une of Siena in Ambrogio
Lorenzetti's fresco. Giovanni Villani, in a passage of his Chronicle
which deals with the fair state of Florence just before the outbreak
of the Black and White parties, says the city at that epoch numbered
'three hundred Cavalieri di Corredo, with many clubs of knights and
squires, who morning and evening went to meat with many men of the
court, and gave away on high festivals many robes of vair.' It is
clear that these citizen knights were leaders of society, and did
their duty to the commonwealth by adding to its joyous cheer. Upon
the battlefields of the civil wars, moreover, they sustained at
their expense the charges of the cavalry.

Siena was a city much given to parade and devoted to the Imperial
cause, in which the institution of chivalry flourished. Not only did
the burghers take knighthood from their procurators, but the more
influential sought it by a special dispensation from the Emperor.
Thus we hear how Nino Tolomei obtained a Caesarean diploma of
knighthood for his son Giovanni, and published it with great pomp to
the people in his palace. This Giovanni, when he afterwards entered
religion, took the name of Bernard, and founded the Order of Monte
Oliveto.

Owing to the special conditions of Italian chivalry, it followed
that the new knight, having won his spurs by no feat of arms upon
the battlefield, was bounden to display peculiar magnificence in the
ceremonies of his investiture. His honour was held to be less the
reward of courage than of liberality. And this feeling is strongly
expressed in a curious passage of Matteo Villani's Chronicle. 'When
the Emperor Charles had received the crown in Rome, as we have said,
he turned towards Siena, and on the 19th day of April arrived at
that city; and before he entered the same, there met him people of
the commonwealth with great festivity upon the hour of vespers; in
the which reception eight burghers, given to display but miserly, to
the end they might avoid the charges due to knighthood, did cause
themselves then and there to be made knights by him. And no sooner
had he passed the gates than many ran to meet him without order in
their going or provision for the ceremony, and he, being aware of
the vain and light impulse of that folk, enjoined upon the Patriarch
to knight them in his name. The Patriarch could not withstay from
knighting as many as offered themselves; and seeing the thing so
cheap, very many took the honour, who be