First Martyrs' Day

Nero blamed Christians for his own crimes

Henryk Siemiradzki's painting shows trussed up Christian

captives about to be torched in Rome in AD64

Christians martyred in Rome during the reign of Nero in AD 64 are remembered every year on this day in Italy.

The Catholic Church celebrates the lives of the many men and women put to death by Nero, who are now known as i Primi Martiri, first martyrs of the Church of Rome, with a feast day every year on 30 June.

In the summer of AD 64, Rome was devastated by fire. The unpopular emperor Nero, who wanted to enlarge his palace, was suspected of setting fire to the city himself but he accused the early Christians then living in Rome and had them executed.

Some were fed to wild animals, some crucified, while others were burnt to death to illuminate the sky and provide evening entertainment.

The feast of the First Martyrs came into the Church calendar in 1969 as a general celebration day for the early Roman martyrs. It falls the day after the feast day of Saints Peter and Paul, the patron saints of Rome.

Part of a fresco from Nero's Domus Aurea in Rome, which
can be found in the Ashmolean Museum in Oxford

Travel tip:

After the fires had cleared the existing buildings away, Nero had an elaborate villa, his Golden House (Domus Aurea), built a short walk away from the Colosseum on Palatine Hill in Rome. Construction took place between AD 64 and the Emperor’s suicide in AD 68. The site of the villa in Viale Domus Aurea can be visited during a guided tour to view the restoration works. 

Travel tip:

There is a permanent memorial to the First Martyrs in Piazza di Protomartiri Romani, which is close to the Basilica of Saint Peter inside Vatican City in Rome.

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Elizabeth Barrett Browning dies in Florence

Romantic poet produced some of her best work after fleeing to Italy

Hungarian artist Károly Brocky's portrait of
 Elizabeth  Barrett Browning

English poet Elizabeth Barrett Browning died on this day in 1861 in Florence.

She had spent 15 years living in Italy with her husband, the poet Robert Browning, after being disinherited by her father who disapproved of their marriage.

The Brownings’ home in Florence, Casa Guidi, is now a memorial to the two poets.

Their only child, Robert Weidemann Barrett Browning, who became known as Pen, was born there in 1849.

Barrett Browning was one of the most prominent English poets of the Victorian era and was popular in both Britain and the United States during her lifetime.

From about the age of 15 she had suffered health problems and therefore lived a quiet life in her father’s house, concentrating on her writing.

A volume of her poems, published in 1844, inspired another writer, Robert Browning, to send her a letter praising her work.

He was eventually introduced to her by a mutual acquaintance and their legendary courtship began in secret.

They were married in 1846 and, after she had continued to live in her father’s home for a week, they fled to Italy. They settled in Florence, where they continued to write, inspired by art, the Tuscan landscape, and their contact with other writers and artists living there.

A plaque above the door of the Casa Guidi in Piazza San
 Felice recalls that Elizabeth Barrett Browning lived there

Barrett Browning wrote Casa Guidi Windows in 1851, giving her personal impressions of political events in Italy.

The poets also spent some time living in Siena, where Barrett Browning continued to write poetry expressing her sympathy with the Italian struggle for independence from foreign rule.

When her health began to deteriorate, they moved back to Florence. Barrett Browning died in her husband’s arms on 29 June, 1861 at the age of 55. She is buried in the Protestant English Cemetery in Florence.

Travel tip:

A plaque marks Casa Guidi, the home of Elizabeth Barrett Browning and her husband Robert in Piazza di San Felice in the Oltrarno district of Florence.  The house in Piazza San Felice, close to the Pitti Palace, now houses a museum dedicated to the lives of the literary couple.

Elizabeth Barrett Browning's tomb in the
Protestant English Cemetery in Florence

Travel tip:

Elizabeth Barrett Browning’s tomb, which was designed by Frederic, Lord Leighton, is frequently visited by her admirers in the picturesque setting of the English Cemetery in Piazzale Donatello in Florence.

(Photo of Casa Guidi plaque by Robert Greenham CC BY-SA 3.0)


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Giovanni della Casa - advocate of good manners

Bishop and poet remembered for his manual on etiquette

A portrait of Giovanni della Casa by the
artist Jacopo Pontorno

Giovanni della Casa, the Tuscan bishop whose witty book on behaviour in polite society became a handbook for generations long after he had passed away, was born on this day in 1503 in Borgo San Lorenzo, 30 kilometres north-east of Florence.

Born into a wealthy family, Della Casa was educated in Bologna and followed his friend, the scholar and poet Pietro Bembo, into the church.

He became Archbishop of Benevento in 1544 and was nominated by Pope Paul III as Papal nuncio to Venice. Disappointed at not having been elevated to Cardinal, however, he retired to a life of writing and reading.

At some point between 1551 and 1555, living at an abbey near Treviso, he wrote Galateo: The Rules of Polite Behaviour, a witty treatise on good manners intended for the amusement of a favourite nephew.  He thought it would be regarded as frivolous compared with other books he had written. Little did he know it would become one of the most celebrated books on etiquette in European history.

Published in Venice in 1558, it is considered one of the three great books on Italian conduct, alongside Baldassare Castiglione's Il Cortegiano, which discusses the qualities required of a 16th century courtier, and Niccolo Machiavelli's Il Principe (The Prince), which was less about manners than about political pragmatism and achieving objectives.

Della Casa's work goes into considerable detail in describing how to behave without causing offence to others, particularly in the areas of eating, drinking and personal hygiene.

