Renaissance in Italy, Volume 2 (of 7)
by John Addington Symonds · English · Gutenberg #41924 · 844,173 chars · public domain (US)
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Title: Renaissance in Italy, Volume 2 (of 7)
Author: John Addington Symonds
Release date: January 26, 2013 [eBook #41924]
Most recently updated: October 23, 2024
Language: English
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*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK RENAISSANCE IN ITALY, VOLUME 2 (OF 7) ***
[Transcriber's Note: This e-book was prepared from a 1960 G.P.
Putnam's Sons reprint of the 1900 edition of _The Revival of
Learning_, originally published by Smith, Elder, & Co., London, as
Volume II of John Addington Symonds's _Renaissance in Italy_ series.
Obvious printer errors have been corrected without note; other errors
are indicated by a [Transcriber's Note]. Older spellings of Italian
names (e.g. "Lionardo" for "Leonardo") have been retained as they
appear in the original.]
_JOHN ADDINGTON SYMONDS_
_The Revival of Learning_
At tibi fortassis, si, quod mens sperat et optat,
Es post me victura diu, meliora supersunt
Secula; non omnes veniet lethaeus in annos
Iste sopor; poterunt, discussis forte tenebris,
Ad purum priscumque jubar remeare nepotes.
Tunc Helicona novâ revirentem stirpe videbis,
Tunc lauros frondere sacras; tunc alta resurgent
Ingenia atque animi dociles, quibus ardor honesti
Pieridum studii veterem geminabit amorem.
PETRARCHÆ _Africa_, _lib. ix_
PREFACE[1]
[Footnote 1: To the original edition of this volume.]
This volume on the 'Revival of Learning' follows that on the 'Age of
the Despots,' published in 1875, and precedes that on the 'Fine Arts,'
which is now also offered to the public. In dealing with the 'Revival
of Learning' and the 'Fine Arts,' I have tried to remember that I had
not so much to write again the history of these subjects, as to treat
their relation to the 'Renaissance in Italy.' In other words, I have
regarded each section of my theme as subordinate to the general
culture of a great historical period. The volume on 'Italian
Literature,' still in contemplation, is intended to complete the work.
While handling the theme of the Italian Renaissance, I have selected
such points, and emphasised such details, as I felt to be important
for the biography of a nation at the most brilliant epoch of its
intellectual activity. The historian of culture sacrifices much that
the historian of politics will judge essential, and calls attention to
matters that the general reader may sometimes find superfluous. He
must submit to bear the reproach of having done at once too little and
too much. He must be content to traverse at one time well-worn ground,
and at another to engage in dry or abstruse inquiries. He must not
shrink from seeming to affect the fame of a compiler; nor, unless his
powers be of the highest, can he hope altogether to avoid repetitions
wearisome alike to reader and to writer. His main object is to paint
the portrait of national genius identical through all varieties of
manifestation; and in proportion as he has preserved this point of
view with firmness, he may hope to have succeeded.
For the History of the Revival of Learning I have had continual
recourse to Tiraboschi's 'Storia della Letteratura Italiana.' That
work is still the basis of all researches bearing on the subject. I
owe besides particular obligations to Vespasiano's 'Vite di Uomini
Illustri,' to Comparetti's 'Virgilio nel Medio Evo,' to Rosmini's
'Vita di Filelfo,' 'Vita di Vittorino da Feltre,' and 'Vita di Guarino
da Verona,' to Shepherd's 'Life of Poggio Bracciolini,' to
Dennistoun's 'Dukes of Urbino,' to Schultze's 'Gemistos Plethon,' to
Didot's 'Alde Manuce,' to Von Reumont's 'Lorenzo de' Medici,' to
Burckhardt's 'Cultur der Renaissance in Italien,' to Voigt's
'Wiederbelebung des classischen Alterthums,' and to Gregorovius's
'Geschichte der Stadt Rom.' To Voigt and Burckhardt, having perforce
traversed the same ground that they have done, I feel that I have been
in a special sense indebted. At the same time I have made it my
invariable practice, as the notes to this volume will show, to found
my own opinions on the study of original sources. To mention in
detail all the editions of the works of humanists and scholars I have
consulted, would be superfluous.
To me it has been a labour of love to record even the bare names of
those Italian worthies who recovered for us in the fourteenth and
fifteenth centuries 'the everlasting consolations' of the Greek and
Latin classics. The thought that I was tracing the history of an
achievement fruitful of the weightiest results for modern civilisation
has sustained me in a task that has been sometimes tedious. The
collective greatness of the Revival has reconciled my mind to many
trivialities of detail. The prosaic minutiæ of obscure biographies and
long-forgotten literary labours have been glorified by what appears to
me the poetry and the romance of the whole theme. It lies not in my
province or my power to offer my readers any adequate apology for such
defects as my own want of skill in exposition, or the difficulty of
transfiguring with vital light and heat a subject so remote from
present interests, may have occasioned. I must leave this volume in
their hands, hoping that some at least may be animated by the same
feeling of gratitude toward those past workers in the field of
learning which has supported me.
CLIFTON: _March 1877_.
CONTENTS
CHAPTER I
THE MEN OF THE RENAISSANCE
PAGE
Formation of Conscious Personality in Italy -- Aristocracy of
Intellect -- Self-culture as an Aim -- Want of National Architecture
-- Want of National Drama -- Eminence of Sculpture and Painting --
Peculiar Capacity for Literature -- Scholarship -- Men of Many-sided
Genius -- Their Relation to the Age -- Conflict between Mediæval
Tradition and Humanism -- Petrarch -- The Meaning of the Revival begun
by him -- Cosmopolitan Philosophy -- Toleration -- An Intellectual
Empire -- Worldliness -- Confusion of Impulses and Inspirations --
Copernicus and Columbus -- Christianity and the Classics -- Italian
Incapacity for Religious Reformation -- Free Thought takes the form of
License -- Harmonies attempted between Christianity and Antique
Philosophy -- Florentine Academy -- Physical Qualities of the Italians
-- Portraits of Two Periods -- Physical Exercises -- Determination of
the Race to Scholarship -- Ancient Memories of Rome -- The Cult of
Antiquity -- Desire of Fame -- Fame to be found in Literature -- The
Cult of Intellect -- The Cult of Character -- Preoccupation with
Personal Details -- Biography -- Ideal Sketches -- Posthumous Glory --
Enthusiasm for Erudition -- Piero de' Pazzi -- Florence and Athens --
Paganism -- Real Value of Italian Humanism -- Pico on the Dignity of
Man 1
CHAPTER II
FIRST PERIOD OF HUMANISM
Importance of the Revival of Learning -- Mediæval Romance -- The
Legend of Faustus -- Its Value for the Renaissance -- The Devotion of
Italy to Study -- Italian Predisposition for this Labour --
Scholarship in the Dark Ages -- Double Attitude assumed by the Church
-- Piety for Virgil -- Meagre Acquaintance with the Latin Classics --
No Greek Learning -- The Spiritual Conditions of the Middle Ages
adverse to Pure Literature -- Italy no Exception to the rest of Europe
-- Dante and Petrarch -- Definition of Humanism -- Petrarch's
Conception of it -- His Æsthetical Temperament -- His Cult for Cicero,
Zeal in Collecting Manuscripts, Sense of the Importance of Greek
Studies -- Warfare against Pedantry and Superstition -- Ideal of
Poetry and Rhetoric -- Critique of Jurists and Schoolmen -- S.
Augustine -- Petrarch's Vanity -- Thirst for Fame -- Discord between
his Life and his Profession -- His Literary Temperament -- Visionary
Patriotism -- His Influence -- His Successors -- Boccaccio and Greek
Studies -- Translation of Homer -- Philosophy of Literature --
Sensuousness of Boccaccio's Inspiration -- Giovanni da Ravenna -- The
Wandering Professor -- His Pupils in Latin Scholarship -- Luigi
Marsigli -- The Convent of S. Spirito -- Humanism in Politics --
Coluccio de' Salutati -- Gasparino da Barzizza -- Improved Style in
Letter-writing -- Revival of Greek Learning -- Manuel Chrysoloras --
His Pupils -- Lionardo Bruni -- Value of Greek for the Renaissance 37
CHAPTER III
FIRST PERIOD OF HUMANISM
Condition of the Universities in Italy -- Bologna -- High Schools
founded from it -- Naples under Frederick II. -- Under the House of
Anjou -- Ferrara -- Piacenza -- Perugia -- Rome -- Pisa -- Florence --
Imperial and Papal Charters -- Foreign Students -- Professorial Staff
-- Subjects taught in the High Schools -- Place assigned to Humanism
-- Pay of the Professors of Eloquence -- Francesco Filelfo -- The
Humanists less powerful at the Universities -- Method of Humanistic
Teaching -- The Book Market before Printing -- Mediæval Libraries --
Cost of Manuscripts -- 'Stationarii' and 'Peciarii' -- Negligence of
Copyists -- Discovery of Classical Codices -- Boccaccio at Monte
Cassino -- Poggio at Constance -- Convent of S. Gallen -- Bruni's
Letter to Poggio -- Manuscripts Discovered by Poggio -- Nicholas of
Treves -- Collection of Greek Manuscripts -- Aurispa, Filelfo, and
Guarino -- The Ruins of Rome -- Their Influence on Humanism -- Dante
and Villani -- Rienzi -- His Idealistic Patriotism -- Vanity --
Political Incompetence -- Petrarch's Relations with Rienzi -- Injury
to Monuments in Rome -- Poggio's Roman Topography -- Sentimental
Feeling for the Ruins of Antiquity -- Ciriac of Ancona 83
CHAPTER IV
SECOND PERIOD OF HUMANISM
Intricacy of the Subject -- Division into Four Periods -- Place of
Florence -- Social Conditions favourable to Culture -- Palla degli
Strozzi -- His Encouragement of Greek Studies -- Plan of a Public
Library -- His Exile -- Cosimo de' Medici -- His Patronage of Learning
-- Political Character -- Love of Building -- Generosity to Students
-- Foundation of Libraries -- Vespasiano and Thomas of Sarzana --
Niccolo de' Niccoli -- His Collection of Codices -- Description of his
Mode of Life -- His Fame as a Latinist -- Lionardo Bruni -- His
Biography -- Translations from the Greek -- Latin Treatises and
Histories -- His Burial in Santa Croce -- Carlo Aretino -- Fame as a
Lecturer -- The Florentine Chancery -- Matteo Palmieri -- Giannozzo
Manetti -- His Hebrew Studies -- His Public Career -- His Eloquence --
Manetti ruined by the Medici -- His Life in Exile at Naples --
Estimate of his Talents -- Ambrogio Traversari -- Study of Greek
Fathers -- General of the Camaldolese Order -- Humanism and
Monasticism -- The Council of Florence -- Florentine Opinion about the
Greeks -- Gemistos Plethon -- His Life -- His Philosophy -- His
Influence at Florence -- Cosimo de' Medici and the Florentine Academy
-- Study of Plato -- Plethon's Writings -- Platonists and
Aristotelians in Italy and Greece -- Bessarion -- His Patronage of
Greek Refugees in Rome -- Humanism in the Smaller Republics -- In
Venice 115
CHAPTER V
SECOND PERIOD OF HUMANISM
Transition from Florence to Rome -- Vicissitudes of Learning at the
Papal Court -- Diplomatic Humanists -- Protonotaries -- Apostolic
Scribes -- Ecclesiastical Sophists -- Immorality and Artificiality of
Scholarship in Rome -- Poggio and Bruni, Secretaries -- Eugenius IV.
-- His Patronage of Scholars -- Flavio Biondo -- Solid Erudition --
Nicholas V. -- His Private History -- Nature of his Talents -- His
unexpected Elevation to the Roman See -- Jubilation of the Humanists
-- His Protection of Learned Men in Rome -- A Workshop of Erudition --
A Factory of Translations -- High Sums paid for Literary Labour --
Poggio Fiorentino -- His Early Life -- His Journeys -- His Eminence as
a Man of Letters -- His attitude towards Ecclesiastics -- His
Invectives -- Humanistic Gladiators -- Poggio and Filelfo -- Poggio
and Guarino -- Poggio and Valla -- Poggio and Perotti -- Poggio and
Georgios Trapezuntios -- Literary Scandals -- Poggio's Collections of
Antiquities -- Chancellor of Florence -- Cardinal Bessarion -- His
Library -- Theological Studies -- Apology for Plato -- The Greeks in
Italy -- Humanism at Naples -- Want of Culture in Southern Italy --
Learning an Exotic -- Alfonso the Magnificent -- Scholars in the Camp
-- Literary Dialogues at Naples -- Antonio Beccadelli -- The
'Hermaphroditus' -- Lorenzo Valla -- The Epicurean -- The Critic --
The Opponent of the Church -- Bartolommeo Fazio -- Giannantonio
Porcello -- Court of Milan -- Filippo Maria Visconti -- Decembrio's
Description of his Master -- Francesco Filelfo -- His Early Life --
Visit to Constantinople -- Place at Court -- Marriage -- Return to
Italy -- Venice -- Bologna -- His Pretensions as a Professor --
Florence -- Feuds with the Florentines -- Immersion in Politics --
Siena -- Settles at Milan -- His Fame -- Private Life and Public
Interests -- Overtures to Rome -- Filelfo under the Sforza Tyranny --
Literary Brigandage -- Death at Florence -- Filelfo as the
Representative of a Class -- Vittorino da Feltre -- Early Education --
Scheme of Training Youths as Scholars -- Residence at Padua --
Residence at Mantua -- His School of Princes -- Liberality to Poor
Students -- Details of his Life and System -- Court of Ferrara --
Guarino da Verona -- House Tutor of Lionello d'Este -- Giovanni
Aurispa -- Smaller Courts -- Carpi -- Mirandola -- Rimini and the
Malatesta Tyrants -- Cesena -- Pesaro -- Urbino and Duke Frederick --
Vespasiano da Bisticci 155
CHAPTER VI
THIRD PERIOD OF HUMANISM
Improvement in Taste and Criticism -- Coteries and Academies --
Revival of Italian Literature -- Printing -- Florence, the Capital of
Learning -- Lorenzo de' Medici and his Circle -- Public Policy of
Lorenzo -- Literary Patronage -- Variety of his Gifts -- Meetings of
the Platonic Society -- Marsilio Ficino -- His Education for Platonic
Studies -- Translations of Plato and the Neoplatonists -- Harmony
between Plato and Christianity -- Giovanni Pico -- His First
Appearance in Florence -- His Theses proposed at Rome -- Censure of
the Church -- His Study of the Cabbala -- Large Conception of Learning
-- Occult Science -- Cristoforo Landino -- Professor of Fine
Literature -- Virgilian Studies -- Camaldolese Disputations -- Leo
Battista Alberti -- His Versatility -- Bartolommeo Scala -- Obscure
Origin -- Chancellor of Florence -- Angelo Poliziano -- Early Life --
Translation of Homer -- The 'Homericus Juvenis' -- True Genius in
Poliziano -- Command of Latin and Greek -- Resuscitation of Antiquity
in his own Person -- His Professorial Work -- The 'Miscellanea' --
Relation to Medici -- Roman Scholarship in this Period -- Pius II. --
Pomponius Lætus -- His Academy and Mode of Life -- Persecution under
Paul II. -- Humanism at Naples -- Pontanus -- His Academy -- His
Writings -- Academies established in all Towns of Italy --
Introduction of Printing -- Sweynheim and Pannartz -- The Early
Venetian Press -- Florence -- Cennini -- Alopa's Homer -- Change in
Scholarship effected by Printing -- The Life of Aldo Manuzio -- The
Princely House of Pio at Carpi -- Greek Books before Aldo -- The
Aldine Press at Venice -- History of its Activity -- Aldo and Erasmus
-- Aldo and the Greek Refugees -- Aldo's Death -- His Family and
Successors -- The Neacademia -- The Salvation of Greek Literature 224
CHAPTER VII
FOURTH PERIOD OF HUMANISM
Fall of the Humanists -- Scholarship permeates Society -- A New Ideal
of Life and Manners -- Latinisation of Names -- Classical Periphrases
-- Latin Epics on Christian Themes -- Paganism -- The Court of Leo X.
-- Honours of the Church given to Scholars -- Ecclesiastical Men of
the World -- Mæcenases at Rome -- Papal and Imperial Rome -- Moral
Corruption -- Social Refinement -- The Roman Academy -- Pietro Bembo
-- His Life at Ferrara -- At Urbino -- Comes to Rome -- Employed by
Leo -- Retirement to Padua -- His Dictatorship of Letters -- Jacopo
Sadoleto -- A Graver Genius than Bembo -- Paulus Jovius -- Latin
Stylist -- His Histories -- Baldassare Castiglione -- Life at Urbino
and Rome -- The Courtly Scholar -- His Diplomatic Missions -- Alberto
Pio -- Gian Francesco Pico della Mirandola -- The Vicissitudes of his
Life -- Jerome Aleander -- Oriental Studies -- The Library of the
Vatican -- His Mission to Germany -- Inghirami, Beroaldo, and
Acciaiuoli -- The Roman University -- John Lascaris -- Study of
Antiquities -- Origin of the 'Corpus Inscriptionum' -- Topographical
Studies -- Formation of the Vatican Sculpture Gallery -- Discovery of
the Laocoon -- Feeling for Statues in Renaissance Italy -- Venetian
Envoys in the Belvedere -- Raphael's Plan for Excavating Ancient Rome
-- His Letter to Leo -- Effect of Antiquarian Researches on the Arts
-- Intellectual Supremacy of Rome in this Period -- The Fall -- Adrian
VI. -- The Sack of Rome -- Valeriano's Description of the Sufferings
of Scholars 284
CHAPTER VIII
LATIN POETRY
Special Causes for the Practice of Latin Versification in Italy -- The
Want of an Italian Language -- Multitudes of Poetasters -- Beccadelli
-- Alberti's 'Philodoxus' -- Poliziano -- The 'Sylvæ' -- 'Nutricia,'
'Rusticus,' 'Manto,' 'Ambra' -- Minor Poems -- Pontano -- Sannazzaro
-- Elegies and Epigrams -- Christian Epics -- Vida's 'Christiad' --
Vida's 'Poetica' -- Fracastoro -- The 'Syphilis' -- _Barocco_
Flatteries -- Bembo -- Immoral Elegies -- Imitations of Ovid and
Tibullus -- The 'Benacus' -- Epitaphs -- Navagero -- Epigrams and
Eclogues -- Molsa -- Poem on his own Death -- Castiglione -- 'Alcon'
and 'Lycidas' -- Verses of Society -- The Apotheosis of the Popes --
Poem on the Ariadne of the Vatican -- Sadoleto's Verses on the Laocoon
-- Flaminio -- His Life -- Love of the Country -- Learned Friends --
Scholar-Poets of Lombardy -- Extinction of Learning in Florence --
Decay of Italian Erudition 324
CHAPTER IX
CONCLUSION
General Survey -- The Part played in the Revival by the Chief Cities
-- Preoccupation with Scholarship in spite of War and Conquest --
Place of the Humanists in Society -- Distributors of Praise and Blame
-- Flattery and Libels -- Comparison with the Sophists -- The Form
preferred to the Matter of Literature -- Ideal of Culture as an end in
itself -- Suspicion of Zealous Churchmen -- Intrusion of Humanism into
the Church -- Irreligion of the Humanists -- Gyraldi's 'Progymnasma'
-- Ariosto -- Bohemian Life -- Personal Immorality -- Want of Fixed
Principles -- Professional Vanity -- Literary Pride -- Estimate of
Humanistic Literature -- Study of Style -- Influence of Cicero --
Valla's 'Elegantiæ' -- Stylistic Puerilities -- Value attached to
Rhetoric -- 'Oratore' -- Moral Essays -- Epistolography -- Histories
-- Critical and Antiquarian Studies -- Large Appreciation of Antiquity
-- Liberal Spirit -- Poggio and Jerome of Prague -- Humanistic Type of
Education -- Its Diffusion through Europe -- Future Prospects -- Decay
of Learning in Italy 372
RENAISSANCE IN ITALY
CHAPTER I
THE MEN OF THE RENAISSANCE
Formation of Conscious Personality in Italy -- Aristocracy
of Intellect -- Self-culture as an Aim -- Want of National
Architecture -- Want of National Drama -- Eminence of
Sculpture and Painting -- Peculiar Capacity for Literature
-- Scholarship -- Men of Many-sided Genius -- Their Relation
to the Age -- Conflict between Mediæval Tradition and
Humanism -- Petrarch -- The Meaning of the Revival begun by
him -- Cosmopolitan Philosophy -- Toleration -- An
Intellectual Empire -- Worldliness -- Confusion of Impulses
and Inspirations -- Copernicus and Columbus -- Christianity
and the Classics -- Italian Incapacity for Religious
Reformation -- Free Thought takes the form of License --
Harmonies attempted between Christianity and Antique
Philosophy -- Florentine Academy -- Physical Qualities of
the Italians -- Portraits of Two Periods -- Physical
Exercises -- Determination of the Race to Scholarship --
Ancient Memories of Rome -- The Cult of Antiquity -- Desire
of Fame -- Fame to be found in Literature -- The Cult of
Intellect -- The Cult of Character -- Preoccupation with
Personal Details -- Biography -- Ideal Sketches --
Posthumous Glory -- Enthusiasm for Erudition -- Piero de'
Pazzi -- Florence and Athens -- Paganism -- Real Value of
Italian Humanism -- Pico on the Dignity of Man.
