The Civilisation of the Renaissance in Italy

RELIGION AND THE SPIRIT OF THE RENAISSANCE

BUT in order to reach a definite conclusion with regard to the religious sense of the men of this period, we must adopt a different method. From their intellectual attitude in general, we can infer their relation both to the Divine idea and to the existing religion of their age.

These modern men, the representatives of the culture of Italy, were born with the same religious instincts as other mediæval Europeans. But their powerful individuality made them in religion, as in other matters, altogether subjective, and the intense charm which the discovery of the inner and outer universe exercised upon them rendered them markedly worldly. In the rest of Europe religion remained, till a much later period, something given from without, and in practical life egoism and sensuality alternated with devotion and repentance. The latter had no spiritual competitors, as in Italy, or only to a far smaller extent.

Further, the close and frequent relations of Italy with Byzantium and the Mohammedan peoples had produced a dispassionate tolerance which weakened the ethnographical conception of a privileged Christendom. And when classical antiquity with its men and institutions became an ideal of life, as well as the greatest of historical memories, ancient speculation and scepticism obtained in many cases a complete mastery over the minds of Italians.

Since, again, the Italians were the first modern people of Europe who gave themselves boldly to speculations on freedom and necessity, and since they did so under violent and lawless political circumstances, in which evil seemed often to win a splendid and lasting victory, their belief in God began to waver, and their view of the government of the world became fatalistic. And when their passionate natures refused to rest in the sense of uncertainty, they made a shift to help themselves out with ancient, oriental, or mediæval superstition. They took to astrology and magic.

Finally, these intellectual giants, these representatives of the Renaissance, show, in respect to religion, a quality which is common in youthful natures. Distinguishing keenly between good and evil, they yet are conscious of no sin. Every disturbance of their inward harmony they feel themselves able to make good out of the plastic resources of their own nature, and therefore they feel no repentance. The need of salvation thus becomes felt more and more dimly, while the ambitions and the intellectual activity of the present either shut out altogether every thought of a world to come, or else cause it to assume a poetic instead of a dogmatic form.

When we look on all this as pervaded and often perverted by the all-powerful Italian imagination, we obtain a picture of that time which is certainly more in accordance with truth than are vague declamations against modern paganism. And closer investigation often reveals to us that underneath this outward shell much genuine religion could still survive.

The fuller discussion of these points must be limited to a few of the most essential explanations.

That religion should again become an affair of the individual and of his own personal feeling was inevitable when the Church became corrupt in doctrine and tyrannous in practice, and is a proof that the European mind was still alive. It is true that this showed itself in many different ways. While the mystical and ascetical sects of the North lost no time in creating new outward forms for their new modes of thought and feeling, each individual in Italy went his own way, and thousands wandered on the sea of life without any religious guidance whatever. All the more must we admire those who attained and held fast to a personal religion. They were not to blame for being unable to have any part or lot in the old Church, as she then was; nor would it be reasonable to expect that they should all of them go through that mighty spiritual labour which was appointed to the German reformers. The form and aim of this personal faith, as it showed itself in the better minds, will be set forth at the close of our work.

The worldliness, through which the Renaissance seems to offer so striking a contrast to the Middle Ages, owed its first origin to the flood of new thoughts, purposes, and views, which transformed the mediæval conception of nature and man. This spirit is not in itself more hostile to religion than that ‘culture’ which now holds its place, but which can give us only a feeble notion of the universal ferment which the discovery of a new world of greatness then called forth. This worldliness was not frivolous, but earnest, and was ennobled by art and poetry. It is a lofty necessity of the modern spirit that this attitude, once gained, can never again be lost, that an irresistible impulse forces us to the investigation of men and things, and that we must hold this enquiry to be our proper end and work.[1113 - See the quotations from Pico’s Discourse on the Dignity of Man above, pp. 354-5.] How soon and by what paths this search will lead us back to God, and in what ways the religious temper of the individual will be affected by it, are questions which cannot be met by any general answer. The Middle Ages, which spared themselves the trouble of induction and free enquiry, can have no right to impose upon us their dogmatical verdict in a matter of such vast importance.

To the study of man, among many other causes, was due the tolerance and indifference with which the Mohammedan religion was regarded. The knowledge and admiration of the remarkable civilisation which Islam, particularly before the Mongol inundation, had attained, was peculiar to Italy from the time of the Crusades. This sympathy was fostered by the half-Mohammedan government of some Italian princes, by dislike and even contempt for the existing Church, and by constant commercial intercourse with the harbours of the Eastern and Southern Mediterranean.[1114 - Not to speak of the fact that a similar tolerance or indifference was not uncommon among the Arabians themselves.] It can be shown that in the thirteenth century the Italians recognised a Mohammedan ideal of nobleness, dignity, and pride, which they loved to connect with the person of a Sultan. A Mameluke Sultan is commonly meant; if any name is mentioned, it is the name of Saladin.[1115 - So in the Decameron. Sultans without name in Massuccio nov. 46, 48, 49; one called ‘Rè di Fes,’ another ‘Rè di Tunisi.’ In Dittamondo, ii. 25, we read, ‘il buono Saladin.’ For the Venetian alliance with the Sultan of Egypt in the year 1202, see G. Hanotaux in the Revue Historique iv. (1877) pp. 74-102. There were naturally also many attacks on Mohammedanism. For the Turkish woman baptized first in Venice and again in Rome, see Cechetti i. 487.] Even the Osmanli Turks, whose destructive tendencies were no secret, gave the Italians, as we have shown above (p. 92 (#x6_x_6_i20), sqq.), only half a fright, and a peaceable accord with them was looked upon as no impossibility. Along with this tolerance, however, appeared the bitterest religious opposition to Mohammedanism; the clergy, says Filelfo, should come forward against it, since it prevailed over a great part of the world and was more dangerous to Christendom than Judaism was;[1116 - Philelphi Epistolae, Venet. 1502 fol. 90 b. sqq.] along with the readiness to compromise with the Turks, appeared the passionate desire for a war against them which possessed Pius II. during the whole of his pontificate, and which many of the humanists expressed in high-flown declamations.

The truest and most characteristic expression of this religious indifference is the famous story of the Three Rings, which Lessing has put into the mouth of his Nathan, after it had been already told centuries earlier, though with some reserve, in the ‘Hundred Old Novels’ (nov. 72 or 73), and more boldly in Boccaccio.[1117 - Decamerone i. nov. 3. Boccaccio is the first to name the Christian religion, which the others do not. For an old French authority of the thirteenth century, see Tobler, Li di dou Vrai Aniel, Leipzig, 1871. For the Hebrew story of Abr. Abulafia (b. 1241 in Spain, came to Italy about 1290 in the hope of converting the Pope to Judaism), in which two servants claim each to hold the jewel buried for the son, see Steinschneider, Polem. und Apol. Lit. der Arab. Sprache, pp. 319 and 360. From these and other sources we conclude that the story originally was less definite than as we now have it (in Abul. e.g. it is used polemically against the Christians), and that the doctrine of the equality of the three religions is a later addition. Comp. Reuter, Gesch. der Relig. Aufklärung im M. A. (Berlin, 1877), iii. 302 sqq. 390.] In what language and in what corner of the Mediterranean it was first told, can never be known; most likely the original was much more plain-spoken than the two Italian adaptations. The religious postulate on which it rests, namely Deism, will be discussed later on in its wider significance for this period. The same idea is repeated, though in a clumsy caricature, in the famous proverb of the ‘three who have deceived the world, that is, Moses, Christ, and Mohammed.’[1118 - De Tribus Impostoribus, the name of a work attributed to Frederick II. among many other people, and which by no means answers the expectations raised by the title. Latest ed. by Weller, Heilbronn, 1876. The nationality of the author and the date of composition are both disputed. See Reuter, op. cit. ii. 273-302.] If the Emperor Frederick II., in whom this saying is said to have originated, really thought so, he probably expressed himself with more wit. Ideas of the same kind were also current in Islam.

