Middle Age and judges it, he is himself its most marvellous child, losing himself at last in one of its ideals.  St. Francis of Assisi, concerned only with humanity, has by love contrived the Renaissance of man, assured as he was by the love of God, His delight in us His creatures.  But for Dante, bitter with loneliness, wandering in the Hell, the Purgatory, the Paradise of his own heart, any such wide and overwhelming love might seem to have been impossible.  Imprisoned in the adamant of his personality, he has little but hatred and contempt for the world he knew so well.  How scornful he is!  Some secret sorrow seems to have burnt up the wells of sweetness in his nature, from which he once drew a love for all mankind.  He seems to have gone about hating people, so that if he speaks of Florence it is with a passionate enmity, if of Siena with scorn, Pisa has only his contempt, Arezzo is to him abominable and beastly.  He has judged his country as God Himself will not judge it, and he kept his anger for ever.  And since the great Florentine can bring himself to bid Florence

    “Godi, Fiorenza poi che sei si grande
    Che per mare, e per terra batti l’ali,
    E per l’Inferno il tuo nome si spande,”

it is not wonderful that Pistoja is lost in his scorn.  Coming upon Vanni Fucci continually consumed by the adder, he hears him say

    “Ahi Pistoja, Pistoja, che non stanzi
    D’incenerarti, si che piu non duri
    Poi che in mal far lo seme tuo avanzi?”

“O Giustizia di Dio, quanto e severa,...” yet Dante’s will beggar it.

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 Potesta.  At Campaldino the Pistojese fought under Corso Donati, and turned the battle against the Aretines; and it was under the Potesta Giano della Bella in 1294[136] that the Priore of the twelve anziani, established after Campaldino, was named Gonfaloniere of Justice.  Villani gives us a vivid picture of Pistoja in 1300.