The conditions, political, social, moral, and religious, described in
the first volume of this work, produced among the Italians a type of
character nowhere else observable in Europe. This character, highly
self-conscious and mentally mature, was needed for the intellectual
movement of the Renaissance. Italy had proved herself incapable of
forming an united nation, or of securing the principle of federal
coherence; of maintaining a powerful military system, or of holding
her own against the French and Spaniards. For these defects her
Communes and her Despots, the Papacy and the kingdom of Naples, the
theories of the mediæval doctrinaires and the enthusiasm of the
humanists, were alike responsible; though the larger share belongs to
Rome, resolutely hostile to the monarchical principle, and zealous, by
espousing the Guelf faction, to maintain the discord of the nation. At
the same time the very causes of political disunion were favourable to
the intellectual growth of the Italians. Each State, whether
republican or despotic, had, during the last years of the Middle Ages,
formed a mixed society of nobles, merchants, and artisans, enclosed
within the circuit of the city walls, and strongly marked by the
peculiar complexion of their native place. Every town was a centre of
activity and industry, eagerly competing with its neighbours, proud of
its local characteristics, anxious to confer distinction on citizens
who rose to eminence by genius or practical ability. Party strife in
the republics, while it disturbed their internal repose, sharpened the
intellect and strengthened the personality of the burghers. Exile and
proscription, the common climax of civic warfare, made them still more
self-determined and self-reliant by driving each man back upon his own
resources. The despots, again, through the illegal tenure of their
authority, were forced to the utmost possible development of
individual character: since all their fortunes depended on their
qualities as men. The plots and counter-plots of subjects eager for a
change of government, and of neighbours anxious to encroach upon their
territory, kept the atmosphere of their Courts in a continual state of
agitation. One type of ability was fostered by the diplomatic
relations of the several cities, yielding employment to a multitude of
secretaries and ambassadors; another by the system of Condottiere
warfare, offering a brilliant career to ambitious adventurers. In all
departments open to a man of talent birth was of less importance than
natural gifts; for the social barriers and grades of feudalism had
either never existed in Italy, or had been shaken and confounded
during the struggles of the twelfth and thirteenth centuries. The
ranks of the tyrants were filled with sons of Popes and captains risen
from the proletariat. The ruling class in the republics consisted of
men self-made by commerce; and here the name at least of Popolo was
sovereign. It followed that men were universally rated at what they
proved themselves to be; and thus an aristocracy of genius and
character grew up in Italy at a period when the rest of Europe
presented but rare specimens of individuals emergent from the common
herd. As in ancient Greece, the nation was of less importance than the
city, and within the city personal ability carried overwhelming
weight. The Italian history of the Renaissance resumes itself in the
biography of men greater than their race, of mental despots, who
absorbed its forces in themselves.
The intellectual and moral milieu created by multitudes of
self-centred, cultivated personalities was necessary for the evolution
of that spirit of intelligence, subtle, penetrative, and elastic, that
formed the motive force of the Renaissance. The work achieved by Italy
for the world in that age was less the work of a nation than that of
men of power, less the collective and spontaneous triumph of a
puissant people than the aggregate of individual efforts animated by
one soul of free activity, a common striving after fame. This is
noticeable at the very outset. The Italians had no national Epic:
their Divine Comedy is the poem of the individual man. Petrarch erects
self-culture to the rank of an ideal, and proposes to move the world
from the standpoint of his study, darting his spirit's light through
all the void circumference, and making thought a power.
The success and the failure of the Italians are alike referable to
their political subdivisions, and to this strong development of their
personality. We have already seen how they fell short of national
unity and of military greatness. Even in the realm of art and
literature the same conditions were potent. Some of the chief
productions of humanity seem to require the co-operation of whole
peoples working sympathetically to a common end. Foremost among these
are architecture and the drama. The most splendid triumphs of modern
architecture in the French and English Gothic were achieved by the
half-unconscious striving of the national genius through several
centuries. The names of the builders of the cathedrals are unknown:
the cathedrals themselves bear less the stamp of individual thought
than of popular instinct; their fame belongs to the race that made
them, to the spirit of the times that gave them birth. It is not in
architecture, therefore, that we expect the Italians, divided into
small and rival States, and distinguished by salient subjectivity, to
show their strength. Men like Niccola Pisano, Arnolfo del Cambio,
Alberti, Brunelleschi, and Bramante were gifted with an individuality
too paramount for the creation of more than mighty experiments in
architecture. They bowed to no tradition, but followed the dictates of
their own inventive impulse, selecting the types that suited them, and
dealing freely with the forms they found around them. Instead of
seeking to carry on toward its accomplishment a style, not made, but
felt and comprehended by their genius, they were eager to produce new
and characteristic masterpieces--signs and symbols of their own
peculiar quality of mind. Italy is full of splendid but imperfect
monuments of personal ability, works of beauty displaying no unbroken
genealogy of unknown craftsmen, but attesting the skill of famous
artists. For the practical architect her palaces and churches may,
for this reason, be less instructive and less attractive than the
public buildings of France. Yet for the student of national and
personal characteristics, who loves to trace the physiognomy of a
people in its edifices, to discover the mind of the artist in his
work, their interest is unrivalled. In each city the specific _genius
loci_ meets us face to face: from each town-hall or cathedral the soul
of a great man leans forth to greet our own. These advantages
compensate for frequent extravagances, for audacities savouring of
ignorance, and for awkwardness in the adoption and modification of
incongruous styles. Moreover, it must always be remembered that in
Italy the architect could not forget the monuments of Roman and
Byzantine art around him. Classic models had to be suited to the
requirements of modern life and Christian ritual; and when the Germans
brought their Gothic from beyond the Alps, it suffered from its
adaptation to a southern climate. The result was that Italy arrived at
no great national tradition in architecture, and that free scope was
offered to the whims and freaks of individual designers. When at
length, at the end of the sixteenth century, the Italians attained to
uniformity of taste, it was by the sacrifice of their originality. The
pedantry of the classical revival did more harm to architecture than
to letters, and pseudo-Roman purism superseded the genial caprices of
the previous centuries.
If architecture may be said to have suffered in Italy from the
supremacy of local characteristics and personal genius, overruling
tradition and thwarting the evolution of a national style, the case
was quite different with the other arts. Painting and sculpture demand
the highest independence in the artist, and are susceptible of a far
more many-sided treatment than architecture. They cannot be the common
product of a people, but require the conscious application of a
special ability to the task of translating thought and feeling into
form. As painters, the Italians hold the first rank among civilised
nations of the modern and the ancient world; and their inferiority as
sculptors to the Greeks is mainly due to their mastery over painting,
the essentially romantic art. The sensibilities of the new age craved
a more emotional and agitated expression than is proper to sculpture.
As early as the days of Ghiberti and Donatello it became clear that
the Italian sculptors were following the methods of the sister art in
their designs, while Michael Angelo alone had force enough to make
marble the vehicle of thoughts that properly belong to painting or to
music. The converse probably held good with the Greeks. What remains
of their work in fresco and mosaic seems to show that they were
satisfied with groups and figures modelled upon bas-reliefs and
statues; just as the Florentines carved pictures, with architecture
and landscape, in stone. More need not here be said upon this topic,
since the achievements of the Italians in painting and in sculpture
will form a main part of my history.
As regards literature, the subdivision of Italy into numerous small
States and the energetic self-assertion of the individual were
distinctly favourable. Though the want of a great public, such as can
alone be found in the capital of a free, united nation, may be
reckoned among the many reasons which prevented the Italians from
developing the drama, yet the rivalry of town with town and of burgher
with burgher, Court life with its varied opportunities for the display
of talent, and municipal life with its restless competition in
commerce and public affairs, encouraged the activity of students,
historians, statisticians, critics, and poets. Culture, in the highest
and widest sense of the word, was what Renaissance Italy obtained and
gave to Europe; and this culture implies a full-formed personality in
the men who seek it. It was the highly perfected individuality of the
Italians that made them first emerge from mediæval bondage and become
the apostles of humanism for the modern world. It may be regretted
that their force was expended upon the diffusion of learning and the
purification of style, instead of being concentrated on the creation
of national masterpieces. We seek in vain for Dante's equal among the
poets of the Renaissance. The 'Orlando Furioso' is but a poor second
to the 'Divina Commedia;' and all those works of scholarship, which
seemed to our ancestors the _ne plus ultra_ of refinement, are now
relegated to the lumber-room of erudition that has been superseded, or
of literary ingenuity that has lost its point. Now that the boon of
culture, so hardly won by the students of the fifteenth and sixteenth
centuries, has become the common heritage of Europe, it is not always
easy to explain the mental grandeur of the Italians in that age. Yet
we should fail to recognise their merit, if we did not comprehend
that, precisely by this absorption of their genius in the task of the
Revival, they conferred the most enduring benefits upon humanity. What
the modern world would have been, if the Italian nation had not
devoted its energies to the restoration of liberal learning, cannot
even be imagined. The history of that devotion will form the principal
subject of my present volume.
The comprehensive and many-sided natures, frequent in Renaissance
Italy, were specially adapted for the dissemination of the new spirit.
The appearance of such men as Leo Battista Alberti, Lionardo da Vinci,
Lorenzo de' Medici, Brunelleschi and Buonarroti, Poliziano and Pico
della Mirandola, upon the stage of the Renaissance is not the least
fascinating of its phenomena. We can only find their parallels by
returning to the age of Pericles. But the problem for the Florentines
differed from that which the Athenians had before them. In Greece, the
morning-land of civilisation, men of genius, each perfect in his own
capacity, were needed. Standards had to be created for the future
guidance of the world in all the realms of art and thought. We are
therefore less struck with the versatility than with the concentration
of Pheidias, Pindar, Sophocles, Socrates. Italy, on the other hand,
had for her task the reabsorption of a bygone culture. It was her
vocation to resuscitate antiquity, to gather up afresh the products of
the classic past, and so to blend them with the mediæval spirit as to
generate what is specifically modern. It was indispensable that the
men by whom this work was accomplished should be no less distinguished
for largeness of intelligence, variety of acquirements, quickness of
sympathy, and sensitive susceptibility, than for the complete
development of some one faculty. The great characters of the Greek age
were what Hegel calls plastic, penetrated through and through with a
specific quality. Those of the Italian age were comprehensive and
encyclopædic; the intensity of their force in any one sphere is less
remarkable than its suitableness to all. They were of a nature to
synthesise, interpret, reproduce, and mould afresh--like Mr.
Browning's Cleon, with the addition of the consciousness of young and
potent energy within them. It consequently happens that, except in the
sphere of the Fine Arts, we are tempted to underrate the heroes of the
Renaissance. The impression they leave upon our minds at any one point
is slight in comparison with the estimate we form of them when we
consider each man as a whole. Nor can we point to monumental and
colossal works in proof of their creative faculty.
The biographies of universal geniuses like Leo Battista Alberti or
Lionardi [Transcriber's Note: Lionardo] da Vinci, so multiform in
their capacity and so creative in their intuitions, prompt us to ask
what is the connection between the spirit of an age and the men in
whom it is incorporated. Not without reason are we forced to personify
the Renaissance as something external to its greatest characters.
There is an intellectual strength outside them in the century, a
heritage of power prepared for them at birth. The atmosphere in which
they breathe is so charged with mental vitality that the least
stirring of their special energy brings them into relation with forces
mightier than are the property of single natures. In feebler periods
of retrospect and criticism we can but wonder at the combination of
faculties so varied, and at miracles so easily accomplished. These
times of clairvoyance and of intellectual magnetism, when individuals
of genius appear to move like vibrios in a life-sustaining fluid
specially adapted to their needs, are rare in the history of the
world; nor has our science yet arrived at analysing their causes. They
are not on that account the less real. To explain them by the
hypothesis of a _Weltgeist_, the collective spirit of humanity
proceeding in its evolution through successive phases, and making its
advance from stage to stage by alternations of energy and repose, is
simply to restore, in other terms, a mystery that finds its final and
efficient cause in God.[2]
[Footnote 2: The analogy of the individual might be quoted. We are
aware within ourselves of times when thought is fertile and insight
clear, times of conception and projection, followed by seasons of slow
digestion, assimilation, and formation, when the creative faculty
stagnates, and the whole force of the intellect is absorbed in
mastering through years what it took minutes to divine.]
Gifted with the powerful individuality I am attempting to describe,
the men of the Renaissance received their earliest education in the
religion of the Middle Ages, their second in the schools of Greece and
Rome. It was the many-sided struggle of personal character with
time-honoured tradition on the one hand, and with new ideals on the
other, that lent so much of inconsistency and contradiction to their
aims. Dante remained within the pale of mediæval thoughts, and gave
them full poetical expression. To him, in a truer sense than to any
other poet, belongs the double glory of immortalising in verse the
centuries behind him, while he inaugurated the new age. The 'Vita
Nuova' and the 'Divina Commedia' are modern, in so far as the one is
the first complete analysis of personal emotion, and the other is the
epic of the soul conceived as concrete personality. But the form and
colour, the material and structure, the warp of thought and the woof
of fancy, are not modern. Petrarch opens a new era. He is not
satisfied with the body of mediæval beliefs and intellectual
conceptions. Antiquity presents a more fascinating ideal to his
spirit, and he feels the subjectivity within him strong enough to
assimilate what suits it in the present and the past. The Revival of
Learning, begun by Petrarch, was no mere renewal of interest in
classic literature. It was the emancipation of the reason in a race of
men, intolerant of control, ready to criticise accepted canons of
conduct, enthusiastic in admiration of antique liberty, freshly
awakened to the sense of beauty, and anxious above all things to
secure for themselves free scope in spheres outside the region of
authority. Men so vigorous and independent felt the joy of
exploration. There was no problem they feared to face, no formula they
were not eager to recast according to their new convictions. This
liberty of judgment did not of necessity lead to lawlessness; nor in
any case did it produce that insurgence against Catholic orthodoxy
which marked the German Reformation. Yet it lent a characteristic
quality to thought and action. Men were, and dared to be, themselves
for good or evil without too much regard for what their neighbours
thought of them. At the same time they were tolerant. The culture of
the Renaissance implied a philosophical acceptance of variety in
fashion, faith, and conduct; and this toleration was no doubt one
reason why Italian scepticism took the form of cynicism, not of
religious revolution. Contact with Islam in the south and east,
diplomatic relations with the Turks, familiarity with the mixed races
of Spain, and commerce with the nations of the north, had widened the
sympathies of the Italians, and taught them to regard humanity as one
large family. The liberal spirits of the Renaissance might have quoted
Marcus Aurelius with slight alteration: 'I will not say, dear City of
St. Peter, but, dear City of Man!' And just as their moral and
religious sensibilities were blunted, so patriotism with them ceased
to be an instinct. Instead of patriotism, the Italians were inflamed
with the zeal of cosmopolitan culture.
In proportion as Italy lost year by year the hope of becoming an
united nation, in proportion as the military instincts died in her,
and the political instincts were extinguished by despotism, in
precisely the same ratio did she evermore acquire a deeper sense of
her intellectual vocation. What was world-embracing in the spirit of
the mediæval Church passed by transmutation into the humanism of the
fifteenth century. As though aware of the hopelessness of being
Italians in the same sense as the natives of Spain were Spaniards, or
the natives of France were Frenchmen, the giants of the Renaissance
did their utmost to efface their nationality in order that they might
the more effectually restore the cosmopolitan ideal of the human
family. To this end both artists and scholars, the depositaries of the
real Italian greatness at this epoch, laboured; the artists by
creating an ideal of beauty with a message and a meaning for all
Europe, the scholars by recovering for Europe the burghership of Greek
and Roman civilisation. In spite of the invasions and convulsions that
ruined Italy between the years 1494 and 1527, the painters and the
humanists proceeded with their task, as though the fate of Italy
concerned them not, as though the destinies of the modern world
depended on their activity. After Venice had been desolated by the
armies of the League of Cambray, Aldus Manutius presented the
peace-gift of Plato to the foes of his adopted city; and when the
Lutherans broke into Parmegiano's workshop at Rome, even they were
awed by the tranquil majesty of the Virgin on his easel. Stories like
these remind us that Renaissance Italy met her doom of servitude and
degradation in the spirit of ancient Hellas, repeating as they do the
tales told of Archimedes in his study, and of Paulus Æmilius face to
face with the Zeus of Pheidias.
As patriotism gave way to cosmopolitan enthusiasm, and toleration took
the place of earnestness, in like manner the conflict of mediæval
tradition with revived Paganism in the minds of these self-reliant
men, trained to indulgence by their large commerce with the world, and
familiarised with impiety by the ever-present pageant of an
anti-Christian Church, led, as I have hinted, to recklessness and
worldly vices, rather than to reformed religion. Contented with
themselves and their surroundings, they felt none of the unsatisfied
cravings after the infinite, none of the mysterious intuitions and
ascetic raptures, the self-abasements and transfigurations, stigmata
and beatific visions, of the Middle Ages. The plenitude of life within
them seemed to justify their instincts and their impulses, however
varied and discordant these might be. The sonorous current of the
world around them drowned the voice of conscience, the suggestion of
religious scruples. It is only thus we can explain to ourselves the
attitude of such men as Sixtus and Alexander, serenely vicious in
extreme old age. The gratification of their egotism was so complete as
to exclude self-judgment by the rules and standards they
professionally applied; their personality was too exacting to admit of
hesitation when their instincts were concerned; in common with their
age they had lost sight of all but mundane aims and interests. Three
aphorisms, severally attributed to three representative Italians, may
be quoted in illustration of these remarks. 'You follow infinite
objects; I follow the finite;' said Cosimo de' Medici; 'you place your
ladders in the heavens; I on earth, that I may not seek so high or
fall so low.' 'If we are not ourselves pious,' said Julius II., 'why
should we prevent other people from being so?' 'Let us enjoy the
Papacy,' said Leo X., 'now that God has given it to us.'
It was only under the influence of some external terror--a plague, a
desolating war, an imminent peril to the nation--that the religious
sense, deadened by worldliness and selfish philosophy, made itself
felt. At such seasons whole cities rushed headlong into fierce
revivalism, while men of violent or profligate lives saw visions, and
betook themselves to penance. Cellini's Memoirs are, on this point, a
valuable mirror of the age in which he lived. It is clear that his
ecstasies of devotion in the dungeons of S. Angelo were as sincere as
the fiery impulses he obeyed with so much complacency. Passionate and
worldly as men of Cellini's stamp might be, they could not shake off
the associations that bound them to the past. The energy of their
intense individuality took turn by turn the form and colour of ascetic
piety and Pagan sensuality; and at times these strong contrasts of
emotion seemed bordering upon insanity. Ungovernable natures, swayed
by no fixed principle, and bent on moulding the world of thought
afresh to suit their own desires, became the puppets of astrological
superstition, the playthings of mad lust. Much that appears
unaccountable and contradictory in the Renaissance may be referred to
this imperfect blending of ecclesiastical tradition and idealised
Paganism in natures potent enough to be original and wilful, but not
yet tamed from semi-savagery into acquiescence by experience.
Experience came to the Italians in servitude beneath the heel of
Spain.
The confusion of influences, classical and mediæval, Christian and
Pagan, in that age is not the least extraordinary of its phenomena.
Even the new thoughts that illuminated the minds of great discoverers,
seemed to them like reflections from antiquity; and while they were
opening fresh worlds, their hearts were turned toward the Holy Land
of the Crusades. Columbus and Copernicus, the two men who did more
than any others to revolutionise the mental attitude of humanity,
appealed to their contemporaries on the strength of texts from
Aristotle and Philolaus. Conscious that the guesses of the Greek
cosmographers had stimulated in themselves that curiosity whereby they
made the motion of the earth a certainty, and found a way across the
waves to a new continent, these mighty spirits forgot how slight in
reality was their debt to the inert speculators of the classic age.
The truth was that in them throbbed a force of enterprise and
conquering discovery, a spirit of exploration resolute and hardy,
denied to the ancients.
How far this new and fruitful temper of the modern mind was due to
Christianity, is a problem for the deepest speculation. The conception
of a God who had made no part of His world in vain, of a Christ who
had bought with His blood the whole seed of Adam, and who imposed the
preaching of the faith upon His followers as a duty, wrought
powerfully on Columbus. The Crusades, again, had familiarised the
nations with distant objects and ideal quests; while chivalry was
essentially antagonistic to positive and selfish aims. The spirit of
mankind had marched a long stage during the Middle Ages. It was not
possible now to conceive of God as a tranquil thinking upon thought,
with Aristotle. There was no Augustus to set arbitrary limits to the
empire of the world in the interest of a conquering nation, or to make
the two words _orbs_ and _urbs_ synonymous. When Strabo hazarded the
opinion that there might be populous islands in the other hemisphere,
he added, with the sublime indifference of a Roman, 'But these
speculations have nothing in common with practical geography; and if
such islands exist, they cannot support peoples of like origin with
us.' Such language was impossible for a man educated in the Christian
faith, and imbued with the instincts of romanticism. Therefore, though
the study of Strabo and Ptolemy at Pavia impressed Columbus with the
certainty of the new route across the ocean, he owed the courage that
sustained him to the conviction that God was leading him to a great
end. 'When I first undertook to start for the discovery of the
Indies,' he says in his will, 'I intended to beg the King and Queen to
devote the whole of the money that might be drawn from these realms to
Jerusalem.' The religious yearning of the mediæval pilgrim added
fervour to the conviction of the student, who, by reasoning on antique
texts, guessed the greatest secret of which the world has record. At
the same time there was something more in Columbus than either
antiquity or mediævalism could provide. The modern spirit is distinct
from both; and though, in the Renaissance, creation wore the garb of
imitation, and the new forces used the organs they were destined to
outlive and destroy, yet we must allow to native personality the
lion's share in such achievement as that of Columbus. It is the
variety of spiritual elements in combination and solution, which he
illustrates, that makes the psychology of the Renaissance at once so
fascinating and so difficult to analyse.
