Spini, Dolfo (Hist.)

Leader of the Compagnacci or Evil Companions. "Yet the tall, broad-shouldered personage greeted in that slight way looked like one who had considerable claims. He wore a richly embroidered tunic, with a great show of linen, after the newest French mode, and at his belt there hung a sword and poignard of fine workmanship. His hat, with a red plume in it, seemed a scornful protest against the gravity of Florentine costume, which had been exaggerated to the utmost under the influence of the Piagnoni. Certain undefinable indications of youth made the breadth of his face and the large diameter of his waist appear the more emphatically a stamp of coarseness, and his eyes had that rude desecrating stare at all men and things which to a refined mind is as intolerable as a bad odour or a flaring light." An avowed enemy of Savonarola, he plots with Tito Melema against him, especially in the matter of the Trial by Fire, in which, guided by Tito's superior intelligence, he hopes to accomplish the Frate's overthrow. He becomes uneasy under Tito's some what condescending superiority, and after Savonarola's arrest, when his suspicions have been further aroused by the hints of Tito's enemy, the shifty notary Ser Ceccone, he orders his Compagnacci to make way with Tito. Ridolpho Spini (d. 1519), usually called Doffo; the form Dolfo is used by Nerli in his Commentarj, one of
the sources consulted by George Eliot. He was one of the seventeen commissioners appointed to conduct the examination of Savonarola.

<em>Romola</em>

Text