The Civilisation of the Renaissance in Italy

The popular faith in what is called the spirit-world was nearly the same in Italy as elsewhere in Europe.[1210 - The imaginations of the scholars, such as the ‘splendor’ and the ‘spiritus’ of Cardanus, and the ‘dæmon familiaris’ of his father, may be taken for what they are worth. Comp. Cardanus, De Propria Vita, cap. 4, 38, 47. He was himself an opponent of magic; cap. 39. For the prodigies and ghosts he met with, see cap. 37, 41. For the terror of ghosts felt by the last Visconti, see Decembrio, in Murat. xx. col. 1016.] In Italy as elsewhere there were ghosts, that is, reappearances of deceased persons; and if the view taken of them differed in any respect from that which prevailed in the North, the difference betrayed itself only in the ancient name ‘ombra.’ Nowadays if such a shade presents itself, a couple of masses are said for its repose. That the spirits of bad men appear in a dreadful shape, is a matter of course, but along with this we find the notion that the ghosts of the departed are universally malicious. The dead, says the priest in Bandello,[1211 - ‘Molte fiate i morti guastano le creature.’ Bandello, ii. nov. 1. We read (Galateo, p. 177) that the ‘animæ’ of wicked men rise from the grave, appear to their friends and acquaintances, ‘animalibus vexi, pueros sugere ac necare, deinde in sepulcra reverti.’] kill the little children. It seems as if a certain shade was here thought of as separate from the soul, since the latter suffers in Purgatory, and when it appears, does nothing but wail and pray. To lay the ghost, the tomb was opened, the corpse pulled to pieces, the heart burned and the ashes scattered to the four winds.[1212 - Galateo, l. c. We also read (p. 119 (#x7_x_7_i6)) of the ‘Fata Morgana’ and other similar appearances.] At other times what appears is not the ghost of a man, but of an event—of a past condition of things. So the neighbours explained the diabolical appearances in the old palace of the Visconti near San Giovanni in Conca, at Milan, since here it was that Bernabò Visconti had caused countless victims of his tyranny to be tortured and strangled, and no wonder if there were strange things to be seen.[1213 - Bandello, iii. nov. 20. It is true that the ghost was only a lover wishing to frighten the occupier of the palace, who was also the husband of the beloved lady. The lover and his accomplices dressed themselves up as devils; one of them, who could imitate the cry of different animals, had been sent for from a distance.] One evening a swarm of poor people with candles in their hands appeared to a dishonest guardian of the poor at Perugia, and danced round about him; a great figure spoke in threatening tones on their behalf—it was St. Alò, the patron saint of the poor-house.[1214 - Graziani, Arch. Stor. xvi. i. p. 640, ad a. 1467. The guardian died of fright.] These modes of belief were so much a matter of course that the poets could make use of them as something which every reader would understand. The appearance of the slain Ludovico Pico under the walls of the besieged Mirandola is finely represented by Castiglione.[1215 - Balth. Castilionii Carmina; Prosopopeja Lud. Pici.] It is true that poetry made the freest use of these conceptions when the poet himself had outgrown them.

Italy, too, shared the belief in dæmons with the other nations of the Middle Ages. Men were convinced that God sometimes allowed bad spirits of every class to exercise a destructive influence on parts of the world and of human life. The only reservation made was that the man to whom the Evil One came as tempter, could use his free will to resist.[1216 - Alexandri ab Alexandro, Dierum Genialium, libri vi. (Colon. 1539), is an authority of the first rank for these subjects, the more so as the author, a friend of Pontanus and a member of his academy, asserts that what he records either happened to himself, or was communicated to him by thoroughly trustworthy witnesses. Lib. vi. cap. 19: two evil men and a monk are attacked by devils, whom they recognise by the shape of their feet, and put to flight, partly by force and partly by the sign of the cross. Lib. vi. cap. 21: A servant, cast into prison by a cruel prince on account of a small offence, calls upon the devil, is miraculously brought out of the prison and back again, visits meanwhile the nether world, shows the prince his hand scorched by the flames of Hell, tells him on behalf of a departed spirit certain secrets which had been communicated to the latter, exhorts him to lay aside his cruelty, and dies soon after from the effects of the fright. Lib. ii. c. 19, iii. 15, v. 23: Ghosts of departed friends, of St. Cataldus, and of unknown beings in Rome, Arezzo and Naples. Lib. ii. 22, iii. 8: Appearances of mermen and mermaids at Naples, in Spain, and in the Peloponnesus; in the latter case guaranteed by Theodore Gaza and George of Trebizond.] In Italy the dæmonic influence, especially as shown in natural events, easily assumed a character of poetical greatness. In the night before the great inundation of the Val d’Arno in 1333, a pious hermit above Vallombrosa heard a diabolical tumult in his cell, crossed himself, stepped to the door, and saw a crowd of black and terrible knights gallop by in armour. When conjured to stand, one of them said: ‘We go to drown the city of Florence on account of its sins, if God will let us.’[1217 - Gio. Villani, xi. 2. He had it from the Abbot of Vallombrosa, to whom the hermit had communicated it.] With this, the nearly contemporary vision at Venice (1340) may be compared, out of which a great master of the Venetian school, probably Giorgione, made the marvellous picture of a galley full of dæmons, which speeds with the swiftness of a bird over the stormy lagune to destroy the sinful island-city, till the three saints, who have stepped unobserved into a poor boatman’s skiff, exorcised the fiends and sent them and their vessel to the bottom of the waters.[1218 - Another view of the Dæmons was given by Gemisthos Pletho, whose great philosophical work οἱ νὁμοι, of which only fragments are now left (ed. Alexander, Paris, 1858), was probably known more fully to the Italians of the fifteenth century, either by means of copies or of tradition, and exercised undoubtedly a great influence on the philosophical, political, and religious culture of the time. According to him the dæmons, who belong to the third order of the gods, are preserved from all error, and are capable of following in the steps of the gods who stand above them; they are spirits who bring to men the good things ‘which come down from Zeus through the other gods in order; they purify and watch over man, they raise and strengthen his heart.’ Comp. Fritz Schultze, Gesch. der Philosophie der Renaissance, Jena, 1874.]

To this belief the illusion was now added that by means of magical arts it was possible to enter into relations with the evil ones, and use their help to further the purposes of greed, ambition, and sensuality. Many persons were probably accused of doing so before the time when it was actually attempted by many; but when the so-called magicians and witches began to be burned, the deliberate practice of the black art became more frequent. With the smoke of the fires in which the suspected victims were sacrificed, were spread the narcotic fumes by which numbers of ruined characters were drugged into magic; and with them many calculating impostors became associated.

The primitive and popular form in which the superstition had probably lived on uninterruptedly from the time of the Romans,[1219 - Yet but little remained of the wonders attributed to her. For probably the last metamorphosis of a man into an ass, in the eleventh century under Leo IX., see Giul. Malmesbur. ii. 171.] was the art of the witch (Strega). The witch, so long as she limited herself to mere divination,[1220 - This was probably the case with the possessed woman, who in 1513 at Ferrara and elsewhere was consulted by distinguished Lombards as to future events. Her name was Rodogine. See Rabelais, Pantagruel, iv. 58.] might be innocent enough, were it not that the transition from prophecy to active help could easily, though often imperceptibly, be a fatal downward step. She was credited in such a case not only with the power of exciting love or hatred between man and woman, but also with purely destructive and malignant arts, and was especially charged with the sickness of little children, even when the malady obviously came from the neglect and stupidity of the parents. It is still questionable how far she was supposed to act by mere magical ceremonies and formulæ, or by a conscious alliance with the fiends, apart from the poisons and drugs which she administered with a full knowledge of their effect.