While so much liberty of thought prevailed in Italy, it may be
wondered why the Renaissance, eminently fertile in the domains of art
and culture, bore but meagre fruit in those of religion and
philosophy. The German Reformation was the Renaissance of
Christianity; and in this the Italians had no share, though it should
be remembered that, without their previous labours in the field of
scholarship, the band who led the Reformation could hardly have given
that high intellectual character to the movement which made it a new
starting-point in the history of the reason. To expect from Italy the
ethical regeneration of the modern world would be to misapprehend her
true vocation; art and erudition were sufficient to engage her
spiritual energies. The Church again, though by no means adverse to
laxity in morals, was jealous of heterodoxy. So long as freethinkers
confined their audacity to such matters as form the topic of Poggio's
'Facetiæ,' Beccadelli's 'Hermaphroditus,' or La Casa's 'Capitolo del
Forno,' the Roman Curia looked on and smiled approvingly. The most
obscene books to be found in any literature escaped the Papal censure,
and Aretino, notorious for ribaldry, aspired not wholly without reason
to the scarlet of a cardinal. But even in the fifteenth century the
taint of heresy was dangerous, and this peril was magnified when the
Lutheran schism had roused the Papacy to a sense of its position.
Under the patronage, therefore, of ecclesiastics, in the depraved
atmosphere of Rome, the free thought of the Italians turned to
licentiousness; this suited the temper of the people, fascinated by
Paganism and little inclined to raise debate upon matters of no
practical utility. Those who reflected on religious topics kept their
own counsel. How purely political were the views of profound thinkers
in Italy upon all Church questions may be gathered from the
observations of Guicciardini and Machiavelli; how little the most
earnest antagonist of ungodly ecclesiastics dreamed of disturbing the
Catholic Church system is clear in the biography of Savonarola.[3] The
first satire of Ariosto may be indicated as an epitome of the opinions
entertained by sound and liberal intellects in Italy upon the relation
of Papal Rome to the nation. There is not a trace in it of Teutonic
revolt against authority, of pious yearning for a purer faith. The
standpoint of the critic, though solid and sincere, is worldly.
[Footnote 3: See Vol. I., _Age of Despots_, pp. 239, 350-356, 415-420,
where I have endeavoured to treat these topics more at length.]
True to culture as their main preoccupation, the Italian thinkers
sought to philosophise faith by bringing Christianity into harmony
with antique speculation, and forming for themselves a theism that
should embrace the systems of the Platonists and Stoics, the Hebrew
Cabbala and the Sermon on the Mount. There is much that strikes us as
both crude and pedantic, at the same time infantine and pompous, in
the systems elaborated by those pioneers of modern eclecticism. They
lack the vigorous simplicity that gave its force to Luther's
intuition, the sublime unity of Spinoza's deductions. The dross of
erudition mingles with the pure gold of personal conviction; while
Pagan phrases, ill suited to express Christian notions, lend an air of
unreality to the sincerest efforts after rational theology. The
Platonic Academy of Florence was the centre of this search after the
faith of culture, whereof the real merit was originality, and the true
force lay in the conviction that humanity is one and indivisible. Its
apostles were Pico della Mirandola and Ficino. It found lyrical
expression in verses like the following, translated by me from the
Greek hexameters of Poliziano:--
O Father, Lord enthroned on gold, that dwellest in high heaven,
O King of all things, deathless God, Thou Pan supreme, celestial!
That seest all, and movest all, and all with might sustainest,
Older than oldest time, of all first, last, and without ending!
The firmament of blessed souls, of stars the heavenly splendour,
The giant sun himself, the moon that in her circle shineth,
And streams and fountains, earth and sea, are things of Thy creating,
Thou givest life to all; all these Thou with Thy Spirit fillest.
The powers of earth, and powers of heaven, and they in pain infernal
Who pine below the roots of earth, all these obey Thy bidding.
Behold, I call upon Thee now, Thy creature on earth dwelling,
Poor, short of life, O God, of clay a mean unworthy mortal,
Repenting sorely of my sins, and tears of sorrow shedding.
O God, immortal Father, hear! I cry to Thee; be gracious,
And from my breast of this vain world the soul-enslaving passion,
The demon's wiles, the wilful lust, that damns the impious, banish!
Wash throughly all my heart with Thy pure Spirit's rain abundant,
That I may love Thee, Lord, alone, Thee, King of kings, for ever.
This is but a poor substitute for the Lord's Prayer. Hell and
purgatory are out of place in its theism. [Greek: Chrysothronos] and
[Greek: aitheri naiôn] are tawdry epithets for 'Our Father which art
in heaven.' Yet it is precisely in these contradictions and confusions
that we trace the sincerity of the Renaissance spirit, seeking to fuse
together the vitality of the old faith and the forms of novel culture,
worshipping a Deity created in the image of its own mind, composite
and incoherent.
Physically, the Italians of the Renaissance were equal to any task
they chose to set themselves. No mistake is greater than to suppose
that, because the summer climate of Italy is hotter than our own,
therefore her children must be languid, pleasure-loving, and relaxed.
Twelve months spent in Tuscany would suffice to dissipate illusions
about the enervating Italian air, even if the history of ancient Rome
were not a proof that the hardiest race of combatants and conquerors
the world has ever seen were nurtured between Soracte and the sea.
After the downfall of the Empire, what remained of native vigour in
the Latin cities found a refuge in the lagoons of Venice and other
natural strongholds. Walled towns in general retained a Roman
population. The primitive Italic races still existed in the valleys of
the Apennines, while the Ligurians held the Genoese Riviera; nor were
the Etruscans extinct in Tuscany. It is true that Rome had fused these
races into a people using the same language. Yet the ethnologist will
hardly allow that the differences noticeable between the several
districts of Italy were not connected with original varieties of
stock. To the people, as Rome had made it, fresh blood was added by
the Goths, Lombards, and Germans descending from the North. Greeks,
Arabs, Normans, and, in course of time, Franks influenced the South.
During the Middle Ages a new and mighty breed of men sprang into being
by the combination of these diverse elements, each district deriving
specific quality from the varying proportions in which the chief
constituents were mingled. It is noticeable that where the
Roman-Etruscan blood was purest probably from mixture, in the valley
of the Arno, the modern Italian genius found its home. Florence and
her sister cities formed the language and the arts of Italy. To this
race, in conjunction with the natives of Lombardy and Central Italy,
was committed the civilisation of Europe in the fifteenth century. It
was only south of Rome, where the brutalising traditions of the Roman
_latifundia_ had never yielded to the burgh-creating impulse of the
Middle Ages, that the Italians were unfit for their great duty. On
these southern states the Empire of the East, Saracen marauders and
Norman conquerors, the French and the Spanish dynasties, had
successively exercised a pernicious influence; nor did the imperial
policy of Frederick II. remain long enough in operation to effect a
radical improvement in the people. Even at Naples culture was always
an exotic. Elsewhere throughout the peninsula the Italians of the new
age were a noble nation, gifted with physical, emotional, and mental
faculties in splendid harmony. In some districts, notably in Florence,
circumstance and climate had been singularly favourable to the
production of such glorious human beings as the world has rarely seen.
Beauty of person, strength of body, and civility of manners were
combined in the men of that favoured region with intellectual
endowments of the highest order: nor were these gifts of nature
confined to a caste apart; the whole population formed an aristocracy
of genius.
In order to comprehend the greatness of this Italian type in the
Renaissance, it is only needful to study the picture galleries of
Florence or of Venice with special attention to the portraits they
contain. When we compare those senators and sages with the subjects of
Dürer's and of Cranach's art, we feel the physical superiority of the
Italians. In like manner a comparison of the men of the fifteenth
century with those of the sixteenth shows how much of that physical
grandeur had been lost. It is easy to wander astray while weaving
subtle theories on this path of criticism. Yet it cannot be a mere
accident that Vandyck's portrait of the Cardinal de' Bentivogli in the
Pitti Palace differs as it does from that of the Cardinal Ippolito de'
Medici by Pontormo or by Titian. The Medici is an Italian of the
Renaissance, with his imperious originality and defiance of
convention. He has refused to be portrayed as an ecclesiastic. Titian
has painted him in Hungarian costume of dark red velvet, moustached,
and sworded like a soldier; in Pontormo's picture he wears a suit of
mail, and rests his left hand on a large white hound. The Bentivoglio
is an Italian of the type produced by the Counter-Reformation. His
delicate lace ruffs, the coquetry of his scarlet robes, and the fine
keen cut of his diplomatic features betray a new spirit.[4] Surely the
physical qualities of a race change with the changes in their thought
and feeling. The beauty of Tasso is more feminine and melancholy than
that of Ariosto, in whom the liberal genius of the Renaissance was yet
alive. Among the scowling swordsmen of the seventeenth century you
cannot find a face like Giorgione's Gattamelata;[5] the nobles who
bear themselves so proudly on the canvases of Vandyck at Genoa lack
the urbanity of Raphael's Castiglione; Moroni's black-robed students
are more pinched and withered than the Pico of the Uffizzi. It will
not do to strain such points. It is enough to suggest them. What
remains, however, for certain is that the Italians of the fifteenth
century--and among these must be included those who lived through the
first half of the sixteenth--had physical force and character
corresponding to their robust individuality. Until quite late in the
Renaissance so much survived of feudal customs even in Italy that
riding, the handling of the lance and sword, and all athletic
exercises formed a part of education no less indispensable than mental
training. Great cities had open places set apart for tournaments and
games; in Tuscan burghs the _palio_ was run on feast days, and May
mornings saw the prentice lads of Florence tilting beneath the smiles
of girls who danced at nightfall on the square of Santa Trinità.
Bloody battles in the streets were frequent. The least provocation
caused a man to draw his dagger. Combats _a steccato chiuso_ were
among the pastimes to which a Pope might lend his countenance. Skill
in swordsmanship was therefore a necessity. For the rest, we learn
from Castiglione that the perfect gentleman was bound to be an
accomplished dancer, a bold rider, a skilled wrestler, a swift runner,
to shoot well at the mark, to hurl the javelin and the quoit with
grace, and to play at tennis and _pallone_. In addition he ought to
affect some one athletic exercise in such perfection as to beat
professors of the same on their own ground. Cesare Borgia took pride
in felling an ox at a single blow, and exhibited his marksman's
cunning by shooting condemned criminals in a courtyard of the Vatican.
[Footnote 4: It would be easy to multiply these contrasts, comprising,
for example, the Cardinals Inghirami and Bibbiena and the Leo of
Raphael with the Farnesi portraits at Modena or the grave faces of
Moroni's patrons at Bergamo.]
[Footnote 5: Portrait in the Uffizzi, ascribed to Giorgione, but more
probably by some pupil of Mantegna.]
That such men should have devoted their energies to intellectual
culture at a time when English nobles could barely read or write, and
when the chivalry of France regarded learning with disdain, was a
proof of their rich natural endowments. Nor was the determination of
the race to scholarship in any sense an accident. Throughout the
length and breadth of Italy, memories of ancient greatness spurred her
children on to emulation. Ghosts of Roman patriots and poets seemed
hovering round their graves, and calling on posterity to give them
life again. If we cannot bring back Greece and Rome, at least let us
make Florence a second Athens, and restore the Muses to Ausonian
vales. That was the cry. It was while gazing on the ruins of Rome that
Villani felt impelled to write his chronicle. Pavia honoured Boethius
like a saint. Mantua struck coins with the head of Virgil, and Naples
pointed out his tomb. Padua boasted of Livy, and Como of the Plinies.
'Sulmona,' cried Boccaccio, 'mourns because she holds not Ovid's dust;
and Parma is glad that Cassius rests within her walls.' Such reverence
for the great men of antiquity endured throughout the Middle Ages,
creating myths that swayed the fancy, and forming in the popular
consciousness a presentiment of the approaching age. There is
something pathetic in the survival of old Roman titles, in the freak
of the legend-making imagination that gave to Orlando the style of
Roman senator, in the outburst of enthusiasm for Rienzi when he called
himself Tribunus Populi Romani. With the Renaissance itself this
affection for the past became a passion. Pius II. amnestied the people
of Arpino because they were fellow-citizens of Cicero. Alfonso of
Naples received as a most precious gift from Venice a bone supposed to
be the leg of Livy. All the patricians of Italy invented classical
pedigrees; and even Paul II., because he was called Barbo, claimed
descent from the Ahenobarbi. Such instances might be multiplied
indefinitely. It is, however, more to the purpose here to notice that
in Italy this adoration of the antique world was common to all
classes; not students alone, but the people at large regarded the dead
grandeur of the classic age as their especial heritage. To resuscitate
that buried glory, and to reunite themselves with the past, was the
earnest aim of the Italians as a nation. A conviction prevailed that
the modern world could never be so radiant as the old. This found its
expression in the saying that Rome's chief ornaments were her ruins;
in the belief that Julia's corpse, discovered in the Appian Way,
surpassed all living maidens; in Matarazzo's observation that Astorre
Baglioni's body was worthy of an ancient Roman. In their admiration
for antiquity, scholars were blind to the specific glories of the
modern genius. Lionardo Bruni, for example, exclaimed that 'the
ancient Greeks by far excelled us Italians in humanity and gentleness
of heart.' Yet what Greek poem can be compared for tenderness with
Dante's 'Vita Nuova,' with the 'Canzoniere' of Petrarch, or with the
tale of Griselda in Boccaccio? _Gentilezza di cuore_ was the most
characteristic product of chivalry, and the fourth Æneid is the only
classic masterpiece of pure romantic pathos. This humility of
discipleship was not, however, strong enough to check emulation. On
the contrary, the yearning towards antiquity acted like a potent
stimulus on personal endeavour, generating an acute desire for fame, a
burning aspiration to be numbered with the mighty men of old. When
Virgil introduced Dante to the company of Homer and his peers, the
rank of _sesto tra cotanto senno_ rewarded him for all his labour in
the rhyme that made him thin through half a lifetime. Petrarch, who
exceeded Dante in the thirst for literary honour, turned from the men
of his generation to converse in long epistles with the buried saints
of Latin culture. For men of less ambition it was enough to feel that
they could raise their souls through study to communion with the
stately spirits of antiquity, passing like Machiavelli from trivial
affairs into their closet, where they donned their reading robes and
shook hands across the centuries with Cicero or Livy. It was the
universal object of the humanists to gain a consciousness of self
distinguished from the vulgar herd, and to achieve this by joining the
great company of bards and sages, whose glory could not perish.
Whoever felt within himself the stirring of the spirit under any
form, sought earnestly for fame; and in this way a new social
atmosphere, unknown to the nations of the Middle Ages, was formed in
Italy. A large and liberal acceptance, recognising ability of all
kinds, irrespective of rank or piety or martial prowess, displaced the
narrower judgments of the Church and feudalism. Giotto, the peasant's
son, ranked higher in esteem than Cimabue, the Florentine citizen,
because his work of art was worthier. Petrarch had his place in no
official capacity, but as an honoured equal, at the marriage feasts of
princes. Poliziano corresponded with kings, promising immortality as a
more than regal favour. Pomponius Lætus could afford to repel the
advances of the Sanseverini, feeling that erudition ranked him higher
than his princely kinsmen. It was not wealth or policy alone that
raised the Medici among the Despots so far above the Baglioni of
Perugia or the Petrucci of Siena. They owed this distinction rather to
their comprehension of the craving of their age for culture. Thus
though birth commanded respect for its own sake, a new standard of
eminence had been established, and personal merit was the passport
which carried the meanest into the most illustrious company. Men of
all conditions and all qualifications met upon the common ground of
intellectual intercourse. The subjects they discussed may be gathered
from the introductions to Firenzuola's novels, from Bembo's 'Asolani'
and Castiglione's 'Cortegiano,' from Guicciardini's 'Dialogue on
Florence,' or from the 'Camaldolese Discourses' of Landino. Society of
this kind existed nowhere else in Europe. To Italy belongs the proud
priority of having invented the art of polite conversation, and
anticipated the French _salon_ after an original and urbane fashion of
her own.
Under these conditions a genuine cultus of intellect sprang up in
Italy. Princes and people shared a common impulse to worship the
mental superiority of men who had no claim to notice but their
genius. It was in the spirit of this hero-worship that the terrible
Gismondo Pandolfo Malatesta transferred to Rimini the bones of Pletho,
and wrote his impassioned epitaph upon the sarcophagus outside
Alberti's church. The biographies of the humanists abound in stories
of singular honours paid to men of parts, not only by princes who
rejoiced in their society, but also by cities receiving them with
public acclamation. And, as it often happens that a parody reveals the
nature of the art it travesties, such light is thrown upon our subject
by the vile Pietro Aretino, who, because he was a man of talent and
unscrupulous in its employment, held kings and potentates beneath his
satyr's hoof. It is not, however, needful to go thus far afield for
instances. Some lines of our own poet Webster exactly describe the
Catholicity of the Renaissance, which first obtained in Italy for men
of marked abilities, and afterwards to some extent prevailed at large
in Europe:--
Virtue is ever sowing of her seeds:
In the trenches for the soldier; in the wakeful study
For the scholar; in the furrows of the sea
For men of our profession: of all which
Arise and spring up honour.
The virtue here described bears the Italian sense of _virtù_, the
Latin _virtus_, the Greek [Greek: aretê], that which makes a man. It
might display itself in a thousand ways; but all alike brought honour,
and honour every man was bound to seek. The standard whereby the
Italians judged this virtue was æsthetical rather than moral. They
were too dazzled by brilliant achievement to test it in the crucible
of ethics. This is the true key to Machiavelli's critique of
Castruccio Castracane, Gianpaolo Baglioni, Cesare Borgia, and Piero
Soderini. In common with his race, he was fascinated by character, and
attached undue importance to the force that made men seek success even
through crime.
The thirst for glory and the worship of ability stimulated the
Italians, earlier than any other nation, to commemorate what seemed to
them noteworthy in their own lives and in those of their
contemporaries. Dante, within the pale of mediævalism, led the way in
both of these directions. His 'Vita Nuova' is a chapter of
autobiography restrained within the limits of consummate art. His
portraits of S. Francis and S. Dominic (not to mention other
medallions and cameos of predecessors or contemporaries--Farinata, for
example, or Boniface VIII.) record the special qualities whereby those
heroes of the faith were distinguished from the herd of men around
them. Boccaccio's 'Life of Dante' is a further step in the direction
of purely modern biography. Then follow the collections of Filippo
Villani, Giovanni Cavalcanti, Vespasiano, Platina, Decembrio,
Beccadelli, Caracciolo, and Paolo Giovio. Vasari's 'Lives of the
Painters' are unique in their attempt to embrace within a single work
whatever struck their author as most characteristic in the career of
one particular class of men. For historical precision the portraits
composed by Machiavelli, Guicciardini, Varchi, Pitti, and many of the
minor annalists leave nothing to be desired. Such autobiographies as
those of Petrarch, Cellini, Cardano, and Cornaro are models in their
kind; whether their object were simply self-glorification, or whether
a scientific and didactic purpose underlay the chronicle of a
lifetime, the result is equally vivid and interesting. Hero-worship
prompted Gian Francesco Pico to compose the 'Life of Savonarola,' and
Condivi to write that of Michael Angelo. Scorn and hatred impelled
Platina to transmit the outline of Paul II. to posterity in a
caricature, the irony of which is so restrained that it might pass for
sincerity. Machiavelli's 'Biography of Castruccio' is a political
romance indited with a philosophical intention. What motive, beyond
admiration, produced the anonymous 'Memoir of Alberti,' so terse in
its portraiture, so tranquil in style, we do not know; but this too,
like Prendilacqua's 'Life of Vittorino da Feltre,' is a masterpiece of
natural delineation. For these biographies the works of Plutarch and
Suetonius served no doubt as models. Yet this does not make the
preoccupation of the Italians with the phenomena of personality the
less remarkable.
Another phase of the same impulse led to special treatises upon ideal
characters. The picture of the perfect householder was drawn by
Alberti, that of the courtier by Castiglione, that of the prince by
Machiavelli. Da Vinci discoursed upon the physical proportions of the
human form. Firenzuola and Luigini analysed the beauty of women;
Piccolomini undertook to describe the manners of a well-bred lady; and
La Casa laid down rules for polite behaviour in society. The names of
treatises of this description might easily be multiplied. Enough,
however, has been said to show the tendency of the Italian intellect
to occupy itself with salient qualities, whether exhibited in
individuals or idealised and abstracted by the reflective fancy. The
whole of this literature implies an intense self-consciousness in the
nation, an ardent interest in men as men, because of the specific
virtue to be found in each. The spirit, therefore, in which these
authors of the Renaissance approached their task was wholly different
from that which induced the mediæval annalist to register the miracles
of saints, to chronicle the princes of some dynasty or the abbots of a
convent. Nor had it much in common with the mythologising enthusiasm
of romantic poets. The desire for edification and the fire of fancy
had yielded to an impulse more strictly scientific, to a curiosity
more positive.
The attention directed in literature and social intercourse upon great
men implied a corresponding thirst for posthumous glory as a
subjective quality of the Renaissance character. To perpetuate a name
and fame was the most fervent passion, shared alike by artists and
princes, by men of letters and by generals. It was not enough for a
man to show forth the vigour that was in him, or to win the applause
of his contemporaries. He must go beyond and wrest something permanent
for himself from the ideal world that will survive our transient
endeavours. When Alfonso the Magnanimous employed Fazio to compose his
chronicle, when Francesco Sforza paid Filelfo for his verses by the
dozen, when Cosimo de' Medici regretted that he had not spent more
wealth on building, when Bartolommeo Colleoni decreed the erection of
his chapel at Bergamo, and his statue on the public square of Venice,
these men, so different in all things else, were striving, each after
his own fashion, to buy an immortality his own achievements in the
field or Senate might not win. Dante, here as elsewhere the first to
utter the word of the modern age, has given expression to this thirst
for lasting recollection in his lines about the planet Mercury:[6]--
Questa picciola stella si correda
De' buoni spirti, che son stati attivi,
Perchè onore e fama gli succeda.
[Footnote 6: _Paradiso_, vi. 112.]