At the height of the Renaissance, towards the close of the fifteenth century, Luigi Pulci offers us an example of the same mode of thought in the ‘Morgante Maggiore.’ The imaginary world of which his story treats is divided, as in all heroic poems of romance, into a Christian and a Mohammedan camp. In accordance with the mediæval temper, the victory of the Christian and the final reconciliation among the combatants was attended by the baptism of the defeated Islamites, and the Improvisatori, who preceded Pulci in the treatment of these subjects, must have made free use of this stock incident. It was Pulci’s object to parody his predecessors, particularly the worst among them, and this he does by those appeals to God, Christ, and the Madonna, with which each canto begins; and still more clearly by the sudden conversions and baptisms, the utter senselessness of which must have struck every reader or hearer. This ridicule leads him further to the confession of his faith in the relative goodness of all religions,[1119 - In the mouth, nevertheless, of the fiend Astarotte, canto xxv. str. 231 sqq. Comp. str. 141 sqq.] which faith, notwithstanding his professions of orthodoxy,[1120 - Canto xxviii. str. 38 sqq.] rests on an essentially theistic basis. In another point too he departs widely from mediæval conceptions. The alternatives in past centuries were: Christian, or else Pagan and Mohammedan; orthodox believer or heretic. Pulci draws a picture of the Giant Margutte[1121 - Canto xviii. str. 112 to the end.] who, disregarding each and every religion, jovially confesses to every form of vice and sensuality, and only reserves to himself the merit of having never broken faith. Perhaps the poet intended to make something of this—in his way—honest monster, possibly to have led him into virtuous paths by Morgante, but he soon got tired of his own creation, and in the next canto brought him to a comic end.[1122 - Pulci touches, though hastily, on a similar conception in his Prince Chiaristante (canto xxi. str. 101 sqq., 121 sqq., 145 sqq., 163 sqq.), who believes nothing and causes himself and his wife to be worshipped. We are reminded of Sigismondo Malatesta (p. 245 (#x10_x_10_i29)).] Margutte has been brought forward as a proof of Pulci’s frivolity; but he is needed to complete the picture of the poetry of the fifteenth century. It was natural that it should somewhere present in grotesque proportions the figure of an untamed egoism, insensible to all established rule, and yet with a remnant of honourable feeling left. In other poems sentiments are put into the mouths of giants, fiends, infidels, and Mohammedans which no Christian knight would venture to utter.

Antiquity exercised an influence of another kind than that of Islam, and this not through its religion, which was but too much like the Catholicism of this period, but through its philosophy. Ancient literature, now worshipped as something incomparable, is full of the victory of philosophy over religious tradition. An endless number of systems and fragments of systems were suddenly presented to the Italian mind, not as curiosities or even as heresies, but almost with the authority of dogmas, which had now to be reconciled rather than discriminated. In nearly all these various opinions and doctrines a certain kind of belief in God was implied; but taken altogether they formed a marked contrast to the Christian faith in a Divine government of the world. And there was one central question, which mediæval theology had striven in vain to solve, and which now urgently demanded an answer from the wisdom of the ancients, namely, the relation of Providence to the freedom or necessity of the human will. To write the history of this question even superficially from the fourteenth century onwards, would require a whole volume. A few hints must here suffice.

If we take Dante and his contemporaries as evidence, we shall find that ancient philosophy first came into contact with Italian life in the form which offered the most marked contrast to Christianity, that is to say, Epicureanism. The writings of Epicurus were no longer preserved, and even at the close of the classical age a more or less one-sided conception had been formed of his philosophy. Nevertheless, that phase of Epicureanism which can be studied in Lucretius, and especially in Cicero, is quite sufficient to make men familiar with a godless universe. To what extent his teaching was actually understood, and whether the name of the problematic Greek sage was not rather a catchword for the multitude, it is hard to say. It is probable that the Dominican Inquisition used it against men who could not be reached by a more definite accusation. In the case of sceptics born before the time was ripe, whom it was yet hard to convict of positive heretical utterances, a moderate degree of luxurious living may have sufficed to provoke the charge. The word is used in this conventional sense by Giovanni Villani,[1123 - Giov. Villani, iv. 29, vi. 46. The name occurs as early as 1150 in Northern countries. It is defined by William of Malmesbury (iii. 237, ed. Londin, 1840): ‘Epicureorum … qui opinantur animam corpore solutam in aerem evanescere, in auras effluere.’] when he explains the Florentine fires of 1115 and 1117 as a Divine judgment on heresies, among others, ‘on the luxurious and gluttonous sect of Epicureans.’ The same writer says of Manfred, ‘His life was Epicurean, since he believed neither in God, nor in the Saints, but only in bodily pleasure.’

Dante speaks still more clearly in the ninth and tenth cantos of the ‘Inferno.’ That terrible fiery field covered with half-opened tombs, from which issued cries of hopeless agony, was peopled by the two great classes of those whom the Church had vanquished or expelled in the thirteenth century. The one were heretics who opposed the Church by deliberately spreading false doctrine; the other were Epicureans, and their sin against the Church lay in their general disposition, which was summed up in the belief that the soul dies with the body.[1124 - See the argument in the third book of Lucretius. The name of Epicurean was afterwards used as synonymous with freethinker. Lorenzo Valla (Opp. 795 sqq.) speaks as follows of Epicurus: ‘Quis eo parcior, quis contentior, quis modestior, et quidem in nullo philosophorum omnium minus invenio fuisse vitiorum, plurimique honesti viri cum Graecorum, tum Romanorum, Epicurei fuerunt.’ Valla was defending himself to Eugenius IV. against the attacks of Fra Antonio da Bitonto and others.] The Church was well aware that this one doctrine, if it gained ground, must be more ruinous to her authority than all the teachings of the Manichaeans and Paterini, since it took away all reason for her interference in the affairs of men after death. That the means which she used in her struggles were precisely what had driven the most gifted natures to unbelief and despair was what she naturally would not herself admit.

Dante’s loathing of Epicurus, or of what he took to be his doctrine, was certainly sincere. The poet of the life to come could not but detest the denier of immortality; and a world neither made nor ruled by God, no less than the vulgar objects of earthly life which the system appeared to countenance, could not but be intensely repugnant to a nature like his. But if we look closer, we find that certain doctrines of the ancients made even on him an impression which forced the biblical doctrine of the Divine government into the background, unless, indeed, it was his own reflection, the influence of opinions then prevalent, or loathing for the injustice that seemed to rule this world, which made him give up the belief in a special Providence.[1125 - Inferno, vii. 67-96.] His God leaves all the details of the world’s government to a deputy, Fortune, whose sole work it is to change and change again all earthly things, and who can disregard the wailings of men in unalterable beatitude. Nevertheless, Dante does not for a moment loose his hold on the moral responsibility of man; he believes in free will.

The belief in the freedom of the will, in the popular sense of the words, has always prevailed in Western countries. At all times men have been held responsible for their actions, as though this freedom were a matter of course. The case is otherwise with the religious and philosophical doctrine, which labours under the difficulty of harmonising the nature of the will with the laws of the universe at large. We have here to do with a question of more or less, which every moral estimate must take into account. Dante is not wholly free from those astrological superstitions which illumined the horizon of his time with deceptive light, but they do not hinder him from rising to a worthy conception of human nature. ‘The stars,’ he makes his Marco Lombardo say,[1126 - Purgatorio, xvi. 73. Compare the theory of the influence of the planets in the Convito. Even the fiend Astarotte in Pulci (Morgante, xxv. str. 150) attests the freedom of the human will and the justice of God.] ‘the stars give the first impulse to your actions,’ but

Light has been given you for good and evil
And free volition; which, if some fatigue
In the first battles with the heavens it suffers,
Afterwards conquers all, if well ‘tis nurtured.

Others might seek the necessity which annulled human freedom in another power than the stars, but the question was henceforth an open and inevitable one. So far as it was a question for the schools or the pursuit of isolated thinkers, its treatment belongs to the historian of philosophy. But inasmuch as it entered into the consciousness of a wider public, it is necessary for us to say a few words respecting it.

The fourteenth century was chiefly stimulated by the writings of Cicero, who, though in fact an eclectic, yet, by his habit of setting forth the opinions of different schools, without coming to a decision between them, exercised the influence of a sceptic. Next in importance came Seneca, and the few works of Aristotle which had been translated into Latin. The immediate fruit of these studies was the capacity to reflect on great subjects, if not in direct opposition to the authority of the Church, at all events independently of it.