The more innocent form of the superstition, in which the mendicant friar could venture to appear as the competitor of the witch, is shown in the case of the witch of Gaeta whom we read of in Pontano.[1221 - Jovian. Pontan. Antonius.] His traveller Suppatius reaches her dwelling while she is giving audience to a girl and a servant-maid, who come to her with a black hen, nine eggs laid on a Friday, a duck, and some white thread—for it is the third day since the new moon. They are then sent away, and bidden to come again at twilight. It is to be hoped that nothing worse than divination is intended. The mistress of the servant-maid is pregnant by a monk; the girl’s lover has proved untrue and has gone into a monastery. The witch complains: ‘Since my husband’s death I support myself in this way, and should make a good thing of it, since the Gaetan women have plenty of faith, were it not that the monks baulk me of my gains by explaining dreams, appeasing the anger of the saints for money, promising husbands to the girls, men-children to the pregnant women, offspring to the barren, and besides all this visiting the women at night when their husbands are away fishing, in accordance with the assignations made in day-time at church.’ Suppatius warns her against the envy of the monastery, but she has no fear, since the guardian of it is an old acquaintance of hers.[1222 - How widespread the belief in witches then was, is shown by the fact that in 1483 Politian gave a ‘praelectio’ ‘in priora Aristotelis Analytica cui titulus Lamia’ (Italian trans. by Isidore del Lungo, Flor. 1864) Comp. Reumont, Lorenzo, ii. 75-77. Fiesole, according to this, was, in a certain sense, a witches’ nest.]

But the superstition further gave rise to a worse sort of witches, namely those who deprived men of their health and life. In these cases the mischief, when not sufficiently accounted for by the evil eye and the like, was naturally attributed to the aid of powerful spirits. The punishment, as we have seen in the case of Finicella (p. 469 (#x16_x_16_i39)), was the stake; and yet a compromise with fanaticism was sometimes practicable. According to the laws of Perugia, for example, a witch could settle the affair by paying down 400 pounds.[1223 - Graziani, Arch. Stor. xvi. i. p. 565, ad a. 1445, speaking of a witch at Nocera, who only offered half the sum, and was accordingly burnt. The law was aimed at such persons as ‘facciono le fature overo venefitie overo encantatione d’ommunde spirite a nuocere,’ l. c. note 1, 2.] The matter was not then treated with the seriousness and consistency of later times. In the territories of the Church, at Norcia (Nursia), the home of St. Benedict, in the upper Apennines, there was a perfect nest of witches and sorcerers, and no secret was made of it. It is spoken of in one of the most remarkable letters of Æneas Sylvius,[1224 - Lib. i. ep. 46, Opera, p. 531 sqq. For ‘umbra’ p. 552 read ‘Umbria,’ and for ‘lacum’ read ‘locum.’] belonging to his earlier period. He writes to his brother: ‘The bearer of this came to me to ask if I knew of a Mount of Venus in Italy, for in such a place magical arts were taught, and his master, a Saxon and a great astronomer,[1225 - He calls him later on: ‘Medicus Ducis Saxoniæ, homo tum dives tum potens.’] was anxious to learn them. I told him that I knew of a Porto Venere not far from Carrara, on the rocky coast of Liguria, where I spent three nights on the way to Basel; I also found that there was a mountain called Eryx in Sicily, which was dedicated to Venus, but I did not know whether magic was taught there. But it came into my mind while talking that in Umbria, in the old Duchy (Spoleto), near the town of Nursia, there is a cave beneath a steep rock, in which water flows. There, as I remember to have heard, are witches (striges), dæmons, and nightly shades, and he that has the courage can see and speak to ghosts (spiritus), and learn magical arts.[1226 - In the fourteenth century there existed a kind of hell-gate near Ansedonia in Tuscany. It was a cave, with footprints of men and animals in the sand, which whenever they were effaced, reappeared the next day. Uberti. Il Dittamondo, l. iii. cap. 9.] I have not seen it, nor taken any trouble about it, for that which is learned with sin is better not learned at all.’ He nevertheless names his informant, and begs his brother to take the bearer of the letter to him, should he be still alive. Æneas goes far enough here in his politeness to a man of position, but personally he was not only freer from superstition than his contemporaries (pp. 481, 508), but he also stood a test on the subject which not every educated man of our own day could endure. At the time of the Council of Basel, when he lay sick of the fever for seventy-five days at Milan, he could never be persuaded to listen to the magic doctors, though a man was brought to his bedside who a short time before had marvellously cured 2,000 soldiers of fever in the camp of Piccinino. While still an invalid, Æneas rode over the mountains to Basel, and got well on the journey.[1227 - Pii II. Comment. l. i. p. 10.]

We learn something more about the neighbourhood of Norcia through the necromancer who tried to get Benvenuto Cellini into his power. A new book of magic was to be consecrated,[1228 - Benv. Cellini, l. i. cap. 65.] and the best place for the ceremony was among the mountains in that district. The master of the magician had once, it is true, done the same thing near the Abbey of Farfa, but had there found difficulties which did not present themselves at Norcia; further, the peasants in the latter neighbourhood were trustworthy people who had practice in the matter, and who could afford considerable help in case of need. The expedition did not take place, else Benvenuto would probably have been able to tell us something of the impostor’s assistants. The whole neighbourhood was then proverbial. Aretino says somewhere of an enchanted well, ‘there dwell the sisters of the sibyl of Norcia and the aunt of the Fata Morgana.’ And about the same time Trissino could still celebrate the place in his great epic[1229 - L’Italia Liberata da’ Goti, canto xiv. It may be questioned whether Trissino himself believed in the possibility of his description, or whether he was not rather romancing. The same doubt is permissible in the case of his probable model, Lucan (book vi.), who represents the Thessalian witch conjuring up a corpse before Sextus Pompejus.] with all the resources of poetry and allegory as the home of authentic prophecy.