At the same time Dante, imbued with the mystic spirit of the Middle
Ages, felt an antagonism between worldly ambition and the ideal of the
Christian life. There are other passages, where fame is mentioned by
him as a fleeting breath, a flower that blooms and fades.[7] In truth,
the passionate desire for glory was part of the Renaissance
worldliness, caught from communion with the classic past, and
connected with that vivid apprehension of human life which gave its
vigour to an age of reawakened impulses and positive ambitions. This
world was so much with them, so much to them, that these men would not
lose their grasp of it in death, or willingly exchange it for a
paradise of hopes beyond.
[Footnote 7: Notably _Purg._ xi. 100-117.]
The enthusiasm for antiquity coloured this desire for fame by forcing
on the Italians the conviction that in culture was the real title to
eternity. How could they have entered into the spiritual kingdom of
the Greeks and Romans, if it had not been for MSS. and works of art?
It became the fashion therefore, to seek immortality through
literature. The study of the classics was not then confined to men of
a peculiar bent. On all alike, even on women, there weighed the one
belief that to be a scholar was the surest way of saving something
from the wreck that is the doom of human deeds.[8] Only at rare
intervals, and in rare natures of the type of Michael Angelo, did the
Christian ideal resume its sway. Tired with the radiance of art or
learning, they turned to the Cross of Christ, and laid their secular
achievements down as vain and worthless. The time, however, had not
yet come when a disgust of culture and an exhaustion of the intellect
should make asceticism and monastic ecstasy acceptable once more. That
belonged to the age of Spanish tyranny, and what is called the
Counter-Reformation. For the real Renaissance Leo's memorable
_imprimatur_, granted to the editors of Tacitus, struck the true
key-note; while Sappho's solemn lines of warning to a friend careless
of literature might be paraphrased to speak the feeling of
Poliziano:--
Lo, thou shalt die,
And lie
Dumb in the silent tomb;
Nor of thy name
Shall there be any fame
In ages yet to be or years to come:
For of the rose
That on Pieria blows
Thou hast no share;
But in sad Hades' house,
Unknown, inglorious,
Mid the dim shades that wander there,
Shalt thou flit forth and haunt the filmy air.
[Footnote 8: A curious echo of this Italian conviction may be traced
in Fletcher's _Elder Brother_.]
These words found no uncertain echo in Renaissance Italy, where lads
with long dark hair and liquid eyes left their loves to listen to a
pedant's lectures, where Niccolo de' Niccoli wooed Piero de' Pazzi
from a life of pleasure by the promise of a spiritual kingdom in the
world of books. Piero was 'a man born with thy face and throat, Lyric
Apollo!' His only object was to enjoy--_darsi buon tempo_, as the
phrase of Florence hath it. Yet these words of the student: 'Seeing
thou art the son of such a man, and of comely person, it is a shame
thou dost not give thyself to learn Latin, the which would be unto
thee a great ornament; and if thou dost not learn it, thou wilt be
nought esteemed; the flower of youth once passed, thou wilt find
thyself without virtue'--these words carried such weight, and sank so
deeply into the young man's heart, that, smitten with the love of
learning, he forsook his boon companions, engaged Pontano as
house-tutor at a salary of one hundred golden florins, and spent his
leisure time in learning Livy and the 'Æneid' by heart.[9] What he
sought he gained; his name is still recorded, now that not only the
bloom of youth, but life itself has passed away, and he has slept for
nearly four centuries in Florentine earth. Yet we, no less wearied of
erudition than Faust was, when he held the cup of laudanum in his hand
and heard the Easter voices singing, may well ask ourselves what Piero
carried with him to the grave more than Sardanapalus, over whom the
Greeks inscribed their bitter epitaphs. Disenchanted and disillusioned
as we are by those four centuries of learning, the musical lament of
Dido and the stately periods of Latin prose are little better,
considered as spiritual sustenance, to us than the husks that the
swine did eat. How can we picture to ourselves the conditions of an
age when scholarship was an evangel, forcing the Levis of Florence by
the persuasion of its irresistible beauty to forsake the tables of the
money-changers, tempting young men of great possessions to sell all
and give to the Muses, making of Lucrezia Borgia herself the Magdalen
of polite literature? Fortunately for the civilisation of the modern
world, the men of the Renaissance, untroubled by a surfeit of
knowledge, made none of these reflections. It was an age of sincere
faith in the goodness and the glory of the intellect revealed by art
and letters. When we read Vespasiano's account of the grey-haired
Niccolo accosting the young Pazzi on the steps of the Bargello, our
mind turns instinctively to an earlier dayspring of the reason in
ancient Greece; we think of the charm exercised by Socrates over
Critias and Alcibiades: and had an Aristophanes appeared in Italy, we
fancy how he might have criticised this seduction of the youth from
citizenship and arms to tranquil contemplations and the cosmopolitan
interests of culture.
[Footnote 9: Vespasiano, _Vita di Piero de' Pazzi_. Compare the
beautiful letter of Æneas Sylvius Piccolomini to his nephew (_Ep.
Lib._ i. 4). He reminds the young man that fair as youth is, and
delightful as are the pleasures of the May of life, learning is more
fair and knowledge more delightful. 'Non enim Lucifer aut Hesperus tam
pulcher est quam sapientia quæ studiis acquiritur litterarum.']
It is not without real reason that these Hellenic parallels confront
us in the study of Italian Renaissance. Florence borrowed her light
from Athens, as the moon shines with rays reflected from the sun. The
Revival was the silver age of that old golden age of Greece. In a
literal, not a merely metaphorical sense, the fifteenth century
witnessed a new birth of the classic spirit. And what, let us ask
ourselves, since here at last is the burning point of our inquiry,
what was the true note of this spirit, in so far as its recovery
concerned the Italian race? Superficial observers will speak of the
Paganism of the Renaissance, its unblushing license, its worldliness,
its self-satisfied sensuality, as though that were all, as though
these qualities were not inherent in human nature, ready at any
moment to emerge when the strain of nobler enthusiasm is relaxed, or
the self-preservative instincts of society are enfeebled. There is
indeed a truth in this rough and ready answer, which requires to be
stated on the threshold. The contact of the modern with the ancient
world did encourage a profligate and godless mode of living in men who
preferred Petronius to S. Paul, and yearned less after Galilee than
Corinth. The humanists were distinguished even above the Roman clergy
for open disorder in their lives. They developed filthy speaking as a
special branch of rhetoric, and professed the science of recondite and
obsolete obscenity. It was just this fashion of the learned classes
that made Erasmus mistrust the importation of scholarship into the
North. 'One scruple still besets my mind,' he wrote, 'lest under the
cloak of revived literature Paganism should strive to raise its head,
there being among Christians men who, while they recognise the name of
Christ, breathe in their hearts the spirit of the Gentiles.'
Christianity, especially in Italy, where the spectacle of the Holy See
inspired disgust, had been prostituted to the vilest service by the
Church.[10] Faith was associated with folly, superstition, ignorance,
intolerance, and cruelty. The manners of the clergy were in flagrant
discord with the Gospel, and Antichrist found fitter incarnation in
Roderigo Borgia than in Nero. While the essence of religion was thus
sacrificed by its professors, there appeared upon the horizon of the
modern world, like some bright blazing star, the ideal of that Pagan
civilisation against which in its decadence the ascendant force of
Christianity had striven. It was not unnatural that a reaction in
favour of Paganism, now that the Church had been found wanting, should
ensue, or that the passions of humanity should justify their
self-indulgence by appealing to the precedents of Greece and Rome.
Good and bad were mingled in the classical tradition. Vices,
loathsome enough in a Pope who had instituted the censure of the
press, seemed venial when combined with the manliness of Hadrian or
the refined charm of Catullus. Sin itself lost half its evil coming
from the new-found Holy Land of culture. Still this so-called Paganism
of the Renaissance, real as it was, had but a superficial connection
with classical studies. The corruption of the Church and the political
degeneracy of the commonwealths had quite as much to do with it as the
return to heathen standards. Nor could the Renaissance have been the
great world-historical era it truly was, if such demoralisation had
been a part and parcel of its essence. Crimes and vices are not the
hotbed of arts and literature: lustful priests and cruel despots were
not necessary to the painting of Raphael or the poetry of Ariosto. The
faults of the Italians in the age of the Renaissance were neither
productive of their high achievements, nor conversely were they
generated by the motion of the intellect toward antique forms of
culture. The historian notes synchronisms, whereof he is not bound to
prove the interdependence, and between which he may feel there is no
causal link.
[Footnote 10: It is enough to refer to Luther's _Table Talk_ upon the
state of Rome in Leo's reign.]
It does not, moreover, appear that the demoralisation of Italian
society, however this may have been brought about, produced either
physical or intellectual degeneration in the people. Commercial
prosperity, indeed, had rendered them inferior in brute strength to
their semi-barbarous neighbours; while the cosmopolitan interests of
culture had destroyed the energy of national instincts. But it would
be wrong to charge their neopaganism alone with results whereof the
causes were so complex.
Meanwhile, what gave its deep importance to the classical revival, was
the emancipation of the reason, consequent upon the discovery that the
best gifts of the spirit had been enjoyed by the nations of antiquity.
An ideal of existence distinct from that imposed upon the Middle Ages
by the Church, was revealed in all its secular attractiveness. Fresh
value was given to the desires and aims, enjoyments and activities of
man, considered as a noble member of the universal life, and not as a
diseased excrescence on the world he helped to spoil. Instead of the
cloistral service of the 'Imitatio Christi,' that conception of
communion, through knowledge, with God manifested in His works and in
the soul of man, which forms the indestructible religion of science
and the reason, was already generated. The intellect, after lying
spell-bound during a long night, when thoughts were as dreams and
movement as somnambulism, resumed its activity, interrogated nature,
and enjoyed the pleasures of unimpeded energy. Without ceasing to be
Christians (for the moral principles of Christianity are the
inalienable possession of the human race), the men of the Revival
dared once again to exercise their thought as boldly as the Greeks and
Romans had done before them. More than this, they were now able, as it
were, by the resuscitation of a lost faculty, to do so freely and
clear-sightedly. The touch upon them of the classic spirit was like
the finger of a deity giving life to the dead.
That more and nobler use was not made of the new light which dawned
upon the world in the Revival; that the humanists abandoned the high
standpoint of Petrarch for a lower and more literary level; that
society assimilated the Hedonism more readily than the Stoicism of the
ancients; that scholars occupied themselves with the form rather than
the matter of the classics; that all these shortcomings in their
several degrees prevented the Italians from leading the intellectual
movement of the sixteenth century in religion and philosophy, as they
had previously led the mind of Europe in discovery and literature--is
deeply to be lamented by those who are jealous for their honour. For
the rest, no words can be found more worthy to express their high
conception of man, regarded as a free yet responsible personality,
sent into the world to mould his own nature, and by this power of
self-determination severed from both brutes and angels, than the
following passage from Pico della Mirandola's 'Oration on the Dignity
of Man.' It combines antique liberty of thought with Christian faith
in a style distinctive of the Renaissance at its best; nor is its note
of mediæval cosmology uncharacteristic of an age that divined as yet
more than it firmly grasped the realities of modern science. Here, if
anywhere, may be hailed the Epiphany of the modern spirit,
contraposing God and man in a relation inconceivable to the ancients,
unapprehended in its fulness by the Middle Ages. 'Then the Supreme
Maker decreed that unto Man, on whom He could bestow nought singular,
should belong in common whatsoever had been given, to His other
creatures. Therefore He took man, made in His own individual image,
and having placed him in the centre of the world, spake to him thus:
"Neither a fixed abode, nor a form in thine own likeness, nor any gift
peculiar to thyself alone, have we given thee, O Adam, in order that
what abode, what likeness, what gifts thou shalt choose, may be thine
to have and to possess. The nature allotted to all other creatures,
within laws appointed by ourselves, restrains them. Thou, restrained
by no narrow bounds, according to thy own free will, in whose power I
have placed thee, shalt define thy nature for thyself. I have set thee
midmost the world, that thence thou mightest the more conveniently
survey whatsoever is in the world. Nor have we made thee either
heavenly or earthly, mortal or immortal, to the end that thou, being,
as it were, thy own free maker and moulder, shouldst fashion thyself
in what form may like thee best. Thou shalt have power to decline unto
the lower or brute creatures. Thou shalt have power to be reborn unto
the higher, or divine, according to the sentence of thy intellect."
Thus to Man, at his birth, the Father gave seeds of all variety and
germs of every form of life.'
Out of thoughts like these, if Italy could only have been free, if her
society could have been uncorrupted, if her Church could have returned
to the essential truths of Christianity, might have sprung, as from a
seed, the noblest growth of human science. But _dis aliter visum est_.
The prologue to this history of culture--the long account taken of
selfish tyrants, vicious clergy, and incapable republics, in my 'Age
of the Despots'--is intended to make it clear why the conditions under
which the Revival began in Italy rendered its accomplishment
imperfect.
CHAPTER II
FIRST PERIOD OF HUMANISM
Importance of the Revival of Learning -- Mediæval Romance --
The Legend of Faustus -- Its Value for the Renaissance --
The Devotion of Italy to Study -- Italian Predisposition for
this Labour -- Scholarship in the Dark Ages -- Double
Attitude assumed by the Church -- Piety for Virgil -- Meagre
Acquaintance with the Latin Classics -- No Greek Learning --
The Spiritual Conditions of the Middle Ages adverse to Pure
Literature -- Italy no exception to the rest of Europe --
Dante and Petrarch -- Definition of Humanism -- Petrarch's
Conception of it -- His Æsthetical Temperament -- His Cult
for Cicero, Zeal in collecting Manuscripts, Sense of the
Importance of Greek Studies -- Warfare against Pedantry and
Superstition -- Ideal of Poetry and Rhetoric -- Critique of
Jurists and Schoolmen -- S. Augustine -- Petrarch's Vanity
-- Thirst for Fame -- Discord between his Life and his
Profession -- His Literary Temperament -- Visionary
Patriotism -- His Influence -- His Successors -- Boccaccio
and Greek Studies -- Translation of Homer -- Philosophy of
Literature -- Sensuousness of Boccaccio's Inspiration --
Giovanni da Ravenna -- The Wandering Professor -- His Pupils
in Latin Scholarship -- Luigi Marsigli -- The Convent of S.
Spirito -- Humanism in Politics -- Coluccio de' Salutati --
Gasparino da Barzizza -- Improved Style in Letter-writing --
Revival of Greek Learning -- Manuel Chrysoloras -- His
Pupils -- Lionardo Bruni -- Value of Greek for the
Renaissance.
I have already observed that it would be inaccurate to identify the
whole movement of the Renaissance with the process whereby the
European nations recovered and appropriated the masterpieces of Greek
and Latin literature. At the same time this reconquest of the classic
world of thought was by far the most important achievement of the
fifteenth and sixteenth centuries. It absorbed nearly the whole mental
energy of the Italians, and determined in a great measure the quality
of all their intellectual production in the period I have undertaken
to illustrate. Through their activity in the field of scholarship the
proper starting-point was given to the modern intellect. The
revelation of what men were and what they wrought under the influence
of other faiths and other impulses, in distant ages with a different
ideal for their aim, not only widened the narrow horizon of the Middle
Ages, but it also restored self-confidence to the reason of humanity.
Research and criticism began to take the place of scholastic
speculation. Positive knowledge was substituted for the intuitive
guesses of idealists and dreamers. The interests of this world
received their due share of attention, and the _litteræ humaniores_ of
the student usurped upon the _divinarum rerum cognitio_ of
theologians.
All through the Middle Ages uneasy and imperfect memories of Greece
and Rome had haunted Europe. Alexander, the great conqueror; Hector,
the noble knight and lover; Helen, who set Troy town on fire; Virgil,
the magician; Dame Venus lingering about the hill of Hörsel--these
phantoms, whereof the positive historic truth was lost, remained to
sway the soul and stimulate desire in myth and saga. Deprived of
actual knowledge, imagination transformed what it remembered of the
classic age into romance. The fascination exercised by these dreams of
a half-forgotten past over the mediæval fancy expressed itself in the
legend of Doctor Faustus. That legend tells us what the men upon the
eve of the Revival longed for, and what they dreaded, when they turned
their minds towards the past. The secret of enjoyment and the source
of strength possessed by the ancients, allured them; but they believed
that they could only recover this lost treasure by the suicide of
their soul. So great was the temptation that Faustus paid the price.
After imbibing all the knowledge of his age, he sold himself to the
Devil, in order that his thirst for experience might be quenched, his
grasp upon the world be strengthened, and the ennui of his inactivity
be soothed. His first use of this dearly-bought power was to make
blind Homer sing to him. Amphion tunes his harp in concert with
Mephistopheles. Alexander rises from the dead at his behest, with all
his legionaries; and Helen is given to him for a bride. Faustus is
therefore a parable of the impotent yearnings of the spirit in the
Middle Ages--its passionate aspiration, its conscience-stricken
desire, its fettered curiosity amid the cramping limits of imperfect
knowledge and irrational dogmatism. That for which Faustus sold his
soul, the freedom he acquired by magic, the sense of beauty he
gratified through visions, the knowledge he gained by interrogation of
demons, was yielded to the world without price at the time of the
Renaissance. Homer, no longer by the intervention of a fiend, but by
the labour of the scholar, sang to the new age. The pomp of the
empires of the old world was restored in the pages of historians. The
indestructible beauty of Greek art, whereof Helen was an emblem,
became, through the discovery of classic poetry and sculpture, the
possession of the modern world. Mediævalism took this Helen to wife,
and their offspring, the Euphorion of Goethe's drama, is the spirit of
the modern world. But how was this effected? By long and toilsome
study, by the accumulation of MSS., by the acquisition of dead
languages, by the solitary labour of grammarians, by the lectures of
itinerant professors, by the scribe, by the printing press, by the
self-devotion of magnificent Italy to erudition. In this way the
Renaissance realised the dream of the Middle Ages, and the genius of
the Italians wrought by solid toil what the myth-making imagination of
the Germans had projected in a poem.
It is impossible to exaggerate the benefit conferred upon Europe by
the Italians at this epoch. The culture of the classics had to be
reappropriated before the movement of the modern mind could begin:
before the nations could start upon a new career of progress, the
chasm between the old and new world had to be bridged over. This task
of reappropriation the Italians undertook alone, and achieved at the
sacrifice of their literary independence and their political freedom.
The history of Renaissance literature in Italy is the history of a
national genius deviating from the course of self-development into the
channels of scholarship and antiquarian research. The language created
by Dante as a thing of power, polished by Petrarch as a thing of
beauty, trained by Boccaccio as the instrument of melodious prose, was
abandoned even by the Tuscans in the fifteenth century for revived
Latin and newly-discovered Greek. Patent acquisition took the place of
proud inventiveness; laborious imitation of classical authors
suppressed originality of style. The force of mind which in the
fourteenth century had produced a 'Divine Comedy' and a 'Decameron,'
in the fifteenth was expended upon the interpretation of codices, the
settlement of texts, the translation of Greek books into Latin, the
study of antiquities, the composition of commentaries, encyclopædias,
dictionaries, ephemerides. While we regret this change from creative
to acquisitive literature, we must bear in mind that those scholars
who ought to have been poets accomplished nothing less than the
civilisation, or, to use their own phrase, the humanisation, of the
modern world.[11] At the critical moment when the Eastern Empire was
being shattered by the Turks, and when the other European nations were
as yet unfit for culture, Italy saved the arts and sciences of Greece
and Rome, and interpreted the spirit of the classics. Devoting herself
to what appears the slavish work of compilation and collection, she
transmitted an inestimable treasure to the human race; and though for
a time the beautiful Italian tongue was superseded by a jargon of dead
languages, yet the literature of the Renaissance yielded in the end
the poetry of Ariosto, the political philosophy of Machiavelli, the
histories of Guicciardini and Varchi. Meanwhile the whole of Europe
had received the staple of its intellectual education.
[Footnote 11: Poliziano, Pontano, Sannazzaro, and Bembo divided their
powers between scholarship and poetry, to the injury of the latter.]
It is necessary to repeat the observation that this absorption of
energy in the task of scholarship was no less natural to the Italians
than necessary for the world at large. The Italians were not a new
nation like the Franks and Germans. Nothing is more remarkable in the
mediæval history of Italy than the sense, shared alike by poets and
jurists, by the leaders of popular insurrections and the moulders of
philosophic thought, that the centre of national vitality existed in
the Roman Empire. It was this determination to look backward rather
than forward, to trust the past rather than the present, that
neutralised the forces of the Lombard League, and prevented the
communes from asserting their independence face to face with
foreigners who claimed to be the representatives of Cæsar. The
Italians, unlike any other European people, sacrificed the reality of
political freedom for the idea of majesty and glory, to be recovered
by the restitution of the Empire. Guelf and Ghibelline coincided in
this delusion, that Rome, whether Papal or Imperial, was destined
still to place the old Italic stock upon the throne of civilised
humanity. When the three great authors of the thirteenth century
appeared, each in turn cast his eyes to ancient Rome as the true
source of national greatness. The language of modern Italy was known
to be a scion of the Latin speech, and the Italians called themselves
_Latini_. The attempt to conform their literature to the Roman type
was therefore felt to be but a return to its true standard; the
'Æneid' of Virgil was their _Nibelungen-Lied_. Thus the humanistic
enthusiasm of the fifteenth century assumed an almost patriotic
character. In it, moreover, the doctrine that had ruled the Middle
Ages, interrupting political cohesion without acquiring the
consistency of fact, attained at last its proper sphere of
development. The ideal of Dante in the 'De Monarchiâ' had proved a
baseless dream; no emperor was destined to take his seat in Rome and
sway the world. But the ideal of Petrarch was realised; the scholars,
animated by his impulse, reacquired the birthright of culture which
belonged of old to Italy, and made her empress of the intellect for
Europe. Not political but spiritual supremacy was the real heritage of
these new Romans.