In the course of the fifteenth century the works of antiquity were discovered and diffused with extraordinary rapidity. All the writings of the Greek philosophers which we ourselves possess were now, at least in the form of Latin translations, in everybody’s hands. It is a curious fact that some of the most zealous apostles of this new culture were men of the strictest piety, or even ascetics (p. 273 (#x11_x_11_i20)). Fra Ambrogio Camaldolese, as a spiritual dignitary chiefly occupied with ecclesiastical affairs, and as a literary man with the translation of the Greek Fathers of the Church, could not repress the humanistic impulse, and at the request of Cosimo de’Medici, undertook to translate Diogenes Laertius into Latin.[1127 - Comp. Voigt, Wiederbelebung, 165-170.] His contemporaries, Niccolò Niccoli, Griannozzo Manetti, Donato Acciajuoli, and Pope Nicholas V.,[1128 - Vespasiano Fiorent. pp. 26, 320, 435, 626, 651. Murat. xx. col. 532.] united to a many-sided humanism profound biblical scholarship and deep piety. In Vittorino da Feltre the same temper has been already noticed (p. 213 (#x9_x_9_i29) sqq.). The same Matthew Vegio, who added a thirteenth book to the ‘Æneid,’ had an enthusiasm for the memory of St. Augustine and his mother Monica which cannot have been without a deeper influence upon him. The result of all these tendencies was that the Platonic Academy at Florence deliberately chose for its object the reconciliation of the spirit of antiquity with that of Christianity. It was a remarkable oasis in the humanism of the period.[1129 - In Platina’s introd. to his Life of Christ the religious influence of the Renaissance is curiously exemplified (Vitæ Paparum, at the beginning): Christ, he says, fully attained the fourfold Platonic ‘nobilitas’ according to his ‘genus’: ‘quem enim ex gentilibus habemus qui gloria et nomine cum David et Salomone, quique sapientia et doctrina cum Christo ipso conferri merito debeat et possit?’ Judaism, like classical antiquity, was also explained on a Christian hypothesis. Pico and Pietro Galatino endeavoured to show that Christian doctrine was foreshadowed in the Talmud and other Jewish writings.]

This humanism was in fact pagan, and became more and more so as its sphere widened in the fifteenth century. Its representatives, whom we have already described as the advanced guard of an unbridled individualism, display as a rule such a character that even their religion, which is sometimes professed very definitely, becomes a matter of indifference to us. They easily got the name of atheists, if they showed themselves indifferent to religion, and spoke freely against the Church; but not one of them ever professed, or dared to profess, a formal, philosophical atheism.[1130 - On Pomponazzo, see the special works; among others, Bitter, Geschichte der Philosophie, bd. ix.] If they sought for any leading principle, it must have been a kind of superficial rationalism—a careless inference from the many and contradictory opinions of antiquity with which they busied themselves, and from the discredit into which the Church and her doctrines had fallen. This was the sort of reasoning which was near bringing Galeottus Martius[1131 - Paul. Jovii, Elog. Lit. p. 90. G. M. was, however, compelled to recant publicly. His letter to Lorenzo (May 17, 1478) begging him to intercede with the Pope, ‘satis enim poenarum dedi,’ is given by Malagola, Codro Urceo, p. 433.] to the stake, had not his former pupil, Pope Sixtus IV., perhaps at the request of Lorenzo de’Medici, saved him from the hands of the Inquisition. Galeotto had ventured to write that the man who walked uprightly, and acted according to the natural law born within him, would go to heaven, whatever nation he belonged to.

Let us take, by way of example, the religious attitude of one of the smaller men in the great army. Codrus Urceus[1132 - Codri Urcei Opera, with his life by Bart. Bianchini; and in his philological lectures, pp. 65, 151, 278, &c.] was first the tutor of the last Ordelaffo, Prince of Forlì, and afterwards for many years professor at Bologna. Against the Church and the monks his language is as abusive as that of the rest. His tone in general is reckless to the last degree, and he constantly introduces himself in all his local history and gossip. But he knows how to speak to edification of the true God-Man, Jesus Christ, and to commend himself by letter to the prayers of a saintly priest.[1133 - On one occasion he says, ‘In Laudem Christi:’Phoebum alii vates musasque Jovemque sequuntur,At mihi pro vero nomine Christus erit.He also (fol. x. b) attacks the Bohemians. Huss and Jerome of Prague are defended by Poggio in his famous letter to Lion. Aretino, and placed on a level with Mucius Scaevola and Socrates.] On one occasion, after enumerating the follies of the pagan religions, he thus goes on: ‘Our theologians, too, fight and quarrel “de lana caprina,” about the Immaculate Conception, Antichrist, Sacraments, Predestination, and other things, which were better let alone than talked of publicly.’ Once, when he was not at home, his room and manuscripts were burnt. When he heard the news he stood opposite a figure of the Madonna in the street, and cried to it: ‘Listen to what I tell you; I am not mad, I am saying what I mean. If I ever call upon you in the hour of my death, you need not hear me or take me among your own, for I will go and spend eternity with the devil.’[1134 - ‘Audi virgo ea quae tibi mentis compos et ex animo dicam. Si forte cum ad ultimum vitae finem pervenero supplex accedam ad te spem oratum, ne me audias neve inter tuos accipias oro; cum infernis diis in aeternum vitam degere decrevi.’] After which speech he found it desirable to spend six months in retirement at the house of a wood-cutter. With all this, he was so superstitious that prodigies and omens gave him incessant frights, leaving him no belief to spare for the immortality of the soul. When his hearers questioned him on the matter, he answered that no one knew what became of a man, of his soul or his body, after death, and the talk about another life was only fit to frighten old women. But when he came to die, he commended in his will his soul or his spirit[1135 - ‘Animum meum seu animam’—a distinction by which philology used then to perplex theology.] to Almighty God, exhorted his weeping pupils to fear the Lord, and especially to believe in immortality and future retribution, and received the Sacrament with much fervour. We have no guarantee that more famous men in the same calling, however significant their opinions may be, were in practical life any more consistent. It is probable that most of them wavered inwardly between incredulity and a remnant of the faith in which they were brought up, and outwardly held for prudential reasons to the Church.

Through the connexion of rationalism with the newly born science of historical investigation, some timid attempts at biblical criticism may here and there have been made. A saying of Pius II.[1136 - Platina, Vitae Pontiff. p. 311: ‘Christianam fidem si miraculis non esset confirmata, honestate sua recipi debuisse.’ It may be questioned whether all that Platina attributes to the Pope is in fact authentic.] has been recorded, which seems intended to prepare the way for such criticism: ‘Even if Christianity were not confirmed by miracles, it ought still to be accepted on account of its morality.’ When Lorenzo Valla calls Moses and the Evangelists historians, he does not seek to diminish their dignity and reputation; but is nevertheless conscious that in these words lies as decided a contradiction to the traditional view taken by the Church, as in the denial that the Apostles’ Creed was the work of all the Apostles, or that the letter of Abgarus to Christ was genuine.[1137 - Preface to the Historia Ferdinandi I. (Hist. Ztschr. xxxiii. 61) and Antid. in Pogg. lib. iv. Opp. p. 256 sqq. Pontanus (De Sermone, i. 18) says that Valla did not hesitate ‘dicere profiterique palam habere se quoque in Christum spicula.’ Pontano, however, was a friend of Valla’s enemies at Naples.] The legends of the Church, in so far as they contained arbitrary versions of the biblical miracles, were freely ridiculed,[1138 - Especially when the monks improvised them in the pulpit. But the old and recognised miracles did not remain unassailed. Firenzuola (Opere, vol. ii. p. 208, in the tenth novel) ridicules the Franciscans of Novara, who wanted to spend money which they had embezzled, in adding a chapel to their church, ‘dove fusse dipinta quella bella storia, quando S. Francesco predicava agli uccelli nel deserto; e quando ei fece la santa zuppa, e che l’agnolo Gabriello gli portò i zoccoli.’] and this reacted on the religious sense of the people. Where Judaising heretics are mentioned, we must understand chiefly those who denied the Divinity of Christ, which was probably the offence for which Giorgio da Novara was burnt at Bologna about the year 1500.[1139 - Some facts about him are to be found in Bapt. Mantuan. De Patientia, l. iii. cap. 13.] But again at Bologna in the year 1497 the Dominican Inquisitor was forced to let the physician Gabrielle da Salò, who had powerful patrons, escape with a simple expression of penitence,[1140 - Bursellis, Ann. Bonon. in Murat. xxiii. col. 915.] although he was in the habit of maintaining that Christ was not God, but son of Joseph and Mary, and conceived in the usual way; that by his cunning he had deceived the world to its ruin; that he may have died on the cross on account of crimes which he had committed; that his religion would soon come to an end; that his body was not really contained in the sacrament, and that he performed his miracles, not through any divine power, but through the influence of the heavenly bodies. This latter statement is most characteristic of the time, Faith is gone, but magic still holds its ground.[1141 - How far these blasphemous utterances sometimes went, has been shown by Gieseler (Kirchengeschichte, ii. iv. § 154, anm.) who quotes several striking instances.]