After the famous Bull of Innocent VIII. (1484),[1230 - Septimo Decretal, lib. v. tit. xii. It begins: ‘Summis desiderantes affectibus’ &c. I may here remark that a full consideration of the subject has convinced me that there are in this case no grounds for believing in a survival of pagan beliefs. To satisfy ourselves that the imagination of the mendicant friars is solely responsible for this delusion, we have only to study, in the Memoirs of Jacques du Clerc, the so-called trial of the Waldenses of Arras in the year 1459. A century’s prosecutions and persecutions brought the popular imagination into such a state that witchcraft was accepted as a matter of course and reproduced itself naturally.] witchcraft and the persecution of witches grew into a great and revolting system. The chief representatives of this system of persecution were German Dominicans; and Germany and, curiously enough, those parts of Italy nearest Germany were the countries most afflicted by this plague. The bulls and injunctions of the Popes themselves[1231 - Of Alexander VI., Leo X., Hadrian VI.] refer, for example, to the Dominican Province of Lombardy, to Cremona, to the dioceses of Brescia and Bergamo. We learn from Sprenger’s famous theoretico-practical guide, the ‘Malleus Maleficarum,’ that forty-one witches were burnt at Como in the first year after the publication of the bull; crowds of Italian women took refuge in the territory of the Archduke Sigismund, where they believed themselves to be still safe. Witchcraft ended by taking firm root in a few unlucky Alpine valleys, especially in the Val Camonica;[1232 - Proverbial as the country of witches, e.g. Orlandino, i. 12.] the system of persecution had succeeded in permanently infecting with the delusion those populations which were in any way predisposed for it. This essentially German form of witchcraft is what we should think of when reading the stories and novels of Milan or Bologna.[1233 - E.g. Bandello, iii. nov. 29, 52. Prato, Arch. Stor. iii. 409. Bursellis, Ann. Bon. in Murat. xxiii. col. 897, mentions the condemnation of a prior in 1468, who kept a ghostly brothel: ‘cives Bononienses coire faciebat cum dæmonibus in specie puellarum.’ He offered sacrifices to the dæmons. See for a parallel case, Procop. Hist. Arcana, c. 12, where a real brothel is frequented by a dæmon, who turns the other visitors out of doors. The Galateo (p. 116 (#x7_x_7_i4)) confirms the existence of the belief in witches: ‘volare per longinquas regiones, choreas per paludes dicere et dæmonibus cnogredi, ingredi et egredi per clausa ostia et foramina.’] That it did not make further progress in Italy is probably due to the fact that elsewhere a highly developed ‘Stregheria’ was already in existence, resting on a different set of ideas. The Italian witch practised a trade, and needed for it money and, above all, sense. We find nothing about her of the hysterical dreams of the Northern witch, of marvellous journeys through the air, of Incubus and Succubus; the business of the ‘Strega’ was to provide for other people’s pleasure. If she was credited with the power of assuming different shapes, or of transporting herself suddenly to distant places, she was so far content to accept this reputation, as her influence was thereby increased; on the other hand, it was perilous for her when the fear of her malice and vengeance, and especially of her power for enchanting children, cattle, and crops, became general. Inquisitors and magistrates were then thoroughly in accord with popular wishes if they burnt her.

By far the most important field for the activity of the ‘Strega’ lay, as has been said, in love-affairs, and included the stirring up of love and of hatred, the producing of abortion, the pretended murder of the unfaithful man or woman by magical arts, and even the manufacture of poisons.[1234 - For the loathsome apparatus of the witches’ kitchens, see Maccaroneide, Phant. xvi. xxi., where the whole procedure is described.] Owing to the unwillingness of many persons to have to do with these women, a class of occasional practitioners arose who secretly learned from them some one or other of their arts, and then used this knowledge on their own account. The Roman prostitutes, for example, tried to enhance their personal attractions by charms of another description in the style of Horatian Canidia. Aretino[1235 - In the Ragionamento del Zoppino. He is of opinion that the courtesans learn their arts from certain Jewish women, who are in possession of ‘malie.’ The following passage is very remarkable. Bembo says in the life of Guidobaldo (Opera, i. 614): ‘Guid. constat sive corporis et naturae vitio, seu quod vulgo creditum est, actibus magicis ab Octaviano patruo propter regni cupiditatem impeditum, quarum omnino ille artium expeditissimus habebatur, nulla cum femina coire unquam in tota vita potuisse, nec unquam fuisse ad rem uxoriam idoneum.’] may not only have known, but have also told the truth about them in this particular. He gives a list of the loathsome messes which were to be found in their boxes—hair, skulls, ribs, teeth, dead men’s eyes, human skin, the navels of little children, the soles of shoes and pieces of clothing from tombs. They even went themselves to the graveyard and fetched bits of rotten flesh, which they slily gave their lovers to eat—with more that is still worse. Pieces of the hair and nails of the lover were boiled in oil stolen from the ever-burning lamps in the church. The most innocuous of their charms was to make a heart of glowing ashes, and then to pierce it while singing—

Prima che’l fuoco spenghi,
Fa ch’a mia porta venghi;
Tal ti punga mio amore
Quale io fo questo cuore.

There were other charms practised by moonshine, with drawings on the ground, and figures of wax or bronze, which doubtless represented the lover, and were treated according to circumstances.

These things were so customary that a woman who, without youth and beauty, nevertheless exercised a powerful charm on men, naturally became suspected of witchcraft. The mother of Sanga,[1236 - Varchi, Stor. Fior. ii. p. 153.] secretary to Clement VII., poisoned her son’s mistress, who was a woman of this kind. Unfortunately the son died too, as well as a party of friends who had eaten of the poisoned salad.

Next come, not as helper, but as competitor to the witch, the magician or enchanter—‘incantatore’—who was still more familiar with the most perilous business of the craft. Sometimes he was as much or more of an astrologer than of a magician; he probably often gave himself out as an astrologer in order not to be prosecuted as a magician, and a certain astrology was essential in order to find out the favourable hour for a magical process.[1237 - Curious information is given by Landi, in the Commentario, fol. 36 a and 37 a, about two magicians, a Sicilian and a Jew; we read of magical mirrors, of a death’s-head speaking, and of birds stopped short in their flight.] But since many spirits are good[1238 - Stress is laid on this reservation. Corn. Agrippa, De Occulta Philosophia, cap. 39.] or indifferent, the magician could sometimes maintain a very tolerable reputation, and Sixtus IV. in the year 1474, had to proceed expressly against some Bolognese Carmelites,[1239 - Septimo Decretal, l. c.] who asserted in the pulpit that there was no harm in seeking information from the dæmons. Very many people believed in the possibility of the thing itself; an indirect proof of this lies in the fact that the most pious men believed that by prayer they could obtain visions of good spirits. Savonarola’s mind was filled with these things; the Florentine Platonists speak of a mystic union with God; and Marcellus Palingenius (p. 264 (#x10_x_10_i57)), gives us to understand clearly enough that he had to do with consecrated spirits.[1240 - Zodiacus Vitae, xv. 363-549, comp. x. 393 sqq.] The same writer is convinced of the existence of a whole hierarchy of bad dæmons, who have their seat from the moon downwards, and are ever on the watch to do some mischief to nature and human life.[1241 - Ibid. ix. 291 sqq.] He even tells of his own personal acquaintance with some of them, and as the scope of the present work does not allow of a systematic exposition of the then prevalent belief in spirits, the narrative of Palingenius may be given as one instance out of many.[1242 - Ibid. x. 770 sqq.]

At S. Silvestro, on Soracte, he had been receiving instruction from a pious hermit on the nothingness of earthly things and the worthlessness of human life; and when the night drew near he set out on his way back to Rome. On the road, in the full light of the moon, he was joined by three men, one of whom called him by name, and asked him whence he came. Palingenius made answer: ‘From the wise man on the mountain.’ ‘O fool,’ replied the stranger, ‘dost thou in truth believe that anyone on earth is wise? Only higher beings (Divi) have wisdom, and such are we three, although we wear the shapes of men. I am named Saracil, and these two Sathiel and Jana. Our kingdom lies near the moon, where dwell that multitude of intermediate beings who have sway over earth and sea.’ Palingenius then asked, not without an inward tremor, what they were going to do at Rome. The answer was: ‘One of our comrades, Ammon, is kept in servitude by the magic arts of a youth from Narni, one of the attendants of Cardinal Orsini; for mark it, O men, there is proof of your own immortality therein, that you can control one of us; I myself, shut up in crystal, was once forced to serve a German, till a bearded monk set me free. This is the service which we wish to render at Rome to our friend, and we shall also take the opportunity of sending one or two distinguished Romans to the nether world.’ At these words a light breeze arose, and Sathiel said: ‘Listen, our messenger is coming back from Rome, and this wind announces him.’ And then another being appeared, whom they greeted joyfully and then asked about Rome. His utterances are strongly anti-papal: Clement VII. was again allied with the Spaniards and hoped to root out Luther’s doctrines, not with arguments, but by the Spanish sword. This is wholly in the interest of the dæmons, whom the impending bloodshed would enable to carry away the souls of thousands into hell. At the close of this conversation, in which Rome with all its guilt is represented as wholly given over to the Evil One, the apparitions vanish, and leave the poet sorrowfully to pursue his way alone.[1243 - The mythical type of the magician among the poets of the time was Malagigi. Speaking of him, Pulci (Morgante, canto xxiv. 106 sqq.) gives his theoretical view of the limits of dæmonic and magic influence. It is hard to say how far he was in earnest. Comp. canto xxi.]

