the property of persons who had given it to them on deposit.’  This debt was to have been recovered out of the wool revenues and other income of the English; in fact, the Bardi and Peruzzi had negotiated a national loan, by which they hoped to gain a superb percentage on their capital.  The speculation, however, proved unfortunate; and the two houses would have failed, but for their enormous possessions in Tuscany.  We hear, for example, of the Bardi buying the villages of Vernia and Mangona in 1337.[4] As it was, their credit received a shock from which it never thoroughly recovered; and a little later on, in 1342, after the ruinous wars with the La Scala family and Pisa, and after the loss of Lucca, they finally stopped payment and declared themselves bankrupt.[5] The shock communicated by this failure to the whole commerce of Christendom is well described by Villani.[6] The enormous wealth amassed by Florentine citizens in commerce may be still better imagined when we remember that the Medici, between the years 1434 and 1471, spent some 663,755 golden florins upon alms and public works, of which 400,000 were supplied by Cosimo alone.  But to return to Villani; not content with the statistics which I have already extracted, he proceeds to calculate how many bushels of wheat, hogsheads of wine, and head of cattle were consumed in Florence by the year and the week.[7] We are even told that in the month of July 1280, 40,000 loads of melons entered the gate of San Friano and were sold in the city.  Nor are the manners and the costume of the Florentines neglected:  the severe and decent dress of the citizens in the good old times (about 1260) is contrasted with the new-fangled fashions introduced by the French in 1342.[8] In addition to all this miscellaneous information may be mentioned what we learn from Matteo Villani concerning the foundation of the Monte or Public Funds of Florence in the year 1345,[9] as well as the remarkable essay upon the economical and other consequences of the plague of 1348, which forms the prelude to his continuation of his brother’s Chronicle.[10]

    [1] xi. 62.

    [2] x. 162.

    [3] xi. 88.

    [4] xi. 74.  On this occasion a law was passed forbidding citizens to
    become lords of districts within the territory of Florence.

    [5] xi. 38.

    [6] xi. 88.

    [7] xi, 94.

    [8] vi. 69; xii. 4.

    [9] iii. 106.

    [10] i. 1-8.

In his survey of the results of the Black Death, Matteo notices not only the diminution of the population, but the alteration in public morality, the displacement of property, the increase in prices, the diminution of labor, and the multiplication of lawsuits, which were the consequences direct or indirect of the frightful mortality.  Among the details which he has supplied upon these topics deserve to be commemorated the enormous bequests to public charities in Florence—­350,000 florins to the Society of Orsammichele, 25,000 to the Compagnia della Misericordia, and 25,000 to the Hospital of Santa Maria Nuova.  The poorer population had been almost utterly destroyed by the plague; so that these funds were for the most part wasted, misapplied, and preyed upon by mal-administrators.[1] The foundation of the University of Florence is also mentioned as one of the extraordinary consequences of this calamity.