A worse fate befell a Canon of Bergamo, Zanino de Solcia, a few years earlier (1459), who had asserted that Christ did not suffer from love to man, but under the influence of the stars, and who advanced other curious scientific and moral ideas. He was forced to abjure his errors, and paid for them by perpetual imprisonment.[1142 - Voigt, Enea Silvio, iii. 581. It is not known what happened to the Bishop Petro of Aranda who (1500) denied the Divinity of Christ and the existence of Hell and Purgatory, and denounced indulgences as a device of the popes invented for their private advantage. For him, see Burchardi Diarium, ed. Leibnitz, p. 63 sqq.]

With respect to the moral government of the world, the humanists seldom get beyond a cold and resigned consideration of the prevalent violence and misrule. In this mood the many works ‘On Fate,’ or whatever name they bear, are written. They tell of the turning of the wheel of Fortune, and of the instability of earthly, especially political, things. Providence is only brought in because the writers would still be ashamed of undisguised fatalism, of the avowal of their ignorance, or of useless complaints. Gioviano Pontano[1143 - Jov. Pontanus, De Fortuna, Opp. i. 792-921. Comp. Opp. ii. 286.] ingeniously illustrates the nature of that mysterious something which men call Fortune by a hundred incidents, most of which belonged to his own experience. The subject is treated more humorously by Æneas Sylvius, in the form of a vision seen in a dream.[1144 - Æn. Sylvii, Opera, p. 611.] The aim of Poggio, on the other hand, in a work written in his old age,[1145 - Poggius, De Miseriis Humanae Conditionis.] is to represent the world as a vale of tears, and to fix the happiness of various classes as low as possible. This tone became in future the prevalent one. Distinguished men drew up a debit and credit of the happiness and unhappiness of their lives, and generally found that the latter outweighed the former. The fate of Italy and the Italians, so far as it could be told in the year 1510, has been described with dignity and an almost elegiac pathos by Tristano Caracciolo.[1146 - Caracciolo, De Varietate Fortunae, in Murat. xxii., one of the most valuable writings of a period rich in such works. On Fortune in public processions, see p. 421.] Applying this general tone of feeling to the humanists themselves, Pierio Valeriano afterwards composed his famous treatise (pp. 276-279). Some of these themes, such as the fortunes of Leo, were most suggestive. All the good that can be said of him politically has been briefly and admirably summed up by Francesco Vettori; the picture of Leo’s pleasures is given by Paolo Giovio and in the anonymous biography;[1147 - Leonis X. Vita Anonyma, in Roscoe, ed. Bossi, xii. p. 153.] and the shadows which attended his prosperity are drawn with inexorable truth by the same Pierio Valeriano.

We cannot, on the other hand, read without a kind of awe how men sometimes boasted of their fortune in public inscriptions. Giovanni II. Bentivoglio, ruler of Bologna, ventured to carve in stone on the newly built tower by his palace, that his merit and his fortune had given him richly of all that could be desired[1148 - Bursellis, Ann. Bonon. in Murat. xxiii. col. 909: ‘Monimentum hoc conditum a Joanne Bentivolo secundo patriae rectore, cui virtus et fortuna cuncta quæ optari possunt affatim praestiterunt.’ It is still not quite certain whether this inscription was outside, and visible to everybody, or, like another mentioned just before, hidden on one of the foundation stones. In the latter case, a fresh idea is involved. By this secret inscription, which perhaps only the chronicler knew of, Fortune is to be magically bound to the building.[According to the words of the chronicle, the inscription cannot have stood on the walls of the newly built tower. The exact spot is uncertain.—L.G.]]—and this a few years before his expulsion. The ancients, when they spoke in this tone, had nevertheless a sense of the envy of the gods. In Italy it was probably the Condottieri (p. 22 (#x4_x_4_i33)) who first ventured to boast so loudly of their fortune.

But the way in which resuscitated antiquity affected religion most powerfully, was not through any doctrines or philosophical system, but through a general tendency which it fostered. The men, and in some respects the institutions of antiquity were preferred to those of the Middle Ages, and in the eager attempt to imitate and reproduce them, religion was left to take care of itself. All was absorbed in the admiration for historical greatness (part ii. chap. iii., and above, passim). To this the philologians added many special follies of their own, by which they became the mark for general attention. How far Paul II. was justified in calling his Abbreviators and their friends to account for their paganism, is certainly a matter of great doubt, as his biographer and chief victim, Platina, (pp. 231, 331) has shown a masterly skill in explaining his vindictiveness on other grounds, and especially in making him play a ludicrous figure. The charges of infidelity, paganism,[1149 - ‘Quod nimium gentilitatis amatores essemus.’ Paganism, at least in externals, certainly went rather far. Inscriptions lately found in the Catacombs show that the members of the Academy described themselves as ‘sacerdotes,’ and called Pomponius Lætus ‘pontifex maximus;’ the latter once addressed Platina as ‘pater sanctissimus.’ Gregorovius, vii. 578.] denial of immortality, and so forth, were not made against the accused till the charge of high treason had broken down. Paul, indeed, if we are correctly informed about him, was by no means the man to judge of intellectual things. He knew little Latin, and spoke Italian at Consistories and in diplomatic negotiations. It was he who exhorted the Romans to teach their children nothing beyond reading and writing. His priestly narrowness of view reminds us of Savonarola (p. 476 (#x16_x_16_i52)), with the difference that Paul might fairly have been told that he and his like were in great part to blame if culture made men hostile to religion. It cannot, nevertheless, be doubted that he felt a real anxiety about the pagan tendencies which surrounded him. And what, in truth, may not the humanists have allowed themselves at the court of the profligate pagan, Sigismondo Malatesta? How far these men, destitute for the most part of fixed principle, ventured to go, depended assuredly on the sort of influences they were exposed to. Nor could they treat of Christianity without paganising it (part iii. chap. x.). It is curious, for instance, to notice how far Gioviano Pontano carried this confusion. He speaks of a saint not only as ‘divus,’ but as ‘deus;’ the angels he holds to be identical with the genii of antiquity;[1150 - While the plastic arts at all events distinguished between angels and ‘putti,’ and used the former for all serious purposes. In the Annal. Estens. Murat. xx. col. 468, the ‘amorino’ is naively called ‘instar Cupidinis angelus.’ Comp. the speech made before Leo X. (1521), in which the passage occurs: ‘Quare et te non jam Juppiter, sed Virgo Capitolina Dei parens quæ hujus urbis et collis reliquis præsides, Romamque et Capitolium tutaris.’ Greg. viii. 294.] and his notion of immortality reminds us of the old kingdom of the shades. This spirit occasionally appears in the most extravagant shapes. In 1526, when Siena was attacked by the exiled party,[1151 - Della Valle, Lettere Sanesi, iii. 18.] the worthy canon Tizio, who tells us the story himself, rose from his bed on the 22nd July, called to mind what is written in the third book of Macrobius,’[1152 - Macrob. Saturnal. iii. 9. Doubtless the canon did not omit the gestures there prescribed. Comp. Gregorovius, viii. 294, for Bembo. For the paganism thus prevalent in Rome, see also Ranke, Päpste, i. 73 sqq. Comp. also Gregorovius, viii. 268.] celebrated mass, and then pronounced against the enemy the curse with which his author had supplied him, only altering ‘Tellus mater teque Juppiter obtestor’ into ‘Tellus teque Christe Deus obtestor.’ After he had done this for three days, the enemy retreated. On the one side, these things strike us an affair of mere style and fashion; on the other, as a symptom of religious decadence.