Those who would form a conception of the extent of the belief in those relations to the dæmons which could be openly avowed in spite of the penalties attaching to witchcraft, may be referred to the much read work of Agrippa of Nettesheim on ‘Secret Philosophy.’ He seems originally to have written it before he was in Italy,[1244 - Polydorus Virgilius was an Italian by birth, but his work De Prodigiis treats chiefly of superstition in England, where his life was passed. Speaking of the prescience of the dæmons, he makes a curious reference to the sack of Rome in 1527.] but in the dedication to Trithemius he mentions Italian authorities among others, if only by way of disparagement. In the case of equivocal persons like Agrippa, or of the knaves and fools into whom the majority of the rest may be divided, there is little that is interesting in the system they profess, with its formulæ, fumigations, ointments, and the rest of it.[1245 - Yet murder is hardly ever the end, and never, perhaps, the means. A monster like Gilles de Retz (about 1440) who sacrificed more than 100 children to the dæmons has scarcely a distant counterpart in Italy.] But this system was filled with quotations from the superstitions of antiquity, the influence of which on the life and the passions of Italians is at times most remarkable and fruitful. We might think that a great mind must be thoroughly ruined, before it surrendered itself to such influences; but the violence of hope and desire led even vigorous and original men of all classes to have recourse to the magician, and the belief that the thing was feasible at all weakened to some extent the faith, even of those who kept at a distance, in the moral order of the world. At the cost of a little money and danger it seemed possible to defy with impunity the universal reason and morality of mankind, and to spare oneself the intermediate steps which otherwise lie between a man and his lawful or unlawful ends.

Let us here glance for a moment at an older and now decaying form of superstition. From the darkest period of the Middle Ages, or even from the days of antiquity, many cities of Italy had kept the remembrance of the connexion of their fate with certain buildings, statues, or other material objects. The ancients had left records of consecrating priests or Telestæ, who were present at the solemn foundation of cities, and magically guaranteed their prosperity by erecting certain monuments or by burying certain objects (Telesmata). Traditions of this sort were more likely than anything else to live on in the form of popular, unwritten legend; but in the course of centuries the priest naturally became transformed into the magician, since the religious side of his function was no longer understood. In some of his Virgilian miracles at Naples,[1246 - See the treatise of Roth ‘Ueber den Zauberer Virgilius’ in Pfeiffer’s Germania, iv., and Comparetti’s Virgil in the Middle Ages. That Virgil began to take the place of the older Telestæ may be explained partly by the fact that the frequent visits made to his grave even in the time of the Empire struck the popular imagination.] the ancient remembrance of one of these Telestæ is clearly preserved, his name being in course of time supplanted by that of Virgil. The enclosing of the mysterious picture of the city in a vessel is neither more nor less than a genuine, ancient Telesma; and Virgil the founder of Naples is only the officiating priest, who took part in the ceremony, presented in another dress. The popular imagination went on working at these themes, till Virgil became also responsible for the brazen horse, for the heads at the Nolan gate, for the brazen fly over another gate, and even for the Grotto of Posilippo—all of them things which in one respect or other served to put a magical constraint upon fate, and the first two of which seemed to determine the whole fortune of the city. Mediæval Rome also preserved confused recollections of the same kind. At the church of S. Ambrogio at Milan, there was an ancient marble Hercules; so long, it was said, as this stood in its place, so long would the Empire last. That of the Germans is probably meant, as the coronation of their Emperors at Milan took place in this church.[1247 - Uberti, Dittamondo, 1. iii. cap. 4.] The Florentines[1248 - For what follows, see Gio. Villani, i. 42, 60, ii. 1, iii. v. 38, xi. He himself does not believe such godless superstitions. Comp. Dante, Inferno xiii. 146.] were convinced that the temple of Mars, afterwards transformed into the Baptistry, would stand to the end of time, according to the constellation under which it had been built; they had, as Christians, removed from it the marble equestrian statue; but since the destruction of the latter would have brought some great calamity on the city—also according to a constellation—they set it upon a tower by the Arno. When Totila conquered Florence, the statue fell into the river, and was not fished out again till Charles the Great refounded the city. It was then placed on a pillar at the entrance to the Ponte Vecchio, and on this spot Buondelmente was slain in 1215. The origin of the great feud between Guelph and Ghibelline was thus associated with the dreaded idol. During the inundation of 1333 the statue vanished forever.[1249 - According to a fragment given in Baluz. Miscell ix. 119, the Perugians had a quarrel in ancient times with the Ravennates, ‘et militem marmoreum qui juxta Ravennam se continue volvebat ad solem usurpaverunt et ad eorum civitatem virtuosissime transtulerunt.’]

But the same Telesma reappears elsewhere. Guido Bonatto, already mentioned, was not satisfied, at the refounding of the walls of Forli, with requiring certain symbolic acts of reconciliation from the two parties (p. 511 (#x17_x_17_i54)). By burying a bronze or stone equestrian statue,[1250 - The local belief on the matter is given in Annal. Forolivens. Murat. xxii. col. 207, 238; more fully in Fil. Villani, Vite, p 33.] which he had produced by astro logical or magical arts, he believed that he had defended the city from ruin, and even from capture and plunder. When Cardinal Albornoz (p. 102 (#x6_x_6_i29)) was governor of Romagna some sixty years later, the statue was accidentally dug up and then shown to the people, probably by the order of the Cardinal, that it might be known by what means the cruel Montefeltro had defended himself against the Roman Church. And again, half a century later, when an attempt to surprise Forli had failed, men began to talk afresh of the virtue of the statue, which had perhaps been saved and reburied. It was the last time that they could do so; for a year later Forli was really taken. The foundation of buildings all through the fifteenth century was associated not only with astrology (p. 511 (#x17_x_17_i54)) but also with magic. The large number of gold and silver medals which Paul II. buried in the foundations of his buildings[1251 - Platina, Vitae Pontiff. p. 320: ‘Veteres potius hac in re quam Petrum, Anacletum, et Linum imitatus.’] was noticed, and Platina was by no means displeased to recognise an old pagan Telesma in the fact. Neither Paul nor his biographer were in any way conscious of the mediæval religious significance of such an offering.[1252 - Which it is easy to recognise e.g. in Sugerius, De Consecratione Ecclesiae (Duchesne, Scriptores, iv. 355) and in Chron. Petershusanum, i. 13 and 16.]

