Charles solemnly swears to Florence that he will restore 371 Pisa on his return from Naples
The Pisans send an advocate to the King in Rome, beseeching 373 him not to deliver them to Florence
Louis de Ligny—Luxemburg, with other adherents of the 376 party of Orleans, favours the Pisans’ cause
Savonarola meets the King at Poggibonsi, and summons him 378 to return by Florence
But the King returns by Pisa, and does not yield the city, 380
The King promises to let the Florentines know his decision 385 so soon as he arrives at Asti
Meanwhile he leaves Entragues with a French garrison in 385 Pisa
The King, arrived at Turin, summons Entragues to yield 388 Pisa to the Florentines
Pisa becomes nominally a Free Republic 393
And Pisa never forgives the French her liberty 396
THE BEGUINES AND THE WEAVING BROTHERS.[1]
With the approach of the thirteenth century, the world awoke from its long and dreamless sleep. Then began the age of faith, the miraculous century, starving for lack of bread and nourished upon heavenly roses. St. Louis and St. Elizabeth, Dominic the eloquent and the fiery Bonaventura, Thomas Aquinas and Francis the _glorioso poverello di Dio_, proclaim the enthusiastic spirit of the age. It is an age of chivalry no less in religion than in love, an age whose somewhat strained and mystical conception of virtue is sweetened by a new strong impulse of human pity. The world begins to see; and the green growth of the earth, the birds of the air, the fishes of the sea, become clear and noticeable things in the eyes of the saints. The world awakes and feels. Jean de Matha and Félix de Valois, gentlemen of Meaux, visit the prisons of France, and redeem many hundred captives from Morocco. On all sides men begin to love the sick, the poor, the sinful; even to long for sickness and poverty, as if in themselves they were virtuous; even to wonder whether sin and evil may not be a holy means for mortifying spiritual pride. To rescue the captive, to feed the hungry, to nurse the leper, as unawares Elizabeth of Hungary tended Christ in her Thuringian city—this is the new ideal of mankind. And this age of feeling is no less an age of speculation, of metaphysical inquiry, of manifold heresies and schisms. No new Bernard stops with his earnest dogma the thousand theories which everywhere arise and spread.