CHAPTER IV.

MIXTURE OF ANCIENT AND MODERN SUPERSTITION

BUT in another way, and that dogmatically, antiquity exercised a perilous influence. It imparted to the Renaissance its own forms of superstition. Some fragments of this had survived in Italy all through the Middle Ages, and the resuscitation of the whole was thereby made so much the more easy. The part played by the imagination in the process need not be dwelt upon. This only could have silenced the critical intellect of the Italians.

The belief in a Divine government of the world was in many minds destroyed by the spectacle of so much injustice and misery. Others, like Dante, surrendered at all events this life to the caprices of chance, and if they nevertheless retained a sturdy faith, it was because they held that the higher destiny of man would be accomplished in the life to come. But when the belief in immortality began to waver, then Fatalism got the upper hand, or sometimes the latter came first and had the former as its consequence.

The gap thus opened was in the first place filled by the astrology of antiquity, or even of the Arabians. From the relations of the planets among themselves and to the signs of the zodiac, future events and the course of whole lives were inferred, and the most weighty decisions were taken in consequence. In many cases the line of action thus adopted at the suggestion of the stars may not have been more immoral than that which would otherwise have been followed. But too often the decision must have been made at the cost of honour and conscience. It is profoundly instructive to observe how powerless culture and enlightenment were against this delusion; since the latter had its support in the ardent imagination of the people, in the passionate wish to penetrate and determine the future. Antiquity, too, was on the side of astrology.

At the beginning of the thirteenth century this superstition suddenly appeared in the foreground of Italian life. The Emperor Frederick II. always travelled with his astrologer Theodorus; and Ezzelino da Romano[1153 - Monachus Paduan. l. ii. ap. Urstisius, Scriptt. i. pp. 598, 599, 602, 607. The last Visconti (p. 37 (#x4_x_4_i54)) had also a number of these men in his service (Comp. Decembrio, in Murat. xx. col. 1017): he undertook nothing without their advice. Among them was a Jew named Helias. Gasparino da Barzizzi once addressed him: ‘Magna vi astrorum fortuna tuas res reget.’ G. B. Opera, ed. Furietto, p. 38.] with a large, well-paid court of such people, among them the famous Guido Bonatto and the long-bearded Saracen, Paul of Bagdad. In all important undertakings they fixed for him the day and the hour, and the gigantic atrocities of which he was guilty may have been in part practical inferences from their prophecies. Soon all scruples about consulting the stars ceased. Not only princes, but free cities[1154 - E.g. Florence, where Bonatto filled the office for a long period. See too Matteo Villani, xi. 3, where the city astrologer is evidently meant.] had their regular astrologers, and at the universities,[1155 - Libri, Hist. des Sciences Mathém. ii. 52, 193. At Bologna this professorship is said to have existed in 1125. Comp. the list of professors at Pavia, in Corio, fol. 290. For the professorship at the Sapienza under Leo X., see Roscoe, Leone X. ed. Bossi, v. p. 283.] from the fourteenth to the sixteenth century, professors of this pseudo-science were appointed, and lectured side by side with the astronomers. It was well known that Augustine and other Fathers of the Church had combated astrology, but their old-fashioned notions were dismissed with easy contempt.[1156 - J. A. Campanus lays stress on the value and importance of astrology, and concludes with the words: ‘Quamquam Augustinus sanctissimus ille vir quidem ac doctissimus, sed fortassis ad fidem religionemque propensior negat quicquam vel boni vel mali astrorum necessitate contingere.’ ‘Oratio initio studii Perugiæ habita,’ compare Opera, Rome, 1495.] The Popes[1157 - About 1260 Pope Alexander IV. compelled a Cardinal (and shamefaced astrologer) Bianco to bring out a number of political prophecies. Giov. Villani, vi. 81.] commonly made no secret of their star-gazing, though Pius II., who also despised magic, omens, and the interpretation of dreams, is an honourable exception.[1158 - De Dictis, &c. Alfonsi, Opera, p. 493. He held it to be ‘pulchrius quam utile.’ Platina, Vitae Pontiff. p. 310. For Sixtus IV. comp. Jac. Volaterran. in Murat. xxiii. col. 173, 186. He caused the hours for audiences, receptions, and the like, to be fixed by the ‘planetarii.’ In the Europa, c. 49, Pius II. mentions that Baptista Blasius, an astronomer from Cremona, had prophesied the misfortunes of Fr. Foscaro ‘tanquam prævidisset.’] Julius II., on the other hand, had the day for his coronation and the day for his return from Bologna calculated by the astrologers.[1159 - Brosch, Julius II. (Gotha, 1878), pp. 97 and 323.] Even Leo X. seems to have thought the flourishing condition of astrology a credit to his pontificate,[1160 - P. Valeriano, De Infel. Lit. (318-324) speaks of Fr. Friuli, who wrote on Leo’s horoscope, and ‘abditissima quæque anteactæ ætatis et uni ipsi cognita principi explicuerat quæque incumberent quæque futura essent ad unguem ut eventus postmodum comprobavit, in singulos fere dies prædixerat.’] and Paul III. never held a Consistory till the star-gazers had fixed the hour.[1161 - Ranke, Päpste, i. 247.]

It may fairly be assumed that the better natures did not allow their actions to be determined by the stars beyond a certain point, and that there was a limit where conscience and religion made them pause. In fact, not only did pious and excellent people share the delusion, but they actually came forward to profess it publicly. One of these was Maestro Pagolo of Florence,[1162 - Vespas. Fiorent. p. 660, comp. 341. Ibid. p. 121, another Pagolo is mentioned as court mathematician and astrologer of Federigo of Montefeltro. Curiously enough, he was a German.] in whom we can detect the same desire to turn astrology to moral account which meets us in the late Roman Firmicus Maternus.[1163 - Firmicus Maternus, Matheseos Libri viii. at the end of the second book.] His life was that of a saintly ascetic. He ate almost nothing, despised all temporal goods, and only collected books. A skilled physician, he only practised among his friends, and made it a condition of his treatment that they should confess their sins. He frequented the small but famous circle which assembled in the Monastery of the Angeli around Fra Ambrogio Camaldolese (p. 463 (#x16_x_16_i27)). He also saw much of Cosimo the Elder, especially in his last years; for Cosimo accepted and used astrology, though probably only for objects of lesser importance. As a rule, however, Pagolo only interpreted the stars to his most confidential friends. But even without this severity of morals, the astrologers might be highly respected and show themselves everywhere. There were also far more of them in Italy than in other European countries, where they only appeared at the great courts, and there not always. All the great householders in Italy, when the fashion was once established, kept an astrologer, who, it must be added, was not always sure of his dinner.[1164 - In Bandello, iii. nov. 60, the astrologer of Alessandro Bentivoglio, in Milan, confessed himself a poor devil before the whole company.] Through the literature of this science, which was widely diffused even before the invention of printing, a dilettantism also grew up which as far as possible followed in the steps of the masters. The worst class of astrologers were those who used the stars either as an aid or a cloak to magical arts.

Yet apart from the latter, astrology is a miserable feature in the life of that time. What a figure do all these highly gifted, many-sided, original characters play, when the blind passion for knowing and determining the future dethrones their powerful will and resolution! Now and then, when the stars send them too cruel a message, they manage to brace themselves up, act for themselves, and say boldly: ‘Vir sapiens dominabitur astris’—the wise man is master of the stars,[1165 - It was in such a moment of resolution that Ludovico Moro had the cross with this inscription made, which is now in the Minster at Chur. Sixtus IV. too once said that he would try if the proverb was true. On this saying of the astrologer Ptolemæus, which B. Fazio took to be Virgilian, see Laur. Valla, Opera, p. 461.] and then again relapse into the old delusion.

