DOI Seite / Zitierlink:
https://doi.org/10.11588/diglit.68796#0108
88 Mediceval Florence and Her Painters part i
banquets and jousts and every other graceful sport, so that
one would think that there was nothing else to be done
during all the time before San Giovanni’s day.
‘ But when at last there comes the vigil of the feast, then
in the morning very early all the Trades (Arti) make a show
outside their shops with all the rich and lovely things, the
ornaments and the jewels they had prepared. Such cloth
of gold and silk is there on view as would furnish forth ten
realms, such jewels of gold and of silver, such canopies,
such painted canvases, such wondrous inlaid panels and all
sorts of arms and armour that could never be counted up.
‘ Now about the third hour throughout the city there
winds a solemn procession of all the clerics, priests, monks,
and brothers of all the different orders, with such infinite
treasure of relics of the saints that it is a most solemn and
religious show, let alone the marvellous richness of their
robes and sacred vestments, with the cloth of gold and silk
and embroidered designs which the whole world could not
match. With them come many bands of secular persons
attached to the companies of religious orders and dressed
as angels, or imitating in the most vivid manner some of
the Saints of the orders, or even the very relics they honour,
and these all stream on with songs and shouts and the sound
of all manner of instruments. From Sta Maria del Fiore
the procession starts, goes round the city and thither again
returns.
‘ Later on after midday when the heat is a little abated,
about the hour of Vespers, all the citizens are arrayed each
under his own banner in sixteen bands, each band in its
place, one following the other, with the citizens under each
banner walking two and two, the older and more honourable
in front and the rest following, till at last come the boys all
in richest dress, and they go to offer one by one a candle of
a pound’s weight each in the church of San Giovanni. The
banquets and jousts and every other graceful sport, so that
one would think that there was nothing else to be done
during all the time before San Giovanni’s day.
‘ But when at last there comes the vigil of the feast, then
in the morning very early all the Trades (Arti) make a show
outside their shops with all the rich and lovely things, the
ornaments and the jewels they had prepared. Such cloth
of gold and silk is there on view as would furnish forth ten
realms, such jewels of gold and of silver, such canopies,
such painted canvases, such wondrous inlaid panels and all
sorts of arms and armour that could never be counted up.
‘ Now about the third hour throughout the city there
winds a solemn procession of all the clerics, priests, monks,
and brothers of all the different orders, with such infinite
treasure of relics of the saints that it is a most solemn and
religious show, let alone the marvellous richness of their
robes and sacred vestments, with the cloth of gold and silk
and embroidered designs which the whole world could not
match. With them come many bands of secular persons
attached to the companies of religious orders and dressed
as angels, or imitating in the most vivid manner some of
the Saints of the orders, or even the very relics they honour,
and these all stream on with songs and shouts and the sound
of all manner of instruments. From Sta Maria del Fiore
the procession starts, goes round the city and thither again
returns.
‘ Later on after midday when the heat is a little abated,
about the hour of Vespers, all the citizens are arrayed each
under his own banner in sixteen bands, each band in its
place, one following the other, with the citizens under each
banner walking two and two, the older and more honourable
in front and the rest following, till at last come the boys all
in richest dress, and they go to offer one by one a candle of
a pound’s weight each in the church of San Giovanni. The