The Civilisation of the Renaissance in Italy

Boccaccio, Vita di Dante, p. 39.

333

Franco Sacchetti, nov. 121.

334

The former in the well-known sarcophagus near San Lorenzo, the latter over a door in the Palazzo della Ragione. For details as to their discovery in 1413, see Misson, Voyage en Italie, vol. i., and Michele Savonarola, col. 1157.

335

Vita di Dante, l. c. How came the body of Cassius from Philippi back to Parma?

336

‘Nobilitatis fastu’ and ‘sub obtentu religionis,’ says Pius II. (Comment. x. p. 473). The new sort of fame must have been inconvenient to those who were accustomed to the old.

That Carlo Malatesta caused the statue of Virgil to be pulled down and thrown into the Mincio, and this, as he alleged, from anger at the veneration paid to it by the people of Mantua, is a well-authenticated fact, specially attested by an invective written in 1397 by P. P. Vergerio against C. M., De dirutâ Statuâ Virgilii P. P. V. eloquentissimi Oratoris Epistola ex Tugurio Blondi sub Apolline, ed. by Marco Mantova Benavides (publ. certainly before 1560 at Padua). From this work it is clear that till then the statue had not been set up again. Did this happen in consequence of the invective? Bartholomæus Facius (De Vir. Ill. p. 9 sqq. in the Life of P. P. V. 1456) says it did, ‘Carolum Malatestam invectus Virgilii statua, quam ille Mantuæ in foro everterat, quoniam gentilis fuerat, ut ibidem restitueretur, effecit;’ but his evidence stands alone. It is true that, so far as we know, there are no contemporary chronicles for the history of Mantua at that period (Platina, Hist. Mant. in Murat. xx. contains nothing about the matter), but later historians are agreed that the statue was not restored. See for evidence, Prendilacqua, Vita di Vitt. da Feltre, written soon after 1446 (ed. 1871, p. 78), where the destruction but not the restoration of the statue is spoken of, and the work of Ant. Possevini, jun. (Gonzaga, Mantua, 1628), where, p. 486, the pulling down of the statue, the murmurings and violent opposition of the people, and the promise given in consequence by the prince that he would restore it, are all mentioned, with the addition: ‘Nec tamen restitutus est Virgilius.’ Further, on March 17, 1499, Jacopo d’Hatry writes to Isabella of Este, that he has spoken with Pontano about a plan of the princess to raise a statue to Virgil at Mantua, and that Pontano cried out with delight that Vergerio, if he were alive, would be even more pleased ‘che non se attristò quando el Conte Carola Malatesta persuase abuttare la statua di Virgilio nel flume.’ The writer then goes on to speak of the manner of setting it up, of the inscription ‘P. Virgilius Mantuanus’ and ‘Isabella Marchionissa Mantuæ restituit,’ and suggests that Andrea Mantegna would be the right man to be charged with the work. Mantegna did in fact make the drawings for it. (The drawing and the letter in question are given in Baschet, Recherches de documents d’art et d’histoire dans les Archives de Mantoue; documents inédits concernant la personne et les œuvres d’Andrea Mantegna, in the Gazette des Beaux-Arts, xx. (1866) 478-492, esp. 486 sqq.) It is clear from this letter that Carlo Malatesta did not have the statue restored. In Comparetti’s work on Virgil in the Middle Ages, the story is told after Burckhardt, but without authorities. Dr. Geiger, on the authority of Professor Paul of Berlin, distinguishes between C. Cassius Longinus and Cassius Parmensis, the poet, both among the assassins of Cæsar.

337

Comp. Keyssler’s Neueste Reisen, p. 1016.

338

The elder was notoriously a native of Verona.

339

This is the tone of the remarkable work, De Laudibus Papiæ, in Murat. xx., dating from the fourteenth century—much municipal pride, but no idea of personal fame.

340

De Laudibus Patavii, in Murat. xxiv. col. 1138 sqq. Only three cities, in his opinion—could be compared with Padua—Florence, Venice and Rome.

341

‘Nam et veteres nostri tales aut divos aut æternâ memoriâ dignos non immerito prædicabant, quum virtus summa sanctitatis sit consocia et pari ematur pretio.’ What follows is most characteristic: ‘Hos itaque meo facili judicio æternos facio.’