As an introduction to the history of the Revival, and in order that
the work to be performed by the Italian students may be accurately
measured, it will be necessary to touch briefly upon the state of
scholarship during the dark ages. To underrate the achievement of that
period, especially in logic, theology, and law, is only too easy,
seeing that a new direction was given to the mind of Europe by the
Renaissance, and that we have moved continuously on other lines to
other objects since the opening of the fifteenth century. Mediæval
thought was both acute and strenuous in its own region of activity.
What it lacked was material outside the speculative sphere to feed
upon. Culture, in our sense of the word, did not exist, and the
intellect was forced to deal subtly with a very limited class of
conceptions.
Long before the fall of the Roman Empire it became clear that both
fine arts and literature were gradually declining. Sculpture in the
age of Constantine had lost distinction of style; and though the
practice of verse survived as a rhetorical exercise, no works of
original genius were produced. Ausonius and Claudian, just before the
division of the Empire and the irruption of the barbarian races,
uttered the last swan's note of classic poetry. Meanwhile true taste
and criticism were extinct.[12] The Church, while battling with
Paganism, recognised her deadliest foes in literature. Not only were
the Greek and Latin masterpieces the stronghold of a mythology that
had to be erased from the popular mind; not only was their morality
antagonistic to the principles of Christian ethics: in addition to
these grounds for hatred and mistrust, the classics idealised a form
of human life which the new faith regarded as worthless. What was
culture in comparison with the salvation of the soul? Why should time
be spent upon the dreams of poets, when every minute might be well
employed in pondering the precepts of the Gospels? What was the use of
making this life refined and agreeable by study, when it formed but an
insignificant prelude to an eternity wherein mere mundane learning
would be valueless? Why raise questions about man's condition on this
earth, when the creeds had to be defined and expounded, when the
nature of God and the relation of the human soul to its Creator had to
be established? It was easy to pass from this state of mind to the
belief that learning in itself was impious.[13] 'Let us shun the lying
fables of the poets,' cries Gregory of Tours, 'and forego the wisdom
of sages at enmity with God, lest we incur the doom of endless death
by sentence of our Lord.' Even Augustine deplored his time spent in
reading Virgil, weeping over Dido's death by love, when all the while
he was himself both morally and spiritually dead. Alcuin regretted
that in his boyhood he had preferred Virgil to the legends of the
Saints, and stigmatised the eloquence of the Latin writers by the
epithet of wanton. Such phrases as _poetarum figmenta, gentilium
figmenta sive deliramenta_ (the fictions or mad ravings of Pagan
poets) are commonly employed by Christian authors of the Lives of
Saints, in order to mark the inferiority of Virgil and Ovid to their
own more edifying compositions. Relying on their spiritual
pretensions, the monkish scribes gloried in ignorance and paraded want
of grammar as a sign of grace. 'I warn the curious reader,' writes a
certain Wolfhard in the 'Life of S. Walpurgis,' 'not to mind the mass
of barbarisms in this little work; I bid him ponder what he finds upon
these pages, and seek the pearl within the dung-heap.' Gregory the
Great goes further, and defies the pedantry of pedagogues. 'The place
of prepositions and the cases of the nouns I utterly despise, since I
deem it unfit to confine the words of the celestial oracle within the
rules of Donatus.' 'Let philosophers and impure scholars of Donatus,'
writes a fanatic of Cordova, 'ply their windy problems with the
barking of dogs, the grunting of swine, snarling with skinned throat
and teeth; let the foaming and bespittled grammarians belch, while we
remain evangelical servants of Christ, true followers of rustic
teachers.' Thus the opposition of the Church to Paganism, the
conviction that Christianity was alien to culture, and the absorption
of intellectual interest in theological questions contributed to
destroy what had remained of sound scholarship in the last years of
the Empire. The task of the Church, moreover, in the Middle Ages was
not so much to keep learning alive as to moralise the savage races who
held Europe at their pleasure. Pure Latinity, even if it could have
been instilled into the nations of the North, was of less moment than
elementary discipline in manners and religion. It must not be
forgotten that the literature of ancient Rome was artificial in its
best days, confined to a select few, and dependent on the capital for
its support. After the dismemberment of the Empire the whole of Europe
was thrown open to the action of spiritual powers who had to use
unlettered barbarians for their ministers and missionaries. To submit
this vast field to classic culture at the same time that Christianity
was being propagated, would have been beyond the strength of the
Church, even had she chosen to undertake this task, and had the vital
forces of antiquity not been exhausted.
[Footnote 12: For the low state of criticism, even in a good age, see
Aulus Gellius, lib. xiv. cap. vi. He describes the lecture of a
rhetor, _quispiam linguæ Latinæ literator_, on a passage in the
seventh Æneid. The man's explanation of the word _bidentes_ proves an
almost more than mediæval puerility and ignorance.]
[Footnote 13: Most of the following quotations will be found in
Comparetti, _Virgilio nel Medio Evo_, vol. i., a work of sound
scholarship and refined taste upon the place of Virgil in the Middle
Ages.]
At this point an inevitable reaction, illustrating the compromise
thrust upon the Church by her peculiar position, made itself apparent.
In proportion as the dangers of Paganism decreased, the clergy, on
whom devolved the double duty of civilising as well as moralising
society, began to feel the need of arresting the advance of ignorance.
Knowledge of Latin was required for ecclesiastical uses, for the
interpretation of Scripture, for the study of the Fathers, and for the
establishment of a common language among many divers nationalities. A
middle course between the fanaticism which regarded classical
literature as worthless and impure, and the worldliness that might
have been encouraged by enthusiasm for the ancients, had therefore to
be steered. Grammar was taught in the schools, and where grammar was
taught, it was impossible to exclude Virgil and some other Latin
authors. A conflict in the monkish mind was the unavoidable
consequence. Since the classics alone communicated sound learning, the
study of them formed a necessary part of education; and yet these
authors were unbaptized Pagans, doomed to everlasting death because of
their impiety and immorality. Poets who had hitherto been regarded as
deadly foes, were now accepted as auxiliaries in the battle of the
Church against barbarism. While copying the elegies of Ovid, the
compassionate scribe sought to place them in a favourable light, and
to render them edifying at the cost of contradicting their plain
meaning.[14] Virgil was credited with allegorical significance; and
the strong sympathy he roused in those who felt the beauty of his
style, produced a belief that, if not quite, he was almost a
Christian. The piety and pity for Virgil as a gentle soul who had just
missed the salvation offered by Christ, found expression in the
service for S. Paul's Day used at Mantua:[15]--
Ad Maronis mausoleum
Ductus, fudit super eum
Piæ rorem lacrymæ;
Quem te, inquit, reddidissem
Si te vivum invenissem,
Poetarum maxime!
[Footnote 14: _Hoc est quod pueri tangar amore minus_, for example,
was altered into _Hoc est quod pueri tangar amore nihil_; for
_lusisset amores_ was substituted _dampnasset amores_, and so forth.]
[Footnote 15: The hymn quoted above in the text refers to a legend of
S. Paul having visited the tomb of Virgil at Naples:--
'When to Maro's tomb they brought him
Tender grief and pity wrought him
To bedew the stone with tears;
What a saint I might have crowned thee,
Had I only living found thee,
Poet first and without peers!']
Meanwhile the utter confusion consequent upon the downfall of the
Roman Empire and the irruption of the Germanic races was causing, by
the mere brute force of circumstance, a gradual extinction of
scholarship too powerful to be arrested. The teaching of grammar for
ecclesiastical purposes was insufficient to check the influence of
many causes leading to this overthrow of learning. It was impossible
to communicate more than a mere tincture of knowledge to students
separated from the classical tradition, for whom the antecedent
history of Rome was a dead letter. The meaning of Latin words derived
from the Greek was lost. Smaragdus, a grammarian, mistook _Eunuchus
Comoedia_ and _Orestes Tragoedia_, mentioned by Donatus, for the
names of authors. Remigius of Auxerre explained _poema_ by _positio_,
and _emblema_ by _habundantia_. Homer and Virgil were supposed to have
been friends and contemporaries, while the Latin epitome of the
'Iliad,' bearing the name of Pindar, was fathered on the Theban
lyrist. Theological notions, grotesque and childish beyond
description, found their way into etymology and grammar. The three
persons of the Trinity were discovered in the verb, and mystic numbers
in the parts of speech. Thus analytical studies like that of language
came to be regarded as an open field for the exercise of the
mythologising fancy; and etymology was reduced to a system of
ingenious punning. _Voluntas_ and _voluptas_ were distinguished, for
example, as pertaining to the nature of _Deus_ and _diabolus_
respectively; and, in order to make the list complete, _voluntas_ was
invented as an attribute of _homo_. It is clear that on this path of
verbal quibbling the intellect had lost tact, taste, and common sense
together.
When the minds of the learned were possessed by these absurdities to
the exclusion of sound method, we cannot wonder that antiquity
survived but as a strange and shadowy dream in popular imagination.
Virgil, the only classic who retained distinct and living personality,
passed from poet to philosopher, from philosopher to Sibyl, from Sibyl
to magician, by successive stages of transmutation, as the truth about
him grew more dim and the faculty to apprehend him weakened. Forming
the staple of education in the schools of the grammarians, and
metamorphosed by the vulgar consciousness into a wizard,[16] he waited
on the extreme verge of the dark ages to take Dante by the hand, and
lead him, as the type of human reason, through the realms of Hell and
Purgatory.
[Footnote 16: The common use of the word _grammarie_ for occult
science in our ballads illustrates this phase of popular opinion. So
does the legend of Friar Bacon. See Thoms, _Early English Prose
Romances_.]
With regard to the actual knowledge of Latin literature possessed in
the Middle Ages, it may be said in brief that Virgil was continually
studied, and that a certain familiarity with Ovid, Lucan, Horace,
Juvenal, and Statius was never lost. Among the prose-writers,
portions of Cicero were used in education; but the compilations of
Boethius, Priscian, Donatus, and Cassiodorus were more widely used. In
the twelfth century the study of Roman law was revived, and the
scholastic habit of thought found scope for subtlety in the discussion
of cases and composition of glosses. The general knowledge and
intellectual sympathy required for comprehension of the genuine
classics were, however, wanting; and thus it happened that their place
was taken by epitomes and abstracts, and by the formal digests of the
Western Empire in its decadence. This lifeless literature was better
suited to the meagre intellectual conditions of the Middle Ages than
the masterpieces of the Augustan and Silver periods.
Of Greek there was absolutely no tradition left.[17] When the names of
Greek poets or philosophers are cited by mediæval authors, it is at
second hand from Latin sources; and the Aristotelian logic of the
schoolmen came through Latin translations made by Jews from Arabian
MSS. Occasionally it might happen that a Western scholar acquired
Greek at Constantinople or in the south of Italy, where it was spoken;
but this did not imply Hellenic culture, nor did such knowledge form a
part and parcel of his erudition. Greek was hardly less lost to Europe
then than Sanskrit in the first half of the eighteenth century.
[Footnote 17: Didot, in his _Life of Aldus_, tries to make out that
Greek learning survived in Ireland longer than elsewhere.]
The meagreness of mediæval learning was, however, a less serious
obstacle to culture than the habit of mind, partly engendered by
Christianity and partly idiosyncratic to the new races, which
prevented students from appreciating the true spirit of the classics.
While mysticism and allegory ruled supreme, the clearly-defined
humanity of the Greeks and Romans could not fail to be misapprehended.
The little that was known of them reached students through a hazy and
distorting medium. Poems like Virgil's fourth Eclogue were prized for
what the author had not meant when he was writing them; while his real
interests were utterly neglected. Against this mental misconception,
this original obliquity of vision, this radical lie in the intellect,
the restorers of learning had to fight at least as energetically as
against brute ignorance and dulness. It was not enough to multiply
books and to discover codices; they had to teach men how to read them,
to explain their inspiration, to defend them against prejudice, to
protect them from false methods of interpretation. To purge the mind
of fancy and fable, to prove that poetry apart from its supposed
prophetic meaning was delightful for its own sake, and that the
history of the antique nations, in spite of Paganism, could be used
for profit and instruction, was the first step to be taken by these
pioneers of modern culture. They had, in short, to create a new mental
sensibility by establishing the truth that pure literature directly
contributes to the dignity and happiness of human beings. The
achievement of this revolution in thought was the great performance of
the Italians in the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries.
During the dark ages Italy had in no sense enjoyed superiority of
culture over the rest of Europe. On the contrary, the first abortive
attempt at a revival of learning was due to Charlemagne at Aix, the
second to the Emperor Frederick in Apulia and Sicily; and while the
Romance nations had lost the classical tradition, it was still to some
extent preserved by the Moslem dynasties. The more we study the
history of mediæval learning, the more we recognise the debt of
civilised humanity to the Arabs for their conservation and
transmission of Greek thought in altered form to Europe. Yet, though
the Italians came comparatively late into the field, their action was
decisive. Neither Charlemagne nor Frederick, neither the philosophy of
the Arabian sages nor the precocious literature of Provence, succeeded
in effecting for the education of the modern intellect that which
Dante and Petrarch performed--the one by the production of a
monumental work of art in poetry, the other by the communication of a
new enthusiasm for antiquity to students.
Dante does not belong in any strict sense to the history of the
Revival of Learning. The 'Divine Comedy' closes the Middle Ages and
preserves their spirit. It stands before the vestibule of modern
literature like a solitary mountain at the entrance of a country rich
in all varieties of landscape. In order to become acquainted with its
grandeur, we must leave the fields and forests that we know, ascend
the heights, and use ourselves to an austerer climate. In spite of
this isolation, Dante's influence was powerful upon succeeding
generations. The modern mind first found in him its scope, and
recognised its freedom; first dared and did what placed it on a level
with antiquity in art. Many ideas, moreover, destined to play an
important part in the coming age, received from him their germinal
expression. It may thus be truly said that Dante initiated the
movement of the modern intellect in its entirety, though he did not
lead the Revival considered as a separate moment in this evolution.
That service was reserved for Petrarch.
There are spots upon the central watershed of Europe where, in the
stillness of a summer afternoon, the traveller may listen to the
murmurs of two streams--the one hurrying down to form the Rhine, the
other to contribute to the Danube or the Po. Born within hearing of
each other's voices, and nourished by the self-same clouds that rest
upon the crags around them, they are henceforth destined to an
ever-widening separation. While the one sweeps onward to the Northern
seas, the other will reach the shores of Italy or Greece and mingle
with the Mediterranean. To these two streamlets we might compare Dante
and Petrarch, both of whom sprang from Florence, both of whom were
nurtured in the learning of the schools and in the lore of chivalrous
love. Yet how different was their mission! Petrarch marks the rising
of that great river of intellectual energy which flowed southward to
recover the culture of the ancient world. The current of Dante's
genius took the contrary direction. Borne upon its mighty flood, we
visit the lands and cities of the Middle Ages, floating toward
infinities divined and made the heritage of human nature by the
mediæval spirit.
In speaking of Petrarch here, it is necessary to concentrate attention
upon his claims to be considered as the apostle of scholarship, the
inaugurator of the humanistic impulse of the fifteenth century. We
have nothing to do with his Italian poetry. The _Rime_ dedicated to
Madonna Laura have eclipsed the fame of the Latin epic, philosophical
discourses, epistles, orations, invectives, and dissertations, which
made Petrarch the Voltaire of his own age, and on which he thought his
immortality would rest. Yet it is with these latter products of his
genius, not with the _Canzoniere_, that we are now concerned; nor can
it be too emphatically asserted that his originality was even more
eminently displayed in the revelation of humanism to the modern world
than in the verses that impressed their character upon Italian
literature. To have foreseen a whole new phase of European culture, to
have interpreted its spirit, and determined by his own activity the
course it should pursue, is in truth a higher title to fame than the
composition of even the most perfect sonnets. The artist, however, has
this advantage over the pioneer of intellectual progress, that his
delicate creations are indestructible, and that his work cannot be
merged in that of a continuator. Therefore Petrarch lives and will
live in the memory of millions as the poet of Laura, while only
students know how much the world owes to his humanistic ardour.
As I cannot dispense with the word Humanism in this portion of my
work, it may be well to fix the sense I shall attach to it.[18] The
essence of humanism consisted in a new and vital perception of the
dignity of man as a rational being apart from theological
determinations, and in the further perception that classic literature
alone displayed human nature in the plenitude of intellectual and
moral freedom. It was partly a reaction against ecclesiastical
despotism, partly an attempt to find the point of unity for all that
had been thought and done by man, within the mind restored to
consciousness of its own sovereign faculty. Hence the single-hearted
devotion to the literature of Greece and Rome that marks the whole
Renaissance era. Hence the watchword of that age, the _Litteræ
Humaniores_. Hence the passion for antiquity, possessing thoughtful
men, and substituting a new authority for the traditions of the
Church. Hence the so-called Paganism of centuries bent upon absorbing
and assimilating a spirit no less life-giving from their point of view
than Christianity itself. Hence the persistent effort of philosophers
to find the meeting-point of two divergent inspirations. Hence, too,
the ultimate antagonism between the humanists, or professors of the
new wisdom, and those uncompromising Christians who, like S. Paul,
preferred to remain fools for Christ's sake.
[Footnote 18: The word Humanism has a German sound, and is in fact
modern. Yet the generic phrase _umanità_ for humanistic culture, and
the name _umanista_ for a professor of humane studies, are both pure
Italian. Ariosto, in his seventh satire, line 25, writes--
'Senza quel vizio son pochi umanisti.']
Humanism in this, the widest, sense of the word was possessed by
Petrarch intuitively. It belonged to his nature as much as music to
Mozart; so that he seemed sent into the world to raise, by the pure
exercise of innate faculties, a standard for succeeding workers.
Physically and æsthetically, by the fineness of his ear for verbal
harmonies, and by the exquisiteness of his sensibilities, he was
fitted to divine what it took centuries to verify. While still a boy,
long before he could grasp the meaning of classical Latin, he used to
read the prose of Cicero aloud, delighting in the sonorous cadence and
balanced periods of the master's style.[19] Nor were the moral
qualities of industry and perseverance, needed to supplement these
natural gifts, defective. In his maturity he spared no pains to
collect the manuscripts of Cicero, sometimes transcribing them with
his own hand, sometimes employing copyists, sending and journeying to
distant parts of Europe where he heard a fragment of his favourite
author might be found.[20] His greatest literary disappointment was
the loss of a treatise by Cicero on Glory, a theme exceedingly
significant for the Renaissance, which he lent to his tutor
Convennevole, and which the old man pawned.[21] Though he could not
read Greek, he welcomed with profoundest reverence the codices of
Homer and Plato sent to him from Constantinople, and exhorted
Boccaccio to dedicate his genius to the translation of the sovran poet
into Latin.[22] In this susceptibility to the melodies of rhetorical
prose, in this special cult of Cicero, in the passion for collecting
manuscripts, and in the intuition that the future of scholarship
depended upon the resuscitation of Greek studies, Petrarch initiated
the four most important momenta of the classical Renaissance. He,
again, was the first to understand the value of public libraries;[23]
the first to accumulate coins and inscriptions, as the sources of
accurate historical information; the first to preach the duty of
preserving ancient monuments. It would seem as though, by the instinct
of genius, he foresaw the future for at least three centuries, and
comprehended the highest uses whereof scholarship is capable.
[Footnote 19: See the interesting letter to Luca di Penna, _De Libris
Ciceronis_, p. 946, and compare _De Ignorantiâ sui ipsius_, &c. p.
1044. These references, as well as those which follow under the
general sign _Ibid._, are made to the edition of Petrarch's collected
works, Basle, 1581.]
[Footnote 20: _Ibid._ p. 948. Cf. the fine letter on the duty of
collecting and preserving codices (_Fam. Epist._ lib. iii. 18, p.
619). 'Aurum, argentum, gemmæ, purpurea vestis, marmorea domus, cultus
ager, pictæ tabulæ, phaleratus sonipes, cæteraque id genus mutam
habent et superficiariam voluptatem: libri medullitus delectant,
colloquuntur, consulunt, et vivâ quâdam nobis atque argutâ
familiaritate junguntur.']
[Footnote 21: _De Libris Ciceronis_, p. 949. Cf. his _Epistle to
Varro_ for an account of a lost MS. of that author. _Ibid._ p. 708.]
[Footnote 22: _Ibid._ p. 948. Cf. _De Ignorantiâ_, pp. 1053, 1054.
See, too, the letter to Nicolaus Syocerus of Constantinople, _Epist.
Var._ xx. p. 998, thanking him for the Homer and the Plato, in which
Petrarch gives an account of his slender Greek studies. 'Homerus tuus
apud me mutus, immo vero ego apud illum surdus sum. Gaudeo tamen vel
aspectu solo, et sæpe illum amplexus et suspirans dico.... Plato
philosophorum princeps ... nunc tandem tuo munere Philosophorum
principi Poetarum princeps asserit. Quis tantis non gaudeat et
glorietur hospitibus?... Græcos spectare, et si nihil aliud, certe
juvat.' The letter urging Boccaccio to translate Homer--'an tuo
studio, meâ impensâ fieri possit, ut Homerus integer bibliothecæ huic,
ubi pridem Græcus habitat, tandem Latinus accedat'--will be found
[Transcriber's Note: original missing 'in'] _Ep. Rer. Sen._ lib. iii.
5, p. 775. In another letter, _Ep. Rer. Sen._ lib. vi. 2, p. 807, he
thanks Boccaccio for the Latin version.]
[Footnote 23: _De Remediis utriusque Fortunæ_, p. 43. A plea for
public as against private collections of useful books. 'Multos in
vinculis tenes,' &c.]