In all the better families the horoscope of the children was drawn as a matter of course, and it sometimes happened that for half a lifetime men were haunted by the idle expectation of events which never occurred. The stars[1166 - The father of Piero Capponi, himself an astrologer, put his son into trade lest he should get the dangerous wound in the head which threatened him. Vita di P. Capponi, Arch. Stor. iv. ii. 15. For an instance in the life of Cardanus, see p. 334. The physician and astrologer Pierleoni of Spoleto believed that he would be drowned, avoided in consequence all watery places, and refused brilliant positions offered him at Venice and Padua. Paul. Jov. Elog. Liter. pp. 67 sqq. Finally he threw himself into the water, in despair at the charge brought against him of complicity in Lorenzo’s death, and was actually drowned. Hier. Aliottus had been told to be careful in his sixty-second year, as his life would then be in danger. He lived with great circumspection, kept clear of the doctors, and the year passed safely. H. A. Opuscula (Arezzo, 1769), ii. 72. Marsilio Ficino, who despised astrology (Opp. p. 772) was written to by a friend (Epist. lib. 17): ‘Praeterea me memini a duobus vestrorum astrologis audivisse, te ex quadam siderum positione antiquas revocaturum philosophorum sententias.’] were questioned whenever a great man had to come to any important decision, and even consulted as to the hour at which any undertaking was to be begun. The journeys of princes, the reception of foreign ambassadors,[1167 - For instances in the life of Ludovico Moro, see Senarega, in Murat, xxiv. col. 518, 524. Benedictus, in Eccard, ii. col. 1623. And yet his father, the great Francesco Sforza, had despised astrology, and his grandfather Giacomo had not at any rate followed its warnings. Corio, fol. 321, 413.] the laying of the foundation-stone of public buildings, depended on the answer. A striking instance of the latter occurs in the life of the aforenamed Guido Bonatto, who by his personal activity and by his great systematic work on the subject[1168 - For the facts here quoted, see Annal. Foroliviens. in Murat. xxii. col. 233 sqq. (comp. col. 150). Leonbattista Alberti endeavoured to give a spiritual meaning to the ceremony of laying the foundation. Opere Volgari, tom. iv. p. 314 (or De Re Ædific. 1. i.). For Bonatto see Filippo Villani, Vite and Delia Vita e delle Opere di Guido Bonati, Astrologo e Astronomo del Secolo Decimoterzo, raccolte da E. Boncompagni, Rome 1851. B.’s great work, De Astronomia, lib. x. has been often printed.] deserves to be called the restorer of astrology in the thirteenth century. In order to put an end to the struggle of the Guelphs and Ghibellines at Forli, he persuaded the inhabitants to rebuild the city walls and to begin the works under a constellation indicated by himself. If then two men, one from each party, at the same moment put a stone into the foundation, there would henceforth and for ever be no more party divisions in Forli. A Guelph and a Ghibelline were selected for this office; the solemn moment arrived, each held the stone in his hands, the workmen stood ready with their implements, Bonatto gave the signal and the Ghibelline threw down his stone on to the foundation. But the Guelph hesitated, and at last refused to do anything at all, on the ground that Bonatto himself had the reputation of a Ghibelline and might be devising some mysterious mischief against the Guelphs. Upon which the astrologer addressed him: ‘God damn thee and the Guelph party, with your distrustful malice! This constellation will not appear above our city for 500 years to come.’ In fact God soon afterwards did destroy the Guelphs of Forli, but now, writes the chronicler about 1480, the two parties are thoroughly reconciled, and their very names are heard no longer.[1169 - In the horoscopes of the second foundation of Florence (Giov. Villani, iii. 1. under Charles the Great) and of the first of Venice (see above, p. 62), an old tradition is perhaps mingled with the poetry of the Middle Ages.]

Nothing that depended upon the stars was more important than decisions in time of war. The same Bonatto procured for the great Ghibelline leader Guido da Montefeltro a series of victories, by telling him the propitious hour for marching.[1170 - For one of these victories, see the remarkable passage quoted from Bonatto in Steinschneider, in the Zeitschr. d. D. Morg. Ges. xxv. p. 416. On B. comp. ibid. xviii. 120 sqq.] When Montefeltro was no longer accompanied by him[1171 - Ann. Foroliv. 235-238. Filippo Villani, Vite. Macchiavelli, Stor. Fior. l. i. When constellations which augured victory appeared, Bonatto ascended with his book and astrolabe to the tower of San Mercuriale above the Piazza, and when the right moment came gave the signal for the great bell to be rung. Yet it was admitted that he was often wide of the mark, and foresaw neither his own death nor the fate of Montefeltro. Not far from Cesena he was killed by robbers, on his way back to Forli from Paris and from Italian universities where he had been lecturing. As a weather prophet he was once overmatched and made game of by a countryman.] he lost the courage to maintain his despotism, and entered a Minorite monastery, where he lived as a monk for many years till his death. In the war with Pisa in 1362, the Florentines commissioned their astrologer to fix the hour for the march,[1172 - Matteo Villani, xi. 3; see above, p. 508.] and almost came too late through suddenly receiving orders to take a circuitous route through the city. On former occasions they had marched out by the Via di Borgo S. Apostolo, and the campaign had been unsuccessful. It was clear that there was some bad omen connected with the exit through this street against Pisa, and consequently the army was now led out by the Porta Rossa. But as the tents stretched out there to dry had not been taken away, the flags—another bad omen—had to be lowered. The influence of astrology in war was confirmed by the fact that nearly all the Condottieri believed in it. Jacopo Caldora was cheerful in the most serious illness, knowing that he was fated to fall in battle, which in fact happened.[1173 - Jovian. Pontan. De Fortitudine, l. i. See p. 511 note 1, for the honourable exception made by the first Sforza.] Bartolommeo Alviano was convinced that his wounds in the head were as much a gift of the stars as his military command.[1174 - Paul. Jov. Elog. sub v. Livianus, p. 219.] Niccolò Orsini Pitigliano asked the physicist and astrologer Alessandro Benedetto[1175 - Who tells it us himself. Benedictus, in Eccard, ii. col. 1617.] to fix a favourable hour for the conclusion of his bargain with Venice (1495). When the Florentines on June 1, 1498, solemnly invested their new Condottiere Paolo Vitelli with his office, the Marshal’s staff which they handed him was, at his own wish, decorated with pictures of the constellations.[1176 - In this sense we must understand the words of Jac. Nardi, Vita d’Ant. Giacomini, p. 65. The same pictures were common on clothes and household utensils. At the reception of Lucrezia Borgia in Ferrara, the mule of the Duchess of Urbino wore trappings of black velvet with astrological figures in gold. Arch. Stor. Append. ii. p. 305.] There were nevertheless generals like Alphonso the Great of Naples who did not allow their march to be settled by the prophets.[1177 - Æn. Sylvius, in the passage quoted above p. 508; comp. Opp. 481.]

Sometimes it is not easy to make out whether in important political events the stars were questioned beforehand, or whether the astrologers were simply impelled afterwards by curiosity to find out the constellation which decided the result. When Giangaleazzo Visconti (p. 12 (#x4_x_4_i21)) by a master-stroke of policy took prisoners his uncle Bernabò, with the latter’s family (1385), we are told by a contemporary, that Jupiter, Saturn, and Mars stood in the house of the Twins,[1178 - Azario, in Corio, fol. 258.] but we cannot say if the deed was resolved on in consequence. It is also probable that the advice of the astrologers was often determined by political calculation not less than by the course of the planets.[1179 - Considerations of this kind probably influenced the Turkish astrologers who, after the battle of Nicopolis, advised the Sultan Bajazet I. to consent to the ransom of John of Burgundy, since ‘for his sake much Christian blood would be shed.’ It was not difficult to foresee the further course of the French civil war. Magn. Chron. Belgicum, p. 358. Juvénal des Ursins, ad. a. 1396.]

All Europe, through the latter part of the Middle Ages, had allowed itself to be terrified by predictions of plagues, wars, floods, and earthquakes, and in this respect Italy was by no means behind other countries. The unlucky year 1494, which for ever opened the gates of Italy to the stranger, was undeniably ushered in by many prophecies of misfortune[1180 - Benedictus, in Eccard, ii. col. 1579. It was said of King Ferrante in 1493 that he would lose his throne ‘sine cruore sed sola fama’—which actually happened.]—only we cannot say whether such prophecies were not ready for each and every year.