He advised that tearing food apart with the hands and with hunting knifes was vulgar, as a result of which Italians began using dainty forks some two centuries before other European countries. He also cautioned that sniffing another person's wine should be avoided for fear of something unpleasant falling out of one's nose.

Reprints of Della Casa's book, such as this
2013 edition, still sell today

It was not good form, in his opinion, to spit, yawn or scratch and he cautioned that handwashing should take place in private because, if done in public, those witness to it risked their minds being drawn to thoughts of the bodily functions that might have necessitated it.

One should dress, he proposed, in clothes that conformed to prevailing custom and were reflective of social status and in conversation one should seek to interest all parties present with words that were 'orderly and well-expressed'.

His guidance in other areas could apply to the modern world.  It was not good manners, he said, to brag about one's children, or to sing off key.  Grooming in public was uncouth and making jokes at the expense of the disabled was unacceptable. And even in an age that could not have imagined telephones, let alone mobile ones, it was rude, he counselled, to read one's mail in company.

However, taking someone to task over their social shortcomings was also considered out of order, unless somehow you could be complimentary at the same time.  In short, he advised that people should be pleasant, appropriate and polite in all but the most extreme circumstances.

A Latin scholar, Della Casa is thought to have named the book in honour of Galeazzo Florimonte, a bishop and man of letters from whom he took his own inspiration.  The title entered the Italian language and for a time people who were impolite or crude were said to 'not know the Galateo.'

Della Casa died in Rome in 1556, aged 53. Modern editions of Galateo are still being reprinted today.

Travel tip:

Borgo San Lorenzo is the largest of nine towns and villages that make up the Mugello, a green hilly area overlooking the Sieve valley.  The Medici family have their roots in the Mugello, as does the artist, Giotto, the most important Italian painter of the 14th century.  Its Romanesque Church of San Lorenzo has a belltower dated at 1263. The medieval Palazzo del Podestà was rebuilt in the 1919 earthquake.

The ruins of the Abbey of Sant'Eustachio near Treviso

Travel tip:

Little remains now of the Abbey of Sant'Eustachio, the Benedictine monastery of the early 11th century where Della Casa is thought to have been staying when he wrote Galateo.  Situated close to the small town of Nervesa della Battaglia, about 20km from Treviso in the Veneto, it had already been abandoned when it suffered substantial damage during the Battle of the Piave River during the First World War.

(Photo of the Abbey of Sant'Eustachio by Franco CC BY-SA 2.0)

More reading:

Cosimo II de' Medici - patron of Galileo

Pietro Bembo - poet and scholar who was Lucrezia Borgia's lover

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Giorgio Vasari - the first art historian

Artist and architect who chronicled lives of Old Masters

Portrait of Giorgio Vasari

Giorgio Vasari, whose 16th century book on the lives of Renaissance artists led to him being described as the world's first art historian, died on this day in 1574 in Florence.

Born in Arezzo in 1511, Vasari was a brilliant artist and architect who worked for the Medici family in Florence and Rome and amassed a considerable fortune in his career.

But he is remembered as much for Lives of the Most Excellent Painters, Sculptors, and Architects, from Cimabue to Our Times, a collection of biographies of all the great artists of his lifetime.

The six-part work is remembered as the first important book on art history.  Had it not been written, much less would be known of the lives of Cimabue, Giotto, Donatello, Botticelli, Da Vinci, Giorgione, Raphael, Boccaccio and Michelangelo among many others from the generation known as the Old Masters.

Vasari, who is believed to have been the first to describe the period of his lifetime as the Renaissance, also went into much detail in discussing the techniques employed by the great artists.  It is partly for that reason that the book is regarded by contemporary art historians as "the most influential single text for the history of Renaissance art".

Vasari's wall paintings in the Palazzo Vecchio in Florence

In his own career, Vasari became friends with Michelangelo and studied the works of Raphael.  His frescoes in the Palazzo della Cancelleria in Rome and his wall and ceiling paintings in the Palazzo Vecchio in Florence gained him much admiration.

As an architect, he designed the loggia of the Palazzo degli Uffizi in Florence and the Vasari Corridor, which connects the Uffizi with the Medici residence at the Palazzo Pitti on the other side of the Arno river.

He also renovated the medieval Florentine churches of Santa Maria Novella and Santa Croce. In Santa Croce, he was responsible for the painting of The Adoration of the Magi which was commissioned by Pope Pius V in 1566 and has been recently restored.

The wealth he acquired enabled him to build a fine house in Arezzo, which now houses a museum dedicated to his life and work.

Travel tip:

The town of Arezzo in eastern Tuscany, where Vasari was born, was famous because of another artist, Piero della Francesco. The 13th century church of San Francesco contains Piero della Francesco’s frescoes, The Legend of the True Cross, painted between 1452 and 1466 and now considered to be one of Italy’s greatest fresco cycles.

The Galleria at the Uffizi, looking towards
Vasari's loggia, which opens on to the Arno

Travel tip:

The Uffizi complex on which Vasari worked from 1560 onwards was built to accommodate the offices of the Florentine magistrates, hence the name uffizi (offices). Cosimo I de' Medici, Grand Duke of Tuscany, who commissioned the building, planned to display prime art works of the Medici collections in the complex.  Over the years, more sections of the palace were recruited to exhibit paintings and sculpture collected or commissioned by the Medici.  In 1765 it was officially opened to the public as an art gallery.

(Photo of Uffizi by Samuli Lintula CC BY-SA 3.0)

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