So far the outside only of Petrarch's instinct for humanism has been
touched. How fully he possessed its large and liberal spirit is shown
by the untiring war he carried on against formalism, tradition,
pedantry, and superstition. Whatever might impede the free play of the
intellect aroused his bitterest hatred. Against the narrow views of
scholastic theologians, against the futile preoccupations of the
Middle-Age materialists, against the lawyers and physicians and
astrologers in vogue, he declared inexorable hostility.[24] These
men, by their puerilities and falsities, obstructed the natural action
of the mind; therefore Petrarch attacked them. At the same time he
recognised the liberators of the reason by a kind of tact. Though he
could not interpret the sixteen dialogues of Plato he possessed in
Greek, he perceived intuitively that Plato, as opposed to Aristotle,
would become the saint of liberal philosophy, surveyed by him as in a
Pisgah-view. His enthusiasm for Cicero and Virgil was twofold; in both
respects he proved how capable he was of moulding the taste and
directing the mental force of his successors. As an artist, he
discerned in their style the harmonies of sound and the proprieties of
diction, whereby Latin might once again become the language of fine
thoughts and delicate emotions. As a champion of intellectual
independence, he saw that, studying their large discourse of all
things which the reason and imagination can appropriate, the thinkers
of the modern age might shake off scholastic fetters, and enter into
the inheritance of spiritual freedom. Poetry and rhetoric he regarded
not merely as the fine arts of literature, but as two chief
instruments whereby the man of genius arrives at self-expression,
perpetuates the qualities of his own soul, and impresses his character
upon the age. Since this realisation of the individual in a high and
puissant work of art appeared to him the noblest aim of man on earth,
it followed that the inspired speech of the poet and the eloquence of
the orator became for Petrarch the summit of ambition, the two-peaked
Parnassus he struggled through his lifetime to ascend.[25] The ideal
was literary; but literature implied for Petrarch more than words and
phrases. It was not enough to make melodious verse, or to move an
audience with well-sounding periods. The hexameters of the epic and
the paragraphs of the oration had to contain solid thought, to be the
genuine outcome of the poet's or the rhetorician's soul. The writer
was bound to be a preacher, to discover truth, and make the truths he
found agreeable to the world.[26] His life, moreover, ought to be in
perfect harmony with all he sought to teach.[27] Upon the purity of
his enthusiasm, the sincerity of his inspiration, depended the future
well-being of the world for which he laboured.[28] Thus for this one
man at least the art of letters was a priesthood; and the earnestness
of his vocation made him fit to be the master of succeeding ages. It
is not easy for us to appreciate the boldness and sincerity of these
conceptions. Many of them, since the days of Petrarch, have been
overstrained and made ridiculous by false pretensions. Besides, the
whole point of view has been appropriated; and men invariably
undervalue what they feel they cannot lose. It is only by comparing
Petrarch's own philosophy of literature with the dulness of the
schoolmen in their decadence, and with the stylistic shallowness of
subsequent scholars, that we come to comprehend how luminous and novel
was the thesis he supported.
[Footnote 24: See the four books of Invectives, _Contra Medicum
quendam_, and the treatise _De sui ipsius et aliorum Ignorantiâ_. Page
1038 of the last dissertation contains a curious list of frivolous
questions discussed by the Averrhoists. Cf. the letter on the
decadence of true learning, _Ep. Var._ 31, p. 1020; the letter to a
friend exhorting him to combat Averrhoism, _Epist. sine titulo_, 18,
p. 731; two letters on physicians, _Epist. Rerum Senilium_, lib. xii.
1 and 2, pp. 897-914; a letter to Francesco Bruno on the lies of the
astrologers, _Epist. Rer. Sen._ lib. i. 6, p. 747; a letter to
Boccaccio on the same theme, _Epist. Rer. Sen._ lib. iii. 1, p. 765;
another on physicians to Boccaccio, _Epist. Rer. Sen._ lib. v. 4, p.
796. Cf. the Critique of Alchemy, _De Remediis utriusque Fortunæ_, p.
93.]
[Footnote 25: In comparing the orator and the poet, Petrarch gives the
palm to the former. He thought the perfect rhetorician, capable of
expressing sound philosophy with clearness, was rarer than the poet.
See _De Remediis utriusque Fortunæ_, lib. ii. dial. 102, p. 192.]
[Footnote 26: See, among other passages, _Inv. contra Medicum_, lib.
i. p. 1092. 'Poetæ studium est veritatem veram pulchris velaminibus
adornare.' Cf. p. 905, the paragraph beginning 'Officium est ejus
fingere,' &c.]
[Footnote 27: See the preface to the _Epistolæ Familiares_, p. 570.
'Scribendi enim mihi vivendique unus (ut auguror) finis erit.']
[Footnote 28: For his lofty conception of poetry see the two letters
to Boccaccio and Benvenuto da Imola, pp. 740, 941. _Epist. Rerum
Senilium_, lib. i. 4, lib. xiv. 11.]
Having thus conceived of literature, Petrarch obtained a standard for
estimating the barren culture of his century. He taxed the
disputations of the doctors with lifeless repetition unmeaning
verbiage. Schoolman after schoolman had been occupied with formal
trifles. The erudition of the jurist and the theologian revealed
nothing fruitful for the heart or intellect; and everything was
valueless that did not come straight from a man's soul, speaking to
the soul of one who heard him. At the same time he read the Fathers
and the Scriptures in a new light. Augustine, some few of whose
sentences had been used as links in the catena of dogmatic orthodoxy,
seemed to Petrarch no longer a mere master of theology, but a man
conversing with him across the chasm of eight centuries. In the
'Confessions,' 'running over with a fount of tears,' the poet of
Vaucluse divined a kindred nature; one who used exalted eloquence for
the expression of vital thoughts and passionate emotions; one,
moreover, who had reached the height of human happiness in union with
God.[29] Not less real was the grasp he laid upon the prophets and
apostles of the Bible. All words that bore a message to his heart were
words of authority and power. The _ipse dixit_ of an Aristotle or a
Seraphic doctor had for him no weight, unless it came home to him as a
man.[30] Even Cicero and Seneca, the saints of philosophical
antiquity, he dared to criticise for practising less wisdom than they
preached.[31]
[Footnote 29: The references to Augustine as a 'divine genius,' equal
to Cicero in eloquence, superior to the classics in his knowledge of
Christ, are too frequent for citation. See, however, _Fam. Epist._
lib. ii. 9, p. 601; the letter to Boccaccio, _Variarum_, 22, p. 1001;
and _Fam. Epist._ lib. iv. 9, p. 635. The phrase describing the
_Confessions_, quoted in my text, is from Petrarch's letter to his
brother Gerard, _Epist. Var._ 27, p. 1012, 'Scatentes lachrymis
Confessionum libros.']
[Footnote 30: 'Sum sectarum negligens, veri appetens.' _Epist. Rer.
Sen._ lib. i. 5, p. 745. 'Nam apud Horatium Flaccum, nullius jurare in
verba magistri, puer valde didiceram.' _Epist. Fam._ lib. iv. 10, p.
637.]
[Footnote 31: See the letters addressed to Cicero and Seneca, pp. 705,
706.]
While regarding Petrarch as the first and, in some respects, the
greatest of the humanists, we are bound to recognise the faults as
well as the good qualities he shared with them. To dwell on these in
detail would be a thankless task, were it not for the conviction that
his personality impressed itself too strongly on the fourteenth
century to escape our criticism. We cannot afford to leave even the
foibles of the man who gave a pattern to his generation unstudied.
Foremost among these may be reckoned his vanity, his eagerness to
grasp the poet's crown, his appetite for flattery, his restless change
from place to place in search of new admirers, his self-complacent
garrulity. This vanity was perhaps inseparable from the position he
assumed upon the threshold of the modern world. It was hardly possible
that the prophet of a new phase of culture should not look down with
contempt upon the uneducated masses, and believe that learning raised
a man into a demigod. Study of the classics taught him to despise his
age and yearn for immortality; but the assurance of the honours that
he sought, could only come to him upon the lips of his contemporaries.
In conflict with the dulness and the darkness of preceding centuries,
he felt the need of a new motive, unrecognised by the Church and
banished from the cloister. That motive was the thirst for fame, the
craving to make his personality eternal in the minds of men. Meanwhile
he was alone in a dim wilderness of transitory interests and sordid
aims, where human life was shadowy, and where, when death arrived,
there would remain no memory of what had been. The gloom of this
present in contrast with the glory of the past he studied, and the
glory of the future he desired, confirmed his egotism. His name and
fame depended on his self-assertion. To achieve renown by writing, to
wrest for himself even in his lifetime a firm place among the
immortals, became his feverish spur to action. He was conscious how
deep a hold the passion for celebrity had taken on his nature; and not
unfrequently he speaks of it as a disease.[32] The Christian within
him wrestled vigorously with the renascent Pagan. Religion taught him
to renounce what ambition prompted him to grasp. Yet he continued to
deceive himself. While penning dissertations on the worthlessness of
praise and the futility of fame, he trimmed his sails to catch the
breeze of popular applause; and as his reputation widened, his desires
grew ever stronger. The last years of his life were spent in writing
epistles to the great men of the past, in whom alone he recognised his
equals, and to posterity, in whom he hoped to meet at last with judges
worthy of him.
[Footnote 32: 'Ægritudo' is a phrase that constantly recurs in his
epistles to indicate a restless, craving habit of the soul. See, too,
the whole second book of the _De Contemptu Mundi_.]
This almost morbid vanity, peculiar to Petrarch's temperament and
encouraged by the circumstances of his life, introduced a division
between his practice and his profession. He was never tired of
praising solitude, and many years of his manhood he spent in actual
retirement at Vaucluse.[33] Yet he only loved seclusion as a contrast
to the society of Courts, and would have been most miserable if the
world, taking him at his own estimate, had left him in peace. No one
wrote more eloquently about equal friendship, or professed a stronger
zeal for candid criticism. Yet he admitted few but professed admirers
to his intimacy, and regarded his literary antagonists as personal
detractors. The same sensitive egotism led him to depreciate the fame
of Dante, in whom he cannot but have recognised a poet in the highest
sense superior to himself.[34] Again, while he complained of celebrity
as an obstacle to studious employment, he showed the most acute
interest when the details of his life were called in question.[35]
Nothing, if we took his philosophic treatises for record, would have
pleased him better than to live unnoticed. His letters make it
manifest that he believed the eyes of the whole world were fixed upon
him, and that he courted this attention of the public with a greedy
appetite.
[Footnote 33: See the treatise _De Vitâ Solitariâ_, pp. 223-292, and
the letters on 'Vaucluse,' pp. 691-697.]
[Footnote 34: See the discussion of this point in Baldelli's _Vita del
Boccaccio_, pp. 130-135.]
[Footnote 35: Compare the chapter in the dissertation _De Remediis_ on
troublesome notoriety, p. 177, with the letter on his reception at
Arezzo, p. 918, the letter to Nerius Morandus on the false news of his
death, p. 776, and the letter to Boccaccio on his detractors, p. 749.]
These qualities and contradictions mark Petrarch as a man of letters,
not of action. He belonged essentially to the _genus irritabile
vatum_, for whom the sphere of thoughts expressed on paper is more
vivid than the world of facts. We may trace a corresponding weakness
in his chief enthusiasms. Unable to distinguish between the realities
of existence and the dreamland of his study, he hailed in Rienzi the
restorer of old Rome, while he stigmatised his friends the Colonnesi
as barbarian intruders.[36] The Rome he read of in the pages of Livy,
seemed to the imagination of this visionary still alive and powerful;
nor did he feel the absurdity of addressing the mediæval rabble of the
Romans in phrases high-flown for a Gracchus.[37] While he courted the
intimacy of the Correggi, and lived as a house-guest with the
Visconti, he denounced these princes as tyrants, and appealed to the
Emperor to take the reins and bring all Italy beneath his yoke.[38]
Herein, it may be urged, Petrarch did but share a delusion common to
his age. This is true; but the point to notice is the contradiction
between his theories and the habits of his life. He was not a partisan
on the Ghibelline side, but a believer in impossible ideals. His
patriotism was no less literary than his temperament. The same
tendency to measure all things by a student's standard made him
exaggerate mere verbal eloquence. Words, according to his view, were
power. Cicero held the highest place in his esteem, because his
declamation was most copious. Aristotle, in spite of his profound
philosophy, was censured for his lack of rhetoric.[39] Throughout the
studied works of Petrarch we can trace this vice of a stylistic ideal.
Though he never writes without some solid germ of thought, he loves to
play with phrases, producing an effect of unreality, and seeming
emulous of casuistical adroitness.[40]
[Footnote 36: See the _Epistles to Rienzi_, pp. 677, 535.]
[Footnote 37: Epistle to the Roman people, beginning 'Apud te
invictissime domitorque terrarum popule meus,' p. 712.]
[Footnote 38: Epistle to Charles IV., _De Pacificandâ Italiâ_, p. 531.
This contradiction struck even his most ardent admirers with painful
surprise. See Boccaccio quoted in Baldelli's _Life_, p. 115.]
[Footnote 39: _Rerum memorandarum_, lib. ii. p. 415.]
[Footnote 40: This is particularly noticeable in the miscellaneous
collection of essays called _De Remediis utriusque Fortunæ_, where
opposite views on a wide variety of topics are expressed with great
dexterity.]
The foregoing analysis was necessary because Petrarch became, as it
were, a model for his followers in the field of scholarship. Italian
humanism never lost the powerful impress of his genius, and the value
of his influence can only be appreciated when the time arrives for
summing up the total achievement of the Revival.[41] It remains to be
regretted that the weaknesses of his character, his personal
pretension and literary idealism, were more easily imitated than his
strength. Petrarch's egotism differed widely from the insolent conceit
of Filelfo and the pedantic boasts of Alciato. Nor did his enthusiasm
for antiquity degenerate, like theirs, into a mere uncritical and
servile worship. His humanism was both loftier and larger. He never
forgot that Christianity was an advance upon Paganism, and that the
accomplished man of letters must acquire the culture of the ancients
without losing the virtues or sacrificing the hopes of a Christian. If
only the humanists of the Renaissance could have preserved this point
of view intact, they would have avoided the worst evils of the age,
and have secured a nobler liberation of the modern reason. Petrarch
created for himself a creed compounded of Roman Stoicism and Christian
doctrine, adapting the precepts of the Gospels and the teaching of the
Fathers, together with the ethics of Cicero and Seneca, to his own
needs. Herein he showed the freedom of his genius, and led the way for
the most brilliant thinkers of the coming centuries. The fault of his
successors was a tendency to recede from this high vantage-ground, to
accept the customary creed with cynical facility, while they inclined
in secret to a laxity adopted from their study of the classics. By
separating himself from tradition, without displaying an arrogant
spirit of revolt against authority, Petrarch established the principle
that men must guide their own souls by the double lights of culture
and of conscience. His followers were too ready to make culture all in
all, and lost thereby the opportunity of grounding a rational
philosophy of life upon a solid basis for the modern world. Petrarch
made it his sincere aim to be both morally and intellectually his
highest self; and if he often failed in practice--if he succumbed to
carnal frailty while he praised sobriety--if he sought for notoriety
while professing indifference to fame--if he mistook dreams for
realities and words for facts--still the ideal he proposed to himself
and eloquently preached to his contemporaries, was a new and lofty
one. After the lapse of five centuries, few as yet have passed beyond
it. Even Goethe, for example, can claim no superiority of humanism
above Petrarch, except by right of his participation in the scientific
spirit.
[Footnote 41: See the last chapter of this volume.]
We are therefore justified in hailing Petrarch as the Columbus of a
new spiritual hemisphere, the discoverer of modern culture. That he
knew no Greek, that his Latin verse was lifeless and his prose style
far from pure, that his contributions to history and ethics have been
superseded, and that his epistles are now only read by antiquaries,
cannot impair his claim to this title. From him the inspiration
needed to quicken curiosity and stimulate a zeal for knowledge
proceeded. But for his intervention in the fourteenth century, it is
possible that the Revival of Learning, and all that it implies, might
have been delayed until too late. Petrarch died in 1374. The Greek
Empire was destroyed in 1453. Between those dates Italy recovered the
Greek classics; but whether the Italians would have undertaken this
labour if no Petrarch had preached the attractiveness of liberal
studies, or if no school of disciples had been formed by him in
Florence, remains more than doubtful. We are brought thus to recognise
in him one of those heroes concerning whose relation to the spirit of
the ages Hegel has discoursed in his 'Philosophy of History.'
Petrarch, by anticipating the tendencies of the Revival, created the
intellectual milieu required for its evolution.[42] Yet we are not
therefore justified in saying that he was not himself the product of
already existing spiritual forces in his century. The vast influence
he immediately exercised, while Dante, though gifted with a far more
powerful individuality, remained comparatively inoperative, proves
that the age was specially prepared to receive his inspiration.
[Footnote 42: The lines from the _Africa_ used as a motto for this
volume are a prophecy of the Renaissance.]
What remains to be said about the first period of Italian humanism is
almost wholly concerned with men who either immediately or indirectly
felt the influence of Petrarch's genius.[43] His shadow stretches over
the whole age. Incited by his brilliant renown, Boccaccio, while still
a young man, began to read the classical authors, bemoaning the years
he had wasted in commerce and the study of the law to please his
father. From what the poet of the 'Decameron' has himself told us
about the origin of his literary enthusiasm, it appears that
Petrarch's example was decisive in determining his course. There is,
however, another tale, reported by his fellow-citizen Villani, so
characteristic of the age that to omit it in this place would be to
sacrifice one of the most attractive legends in the history of
literature.[44] 'After wandering through many lands, now here, now
there, for a long space of time, when he had reached at last his
twenty-eighth year, Boccaccio, at his father's bidding, took up his
abode at Naples in the Pergola. There it chanced one day that he
walked forth alone for pleasure, and came to the place where Virgil's
dust lies buried. At the sight of this sepulchre, he fell into long
musing admiration of the man whose bones it covered, brooding with
meditative soul upon the poet's fame, until his thoughts found vent in
lamentations over his own envious fortunes, whereby he was compelled
against his will to give himself to things of commerce that he
loathed. A sudden love of the Pierian Muses smote his heart, and
turning homeward, he abandoned trade, devoting himself with fervent
study to poetry; wherein very shortly, aided alike by his noble genius
and his burning desire, he made marvellous progress. This when his
father noted, and perceived the heavenly inspiration was more powerful
within his son than the paternal will, he at last consented to his
studies, and helped him as best he could, although at first he tried
to make him turn his talents to the canon law.'
[Footnote 43: It is very significant of Petrarch's influence that his
contemporaries ranked him higher, even as a sonnet-writer, than Dante.
See _Coluccio de' Salutati's Letters_, part ii. p. 57.]
[Footnote 44: Filippo Villani, _Vite d'Uomini Illustri Fiorentini_,
Firenze, 1826, p. 9.]
The hero-worship of Boccaccio, not only for the august Virgil, but
also for Dante, the master of his youth and the idol of his mature
age, is the most amiable trait in a character which, by its geniality
and sweetness, cannot fail to win affection.[45] When circumstances
brought him into personal relations with Petrarch, he transferred the
whole homage of his ardent soul to the only man alive who seemed to
him a fit inheritor of ancient fame.[46] Petrarch became the director
of his conscience, the master of his studies, the moulder of his
thoughts upon the weightiest matters of literary philosophy. The
friendship established between the poet of Vaucluse and the lover of
Fiammetta lasted through more than twenty years, and was only broken
by the death of the former. Throughout this long space of time
Boccaccio retained the attitude of a humble scholar, while in his
published works, the 'Genealogiâ Deorum' and the 'Comento sopra i
Primi Sedici Capitoli dell' "Inferno" di Dante,' he uniformly spoke of
Petrarch as his father and his teacher, the wonder of the century, a
heavenly poet better fitted to be numbered with the giants of the past
than with the pygmies of a barren age. The fame enjoyed by Petrarch,
the honours showered upon him by kings and princes, his own vanity,
and even the discrepancies between his habits and his theories,
produced no bitterness in Boccaccio's more modest nature. It was
enough for the pupil to use his talents for the propagation of his
master's views; and thus the influence of Petrarch was communicated to
Florence, where Boccaccio continued to reside.[47]
[Footnote 45: With his own hand Boccaccio transcribed the _Divine
Comedy_, and sent the MS. to Petrarch, who in his reply wrote
thus:--'Inseris nominatim hanc hujus officii tui escusationem, quod
tibi adolescentulo primus studiorum dux, prima fax fuerit.' Baldelli,
p. 133. The enthusiasm of Boccaccio for Dante contrasts favourably
with Petrarch's grudging egotism.]
[Footnote 46: Boccaccio was present at Naples when Petrarch disputed
before King Robert for his title to the poet's crown (_Gen. Deor._
xiv. 22); but he first became intimate with him as a friend during
Petrarch's visit to Florence in 1350.]
[Footnote 47: Salutato, writing to Francesco da Brossano, describes
his conversations with Boccaccio thus:--'Nihil aliud quam de Francisco
(_i.e._ Petrarcha) conferebamus. In cujus laudationem adeo libenter
sermones usurpabat, ut nihil avidius nihilque copiosius enarraret. Et
eo magis quia tali orationis generi me prospiciebat intentum.
Sufficiebat enim nobis Petrarcha solus, et omni posteritati sufficiet
in moralitate sermonis, in eloquentiæ soliditate atque dulcedine, in
lepore prosarum et in concinnitate metrorum.' _Epist. Fam._ p. 45.]
In obedience to Petrarch's advice, Boccaccio in middle life applied
himself to learning Greek. Petrarch had never acquired a real
knowledge of the language, though he received a few lessons at Avignon
from Barlaam, a Calabrian, who had settled in Byzantium, and who
sought to advance his fortunes in Italy and Greece by alternate acts
of apostasy, and afterwards at Venice from Leontius Pilatus.[48] The
opportunities of Greek study enjoyed by Boccaccio were also very
meagre, and his mastery of the idiom was superficial. Yet he advanced
considerably beyond the point reached by any of his predecessors, so
that he deserves to be named as the first Grecian of the modern world.