But this official magic, which in many cases only rests on hearsay, was comparatively unimportant by the side of the secret arts practised for personal ends.

The form which these most often took in daily life is shown by Ariosto in his comedy of the necromancers.[1253 - Comp. the Calandra of Bibiena.] His hero is one of the many Jewish exiles from Spain, although he also gives himself out for a Greek, an Egyptian, and an African, and is constantly changing his name and costume. He pretends that his incantations can darken the day and lighten the darkness, that he can move the earth, make himself invisible, and change men into beasts; but these vaunts are only an advertisement. His true object is to make his account out of unhappy and troubled marriages, and the traces which he leaves behind him in his course are like the slime of a snail, or often like the ruin wrought by a hail-storm. To attain his ends he can persuade people that the box in which a lover is hidden is full of ghosts, or that he can make a corpse talk. It is at all events a good sign that poets and novelists could reckon on popular applause in holding up this class of men to ridicule. Bandello not only treats the sorcery of a Lombard monk as a miserable, and in its consequences terrible, piece of knavery,[1254 - Bandello, iii. nov. 52. Fr. Filelfo (Epist. Venet. lib. 34, fol. 240 sqq.) attacks nercromancy fiercely. He is tolerably free from superstition (Sat. iv. 4) but believes in the ‘mali effectus,’ of a comet (Epist. fol. 246 b).] but he also describes with unaffected indignation[1255 - Bandello, iii. 29. The magician exacts a promise of secrecy strengthened by solemn oaths, in this case by an oath at the high altar of S. Petronio at Bologna, at a time when no one else was in the church. There is a good deal of magic in the Maccaroneide, Phant. xviii.] the disasters which never cease to pursue the credulous fool. ‘A man hopes with “Solomon’s Key” and other magical books to find the treasures hidden in the bosom of the earth, to force his lady to do his will, to find out the secrets of princes, and to transport himself in the twinkling of an eye from Milan to Rome. The more often he is deceived, the more steadfastly he believes.... Do you remember the time, Signor Carlo, when a friend of ours, in order to win the favour of his beloved, filled his room with skulls and bones like a churchyard?’ The most loathsome tasks were prescribed—to draw three teeth from a corpse or a nail from its finger, and the like; and while the hocus-pocus of the incantation was going on, the unhappy participants sometimes died of terror.

Benvenuto Cellini did not die during the well-known incantation (1532) in the Coliseum at Rome,[1256 - Benv. Cellini, i. cap. 64.] although both he and his companions witnessed no ordinary horrors; the Sicilian priest, who probably expected to find him a useful coadjutor in the future, paid him the compliment as they went home of saying that he had never met a man of so sturdy a courage. Every reader will make his own reflections on the proceedings themselves. The narcotic fumes and the fact that the imaginations of the spectators were predisposed for all possible terrors, are the chief points to be noticed, and explain why the lad who formed one of the party, and on whom they made most impression, saw much more than the others. But it may be inferred that Benvenuto himself was the one whom it was wished to impress, since the dangerous beginning of the incantation can have had no other aim than to arouse curiosity. For Benvenuto had to think before the fair Angelica occurred to him; and the magician told him afterwards that love-making was folly compared with the finding of treasures. Further, it must not be forgotten that it flattered his vanity to be able to say, ‘The dæmons have kept their word, and Angelica came into my hands, as they promised, just a month later’ (cap. 68). Even on the supposition that Benvenuto gradually lied himself into believing the whole story, it would still be permanently valuable as evidence of the mode of thought then prevalent.

As a rule, however, the Italian artists, even ‘the odd, capricious, and eccentric’ among them, had little to do with magic. One of them, in his anatomical studies, may have cut himself a jacket out of the skin of a corpse, but at the advice of his confessor he put it again into the grave.[1257 - Vasari, viii. 143, Vita di Andrea da Fiesole. It was Silvio Cosini, who also ‘went after magical formulæ and other follies.’] Indeed the frequent study of anatomy probably did more than anything else to destroy the belief in the magical influence of various parts of the body, while at the same time the incessant observation and representation of the human form made the artist familiar with a magic of a wholly different sort.

In general, notwithstanding the instances which have been quoted, magic seems to have been markedly on the decline at the beginning of the sixteenth century,—that is to say, at a time when it first began to flourish vigorously out of Italy; and thus the tours of Italian sorcerers and astrologers in the North seem not to have begun till their credit at home was thoroughly impaired. In the fourteenth century it was thought necessary carefully to watch the lake on Mount Pilatus, near Scariotto, to hinder the magicians from there consecrating their books.[1258 - Uberti, Dittamondo, iii. cap. 1. In the March of Ancona he visits Scariotto, the supposed birthplace of Judas, and observes: ‘I must not here pass over Mount Pilatus, with its lake, where throughout the summer the guards are changed regularly. For he who understands magic comes up hither to have his books consecrated, whereupon, as the people of the place say, a great storm arises.’ (The consecration of books, as has been remarked, p. 527, is a special ceremony, distinct from the rest.) In the sixteenth century the ascent of Pilatus near Luzern was forbidden ‘by lib und guot,’ as Diebold Schilling records. It was believed that a ghost lay in the lake on the mountain, which was the spirit of Pilate. When people ascended the mountain or threw anything into the lake, fearful storms sprang up.] In the fifteenth century we find, for example, that the offer was made to produce a storm of rain, in order to frighten away a besieged army; and even then the commander of the besieged town—Nicolò Vitelli in Città di Castello—had the good sense to dismiss the sorcerers as godless persons.[1259 - De Obsedione Tiphernatium, 1474 (Rer. Ital. Scrippt. ex Florent. codicibus, tom. ii.).] In the sixteenth century no more instances of this official kind appear, although in private life the magicians were still active. To this time belongs the classic figure of German sorcery, Dr. Johann Faust; the Italian ideal, on the other hand, Guido Bonatto, dates back to the thirteenth century.

It must nevertheless be added that the decrease of the belief in magic was not necessarily accompanied by an increase of the belief in a moral order, but that in many cases, like the decaying faith in astrology, the delusion left behind it nothing but a stupid fatalism.

One or two minor forms of this superstition, pyromancy, chiromancy[1260 - This superstition, which was widely spread among the soldiery (about 1520), is ridiculed by Limerno Pitocco, in the Orlandino, v. 60.] and others, which obtained some credit as the belief in sorcery and astrology were declining, may be here passed over, and even the pseudo-science of physiognomy has by no means the interest which the name might lead us to expect. For it did not appear as the sister and ally of art and psychology, but as a new form of fatalistic superstition, and, what it may have been among the Arabians, as the rival of astrology. The author of a physiognomical treatise, Bartolommeo Cocle, who styled himself a ‘metoposcopist,’[1261 - Paul. Jov. Elog. Lit. p. 106, sub voce ‘Cocles.’] and whose science, according to Giovio, seemed like one of the most respectable of the free arts, was not content with the prophecies which he made to the many clever people who daily consulted him, but wrote also a most serious ‘catalogue of such whom great dangers to life were awaiting.’ Giovio, although grown old in the free thought of Rome—‘in hac luce romana’—is of opinion that the predictions contained therein had only too much truth in them.[1262 - It is the enthusiastic collector of portraits who is here speaking.] We learn from the same source how the people aimed at in these and similar prophecies took vengeance on the seer. Giovanni Bentivoglio caused Lucas Gauricus to be five times swung to and fro against the wall, on a rope hanging from a lofty winding staircase, because Lucas had foretold to him the loss of his authority.[1263 - From the stars, since Gauricus did not know physiognomy. For his own fate he had to refer to the prophecies of Cocle, since his father had omitted to draw his horoscope.] Ermes Bentivoglio sent an assassin after Cocle, because the unlucky metoposcopist had unwillingly prophesied to him that he would die an exile in battle. The murderer seems to have derided the dying man in his last moments, saying that the prophet had foretold to him that he would shortly commit an infamous murder. The reviver of chiromancy, Antioco Tiberto of Cesena,[1264 - Paul. Jov. l. c. p. 100 sqq. s. v. Tibertus.] came by an equally miserable end at the hands of Pandolfo Malatesta of Rimini, to whom he had prophesied the worst that a tyrant can imagine, namely, death in exile and in the most grievous poverty. Tiberto was a man of intelligence, who was supposed to give his answers less according to any methodical chiromancy than by means of his shrewd knowledge of mankind; and his high culture won for him the respect of those scholars who thought little of his divination.[1265 - The most essential facts as to these side-branches of divination, are given by Corn. Agrippa, De Occulta Philosophia, cap. 57.]

