIV "in many churches of France, Germany and other remote countries" among which Cancellieri reckons Spain. What however is its meaning?
Ridolfo and Ugolino Vergiolesi, the two elder brothers of Selvaggia, had stayed behind in Pistoja to share the fighting in the streets. They had plenty of it, given and received. Ridolfo had his head cut open, Ugolino went near to losing his sword arm; but in spite of these heroic sufferances the detested Cancellieri became masters of the city, and the chequer-board flag floated over the Podest
But I have an older authority for the practice in question, which Sir Francis is hardly likely to have lighted on. That learned antiquary and portentously voluminous writer, Francesco Cancellieri, who was well known to the Roman world in the latter years of the last, and the earliest years of the present, century, used to compose his innumerable works upon a similar principle.
One would have thought that, looking to the state of things in the city, the time of the interregnum would have been the very last to select for ladies to venture into the streets. It would seem, however, that the Roman matrons thought otherwise. Cancellieri says that it was in those days a common saying among Roman ladies that "Happy were they who were married to Spaniards!"
A sonnet and a bunch of red anemones went to the Palazzo Vergiolesi that evening; thenceforth it rained sonnets till poor little Selvaggia ran near losing her five wits. It rained sonnets, I say, until the Cancellieri brought out the black Guelphs in a swarm. Then it rained blood, and the Vergiolesi fled one cloudy night to Pitecchio, their stronghold in the Apennine.
The origin of Pistoja is obscure. Some ascribe its foundation to the Boian Gauls, some to the Romans; however that may be, it was here in Pistoria, as the city was then called, that the army of the Republic came up with Cataline, and defeated him and slew him in B.C. 62. There follows an impenetrable silence, unbroken till, by the will of the Countess Matilda, Tuscany passed, not without protest as we know, to the Pope, when Pistoja seems to have vindicated its liberty in 1117, its commune contriving her celebrated municipal statutes. In 1198 she made one of the Tuscan League against the empire, and in the first year of the thirteenth century she had extended her power over the neighbouring strongholds from Fucecchio to the Arno. After the death of Frederic II, in 1250, she became Guelph with the greater part of Tuscany, and in 1266 took part with Charles of Anjou and fought on his side at Benevento under the Pistojese captains, Giovanni and Corrado da Montemagno. About this time we first hear the name Cancellieri, Cialdo de' Cancellieri being Potest
They enjoyed various privileges, and among others, says an ancient MS. Chronicle quoted by Cancellieri, "havevano questi sei ogni anno, da Santo Spirito, due vacche in die S. Spiritus le quali se magnavano li con gran festa". In 1410 the Volto Santo was carried back to S. Peter's, where it has ever since remained .
It is, of course, all a matter of Panciatichi and Cancellieri. Cf. Zdekauer Statuti Pistoiesi dei Secoli xii. e xiii.
It exists only in the Italian and Spanish translations of Alphonso de Ulloa and Gonzales Barcia: for the original, carried to Venice in 1571 by the learned Fornari, has not been published, and is supposed to be lost. Napione della Patria di Colombo 1804. Cancellieri sopra Christ.
We might mention, as famous instances, the Neri and Bianchi factions introduced into Pistoja in 1296 by a quarrel of the Cancellieri family, the dismemberment of Florence in 1215 by a feud between the Buondelmonti and Amidei, the tragedy of Imelda Lambertazzi, which upset Bologna in 1273, the student riot which nearly delivered Bologna into the hands of Roméo de' Pepoli in 1321, the whole action of the Strozzi family at the period of the extinction of Florentine liberty, the petty jealousies of the Cerchi and Donati detailed by Dino Compagni, in 1294.
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