HKB
[Footnote 18: Dino Compagni, pp. 32, 34, 38.]
Thus the city was divided, and the attempts to check the factions only exasperated them. It was in vain that, when at times the government and the populace lost patience, severe measures were taken. It was in vain that the reformer, Gian della Bella, carried for a time his harsh "orders of justice" against the nobles, and invested popular vengeance with the solemnity of law and with the pomp and ceremony of a public act--that when a noble had been convicted of killing a citizen, the great officer, "Standard-bearer," as he was called, "of justice," issued forth in state and procession, with the banner of justice borne before him, with all his train, and at the head of the armed citizens, to the house of the criminal, and razed it to the ground. An eyewitness describes the effect of such chastisement:--"I, Dino Compagni, being Gonfalonier of Justice in 1293, went to their houses, and to those of their relations, and these I caused to be pulled down according to the laws. This beginning in the case of the other Gonfaloniers came to an evil effect; because, if they demolished the houses according to the laws, the people said that they were cruel; and if they did not demolish them completely, they said that they were cowards; and many distorted justice for fear of the people." Gian della Bella was overthrown with few regrets even on the part of the people. Equally vain was the attempt to keep the peace by separating the leaders of the disturbances. They were banished by a kind of ostracism; they departed in ostentatious meekness, Corso Donato to plot at Rome, Vieri de' Cerchi to return immediately to Florence. Anarchy had got too fast a hold on the city, and it required a stronger hand than that of the pope, or the signory of the republic, to keep it down.