himself to the work of pacification so well begun, he now demanded to be
made lord of Vicenza, with the titles of Duke and Count, and to receive
the supreme authority in Verona. The people, believing him to be a
saint, readily acceded to his wishes; but one of the first things he
did, after altering the statutes of these burghs, was to burn sixty
citizens of Verona, whom he had himself condemned as heretics. The
Paduans revolted against his tyranny. Obliged to have recourse to arms,
he was beaten and put in prison; and when he was released, at the
intercession of the Pope, he found his wonderful prestige
annihilated.[1]

[1] The most interesting accounts of Fra Giovanni da Vicenza
are to be found in Muratori, vol. viii., in the Annals of
Rolandini and Gerardus Maurisius.

The position of Fra Jacopo del Bussolaro in Pavia differed from that of
Fra Giovanni da Vicenza in Verona. Yet the commencement of his political
authority was very nearly the same. The son of a poor boxmaker of Pavia,
he early took the habit of the Augustines, and acquired a reputation for
sanctity by leading the austere life of a hermit. It happened in the
year 1356 that he was commissioned by the superiors of his order to
preach the Lenten sermons to the people of Pavia. 'Then,' to quote
Matteo Villani, 'it pleased God that this monk should make his sermons
so agreeable to every species of people, that the fame of them and the
devotion they inspired increased marvelously. And he, seeing the
concourse of the people, and the faith they bare him, began to denounce
vice, and specially usury, revenge, and ill-behavior of women; and
thereupon he began to speak against the disorderly lordship of the
tyrants; and in a short time he brought the women to modest manners, and
the men to renunciation of usury and feuds.' The only citizens of Pavia
who resisted his eloquence were the Beccaria family, who at that time
ruled Pavia like despots. His most animated denunciations were directed
against their extortions and excesses. Therefore they sought to slay
him. But the people gave him a bodyguard, and at last he wrought so
powerfully with the burghers that they expelled the house of Beccaria
and established a republican government. At this time the Visconti were
laying siege to Pavia: the passes of the Ticino and the Po were occupied
by Milanese troops, and the city was reduced to a state of blockade.
Fra Jacopo assembled the able-bodied burghers, anim