DOI Page / Citation link:
https://doi.org/10.11588/diglit.32873#0123
CH. in] LIFE OF BENVENUTO CELLINI 55
them, I being infuriated, drew a little knife that I carried,
saying thus: " If any one of you issues from your shop,
another had better run for a confessor, for the doctor
will have naught to do." My words struck such terror
into them that no one ventured to the assistance of their
cousin. As soon as I had departed, the fathers and the
sons hurried to the Eight, and there stated that I had
with force of arms assaulted them in their shops; an event
that had never before occurred in Florence. The Eight
(Judges) caused me to be summoned; whereupon I ap-
peared: and administering to me a severe reprimand
they rebuked me because they saw me in my cloak only
whilst the others were in civil dress of mantle and hood;'
and moreover, because my adversaries had been to speak
with all the judges at home in private, whilst I having
no personal acquaintance with any of those judges, had
not spoken with them, trusting to the great justification
that I had: and I told them that on account of the great
injury and insult that Gherardo had shown me, provoked
to very great anger, I had given him nothing more than a
which did not seem to me sufficient to deserve so
severe a censure. Scarcely would Prinzivalle della Stufa,^
* A civilian who went about the city by day in his cloak only,
was regarded at this period of Florentine history as a suspicious,
and even dangerous, character. Qf VARCHi. The citizens of this
period still wore their ancient costumes of long gown and hood
called a /Mrw.
^ An ardent partisan of the Medici, and instigator in 1510 of a
conspiracy against the Gonfalonier, Soderini. He was one of the
Priors, and was Commissary to Arezzo, Pistoia, and Pisa. In 1532
he was nominated by Duke Alessandro among the forty-eight
Senators, and he died on May 19th 1561 at the age of seventy-
seven.
them, I being infuriated, drew a little knife that I carried,
saying thus: " If any one of you issues from your shop,
another had better run for a confessor, for the doctor
will have naught to do." My words struck such terror
into them that no one ventured to the assistance of their
cousin. As soon as I had departed, the fathers and the
sons hurried to the Eight, and there stated that I had
with force of arms assaulted them in their shops; an event
that had never before occurred in Florence. The Eight
(Judges) caused me to be summoned; whereupon I ap-
peared: and administering to me a severe reprimand
they rebuked me because they saw me in my cloak only
whilst the others were in civil dress of mantle and hood;'
and moreover, because my adversaries had been to speak
with all the judges at home in private, whilst I having
no personal acquaintance with any of those judges, had
not spoken with them, trusting to the great justification
that I had: and I told them that on account of the great
injury and insult that Gherardo had shown me, provoked
to very great anger, I had given him nothing more than a
which did not seem to me sufficient to deserve so
severe a censure. Scarcely would Prinzivalle della Stufa,^
* A civilian who went about the city by day in his cloak only,
was regarded at this period of Florentine history as a suspicious,
and even dangerous, character. Qf VARCHi. The citizens of this
period still wore their ancient costumes of long gown and hood
called a /Mrw.
^ An ardent partisan of the Medici, and instigator in 1510 of a
conspiracy against the Gonfalonier, Soderini. He was one of the
Priors, and was Commissary to Arezzo, Pistoia, and Pisa. In 1532
he was nominated by Duke Alessandro among the forty-eight
Senators, and he died on May 19th 1561 at the age of seventy-
seven.