Page:Notes and Queries - Series 9 - Volume 10.djvu/450

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NOTES AND QUERIES. w* s. x. DEC. 6, 1002.

"Non vi e dubbio che dove e presentemente la Propositura d' Or-San-Michele, vi fosse mplto in antico una Chiesa presso ad unorto, che si chiamava volgarmente S. Michele in orto,* perche dedicata sotto 1' invocazione dell' Arcangelo S Michele, e che fino dal 1100 era Parrocchia, come non ne fanno dubitare alcune antiche cartapecore, nelle quali vengono ne' contratti alcuni testimoni chiamati popolani di S. Michele in Orto."

Villani (book iv. cap. 10), writing of the state of Florence in the eleventh century, says : " Eranvi in questo quartiere [Porta S. Piero] i Galligari, Chiarmontesi, e Ardinghi, che abitavano in Orto san Michele." These families were certainly not inhabitants of a horreum. But to continue my quotation from the ' Guida.' The writer goes on :

"Ma avendo la Signoriadi Firenze bisogno di fare una loggia per la pubblica vendita del grano, disfatta questa Chiesa, fu nel 1284 col disegno di Arnolfo fabbricata la gran Ipggiaf con gli annessi stanzoni di sppra per riporyi i grani, e nel tempo medesimo ordinatq all' Architetto, acci6 non se ne perdesse la memoria, che si rifabbricasse dirimpetto ad essa loggia un Oratorio col medesimo nome, che e quello che esiste tuttora, conosciuto oggi sotto il titolo di S. Carlo, perche vi si adunava una Compagnia di tal nome. Ma volendo piu tardi la Repubblica trasferire altrove questa vendita dei grani, fece nel 1337 secondo il Cinelli chiuder la loggia, riducendola ad uso di tempio, per esser cresciuta nel popolo la divozione verso un' imagine di Maria Vergine, che era ad un pilastro di essa loggia, quando serviva di granaio, come lo dimostra lo staio intagliato in pietra forte sopra la porta per la quale si saliva sopra detta loggia."

No thorough study of their language is needed to show that Italians are habituated to shortening words by lopping off the terminal syllables, as fra for frate, san for santo, citta for cittade, po for poco, and others too numerous to mention. Just as " Porta Santa Maria," in Florence, is called " Por Santa Maria " (see Vasari, ' Vita di Filipp^o Brunelleschi ' ; also ' La nostra Citta,' Florence, 1899, pp. 29, 31), so Orto San Michele became at least as early as the sixteenth century Or San Michele and Orsan- michele, Vasari using all these three forms as well as occasionally a fourth, San Michele in Orto, which we find also in Malispini's ' Stpria Fiorentina,' cap. 52, where certain families are said to have settled "ad andare verso San Michele in Orto," and where, too, we are told that the Galigai, noticed in my previous quotation from Villani, "abitavano in Orto

S. Michele in Bosco.
 * Compare the name of a church in Bologna,

t This building was burned in the disturbances of 1304. Giovanni Fiorentino, recounting the occur- rence, calls it "la loggia d' orto San Michele" 'II Pecorone,' xxii. 2). It is related also by Machiavelli (' 1st. Fior.,' book ii. cap. 21, Firenze, 1851).

Santo Michele, dov' e oggi la chiesa di Santo Michele."

I claim to have shown that the alleged connexion of or with horreum is a monstrous absurdity. The Italian name was current long before the establishment of the mercato del grano in Or San Michele, that is, Orto San Michele. I conclude with a quotation from Vasari's life of Agnolo Gaddi : "In

Firenza poi Iavor6 a tempera in Orto S.

Michele una disputa di dottori con Cristo nel tempio," because the picture is evidently that which Firenzuola, Vasari's contemporary, de- scribes in his seventh novel as "quel messer Domenedio giovanetto che disputa nel tempio in Or San Michele quivi presso all' organo." The important fact to note here is that Firenzuola's " Or " is Vasari's " Orto."

F. ADAMS.

115, Albany Road, Camberwell.

ROBERT CARRUTHERS, LL.D. (See ante, p. 364.)

THE inclusion by W. S. in his list of Scottish contributors to the early numbers of 'N. & Q.' of the name of Robert Carru- thers has recalled to me the genial personality of the distinguished editor of the Inverness Courier, concerning whom a few facts and reminiscences may not be uninteresting, par- ticularly at a time when the new edition of 'Chambers's Cyclopaedia of English Literature,' now appearing, must remind some at least of the readers of ' N. & Q. ' that sixty years ago Robert Carruthers edited the first edition of that work. (It is odd, by the way, to find a critic so exact and acute as " Claudius Clear" Dr. Robertson Nicoll in dealing with the second volume of the ' Cyclopaedia ' in the British Weekly for G November,, uniformly terming the work "the .Zfocyclopsedia.") On the recommendation of John McDiarmid editor of the Dumfries Courier, Robert Carruthers, who was at the time fulfilling the duties of master of the National School at Huntingdon, was appointed editor of the Inverness Courier in 1828. At that period Hugh Miller was working as a stonemason in Inverness, and occupying part of his leisure in the composition of verse. Robert Carruthers gave Miller's efforts in this line the hospitality of his columns, and afterwards published a volume of the poems, which was less favourably received than Miller ex- pected, and turned his thoughts towards the medium of expression in which he became a master.

In 1871 the editor of the Inverness Courier received the honorary degree of Doctor of