Alchemy, in conclusion, which is not mentioned in antiquity till quite late under Diocletian, played only a very subordinate part at the best period of the Renaissance.[1266 - Libri, Hist. des Sciences Mathém. ii. 122.] Italy went through the disease earlier, when Petrarch in the fourteenth century confessed, in his polemic against it, that gold-making was a general practice.[1267 - ‘Novi nihil narro, mos est publicus’ (Remed. Utr. Fort. p. 93), one of the lively passages of this book, written ‘ab irato.’] Since then that particular kind of faith, devotion, and isolation which the practice of alchemy required became more and more rare in Italy, just when Italian and other adepts began to make their full profit out of the great lords in the North.[1268 - Chief passage in Trithem. Ann. Hirsaug. ii. 286 sqq.] Under Leo X. the few Italians who busied themselves with it were called ‘ingenia curiosa,’[1269 - ‘Neque enim desunt,’ Paul. Jov. Elog. Lit. p. 150, s. v. ‘Pomp, Gauricus;’ comp. ibid. p. 130, s. v. Aurel. Augurellus, Maccaroneide. Phant. xii.] and Aurelio Augurelli, who dedicated to Leo X., the great despiser of gold, his didactic poem on the making of the metal, is said to have received in return a beautiful but empty purse. The mystic science which besides gold sought for the omnipotent philosopher’s stone, is a late northern growth, which had its rise in the theories of Paracelsus and others.

CHAPTER V.

GENERAL DISINTEGRATION OF BELIEF

WITH these superstitions, as with ancient modes of thought generally, the decline in the belief of immortality stands in the closest connection.[1270 - In writing a history of Italian unbelief it would be necessary to refer to the so-called Averrhoism, which was prevalent in Italy and especially in Venice, about the middle of the fourteenth century. It was opposed by Boccaccio and Petrarch in various letters, and by the latter in his work: De Sui Ipsius et Aliorum Ignorantia. Although Petrarch’s opposition may have been increased by misunderstanding and exaggeration, he was nevertheless fully convinced that the Averrhoists ridiculed and rejected the Christian religion.] This question has the widest and deepest relations with the whole development of the modern spirit.

One great source of doubt in immortality was the inward wish to be under no obligations to the hated Church. We have seen that the Church branded those who thus felt as Epicureans (p. 496 (#x17_x_17_i27) sqq.). In the hour of death many doubtless called for the sacraments, but multitudes during their whole lives, and especially during their most vigorous years, lived and acted on the negative supposition. That unbelief on this particular point must often have led to a general scepticism, is evident of itself, and is attested by abundant historical proof. These are the men of whom Ariosto says: ‘Their faith goes no higher than the roof.’[1271 - Ariosto, Sonetto, 34: ‘Non credere sopra il tetto.’ The poet uses the words of an official who had decided against him in a matter of property.] In Italy, and especially in Florence, it was possible to live as an open and notorious unbeliever, if a man only refrained from direct acts of hostility against the Church.[1272 - We may here again refer to Gemisthos Plethon, whose disregard of Christianity had an important influence on the Italians, and particularly on the Florentines of that period.] The confessor, for instance, who was sent to prepare a political offender for death, began by inquiring whether the prisoner was a believer, ‘for there was a false report that he had no belief at all.’[1273 - Narrazione del Caso del Boscoli, Arch. Stor. i. 273 sqq. The standing phrase was ‘non aver fede;’ comp. Vasari, vii. 122, Vita di Piero di Cosimo.]

The unhappy transgressor here referred to—the same Pierpaolo Boscoli who has been already mentioned (p. 59 (#x5_x_5_i18))—who in 1513 took part in an attempt against the newly restored family of the Medici, is a faithful mirror of the religious confusion then prevalent. Beginning as a partisan of Savonarola, he became afterwards possessed with an enthusiasm for the ancient ideals of liberty, and for paganism in general; but when he was in prison his early friends regained the control of his mind, and secured for him what they considered a pious ending. The tender witness and narrator of his last hours is one of the artistic family of the Delia Robbia, the learned philologist Luca. ‘Ah,’ sighs Boscoli, ‘get Brutus out of my head for me, that I may go my way as a Christian.’ ‘If you will,’ answers Luca, ‘the thing is not difficult; for you know that these deeds of the Romans are not handed down to us as they were, but idealised (con arte accresciute).’ The penitent now forces his understanding to believe, and bewails his inability to believe voluntarily. If he could only live for a month with pious monks, he would truly become spiritually minded. It comes out that these partisans of Savonarola knew their Bible very imperfectly; Boscoli can only say the Paternoster and Avemaria, and earnestly begs Luca to exhort his friends to study the sacred writings, for only what a man has learned in life does he possess in death. Luca then reads and explains to him the story of the Passion according to the Gospel of St. Matthew; the poor listener, strange to say, can perceive clearly the Godhead of Christ, but is perplexed at his manhood; he wishes to get as firm a hold of it ‘as if Christ came to meet him out of a wood.’ His friend thereupon exhorts him to be humble, since this was only a doubt sent him by the Devil. Soon after it occurs to the penitent that he has not fulfilled a vow made in his youth to go on pilgrimage to the Impruneta; his friend promises to do it in his stead. Meantime the confessor—a monk, as was desired, from Savonarola’s monastery—arrives, and after giving him the explanation quoted above of the opinion of St. Thomas Aquinas on tyrannicide, exhorts him to bear death manfully. Boscoli makes answer: ‘Father, waste no time on this; the philosophers have taught it me already; help me to bear death out of love to Christ.’ What follows—the communion, the leave-taking and the execution—is very touchingly described, one point deserves special mention. When Boscoli laid his head on the block, he begged the executioner to delay the stroke for a moment: ‘During the whole time since the announcement of the sentence he had been striving after a close union with God, without attaining it as he wished, and now in this supreme moment he thought that by a strong effort he could give himself wholly to God.’ It is clearly some half-understood expression of Savonarola which was troubling him.

If we had more confessions of this character the spiritual picture of the time would be the richer by many important features which no poem or treatise has preserved for us. We should see more clearly how strong the inborn religious instinct was, how subjective and how variable the relation of the individual to religion, and what powerful enemies and competitors religion had. That men whose inward condition is of this nature, are not the men to found a new church, is evident; but the history of the Western spirit would be imperfect without a view of that fermenting period among the Italians, while other nations, who have had no share in the evolution of thought, may be passed over without loss. But we must return to the question of immortality.