This mode of thought was extended with thorough consistency into regions where we should hardly expect to meet with it. If the whole outward and spiritual life of the individual is determined by the facts of his birth, the same law also governs groups of individuals and historical products—that is to say, nations and religions; and as the constellation of these things changes, so do the things themselves. The idea that each religion has its day, first came into Italian culture in connexion with these astrological beliefs, chiefly from Jewish and Arabian sources.[1181 - Comp. Steinschneider, Apokalypsen mit polemischer Tendenz, D. M. G. Z. xxviii. 627 sqq. xxix. 261.] The conjunction of Jupiter with Saturn brought forth, we are told,[1182 - Bapt. Mantuan. De Patientia, l. iii. cap. 12.] the faith of Israel; that of Jupiter and Mars, the Chaldean; with the Sun, the Egyptian; with Venus, the Mohammedan; with Mercury, the Christian; and the conjunction of Jupiter with the Moon will one day bring forth the religion of Antichrist. Checco d’Ascoli had already blasphemously calculated the nativity of Christ, and deduced from it his death upon the cross. For this he was burnt at the stake in 1327, at Florence.[1183 - Giov. Villani, x. 39, 40. Other reasons also existed, e.g. the jealousy of his colleagues. Bonatto had taught the same, and had explained the miracle of Divine Love in St. Francis as the effect of the planet Mars. Comp. Jo. Picus, Adv. Astrol. ii. 5.] Doctrines of this sort ended by simply darkening men’s whole perceptions of spiritual things.

So much more worthy then of recognition is the warfare which the clear Italian spirit waged against this army of delusions. Notwithstanding the great monumental glorification of astrology, as in the frescos in the Salone at Padua,[1184 - They were painted by Miretto at the beginning of the fifteenth century. Acc. to Scardeonius they were destined ‘ad indicandum nascentium naturas per gradus et numeros’—a more popular way of teaching than we can now well imagine. It was astrology ‘à la portèe de tout le monde.’] and those in Borso’s summer palace (Schifanoja), at Ferrara, notwithstanding the shameless praises of even such a man as the elder Beroaldus,[1185 - He says (Orationes, fol. 35, ‘In Nuptias’) of astrology: ‘haec efficit ut homines parum a Diis distare videantur’! Another enthusiast of the same time is Jo. Garzonius, De Dignitate Urbis Bononiae, in Murat. xxi. col. 1163.] there was no want of thoughtful and independent minds to protest against it. Here, too, the way had been prepared by antiquity, but it was their own common sense and observation which taught them what to say. Petrarch’s attitude towards the astrologers, whom he knew by personal intercourse, is one of bitter contempt;[1186 - Petrarca, Epp. Seniles, iii. 1 (p. 765) and elsewhere. The letter in question was written to Boccaccio. On Petrarch’s polemic against the astrologers, see Geiger. Petr. 87-91 and 267, note 11.] and no one saw through their system of lies more clearly than he. The novels, from the time when they first began to appear—from the time of the ‘Cento novelle antiche,’ are almost always hostile to the astrologers.[1187 - Franco Sacchetti (nov. 151) ridicules their claims to wisdom.] The Florentine chroniclers bravely keep themselves free from the delusions which, as part of historical tradition, they are compelled to record. Giovanni Villani says more than once,[1188 - Gio. Villani, iii. x. 39. Elsewhere he appears as a devout believer in astrology, x. 120, xii. 40.] ‘No constellation can subjugate either the free will of man, or the counsels of God.’ Matteo Villani[1189 - In the passage xi. 3.] declares astrology to be a vice which the Florentines had inherited, along with other superstitions, from their pagan ancestors, the Romans. The question, however, did not remain one for mere literary discussion, but the parties for and against disputed publicly. After the terrible floods of 1333, and again in 1345, astrologers and theologians discussed with great minuteness the influence of the stars, the will of God, and the justice of his punishments.[1190 - Gio. Villani, xi. 2, xii. 58.] These struggles never ceased throughout the whole time of the Renaissance,[1191 - The author of the Annales Placentini (in Murat. xx. col. 931), the same Alberto di Ripalta mentioned at p. 241, took part in this controversy. The passage is in other respects remarkable, since it contains the popular opinion with regard to the nine known comets, their colour, origin, and significance. Comp. Gio. Villani, xi. 67. He speaks of a comet as the herald of great and generally disastrous events.] and we may conclude that the protestors were in earnest, since it was easier for them to recommend themselves to the great by defending, than by opposing astrology.

In the circle of Lorenzo the Magnificent, among his most distinguished Platonists, opinions were divided on this question. That Marsilio Ficino defended astrology, and drew the horoscope of the children of the house, promising the little Giovanni, afterwards Leo X., that he would one day be Pope,[1192 - Paul. Jov. Vita Leonis xx. l. iii. where it appears that Leo himself was a believer at least in premonitions and the like, see above p. 509.] as Giovio would have us believe, is an invention—but other academicians accepted astrology. Pico della Mirandola,[1193 - Jo. Picus Mirand. Adversus Astrologos, libri xii.] on the other hand, made an epoch in the subject by his famous refutation. He detects in this belief the root of all impiety and immorality. If the astrologer, he maintains, believes in anything at all, he must worship not God, but the planets, from which all good and evil are derived. All other superstitions find a ready instrument in astrology, which serves as handmaid to geomancy, chiromancy, and magic of every kind. As to morality, he maintains that nothing can more foster evil than the opinion that heaven itself is the cause of it, in which case the faith in eternal happiness and punishment must also disappear. Pico even took the trouble to check off the astrologers inductively, and found that in the course of a month three-fourths of their weather prophecies turned out false. But his main achievement was to set forth, in the Fourth Book—a positive Christian doctrine of the freedom of the will and the government of the universe, which seems to have made a greater impression on the educated classes throughout Italy than all the revivalist preachers put together. The latter, in fact, often failed to reach these classes.

The first result of his book was that the astrologers ceased to publish their doctrines,[1194 - Acc. to Paul, Jov. Elog. Lit. sub tit. Jo. Picus, the result he achieved was ‘ut subtilium disciplinarum professores a scribendo deterruisse videatur.’] and those who had already printed them were more or less ashamed of what they had done. Gioviano Pontano, for example, in his book on Fate (p. 503 (#x17_x_17_i41)), had recognised the science, and in a great work of his own,[1195 - De Rebus Caelestibus, libri xiv. (Opp. iii. 1963-2591). In the twelfth book, dedicated to Paolo Cortese, he will not admit the latter’s refutation of astrology. Ægidius, Opp. ii. 1455-1514. Pontano had dedicated his little work De Luna (Opp. iii. 2592) to the same hermit Egidio (of Viterbo?)] the several parts of which were dedicated to his highly-placed friends and fellow-believers, Aldo Manucci, P. Bembo, and Sandazaro, had expounded the whole theory of it in the style of the old Firmicus, ascribing to the stars the growth of every bodily and spiritual quality. He now in his dialogue ‘Ægidius,’ surrendered, if not astrology, at least certain astrologers, and sounded the praises of free will, by which man is enabled to know God.[1196 - For the latter passage, see p. 1486. The difference between Pontano and Pico is thus put by Franc. Pudericus, one of the interlocutors in the dialogue (p. 1496): ‘Pontanus non ut Johannes Picus in disciplinam ipsam armis equisque, quod dicitur, irrumpit, cum illam tueatur, ut cognitu maxime dignam ac pene divinam, sed astrologos quosdam, ut parum cautos minimeque prudentes insectetur et rideat.’] Astrology remained more or less in fashion, but seems not to have governed human life in the way it formerly had done. The art of painting, which in the fifteenth century had done its best to foster the delusion, now expressed the altered tone of thought. Raphael, in the cupola of the Cappella Chigi,[1197 - In S. Maria del Popolo at Rome. The angels remind us of Dante’s theory at the beginning of the Convito.] represents the gods of the different planets and the starry firmament, watched, however, and guided by beautiful angel-figures, and receiving from above the blessing of the Eternal Father. There was also another cause which now began to tell against astrology in Italy. The Spaniards took no interest in it, not even the generals, and those who wished to gain their favour[1198 - This was the case with Antonio Galateo who, in a letter to Ferdinand the Catholic (Mai, Spicileg. Rom. vol. viii. p. 226, ad a. 1510), disclaims astrology with violence, and in another letter to the Count of Potenza (ibid. p. 539) infers from the stars that the Turks would attack Rhodes the same year.] declared open war against the half-heretical, half-Mohammedan science. It is true that Guicciardini[1199 - Ricordi, l. c. n. 57.] writes in the year 1529: ‘How happy are the astrologers, who are believed if they tell one truth to a hundred lies, while other people lose all credit if they tell one lie to a hundred truths.’ But the contempt for astrology did not necessarily lead to a return to the belief in Providence. It could as easily lead to an indefinite Fatalism.

