The Florentines, so
Varchi tells us, held Saturday to be the fateful day on which all
important events, good as well as bad, commonly happened. Their
prejudice against marching out to war through a particular street has
been already mentioned. At Perugia one of the gates, the 'Porta
Eburnea,' was thought lucky, and the Baglioni always went out to fight
through it. Meteors and the appearance of the heavens were as
significant in Italy as elsewhere in the Middle Ages, and the popular
imagination saw warring armies in an unusual formation of clouds, and
heard the clash of their collision high in the air. The superstition
became a more serious matter when it attached itself to sacred things,
when figures of the Virgin wept or moved the eyes, or when public
calamities were associated with some alleged act of impiety, for which
the people demanded expiation. In 1478, when Piacenza was visited
with a violent and prolonged rainfall, it was said that there would be
no dry weather till a certain usurer, who had been lately buried in San
Francesco, had ceased to rest in consecrated earth. As the bishop was
not obliging enough to have the corpse dug up the young fellows of the
town took it by force, dragged it down the streets amid frightful
confusion, and at last threw it into the Po. Even Politian accepted
this point of view in speaking of Giacomo Pazzi, one of the chiefs of
the conspiracy of 1478, In Florence, which is called after his family.
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