If unbelief in this respect made such progress among the more highly cultivated natures, the reason lay partly in the fact that the great earthly task of discovering the world and representing it in word and form, absorbed most of the higher spiritual faculties. We have already spoken (p. 490 (#x17_x_17_i12)) of the inevitable worldliness of the Renaissance. But this investigation and this art were necessarily accompanied by a general spirit of doubt and inquiry. If this spirit shows itself but little in literature, if we find, for example, only isolated instances of the beginnings of biblical criticism (p. 465 (#x16_x_16_i32)), we are not therefore to infer that it had no existence. The sound of it was only over-powered by the need of representation and creation in all departments—that is, by the artistic instinct; and it was further checked, whenever it tried to express itself theoretically, by the already existing despotism of the Church. This spirit of doubt must, for reasons too obvious to need discussion, have inevitably and chiefly busied itself with the question of the state of man after death.

And here came in the influence of antiquity, and worked in a twofold fashion on the argument. In the first place men set themselves to master the psychology of the ancients, and tortured the letter of Aristotle for a decisive answer. In one of the Lucianic dialogues of the time[1274 - Jovian. Pontan. Charon, Opp. ii. 1128-1195.] Charon tells Mercury how he questioned Aristotle on his belief in immortality, when the philosopher crossed in the Stygian boat; but the prudent sage, although dead in the body and nevertheless living on, declined to compromise himself by a definite answer—and centuries later how was it likely to fare with the interpretation of his writings? All the more eagerly did men dispute about his opinion and that of others on the true nature of the soul, its origin, its pre-existence, its unity in all men, its absolute eternity, even its transformations; and there were men who treated of these things in the pulpit.[1275 - Faustini Terdocei Triumphus Stultitiae, l. ii.] The dispute was warmly carried on even in the fifteenth century; some proved that Aristotle taught the doctrine of an immortal soul;[1276 - E.g. Borbone Morosini about 1460; comp. Sansovino, Venezia l. xiii. p. 243. He wrote ‘de immortalite animæ ad mentem Aristotelis.’ Pomponius Lætus, as a means of effecting his release from prison, pointed to the fact that he had written an epistle on the immortality of the soul. See the remarkable defence in Gregorovius, vii. 580 sqq. See on the other hand Pulci’s ridicule of this belief in a sonnet, quoted by Galeotti, Arch. Stor. Ital. n. s. ix. 49 sqq.] others complained of the hardness of men’s hearts, who would not believe that there was a soul at all, till they saw it sitting down on a chair before them;[1277 - Vespas. Fiorent. p. 260.] Filelfo in his funeral oration on Francesco Sforza brings forward a long list of opinions of ancient and even of Arabian philosophers in favour of immortality, and closes the mixture, which covers a folio page and a half of print,[1278 - Orationes Philelphi, fol. 8.] with the words, ‘Besides all this we have the Old and New Testaments, which are above all truth.’ Then came the Florentine Platonists with their master’s doctrine of the soul, supplemented at times, as in the case of Pico, by Christian teaching. But the opposite opinion prevailed in the instructed world. At the beginning of the sixteenth century the stumbling-block which it put in the way of the Church was so serious that Leo X. set forth a Constitution[1279 - Septimo Decretal. lib. v. tit. iii. cap. 8.] at the Lateran Council in 1513, in defence of the immortality and individuality of the soul, the latter against those who asserted that there was but one soul in all men. A few years later appeared the work of Pomponazzo, in which the impossibility of a philosophical proof of immortality is maintained; and the contest was now waged incessantly with replies and apologies, till it was silenced by the Catholic reaction. The pre-existence of the soul in God, conceived more or less in accordance with Plato’s theory of ideas, long remained a common belief, and proved of service even to the poets.[1280 - Ariosto, Orlando, vii. 61. Ridiculed in Orlandino, iv. 67, 68. Cariteo, a member of the Neapolitan Academy of Pontanus, uses the idea of the pre-existence of the soul in order to glorify the House of Aragon. Roscoe, Leone X. ed. Bossi, ii. 288.] The consequences which followed from it as to the mode of the soul’s continued existence after death, were not more closely considered.

There was a second way in which the influence of antiquity made itself felt, chiefly by means of that remarkable fragment of the sixth book of Cicero’s ‘Republic’ known by the name of Scipio’s Dream. Without the commentary of Macrobius it would probably have perished like the rest of the second part of the work; it was now diffused in countless manuscript copies,[1281 - Orelli, ad Cic. De Republ. l. vi. Comp. Lucan, Pharsalia, at the beginning.] and, after the discovery of typography, in a printed form, and edited afresh by various commentators. It is the description of a transfigured hereafter for great men, pervaded by the harmony of the spheres. This pagan heaven, for which many other testimonies were gradually extracted from the writings of the ancients, came step by step to supplant the Christian heaven in proportion as the ideal of fame and historical greatness threw into the shade the ideal of the Christian life, without, nevertheless, the public feeling being thereby offended as it was by the doctrine of personal annihilation after death. Even Petrarch founds his hope chiefly on this Dream of Scipio, on the declarations found in other Ciceronian works, and on Plato’s ‘Phædo,’ without making any mention of the Bible.[1282 - Petrarca, Epp. Fam. iv. 3, iv. 6.] ‘Why,’ he asks elsewhere, ‘should not I as a Catholic share a hope which was demonstrably cherished by the heathen?’ Soon afterwards Coluccio Salutati wrote his ‘Labours of Hercules’ (still existing in manuscript), in which it is proved at the end that the valorous man, who has well endured the great labours of earthly life, is justly entitled to a dwelling among the stars.[1283 - Fil. Villani, Vite, p. 15. This remarkable passage is as follows: ‘Che agli uomini fortissimi poichè hanno vinto le mostruose fatiche della terra, debitamente sieno date le stelle.’] If Dante still firmly maintained that the great pagans, whom he would have gladly welcomed in Paradise, nevertheless must not come beyond the Limbo at the entrance to Hell,[1284 - Inferno, iv. 24 sqq. Comp. Purgatorio, vii. 28, xxii. 100.] the poetry of a later time accepted joyfully the new liberal ideas of a future life. Cosimo the Elder, according to Bernardo Pulci’s poem on his death, was received in heaven by Cicero, who had also been called the ‘Father of his country,’ by the Fabii, by Curius, Fabricius and many others; with them he would adorn the choir where only blameless spirits sing.[1285 - This pagan heaven is referred to in the epitaph on the artist Niccolò dell’Arca:‘Nunc te Praxiteles, Phidias, Polycletus adoraMiranturque tuas, o Nicolae, manus.’In Bursellis, Ann. Bonon. Murat. xxiii. col. 912.]

But in the old writers there was another and less pleasing picture of the world to come—the shadowy realms of Homer and of those poets who had not sweetened and humanised the conception. This made an impression on certain temperaments. Gioviano Pontano somewhere attributes to Sannazaro the story of a vision, which he beheld one morning early while half awake.[1286 - In his late work Actius.] He seemed to see a departed friend, Ferrandus Januarius, with whom he had often discoursed on the immortality of the soul, and whom he now asked whether it was true that the pains of Hell were really dreadful and eternal. The shadow gave an answer like that of Achilles when Odysseus questioned him. ‘So much I tell and aver to thee, that we who are parted from earthly life have the strongest desire to return to it again.’ He then saluted his friend and disappeared.