In this respect, as in others, Italy was unable to make its own way healthily through the ferment of the Renaissance, because the foreign invasion and the Counter-Reformation came upon it in the middle. Without such interfering causes its own strength would have enabled it thoroughly to get rid of these fantastic illusions. Those who hold that the onslaught of the strangers and the Catholic reactions were necessities for which the Italian people was itself solely responsible, will look on the spiritual bankruptcy which they produced as a just retribution. But it is a pity that the rest of Europe had indirectly to pay so large a part of the penalty.

The beliefs in omens seems a much more innocent matter than astrology. The Middle Ages had everywhere inherited them in abundance from the various pagan religions; and Italy did not differ in this respect from other countries. What is characteristic of Italy is the support lent by humanism to the popular superstition. The pagan inheritance was here backed up by a pagan literary development.

The popular superstition of the Italians rested largely on premonitions and inferences drawn from ominous occurrences,[1200 - Many instances of such superstitions in the case of the last Visconti are mentioned by Decembrio (Murat. xx. col. 1016 sqq.). Odaxius says in his speech at the burial of Guidobaldo (Bembi Opera, i. 598 sqq.), that the gods had announced his approaching death by thunderbolts, earthquakes, and other signs and wonders.] with which a good deal of magic, mostly of an innocent sort, was connected. There was, however, no lack of learned humanists who boldly ridiculed these delusions, and to whose attacks we partly owe the knowledge of them. Gioviano Pontano; the author of the great astrological work already mentioned (p. 280 (#x11_x_11_i26)), enumerates with pity in his ‘Charon,’ a long string of Neapolitan superstitions—the grief of the women when a fowl or a goose caught the pip; the deep anxiety of the nobility if a hunting falcon did not come home, or if a horse sprained his foot; the magical formulæ of the Apulian peasants, recited on three Saturday evenings, when mad dogs were at large. The animal kingdom, as in antiquity, was regarded as specially significant in this respect, and the behaviour of the lions, leopards, and other beasts kept by the State (p. 293 (#x11_x_11_i46) sqq.) gave the people all the more food for reflection, because they had come to be considered as living symbols of the State. During the siege of Florence, in 1529, an eagle which had been shot at fled into the city, and the Signoria gave the bearer four ducats, because the omen was good.[1201 - Varchi, Stor. Fior. l. iv. (p. 174 (#x8_x_8_i29)); prophecies and premonitions were then as rife in Florence as at Jerusalem during the siege. Comp. ibid. iii. 143, 195; iv. 43, 177.] Certain times and places were favourable or unfavourable, or even decisive one way or the other, for certain actions. The Florentines, so Varchi tells us, held Saturday to be the fateful day on which all important events, good as well as bad, commonly happened. Their prejudice against marching out to war through a particular street has been already mentioned (p. 512 (#x17_x_17_i54)). At Perugia one of the gates, the ‘Porta eburnea,’ was thought lucky, and the Baglioni always went out to fight through it.[1202 - Matarazzo, Archiv. Stor. xvi. ii. p. 208.] Meteors and the appearance of the heavens were as significant in Italy as elsewhere in the Middle Ages, and the popular imagination saw warring armies in an unusual formation of clouds, and heard the clash of their collision high in the air.[1203 - Prato, Arch. Stor. iii. 324, for the year 1514.] The superstition became a more serious matter when it attached itself to sacred things, when figures of the Virgin wept or moved the eyes,[1204 - For the Madonna dell’Arbore in the Cathedral at Milan, and what she did in 1515, see Prato, l. c. p. 327. He also records the discovery of a dead dragon as thick as a horse in the excavations for a mortuary chapel near S. Nazaro. The head was taken to the Palace of the Triulzi for whom the chapel was built.] or when public calamities were associated with some alleged act of impiety, for which the people demanded expiation. In 1478, when Piacenza was visited with a violent and prolonged rainfall, it was said that there would be no dry weather till a certain usurer, who had been lately buried at San Francesco, had ceased to rest in consecrated earth. As the bishop was not obliging enough to have the corpse dug up, the young fellows of the town took it by force, dragged it round the streets amid frightful confusion, offered it to be insulted and maltreated by former creditors, and at last threw it into the Po.[1205 - ‘Et fuit mirabile quod illico pluvia cessavit.’ Diar. Parmense in Murat. xxii. col. 280. The author shares the popular hatred of the usurers. Comp. col. 371.] Even Politian accepted this point of view in speaking of Giacomo Pazzi, one of the chief of the conspiracy of 1478, in Florence, which is called after his name. When he was put to death, he devoted his soul to Satan with fearful words. Here, too, rain followed and threatened to ruin the harvest; here, too, a party of men, mostly peasants, dug up the body in the church, and immediately the clouds departed and the sun shone—‘so gracious was fortune to the opinion of the people,’ adds the great scholar.[1206 - Conjurationis Pactianae Commentarius, in the appendices to Roscoe’s Lorenzo. Politian was in general an opponent of astrology. The saints were naturally able to cause the rain to cease. Comp. Æneas Sylvius, in his life of Bernadino da Siena (De Vir. Ill. p. 25): ‘jussit in virtute Jesu nubem abire, quo facto solutis absque pluvia nubibus, prior serenitas rediit’.] The corpse was first cast into unhallowed ground, the next day again dug up, and after a horrible procession through the city, thrown into the Arno.

These facts and the like bear a popular character, and might have occurred in the tenth, just as well as in the sixteenth century. But now comes the literary influence of antiquity. We know positively that the humanists were peculiarly accessible to prodigies and auguries, and instances of this have been already quoted. If further evidence were needed, it would be found in Poggio. The same radical thinker who denied the rights of noble birth and the inequality of men (p. 361 (#x13_x_13_i55) sqq.), not only believed in all the mediæval stories of ghosts and devils (fol. 167, 179), but also in prodigies after the ancient pattern, like those said to have occurred on the last visit of Eugenius IV. to Florence.[1207 - Poggi Facetiae, fol. 174. Æn. Sylvius (De Europa, c. 53, 54, Opera, pp. 451, 455) mentions prodigies which may have really happened, such as combats between animals and strange appearances in the sky, and mentions them chiefly as curiosities, even when adding the results attributed to them. Similarly Antonio Ferrari (il Galateo), De Situ Iapygiae, p. 121, with the explanation: ‘Et hae, ut puto, species erant earum rerum quæ longe aberant atque ab eo loco in quo species visae sunt minime poterant.’] ‘Near Como there was seen one evening 4,000 dogs, who took the road to Germany; these were followed by a great herd of cattle, and these by an army on foot and horseback, some with no heads and some with almost invisible heads, and then a gigantic horseman with another herd of cattle behind him.’ Poggio also believes in a battle of magpies and jackdaws (fol. 180). He even relates, perhaps without being aware of it, a well-preserved piece of ancient mythology. On the Dalmatian coast a Triton had appeared, bearded and horned, a genuine sea-satyr, ending in fins and a tail; he carried away women and children from the shore, till five stout-hearted washer-women killed him with sticks and stones.[1208 - Poggi Facetiae, fol. 160. Comp. Pausanias, ix. 20.] A wooden model of the monster, which was exhibited at Ferrara, makes the whole story credible to Poggio. Though there were no more oracles, and it was no longer possible to take counsel of the gods, yet it became again the fashion to open Virgil at hazard, and take the passage hit upon as an omen[1209 - Varchi, iii 195. Two suspected persons decided on flight in 1529, because they opened the Æneid at book iii. 44. Comp. Rabelais, Pantagruel, iii. 10.] (‘Sortes Virgilianae’). Nor can the belief in dæmons current in the later period of antiquity have been without influence on the Renaissance. The work of Jamblichus or Abammon on the Mysteries of the Egyptians, which may have contributed to this result, was printed in a Latin translation at the end of the fifteenth century. The Platonic Academy at Florence was not free from these and other neo-platonic dreams of the Roman decadence. A few words must here be given to the belief in dæmons and to the magic which was connected with this belief.