N. 1. - Inscription put up in PALAZZO VECCHIO, First Court:
Reading edition
Vid’io Fiorenza in sì fatto riposo, Che non avea cagion onde piangesse, Con queste genti vid’io glorioso E giusto il popolo suo tanto, che il giglio Non era ad asta mai posto a ritroso, Nè per division fatto vermiglio.” DANTE, Paradiso, XVI, 149–154. Florence beheld I in so great repose, That no occasion had she whence to weep; With all these families beheld so just And glorious her people, that the lily Never upon the spear was placed reversed, Nor by division was vermilion made.” Longfellow’s translation.
The above verses, as all those taken from the Paradise, Canto XVI, are words assigned by the Poet to Cacciaguida, his ancestor, whom he finds in the fifth Heaven, which is that of Mars, where are the souls of those “who died fighting for the true faith.” Cacciaguida thus greets Dante: “I am thy root o leaf” and then describes Florence at the time of his birth and its extent when he lived there, passes in review the chief families of his day and speaks of the former simplicity of the Florentines, since then much corrupted. Their degeneracy and subsequent disgrace he attributes to the introduction of families from the neighbouring country and their mixture with the primitive citizens. Thus—through the mouth of his grandsire the Poet lavishes praise or chastisement on his contemporaries and their ancestors according to their deserts and his personal views.
The name of Fiorenza was derived by the oldest chroniclers from Fiorino, the Praetor of Metellus, who during a long siege of Fiesole by the Romans commanded an entrenched camp between the River and the Rock and was here surprised and slain by the enemy. Others derive it from the flowers in which the meadows abounded, especially lilies, and the ancient ensign: a white lily on a red ground, as well as the name given to the Duomo, Santa Maria del Fiore tend to show that the name refers to the flowery mead rather than to the Roman Praetor. According to another version the city was originally called Fluentia, because situated between the Arno and the Mugnone, which name was afterwards changed into Fiorentia in allusion to the flourishing state of the colony.
“The lily”—meaning the emblem of Florence—had never “hung reversed” on the spear of her enemies in token of her defeat, nor been changed from argent to gules, as it was, when after the long struggle between the Ghibellines and the Guelphs, the latter gained the predominance. The ensign of Florence, having first been a white lily on a red field, was then changed to a red lily on a white field.
FIORENZA