Page:The Oxford book of Italian verse.djvu/18

INTRODUCTION Mentre ch'io canto, O Dio Redentore, Vedo l'Italia tutta a fiamma e foco Per questi Galli, che con gran valore Vengon per desertar non so che loco...

The dark storm-cloud of reality sweeps across the skies of fairyland, and the voice of the singer is forgotten amid the rumours of war. The selfish folly of Lodovico Sforza, ‘Il Moro’, made him invite Charles VIII of France to enter Italy and to occupy Naples as heir of the Angevins who had formerly reigned there. The weakness or indolence of the Italian states became obvious to Europe; Charles met with little opposition during his sinister progress through the country; only, in Florence, Piero Capponi dared to defy him, tearing the scroll containing his conditions of treaty to pieces, and crying ‘Voi sonerete le vostre trombe e noi soneremo le nostre campane’. The avenger whose coming Savonarola had foretold was amongst them; ‘the sword has descended, the scourge has fallen; the Lord leads these armies’. The armies in question had to retire from Italy not long afterwards, but the days of her liberty were numbered. Alexander VI Borgia was elected Pope in 1494.

For a while, however, the tempest held aloof, and in the Cinquecento we see the spectacle of a splendid artistic and intellectual achievement which reaches its zenith in the last hours of Italy's freedom, amid a general corruption of all qualities but fine taste, that ultimate heritage of a morally bankrupt people. The accession of Leo X to the kingdom which had been founded for him by Cesare Borgia and Julius II marks the beginning of an epoch when Italy seems to spend the whole store of her Renaissance capital 18