Page:Val d'Arno (Ruskin, 1890).djvu/189

Rh 187. A question of free trade in corn, then, arose between Florence and Rome. The Pope's legate in Bologna stopped the supply of polenta, the Florentines depending on that to eat with their own oil. Very wicked, you think, of the Pope's legate, acting thus against quasi-Protestant Florence? Yes; just as wicked as the—not quasi-Protestants—but intensely positive Protestants, of Zurich, who tried to convert the Catholic forest-cantons by refusing them salt. Christendom has been greatly troubled about bread and salt: the then Protestant Pope, Zuinglius, was killed at the battle of Keppel, and the Catholic cantons therefore remain Catholic to this day; while the consequences of this piece of protectionist economy at Bologna are cquallv interesting and direct.

188. The legate of Bologna, not content with stopping the supplies of maize to Florence, sent our own John Hawkwood, on the 24th June, 1375, to burn all the maize the Florentines had got growing; and the abbot of Montemaggiore sent a troop of Perugian religious gentlemenriders to ravage similarly the territory of Siena. Whereupon, at Florence, the Gonfalonier of Justice, Aloesio Aldobrandini, rose in the Council of