Leontius Pilatus, a Southern Italian and a pupil of Barlaam, who, like
his teacher, had removed to Byzantium and renounced the Latin faith,
arrived at Venice on his way to Avignon in 1360. Boccaccio induced him
to visit Florence, received him into his own house, and caused him to
be appointed Greek Professor in the University. Then he set himself to
work in earnest on the text of Homer. The ignorance of the teacher
was, however, scarcely less than that of his pupil. While Leontius
possessed a fair knowledge of Byzantine Greek, his command of Latin
was very limited, and his natural stupidity was only equalled by his
impudent pretensions. Of classical usages he seems to have known
nothing. The imbecility of his master could scarcely have escaped the
notice of Boccaccio. Indeed, both he and Petrarch have described
Leontius as a sordid cynic with a filthy beard and tangled hair,
morose in his temper and disgusting in his personal habits, who
concealed a bovine ignorance beneath a lion's hide of ostentation. It
was, however, necessary to make the best of him; for Greek in Northern
Italy could nowhere else be gained, and Boccaccio had not thought, it
seems, of journeying to Byzantium in search of what he wanted.[49]
Boccaccio, accordingly, drank the muddy stream of pseudo-learning and
lies that flowed from this man's lips, with insatiable avidity. The
nonsense administered to him by way of satisfying his thirst for
knowledge may best be understood from the following etymologies.
[Greek: Achilleus] was derived from [Greek: a] and [Greek: chilos],
'without fodder.'[50] The names of the Muses gave rise to these
extraordinary explanations:[51]--Melpomene is derived from _Melempio
comene_, which signifies _facente stare la meditazione_; Thalia is the
same as _Tithonlia_ or _pognente cosa che germini_; Polyhymnia,
through _Polium neemen_, is the same as _cosa che faccia molta
memoria_; Erato becomes _Euruncomenon_ or _trovatore del simile_, and
Terpsichore is described as _dilettante ammaestramento_.
[Footnote 48: _Epist. Rer. Sen._, lib. xi. 9, p. 887; lib. vi. 1, p.
806; lib. v. 4, p. 801.]
[Footnote 49: Petrarch's letter to Ugone di San Severino, _Epist. Rer.
Sen._ lib. xi. 9, p. 887, deserves to be read, since it proves that
Italian scholars despaired at this time of gaining Greek learning from
Constantinople. They were rather inclined to seek it in Calabria.
'Græciam, ut olim ditissimam, sic nunc omnis longe inopem disciplinæ
... quod desperat apud Græcos, non diffidit apud Calabros inveniri
posse.']
[Footnote 50: _De Gen. Deor._ xv. 6, 7.]
[Footnote 51: _Comento sopra Dante, Opp. Volg._ vol. x. p. 127. After
allowing for the difficulty of writing Greek, pronounced by an
Italian, in Italian letters, and also for the errors of the copyist
and printer, it is clear that a Greek scholar who thought Melpomene
was one 'who gives fixity to meditation,' Thalia one 'who plants the
capacity of growth,' Polyhymnia she 'who strengthens and expands
memory,' Erato 'the discoverer of similarity,' and Terpsichore
'delightful instruction,' was on a comically wrong track.]
Such was the bathos reached by erudition in Byzantium. Yet Boccaccio
made what use he could of his contemptible materials. At the dictation
of Leontius he wrote out the 'Iliad' and 'Odyssey' in Latin; and this
was the first translation made of Homer for modern readers. The
manuscript, despatched to Petrarch, was, as we have seen already,
greeted with enthusiasm.[52] This moment in the history of scholarship
is so memorable that I may be excused for borrowing Baldelli's
extract from an ancient copy of Boccaccio's autograph.[53] Lycaon
addresses his last prayer to Achilles:--
Genu deprecor te Achilles: tu autem venerare et me miserere.
Vada Servus. Jove genite venerabilis.
Penes enim te primo gustavi Cereris farinam,
Die illo, quando me cepisti in bene facto viridario;
Et me transtulisti procul ferens patreque amicisque
Lemnon ad gloriosam. Hecatombium autem honorem inveni,
Nunc autem læsus ter tot ferens. Dies autem mihi est
Hæc duodecima, quando ad Ilion veni
Multa passus. Nunc iterum me in tuis manibus posuit
Fatum destructibile. Debeo odio esse Jovi patri,
Qui me tibi iterum dedit, medio cuique, me mater
Genuit Lathoi, filia Altai senis.
[Footnote 52: See above, p. 53, note 4.]
[Footnote 53: _Vita del Boccaccio_, p. 264. The autograph was probably
burned with other books of Boccaccio, and some of the unintelligible
passages in the above quotation may be due to the ignorance of the
copyist.]
Only by keeping firmly in mind that such men as Petrarch and
Boccaccio, the two chief masters of Italian literature, prized this
wretched stuff as an inestimable treasure, can we justly conceive how
utterly Greek had been lost, and what an effort it required to restore
it to the modern world.
Indefatigable industry was Boccaccio's great merit as a student. He
transcribed the whole of Terence with his own hands, and showed a real
sense of the advantage to be gained by a critical comparison of texts.
In his mythological, geographical, and historical collections he
bequeathed to posterity a curious mass of miscellaneous knowledge,
forming, as it were, the first dictionaries of biography and antiquity
for modern scholars.[54] Far from sharing the originality of
Petrarch's humanistic ideal, he remained at best a laborious
chronicler of facts and anecdotes. The author of the 'Decameron,' so
richly gifted with humour, pathos, and poetic fancy, when he wrapped
his student's robe around him, became a painstaking pioneer of
antiquarian research.
[Footnote 54: _De Genealogiâ Deorum_; _De Casibus Virorum ac Feminarum
Illustrium_; _De Claris Muliebribus_; _De Montibus, Silvis, Fontibus_,
&c.]
One very important part of Petrarch's programme was eloquently
supported by Boccaccio. The fourteenth and fifteenth books of the
'Genealogiâ Deorum' form what may be termed the first defence of
poesy, composed in honour of his own art by a poet of the modern
world. In them Boccaccio expounds a theory already sketched in outline
by Petrarch. We have seen that the worst obstacle to humanistic
culture lay, not so much in ignorance, as in misconceptions based upon
prejudice and scruple. The notion of fine literature as an elevating
and purifying influence had been lost. To restore it was the object of
these earliest humanists. By poetry, contends Boccaccio, we must
understand whatever of weighty in argument, deep in doctrine, and
vivid in imagination the man of genius may produce with conscious art
in prose and verse. Poetry is instruction conveyed through allegory
and fiction. Theology itself, he reasons, is a form of poetry; even
the Holy Ghost may be called a Poet, inasmuch as He used the vehicle
of symbol in the visions of the prophets and the Revelation of S.
John.[55] To such strained arguments was the apostle of culture driven
in order to persuade his hearers, and to drag literature from the
Avernus of mediæval neglect. We must not, however, imagine that
Boccaccio was himself superior to a point of view so puerile. Allegory
appeared to him a necessary condition of art: only a madman could deny
the hidden meaning of the 'Georgics' and the 'Æneid;'[56] while the
verses of Dante and of Petrarch owed their value to the Christian
mysteries they shrouded. The poet, according to this mediæval
philosophy of literature, was a sage and teacher wrapping up his
august meanings in delightful fictions.[57] Though the common herd
despised him as a liar and a falsehood-fabricator, he was, in truth, a
prophet uttering his dark speech in parables. How foolish, therefore,
reasons the apologist, are the enemies of poetry--sophistical
dialecticians and avaricious jurists, who have never trodden the
Phoebean hill, and who scorn the springs of Helicon because they do
not flow with gold! Far worse is the condition of those monks and
hypocrites who accuse the divine art of immorality and grossness,
instead of reading between the lines and seeking the sense conveyed to
the understanding under veils of allegory. Truly, proceeds Boccaccio,
we do well to shun the errors of Pagans; nor can it be denied that
poets of antiquity have written verse abhorrent to the Christian
spirit. But, Jesus Christ be praised, the faith has triumphed. Strong
in the doctrines of the Gospel and the Church, the student may safely
approach the masterpieces of classic literature without fearing the
seductions of the Siren.
[Footnote 55: 'La teologia e la poesia quasi una cosa si possono dire
... la teologia niuna altra cosa è che una poesia d'Iddio.' _Vita di
Dante_, p. 59. Cf. _Comento sopra Dante_, loc. cit. p. 45. The
explanation of the Muses referred to above is governed by the same
determination to find philosophy in poetry.]
[Footnote 56: See Petrarch's letter 'De quibusdam fictionibus
Virgilii.' _Ep. Rer. Sen._ lib. iv. 4, p. 785.]
[Footnote 57: See the privilege granted to Petrarch by the Roman
senator in 1343, _Petr. Opp._ tom. iii. p. 6.]
This argument, forming the gist of the 'Apology for Poetry' in the
'Genealogiâ Deorum,' is repeated in the 'Comment upon Dante.' It is
doubly interesting, both as showing the popular opinion of poetry and
the prejudices Boccaccio thought it needful to attack, and also as
containing a full exposition of the allegorising theories with which
humanism started. For some time after Boccaccio's death the paragraphs
condensed above supplied the champions of culture with weapons to be
used against their ecclesiastical and scholastic antagonists; nor was
it until humanism had triumphed, that the allegorical interpretation
of the ancients was finally abandoned.
Independently of his contributions to learning, Boccaccio occupies a
prominent place in the history of the Revival through the new spirit
he introduced into the vulgar literature. He was the first who
frankly sought to justify the pleasures of the carnal life, whose
temperament, unburdened by asceticism, found a congenial element in
amorous legends of antiquity. The romances of Boccaccio, with their
beautiful gardens and sunny skies, fair women and luxurious lovers,
formed a transition from the chivalry of the early Italian poets to
the sensuality of Beccadelli and Pontano. He prepared the nation for
literary and artistic Paganism by unconsciously divesting thought and
feeling of their spiritual elevation. Dante had made the whole world
one in Christ. Petrarch put humanity to school in the lecture-room of
Roman sages and in the councils of the Church. A terrestrial paradise
of sensual delight, where all things were desirable and delicate,
contented the poet of the 'Fiammetta' and 'Filostrato.' To the
beatific vision of the 'Divine Comedy,' to the 'Trionfo della Morte,'
succeeded the 'Visione Amorosa'--a review of human life, in which
Boccaccio begins by invoking Dame Venus and ends with earthly love,
_Il Sior di tutta pace_.
The name given to Boccaccio by contemporaries, _Giovanni della
Tranquillità_, sufficiently indicates his peaceful temperament. He
was, in fact, the scholar, working in his study, and contributing to
the erudition of his age by writings. Another of Petrarch's disciples,
Giovanni Malpaghino, called from his birthplace Giovanni da Ravenna,
exercised a more active personal influence over the destinies of
scholarship. While still a youth he had been employed by Petrarch as
secretary and amanuensis. His general ability, clear handwriting, and
enthusiasm for learning first recommended him to the poet, who made
use of him for copying manuscripts and arranging his familiar letters.
In the course of this work John of Ravenna became himself a learned
man, acquiring a finer sense of Latinity than was possessed by any
other scholar of his time. Something, too, of the sacred fire he
caught from Petrarch, so that in his manhood the very faults of his
nature became instrumental in diffusing throughout Italy the passion
for antiquity. He could not long content himself with being even
Petrarch's scribe. Irresistible restlessness impelled him to seek
adventures in the outer world, to mix with men and gain the glory he
was always reading of. Petrarch, incapable of comprehending that any
honour was greater than that of being his satellite, treated this
ambitious pupil like a wilful child. A quarrel ensued. Giovanni left
his benefactor's house and went forth to try his fortunes. Without
repeating the vicissitudes of his career in detail, it is enough to
mention that want and misery soon drove him back to Petrarch; that
once more the vagrant impulse came upon him, and that for a season he
filled the post of chancellor in the little principality of
Carrara.[58] The one thing, however, which he could not endure, was
the routine of fixed employment. Therefore we find that he abandoned
the Court of the Malaspini, and betook himself to the more congenial
work of a wandering professor. His prodigious memory, by enabling him
to retain, word for word, the text of authors he had read, proved of
invaluable service to him in this career. His passionate poetic temper
made him apt to raise enthusiasm in young souls for literary studies.
Giovanni da Ravenna was in fact the first of those vagabond humanists
with whom we shall be occupied in the next chapters, and of whom
Filelfo was the most illustrious example. Florence, Padua, Venice, and
many other cities of Italy received the Latinist, whose reputation now
increased with every year. In each of these towns in succession he
lectured upon Cicero and the Roman poets, pouring forth the knowledge
he had acquired in Petrarch's study, and transmitting to his audience
the inspiration he had received from his master. The school thus
formed was compared a century later to the Trojan horse, whence issued
a band of heroes destined to possess the capital of classic learning.
As a writer, he produced little that is worth more than a passing
notice. His real merit consisted, as Lionardo Bruni witnessed, in his
faculty of arousing a passion for pure literature, and especially for
the study of Cicero. Among his most illustrious pupils may be
mentioned Francesco Barbaro, Palla degli Strozzi, Roberto de' Rossi,
Francesco Filelfo, Carlo Marsuppini, Poggio Bracciolini, Lionardo
Bruni, Guarino da Verona, Vittorino da Feltre, Ambrogio Traversari,
Ognibene da Vicenza, and Pier Paolo Vergerio. This list, as will
appear from the sequel of my work, includes nearly all those scholars
who devoted their energies to erudition at Venice, Florence, Rome,
Mantua, Ferrara, and Perugia in the fifteenth century. Giovanni da
Ravenna deserves, therefore, to be honoured as the link between the
age of Petrarch and the age of Poggio, as the vessel chosen for
communicating the sacred fire of humanism to the Courts and Republics
of Italy. None but a wanderer, _vagus quidam_, as Petrarch, half in
scorn and half in sorrow, called his protégé, could so effectually
have carried on the work of propagation.[59]
[Footnote 58: De Sade, in his _Memoirs of Petrarch_, gives an
interesting account of this romantic episode in his life. See too
Petrarch, _Epist. Rer. Sen._ lib. v. 6 and 7, pp. 802-806.]
[Footnote 59: _Epist. Rer. Sen._ lib. xiv. 14, p. 942.]
The name of the next student claiming our attention as a disciple of
Petrarch, brings us once more back to Florence. Luigi Marsigli was a
monk of the Augustine Order of S. Spirito. Petrarch, noticing his
distinguished abilities, had exhorted him to make a special study of
theology, and to enter the lists as a champion of Christianity against
the Averrhoists.[60] Under the name of Averrhoists in the fourteenth
century were ranged all freethinkers who questioned the fundamental
doctrines of the Church, doubted the immortality of the soul, and
employed their ingenuity in a dialectic at least as trivial as that
of the schoolmen, but directed to a very different end.[61] Petrarch
disliked their want of liberal culture as much as he abhorred their
affectation of impiety. The stupid materialism they professed, their
gross flippancy, and the idle pretence of natural science upon which
they piqued themselves, were regarded by him as so many obstacles to
his own ideal of humanism. He only saw in them another set of
scholastic wranglers, worse than the theologians, inasmuch as they had
cast off Christ. Against Averrhoes, 'the raging hound who barked at
all things sacred and Divine,' Petrarch therefore sought to stimulate
the young Marsigli. Marsigli, however, while he shared Petrarch's
respect for humane culture, seems to have sympathised with the
audacity and freedom of his proposed antagonists. The Convent of S.
Spirito became under his influence the centre of a learned society,
who met there regularly for disputations. The theme chosen for
discussion was posted up upon the wall of the debating-room,
metaphysical and ethical subjects forming the most frequent matter of
inquiry.[62] Among the members of the circle who sharpened their wits
in this species of dialectic, we find Coluccio de' Salutati, Roberto
de' Rossi, Niccolo de' Niccoli, and Giannozzo Manetti. The influence
of Marsigli in forming their character was undoubtedly powerful.
Poggio, in his funeral oration upon Niccolo de' Niccoli, tells us that
'the house of Marsigli was frequented by distinguished youths, who set
themselves to imitate his life and habits; it was, moreover, the
resort of the best and noblest burghers of this city, who flowed
together from all quarters to him as to some oracle of more than human
wisdom.'[63] His intellectual acuteness, solid erudition, and winning
eloquence were displayed in moral disquisitions upon Virgil, Cicero,
and Seneca. In this way he had the merit of combining the dialectic
method and the bold spirit of the Averrhoists with the sound learning
and polite culture of the newly-discovered humanities. The Convent of
S. Spirito has to be mentioned as the first of those many private
academies to which the free thought and the scholarship of Italy were
afterwards destined to owe so much.
[Footnote 60: _Epist. sine titulo_, xviii. p. 732.]
[Footnote 61: See the exhaustive work of Renan, _Averroès et
l'Averroïsme_.]
[Footnote 62: See Manetti's _Life_, Mur. xx. col. 531. Other
references will be found in Vespasiano's _Lives_. Boccaccio's library
was preserved in this convent.]
[Footnote 63: _Poggii Opera_, p. 271.]
It is my object in this chapter to show how humanistic scholarship,
starting from Petrarch, penetrated every department of study, and
began to permeate the intellectual life of the Italians. We have now
to notice its intrusion into the sphere of politics. Petrarch died in
1374, Boccaccio in 1375. The latter date is also that of Coluccio de'
Salutati's entrance upon the duties of Florentine Chancellor.
Salutato, the friend of Boccaccio and the disciple of Marsigli, the
professed worshipper of Petrarch and the translator of Dante into
Latin verse, was destined to exercise an important influence in his
own department as a stylist. Before he was called to act as secretary
to the Signory of Florence in his forty-sixth year, he had already
acquired the learning and imbibed the spirit of his age. He was known
as a diligent collector of manuscripts and promoter of Greek studies,
as a writer on mythology and morals, as an orator and miscellaneous
author.[64] His talents had now to be concentrated on the weightier
business of the Florentine Republic; but his study of antiquity
caused him to conceive his duties and the political relations of the
State he served, in a new light. During the wars carried on with
Gregory XI. and the Visconti, his pen was never idle. For the first
time he introduced into public documents the gravity of style and
melody of phrase he had learned in the school of classic rhetoricians.
The effect produced by this literary statesman, as elegant in
authorship as he was subtle in the conduct of affairs, can only be
estimated at its proper value when we remember that the Italians were
now ripe to receive the influence of rhetoric, and only too ready to
attribute weight to verbal ingenuity. Gian Galeazzo Visconti is said
to have declared that Salutato had done him more harm by his style
than a troop of paid mercenaries.[65] The epistles, despatches,
protocols, and manifestoes composed by their Chancellor for the
Florentine priors, were distributed throughout Italy. Read and copied
by the secretaries of other states, they formed the models of a new
State eloquence.[66] Elegant Latinity became a necessary condition of
public documents, and Ciceronian phrases were henceforth reckoned
among the indispensable engines of a diplomatic armoury. Offices of
trust in the Papal Curia, the courts of the Despots, and the
chanceries of the republics were thus thrown open to professional
humanists. In the next age we shall find that neither princes, popes,
nor priors could do without the services of trained stylists.
[Footnote 64: Salutato's familiar letters, _Lini Coluci Pieri Salutati
Epistolarum Pars Secunda, Florentiæ_, MDCCXXXXI., are a valuable
source of information respecting scholarship at the close of the
fourteenth century. See especially his letter to Benvenuto da Imola on
the death of Petrarch (p. 32), his letter to the same about Petrarch's
_Africa_ (p. 41), another letter about the preservation of the
_Africa_ (p. 79), a letter to Petrarch's nephew Francesco da Brossano
on the death of Boccaccio (p. 44), and a letter to a certain Comes
Magnificus on the literary and philosophical genius of Petrarch (p.
49).]
[Footnote 65: 'Galeacius Mediolanensium Princeps crebro auditus est
dicere non tam sibi mille Florentinorum equites quam Colucii scripta
nocere.' _Pii Secundi Europæ Commentarii_, p. 454.]
[Footnote 66: 'Costui fu de' migliori dittatori di pistole al mondo,
perocchè molti quando ne potevano avere, ne toglieano copie; si
piaceano a tutti gl'intendenti: e nelle corte di Re e di signori del
mondo, e anchora de' cherici era di lui in questa arte maggiore fama
che di alcuno altro uomo.' From the Chronicle of Luca da Scarparia.
These epistles were collected and printed by Josephus Rigaccius,
Bibliopola Florentinus Celeberrimus, in 1741. Among the letters
written for the Signory of Florence, that of congratulation to Gian
Galeazzo Visconti on his murder of Bernabo (p. 16), that to the French
Cardinals (p. 18), to Sir John Hawkwood, or Domino Joanni Aucud (p.
107), to the Marquis of Moravia (p. 110), and to the Romans (p. 141)
deserve to be read.]
While concentrating attention upon this chief contribution of Salutato
to Italian scholarship, I must not omit to notice, however briefly,
the patronage he exercised at Florence. Both Poggio Bracciolini and
Lionardo Bruni owed their advancement to his interest.[67] Giacomo da
Scarparia, the first Florentine who visited Byzantium with a view to
learning Greek, received from him the warmest encouragement, together
with a commission for the purchase of manuscripts. To his activity in
concert with Palla degli Strozzi was due the establishment of a Greek
chair in the University of Florence. Nor was this zeal confined to the
living. He composed the Lives of Dante, Petrarch, and Boccaccio,
translated a portion of the 'Divine Comedy' into Latin for its wider
circulation through the learned world, and caused the 'Africa' of
Petrarch to be published.[68] When the illustrious Chancellor died, in
the year 1406, at the age of seventy-six, he was honoured with a
public funeral; the poet's crown was placed upon his brow, a
panegyrical oration was recited, and a monument was erected to him in
the Duomo.[69]
[Footnote 67: See the letter of Lionardo Bruni, quoted in _Lini Coluci
Pieri Salutati Epistolæ_, p. xv. Coluccio's own letter recommending
Lionardo to Innocent VII., ib. p. 5, and his numerous familiar letters
to Poggio, ib. pp. 13, 173, &c.]
