The feasts held by these companions at different times were innumerable, but I propose to make mention of some few among them only, and that chiefly for the benefit of those who are not acquainted with the usages of those societies which are now, as I said before, almost wholly extinct. The first supper given by the men of the Trowel, and which was arranged by Griuliano Bugiardini, was held at the place called L’Aia, or the threshing floor of Santa Maria Nuova, where the bronze doors of San Griovanni were cast, as we have before related. Now, the lord of the feast had commanded that all the guests should be permitted to appear in whatsoever habiliments might best please them, but if any two should chance to present themselves in the same garb they were to be punished for that misdeed; the Company, therefore, appeared in the most fanciful and most eccentric, but also most beautiful, vestments that can be imagined.
The hour of supper having arrived, the guests were placed at table in order according to the character of their clothing; those who wore the dress of princes were placed first, the rich and noble followed, and those who had attired themselves as poor men were sent to the lower end; but with regard to the jests and sports that were enacted after the supper, let every one picture to himself what these were, for they may be more easily imagined than described.
At another feast, which was arranged by the above-named Bugiardini and Giovan-Francesco Rustici in concert, the men of the Company appeared, as had been commanded by the lord of the feast, some in the dresses of master masons, and some in the garb of hod-men and other labourers; those who ‘‘went for the Greater,” bearing the trowel by way of a knife for the table, and having a hammer in their girdle; and those who “went for the Lesser,” with a pail or a hod and the windlass or lever in their hands, the trowel being carried in the girdle.
When the whole Company had reached the first chamber, they were shown, by the Signore or lord of the feast, the ground-plan of a building, which they were to erect for the Society, and the masters seating themselves at table around this plan accordingly: the labourers then immediately began to bring them the materials for laying the foundations, hods