It cannot but be recognised that such views of the state of man after death partly presuppose and partly promote the dissolution of the most essential dogmas of Christianity. The notion of sin and of salvation must have almost entirely evaporated. We must not be misled by the effects of the great preachers of repentance or by the epidemic revivals which have been described above (part vi. cap. 2). For even granting that the individually developed classes had shared in them like the rest, the cause of their participation was rather the need of emotional excitement, the rebound of passionate natures, the horror felt at great national calamities, the cry to heaven for help. The awakening of the conscience had by no means necessarily the sense of sin and the felt need of salvation as its consequence, and even a very severe outward penance did not perforce involve any repentance in the Christian meaning of the word. When the powerful natures of the Renaissance tell us that their principle is to repent of nothing,[1287 - Cardanus, De Propria Vita, cap. 13: ‘Non pœnitere ullius rei quam voluntarie effecerim, etiam quæ male cessisset;’ else I should be of all men the most miserable.] they may have in their minds only matters that are morally indifferent, faults of unreason or imprudence; but in the nature of the case this contempt for repentance must extend to the sphere of morals, because its origin, namely the consciousness of individual force, is common to both sides of human nature. The passive and contemplative form of Christianity, with its constant reference to a higher world beyond the grave, could no longer control these men. Macchiavelli ventured still farther, and maintained that it could not be serviceable to the state and to the maintenance of public freedom.[1288 - Discorsi, ii. cap. 2.]

The form assumed by the strong religious instinct which, notwithstanding all, survived in many natures, was Theism or Deism, as we may please to call it. The latter name may be applied to that mode of thought which simply wiped away the Christian element out of religion, without either seeking or finding any other substitute for the feelings to rest upon. Theism may be considered that definite heightened devotion to the one Supreme Being which the Middle Ages were not acquainted with. This mode of faith does not exclude Christianity, and can either ally itself with the Christian doctrines of sin, redemption, and immortality, or else exist and flourish without them.

Sometimes this belief presents itself with childish naïveté and even with a half-pagan air, God appearing as the almighty fulfiller of human wishes. Agnolo Pandolfini[1289 - Del Governo della Famiglia, p. 114.] tells us how, after his wedding, he shut himself in with his wife, and knelt down before the family altar with the picture of the Madonna, and prayed, not to her, but to God that he would vouchsafe to them the right use of their property, a long life in joy and unity with one another, and many male descendants: ‘for myself I prayed for wealth, honour, and friends, for her blamelessness, honesty, and that she might be a good housekeeper.’ When the language used has a strong antique flavour, it is not always easy to keep apart the pagan style and the theistic belief.[1290 - Comp. the short ode of M. Antonio Flaminio in the Coryciana (see p. 269):Dii quibus tam Corycius venustaSigna, tam dives posuit sacellum,Ulla si vestros animos piorumGratia tangit,Vos jocos risusque senis facetiSospites servate diu; senectamVos date et semper viridem et FalernoUsque madentem.At simul longo satiatus ævoLiquerit terras, dapibus DeorumLætus intersit, potiore mutansNectare Bacchum.]

This temper sometimes manifests itself in times of misfortune with a striking sincerity. Some addresses to God are left us from the latter period of Firenzuola, when for years he lay ill of fever, in which, though he expressly declares himself a believing Christian, he shows that his religious consciousness is essentially theistic.[1291 - Firenzuola, Opere, iv. p. 147 sqq.] His sufferings seem to him neither as the punishment of sin, nor as preparation for a higher world; they are an affair between him and God only, who has put the strong love of life between man and his despair. ‘I curse, but only curse Nature, since thy greatness forbids me to utter thy name.... Give me death, Lord, I beseech thee, give it me now!’

In these utterances and the like, it would be vain to look for a conscious and consistent Theism; the speakers partly believed themselves to be still Christians, and for various other reasons respected the existing doctrines of the Church. But at the time of the Reformation, when men were driven to come to a distinct conclusion on such points, this mode of thought was accepted with a fuller consciousness; a number of the Italian Protestants came forward as Anti-Trinitarians and Socinians, and even as exiles in distant countries made the memorable attempt to found a church on these principles. From the foregoing exposition it will be clear that, apart from humanistic rationalism, other spirits were at work in this field.

One chief centre of theistic modes of thought lay in the Platonic Academy at Florence, and especially in Lorenzo Magnifico himself. The theoretical works and even the letters of these men show us only half their nature. It is true that Lorenzo, from his youth till he died, expressed himself dogmatically as a Christian,[1292 - Nic. Valori, Vita di Lorenzo, passim. For the advice to his son Cardinal Giovanni, see Fabroni, Laurentius, adnot. 178, and the appendices to Roscoe’s Leo X.] and that Pico was drawn by Savonarola’s influence to accept the point of view of a monkish ascetic.[1293 - Jo. Pici Vita, auct. Jo. Franc. Pico. For his ‘Deprecatio ad Deum,’ see Deliciae Poetarum Italorum.] But in the hymns of Lorenzo,[1294 - Orazione, Roscoe, Leone X. ed. Bossi viii. 120 (Magno Dio per la cui costante legge); hymn (oda il sacro inno tutta la natura) in Fabroni,’ Laur. adnot. 9; L’Altercazione, in the Poesie di Lor. Magn. i. 265. The other poems here named are quoted in the same collection.] which we are tempted to regard as the highest product of the spirit of this school, an unreserved Theism is set forth—a Theism which strives to treat the world as a great moral and physical Cosmos. While the men of the Middle Ages look on the world as a vale of tears, which Pope and Emperor are set to guard against the coming of Antichrist; while the fatalists of the Renaissance oscillate between seasons of overflowing energy and seasons of superstition or of stupid resignation, here, in this circle of chosen spirits,[1295 - If Pulci in his Morgante is anywhere in earnest with religion, he is so in canto xvi. str. 6. This deistic utterance of the fair pagan Antea is perhaps the plainest expression of the mode of thought prevalent in Lorenzo’s circle, to which tone the words of the dæmon Astarotte (quoted above p. 494) form in a certain sense the complement.] the doctrine is upheld that the visible world was created by God in love, that it is the copy of a pattern pre-existing in Him, and that He will ever remain its eternal mover and restorer. The soul of man can by recognising God draw Him into its narrow boundaries, but also by love to Him itself expand into the Infinite—and this is blessedness on earth.

Echoes of mediæval mysticism here flow into one current with Platonic doctrines, and with a characteristically modern spirit. One of the most precious fruits of the knowledge of the world and of man here comes to maturity, on whose account alone the Italian Renaissance must be called the leader of modern ages.

THE END

notes

1

History of Architecture, by Franz Kugler. (The first half of the fourth volume, containing the ‘Architecture and Decoration of the Italian Renaissance,’ is by the Author.)

2

Macchiavelli, Discorsi, 1. i. c. 12. ‘E la cagione, che la Italia non sia in quel medesimo termine, ne habbia anch’ ella ò una republica ò un prencipe che la governi, è solamente la Chiesa; perchè havendovi habitato e tenuto imperio temporale non è stata si potente ne di tal virtè, che l’habbia potuto occupare il restante d’Italia e farsene prencipe.’