[Footnote 68: 'Certe cogitabam revidere librum, et si quid, ut
scribis, vel absonum, vel contra metrorum regulam intolerabile
deprehendissem, curiosius elimare et sicut Naso finxit in Æneida,
singulos libros paucis versiculis quasi in argumenti formam brevissime
resumere, et exinde pluribus sumptis exemplis, et per me ipsum
correctis et diligenter revisis, unum ad Bononiense gymnasium, unum
Parisiis, unum in Angliam cum meâ epistolâ de libri laudibus
destinare, et unum in Florentiâ ponere in loco celebri,' &c.
_Epistolæ_, part ii. p. 80.]
[Footnote 69: Among the other _laureati_ who filled the post of
Florentine Chancellor may be mentioned Dante's tutor, Brunetto Latini,
Lionardo Bruni, Carlo Marsuppini, Poggio Bracciolini, and Benedetto
Accolti, of whom more hereafter.]
What Salutato accomplished for the style of public documents,
Gasparino da Barzizza effected for familiar correspondence. After
teaching during several years at Venice and Padua, he was summoned to
Milan in 1418 by Filippo Maria Visconti, who ordered him to open a
school in that capital. Gasparino made a special study of Cicero's
Letters, and caused his pupils to imitate them as closely as possible,
forming in this way an art of fluent letter-writing known afterwards
as the _ars familiariter scribendi_. Epistolography in general,
considered as a branch of elegant literature, occupied all the
scholars of the Renaissance, and had the advantage of establishing a
link of union between learned men in different parts of Italy. We
therefore recognise in Gasparino the initiator, after Petrarch, of a
highly important branch of Italian culture. This, when it reached
maturity, culminated in the affectations of the Ciceronian purists. It
must be understood that neither Salutato nor Gasparino attained to
real polish or freedom of style. Compared even with the Latinity of
Poggio, theirs is heavy and uncouth; while that of Poggio seems
barbarous by the side of Poliziano's, and Poliziano in turn yields the
palm of mere correctness to Bembo. It was only by degrees that the
taste of the Italians formed itself, and that facility was acquired in
writing a lost language. The fact that mediæval Latin was still used
in legal documents, in conversation, in the offices of the Church, and
in the theological works which formed the staple of all libraries,
impeded the recovery of a classic style. When the Italians had finally
learned how to polish prose, it was easy to hand on the art to other
nations; while to sneer at their pedantry, as Erasmus did, was no
matter of great difficulty. By that time their scrupulous and anxious
preoccupation with purity of phrase threatened danger to the interests
of liberal learning.
Hitherto, with the exception only of Boccaccio's Greek studies, I have
had to trace the rise of Latin letters and to call particular
attention to the cult of Cicero in Italy. It is now necessary to
mention the advent of a man who played a part in the revival of
learning only second to that of Petrarch. Manuel Chrysoloras, a
Byzantine of noble birth, came to Italy during the Pontificate of
Boniface IX., charged by the Emperor Palæologus with the mission of
attempting to arm the states of Christendom against the Turk. Like all
the Greeks who visited Western Europe, Chrysoloras first alighted in
Venice; but the Republic of the Lagoons neither understood the secret
nor felt the need of retaining these birds of passage. After a few
months they almost invariably passed on to Florence--the real centre
of the intellectual life of Italy. As soon as it was known that
Chrysoloras, who enjoyed the fame of being the most accomplished and
eloquent Hellenist of his age, had arrived with his companion,
Demetrios Kydonios, in Venice, two noble Florentines, Roberto de'
Rossi and Giacomo d'Angelo da Scarparia, set forth to visit him. The
residence of the Greek ambassadors in Italy on this occasion was but
brief; they found that, politically, they could effect nothing. But
Giacomo da Scarparia journeyed in their society to Byzantium; while
Roberto de' Rossi returned to Florence, full of the impression which
the erudite philosophers had left upon him. The report he made to his
fellow-citizens awoke a passionate desire in Palla degli Strozzi and
Niccolo de' Niccoli to bring Chrysoloras in person to Florence. Their
urgent appeals to the Signory resulted in an invitation whereby
Chrysoloras in 1396 was induced to fill the Greek chair in the
university. A yearly stipend of 150 golden florins, raised afterwards
to 250, was voted for his maintenance. This engagement secured the
future of Greek erudition in Europe. The merit of having brought the
affair to a successful issue belongs principally to Palla degli
Strozzi, of whom Vespasiano wrote: 'There being in Florence exceeding
good knowledge of Latin letters, but of Greek none, he resolved that
this defect should be remedied, and therefore did all he could to make
Manuel Grisolora visit Italy, using all his influence thereto and
paying a large portion of the expense incurred.'[70] We must not,
however, omit the share which Coluccio Salutato,[71] by his influence
with the Signory, and Niccolo de' Niccoli, by the interest he exerted
with the Uffiziali dello Studio, may also claim. Among the audience of
this the first true teacher of Greek at Florence were numbered Palla
degli Strozzi, Roberto de' Rossi, Poggio Bracciolini, Lionardo Bruni,
Francesco Barbaro, Giannozzo Manetti, Carlo Marsuppini, and Ambrogio
Traversari--some of them young men of eighteen, others old and
grey-haired, nearly all of them the scholars in Latinity of Giovanni
da Ravenna. Nor was Florence the only town to receive the learning of
Chrysoloras. He opened schools at Rome, at Padua, at Milan, and at
Venice; so that his influence as a wandering professor was at least
equal to that exercised by Giovanni da Ravenna.
[Footnote 70: _Vite d'Uomini Illustri_, p. 271.]
[Footnote 71: Cf. the letter quoted by Voigt (p. 130) to Giacomo da
Scarparia, which shows Coluccio's enthusiasm for Greek.]
The impulse communicated to the study of antiquity by Chrysoloras, and
the noble enthusiasm of his scholars for pure literature, may best be
understood from a passage in the 'Commentaries' of Lionardo Bruni,
whereof the following is a compressed translation:[72]--'Letters at
this period grew mightily in Italy, seeing that the knowledge of
Greek, intermitted for seven centuries, revived. Chrysoloras of
Byzantium, a man of noble birth and well skilled in Greek literature,
brought to us Greek learning. I at that time was following the civil
law, though not ill-versed in other studies; for by nature I loved
learning with ardour, nor had I given slight pains to dialectic and
to rhetoric. Therefore, at the coming of Chrysoloras, I was made to
halt in my choice of lives, seeing that I held it wrong to desert law,
and yet I reckoned it a crime to omit so great an occasion of learning
the Greek literature; and oftentimes I reasoned with myself after this
manner:--Can it be that thou, when thou mayest gaze on Homer, Plato,
and Demosthenes, together with other poets, philosophers, and orators,
concerning whom so great and so wonderful things are said, and mayest
converse with them, and receive their admirable doctrine--can it be
that thou wilt desert thyself and neglect the opportunity divinely
offered thee? Through seven hundred years no one in all Italy has been
master of Greek letters; and yet we acknowledge that all science is
derived from them. Of civil law, indeed, there are in every city
scores of doctors; but should this single and unique teacher of Greek
be removed, thou wilt find no one to instruct thee. Conquered at last
by these reasonings, I delivered myself over to Chrysoloras with such
passion that what I had received from him by day in hours of waking,
occupied my mind at night in hours of sleep.'
[Footnote 72: Mur. xix. 920.]
The earnestness of this paragraph is characteristic of the whole
period. The scholars who assembled in the lecture-rooms of
Chrysoloras, felt that the Greek texts, whereof he alone supplied the
key, contained those elements of spiritual freedom and intellectual
culture without which the civilisation of the modern world would be
impossible. Nor were they mistaken in what was then a guess rather
than a certainty. The study of Greek implied the birth of criticism,
comparison, research. Systems based on ignorance and superstition were
destined to give way before it. The study of Greek opened
philosophical horizons far beyond the dream-world of the churchmen and
the monks; it stimulated the germs of science, suggested new
astronomical hypotheses, and indirectly led to the discovery of
America. The study of Greek resuscitated a sense of the beautiful in
art and literature. It subjected the creeds of Christianity, the
language of the Gospels, the doctrine of S. Paul, to analysis, and
commenced a new era for Biblical inquiry. If it be true, as a writer
no less sober in his philosophy than eloquent in his language has
lately asserted, that, 'except the blind forces of nature, nothing
moves in this world which is not Greek in its origin,' we are
justified in regarding the point of contact between the Greek teacher
Chrysoloras and his Florentine pupils as one of the most momentous
crises in the history of civilisation. Indirectly, the Italian
intellect had hitherto felt Hellenic influence through Latin
literature. It was now about to receive that influence immediately
from actual study of the masterpieces of the Attic authors. The world
was no longer to be kept in ignorance of those 'eternal consolations'
of the human race. No longer could the scribe omit Greek quotations from
his Latin text with the dogged snarl of obtuse self-satisfaction--_Græca
sunt, ergo non legenda_. The motto had rather to be changed into a cry
of warning for ecclesiastical authority upon the verge of
dissolution--_Græca sunt, ergo periculosa_: since the reawakening
faith in human reason, the reawakening belief in the dignity of man,
the desire for beauty, the liberty, audacity, and passion of the
Renaissance, received from Greek studies their strongest and most
vital impulse.
CHAPTER III
FIRST PERIOD OF HUMANISM
Condition of the Universities in Italy -- Bologna -- High
Schools founded from it -- Naples under Frederick II. --
Under the House of Anjou -- Ferrara -- Piacenza -- Perugia
-- Rome -- Pisa -- Florence -- Imperial and Papal Charters
-- Foreign Students -- Professorial Staff -- Subjects taught
in the High Schools -- Place assigned to Humanism -- Pay of
the Professors of Eloquence -- Francesco Filelfo -- The
Humanists less powerful at the Universities -- Method of
Humanistic Teaching -- The Book Market before Printing --
Mediæval Libraries -- Cost of Manuscripts -- _Stationarii_
and _Peciarii_ -- Negligence of Copyists -- Discovery of
Classical Codices -- Boccaccio at Monte Cassino -- Poggio at
Constance -- Convent of S. Gallen -- Bruni's Letter to
Poggio -- Manuscripts discovered by Poggio -- Nicholas of
Treves -- Collection of Greek Manuscripts -- Aurispa,
Filelfo, and Guarino -- The Ruins of Rome -- Their Influence
on Humanism -- Dante and Villani -- Rienzi -- His Idealistic
Patriotism -- Vanity -- Political Incompetence -- Petrarch's
Relations with Rienzi -- Injury to Monuments in Rome --
Poggio's Roman Topography -- Sentimental Feeling for the
Ruins of Antiquity -- Ciriac of Ancona.
Having so far traced the quickening of a new sense for antiquity among
the Italians, it will be well at this point to consider the external
resources of Humanism before continuing the history of the Revival in
the fifteenth century. The condition of the universities, the state of
the book trade before the invention of printing, and the discovery of
manuscripts claim separate attention; nor may it be out of place to
inquire what stimulus the enthusiasm for classical studies received
from the ruins of Rome. A review of these topics will help to explain
the circumstances under which the pioneers of culture had to labour,
and the nature of the crusade they instituted against ignorance in
every part of Europe.
The oldest and most frequented university in Italy, that of Bologna,
is represented as having flourished in the twelfth century.[73] Its
prosperity in early times depended greatly on the personal conduct of
the principal professors, who, when they were not satisfied with their
entertainment, were in the habit of seceding with their pupils to
other cities. Thus high schools were opened from time to time in
Modena, Reggio, and elsewhere by teachers who broke the oaths that
bound them to reside in Bologna, and fixed their centre of education
in a rival town. To make such temporary changes was not difficult in
an age when what we have to call an university, consisted of masters
and scholars, without college buildings, without libraries, without
endowments, and without scientific apparatus. The technical name for
such institutions seems to have been _studium scholarium_, Italianised
into _studio_ or _studio pubblico_.[74] Among the more permanent
results of these secessions may be mentioned the establishment of the
high school at Vicenza by translation from Bologna in 1204, and the
opening of a school at Arezzo under similar circumstances in 1215; the
great University of Padua first saw the light in consequence of
political discords forcing the professors to quit Bologna for a
season.[75]
[Footnote 73: Tiraboschi, _Storia della Letteratura Italiana_, vol.
iv. p. 42 _et seq._, vol. v. p. 60 _et seq._ Large quarto, Modena,
1787.]
[Footnote 74: See Muratori, vol. viii. 15, 75, 372. Matteo Villani,
lib. i. cap. 8.]
[Footnote 75: 'Hoc anno translatum est Studium Scholarium de Bononiâ
Paduam.' Mur. viii. 372.]
The first half of the thirteenth century witnessed the foundation of
these _studi_ in considerable numbers. That of Vercelli was opened in
1228, the municipality providing two certified copyists for the
convenience of students who might wish to purchase text-books.[76] In
1224 the Emperor Frederick II., to whom the south of Italy owed a
precocious eminence in literature, established the University of
Naples by an Imperial diploma.[77] With a view to rendering it the
chief seat of learning in his dominions, he forbade the subjects of
the Regno to frequent other schools, and suppressed the University of
Bologna by letters general. Thereupon Bologna joined the Lombard
League, defied the emperor, and refused to close the schools, which
numbered at that period about ten thousand students of various
nationalities. In 1227 Frederick revoked his edict, and Bologna
remained thenceforward unmolested. Political and internal
vicissitudes, affecting all the Italian universities at this period,
interrupted the prosperity of that of Naples. In the middle of the
thirteenth century Salerno proved a dangerous rival; but when the
House of Anjou was established in the kingdom of the Sicilies, special
privileges were granted, restoring the high school of the capital to
the first rank. Charles I. created a separate court of jurisdiction
for its management. This consisted of a judge and three assessors, one
for the control of foreigners, another for the subjects of the Regno,
and the third for Italians from other states.
[Footnote 76: They were called 'Exemplatores.' See Tiraboschi, vol.
iv. lib. i cap. 2.]
[Footnote 77: Muratori, vii. p. 997. Amari, _Storia dei Mussulmani di
Sicilia_, vol. iii. p. 706.]
In 1264 we find a public school in operation at Ferrara. By its
charter the professors were exempt from military service. The
University of Piacenza came into existence a little earlier. Innocent
IV. established it in 1248, with privileges similar to those of Paris
and Bologna. An important group of _studi pubblici_ owed their origin
to Papal or Imperial charters in the first half of the fourteenth
century. That of Perugia was founded in 1307 by a Bull of Clement V.
That of Rome dated from 1303, in which year Boniface VIII. gave it a
constitution by a special edict; but the translation of the Papal See
to Avignon caused it to fall into premature decadence. The University
of Pisa had already existed for some years, when it received a charter
in 1343 from Clement VI. That of Florence was first founded in
1321.[78] In 1348 a place for its public buildings was assigned
between the Duomo and the Palazzo Pubblico, on the site of what was
afterwards known as the Collegium Eugenianum. A council of eight
burghers was appointed for its management, and a yearly sum was set
apart for its maintenance. In 1349 Clement VI. gave it the same
privileges as the University of Bologna, while in 1364 it received an
Imperial diploma from Charles IV. The same emperor granted charters to
Siena in 1357, to Arezzo in 1356, and to Lucca in 1369. In 1362
Galeazzo Visconti obtained a charter for his University of Pavia from
Charles IV., with the privileges of Paris, Oxford, and Bologna.
[Footnote 78: See Von Reumont, _Lorenzo de' Medici_, vol. i. p. 521.]
It will be observed that the majority of the _studi pubblici_ obtained
charters either from the Pope or the emperor, or from both, less for
the sake of any immediate benefit to be derived from Papal or Imperial
patronage, than because supreme authority in Italy was still referred
to one or other of these heads. It was a great object with each city
to increase its wealth by attracting foreigners as residents, and to
retain the native youth within its precincts. The municipalities,
therefore, accorded immunities from taxation and military service to
_bona fide_ students, prohibited their burghers from seeking rival
places of learning, and in some cases allowed the university
authorities to exercise a special jurisdiction over the motley
multitude of scholars from all countries. How miscellaneous the
concourse in some of the high schools used to be, may be gathered from
the reports extracted by Tiraboschi from their registers. At Vicenza,
for example, in 1209 we find the names of Bohemians, Poles,
Frenchmen, Burgundians, Germans, and Spaniards, as well as of Italians
of divers towns. The rectors of this _studio_ in 1205 included an
Englishman, a Provençal, a German, and a Cremonese. The list of
illustrious students at Bologna between 1265 and 1294 show men of all
the European nationalities, proving that the foreigners attracted by
the university must have formed no inconsiderable element in the whole
population.[79] This will account for the prominent part played by the
students from time to time in the political history of Bologna.[80]
[Footnote 79: In 1320 there were at least 15,000 students in Bologna.]
[Footnote 80: See Sismondi, vol. iii. p. 349.]
The importance attached by great cities to their universities as a
source of strength, may be gathered from the chapter in Matteo
Villani's Chronicle describing the foundation of the _studio pubblico_
in Florence.[81] He expressly mentions that the Signory were induced
to take this step in consequence of the depopulation inflicted by the
Black Death of 1348. By drawing residents to Florence from other
States, they hoped to increase the number of the inhabitants, and to
restore the decayed fame and splendour of the commonwealth.[82] At the
same time they thought that serious studies might put an end to the
demoralisation produced in all classes by the plague. With this object
in view, they engaged the best teachers, and did not hesitate to
devote a yearly sum of 2,500 golden florins to the maintenance of
their high school. Bologna, which owed even more than Florence to its
university, is said to have lavished as much as half of its revenue,
about 20,000 ducats, on the pay of professors and other incidental
expenses. The actual cost incurred by cities through their schools
cannot, however, be accurately estimated, since it varied from year to
year according to the engagements made with special teachers. At
Pavia, for example, in 1400, the university supported in Canon Law
several eminent doctors, in Civil Law thirteen, in Medicine five, in
Philosophy three, in Astrology one, in Greek one, and in Eloquence
one.[83] Whether this staff was maintained after the lapse of another
twenty years we do not know for certain.
[Footnote 81: Lib. i. cap. 8.]
[Footnote 82: 'Volendo attrarre gente alla nostra città, e dilatarla
in onore, e dare materia a' suoi cittadini d'essere scienziati e
virtudiosi.']
[Footnote 83: Cf. Corio, p. 290. He gives the names of the professors
who attended at the funeral of Gian Galeazzo Visconti.]
The subjects taught in the high schools were Canon and Civil Law,
Medicine, and Theology. These faculties, important for the
professional education of the public, formed the staple of the
academical curriculum. Chairs of Rhetoric, Philosophy, and Astronomy
were added according to occasion, the last sometimes including the
study of judicial astrology. If we inquire how the humanists or
professors of classic literature were related to the universities, we
find that, at first at any rate, they always occupied a second rank.
The permanent teaching remained in the hands of jurists, who enjoyed
life engagements at a high rate of pay, while the Latinists and
Grecians could only aspire to the temporary occupation of the Chair of
Rhetoric, with salaries considerably lower than those of lawyers or
physicians. The cause of this inferiority is easily explained. It was
natural that important and remunerative branches of learning like law
and medicine should attract a greater number of students than pure
literature, and that their professors should be better paid than the
teachers of eloquence. Padua, Bologna, and Pavia in particular
retained their legal speciality throughout the period of the
Renaissance, and remained but little open to humanistic influences. At
Padua we find from Sanudo's Diary[84] that an eminent jurist received
a stipend of 1,000 ducats. A Doctor of Medicine at the same
university, in 1491, received a similar stipend, together with the
right of private practice. At Bologna the famous jurist Abbas Siculus
(Niccolo de' Tudeschi) drew 800 scudi yearly; at Padua Giovanni da
Imola in 1406, and Paolo da Castro in 1430, drew a sum of 600
ducats.[85] About the same time (1453) Lauro Quirino, who professed
rhetoric at Padua, was paid at the rate of only forty ducats yearly,
while Lorenzo Valla, at Pavia, filled the Chair of Eloquence with an
annual stipend of fifty sequins. The disparity between the
remuneration of jurists and that of humanists was not so great at all
the universities. Florence in especial formed a notable exception.
From the date of its commencement the Florentine _studio_ was partial
to literature; and it is worth remarking that when Lorenzo de' Medici
transferred the high school to Pisa, he retained at Florence the
professors of the liberal sciences and _belles-lettres_. The great
reputation of eminent rhetoricians, again, often secured for them
temporary engagements at a high rate. Thus we gather from Rosmini's
'Life of Filelfo' that this humanist received from Venice the offer of
500 sequins yearly as remuneration for his professorial services.
Bologna proposed an annual stipend of 450 sequins when he undertook to
lecture upon eloquence and moral philosophy. At Florence his income
amounted to 350 golden florins, secured for three years, and
subsequently raised to 450. With Siena he stipulated for 350 golden
florins for two years. At Milan his Chair of Eloquence was endowed
with 500 golden florins, and this salary was afterwards increased to
700. Nicholas V. offered him an annual income of 600 ducats if he
would devote himself to the translation of Greek books into Latin,
while Sixtus IV. tried to bring him to Rome by proposing 600 Roman
florins as the stipend of the Chair of Rhetoric.
[Footnote 84: Mur. xxii. 990.]
[Footnote 85: See Voigt, p. 447.]
The fact, however, remains that while the special study of antiquity
preoccupied the minds of the Italians, and attracted all the finer
intellects among the youth ambitious of distinction, its professors
never succeeded in taking complete possession of the universities.
Their position there was always that of wandering stars and resident
aliens. This accounts in some measure for the bitter hostility and
scorn which they displayed against the teachers of theology and law
and medicine. The real home of the humanists was in the Courts of
princes, the palaces of the cultivated burghers, the Roman C
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