342

Similar ideas occur in many contemporary writers. Codrus Urceus, Sermo xiii. (Opp. 1506, fol. xxxviii. b), speaking of Galeazzo Bentivoglio, who was both a scholar and a warrior, ‘Cognoscens artem militarem esse quidem excellentem, sed literas multo certe excellentiores.’

343

What follows immediately is not, as the editor remarks (Murat. xxiv col. 1059, note), from the pen of Mich. Savonarola.

344

Petrarch, in the ‘Triumph’ here quoted, only dwells on characters of antiquity, and in his collection, De Rebus Memorandis, has little to say of contemporaries. In the Casus Virorum Illustrium of Boccaccio (among the men a number of women, besides Philippa Catinensis treated of at the end, are included, and even the goddess Juno is described), only the close of the eighth book and the last book—the ninth—deal with non-classical times. Boccaccio’s remarkable work, De Claris Mulieribus, treats also almost exclusively of antiquity. It begins with Eve, speaks then of ninety-seven women of antiquity, and seven of the Middle ages, beginning with Pope Joan and ending with Queen Johanna of Naples. And so at a much later time in the Commentarii Urbani of Ralph. Volaterranus. In the work De Claris Mulieribus of the Augustinian Jacobus Bergomensis (printed 1497, but probably published earlier) antiquity and legend hold the chief place, but there are still some valuable biographies of Italian women. There are one or two lives of contemporary women by Vespasiano da Bisticci (Arch. Stor. Ital. iv. i. pp. 430 sqq.). In Scardeonius (De Urb. Patav. Antiqu. Græv. Thesaur. vi. iii. col. 405 sqq.,) only famous Paduan women are mentioned. First comes a legend or tradition from the time of the fall of the empire, then tragical stories of the party struggles of the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries; then notices of several heroic women; then the foundress of nunneries, the political woman, the female doctor, the mother of many and distinguished sons, the learned woman, the peasant girl who dies defending her chastity; then the cultivated beauty of the sixteenth century, on whom everybody writes sonnets; and lastly, the female novelist and poet at Padua. A century later the woman-professor would have been added to these. For the famous woman of the House of Este, see Ariosto, Orl. xiii.

345

Bartolommeo Facio and Paolo Cortese. B. F. De Viris Illustribus Liber, was first published by L. Mehus (Florence, 1745). The book was begun by the author (known by other historical works, and resident at the court of Alfonso of Naples) after he had finished the history of that king (1455), and ended, as references to the struggles of Hungary and the writer’s ignorance of the elevation of Æneas Silvius to the cardinalate show, in 1456. (See, nevertheless, Wahlen, Laurentii Vallæ Opuscula Tria, Vienna, 1869, p. 67, note 1.) It is never quoted by contemporaries, and seldom by later writers. The author wishes in this book to describe the famous men, ‘ætatis memoriæque nostræ,’ and consequently only mentions such as were born in the last quarter of the fourteenth century, and were still living in, or had died shortly before, the middle of the fifteenth. He chiefly limits himself to Italians, except in the case of artists or princes, among the latter of whom he includes the Emperor Sigismund and Albrecht Achilles of Brandenburg; and in arranging the various biographies he neither follows chronological order nor the distinction which the subject of each attained, but puts them down ‘ut quisque mihi occurrerit,’ intending to treat in a second part of those whom he might have left out in the first. He divides the famous men into nine classes, nearly all of them prefaced by remarks on their distinctive qualities: 1. Poets; 2. Orators; 3. Jurists; 4. Physicians (with a few philosophers and theologians, as an appendix); 5. Painters; 6. Sculptors; 7. Eminent citizens; 8. Generals; 9. Princes and kings. Among the latter he treats with special fulness and care of Pope Nicholas V. and King Alfonso of Naples. In general he gives only short and mostly eulogistic biographies, confined in the case of princes and soldiers to the list of their deeds, and of artists and writers to the enumeration of their works. No attempt is made at a detailed description or criticism of these; only with regard to a few works of art which he had himself seen he writes more fully. Nor is any attempt made at an estimate of individuals; his heroes either receive a few general words of praise, or must be satisfied with the mere mention of their names. Of himself the author says next to nothing. He states only that Guarino was his teacher, that Manetti wrote a book on a subject which he himself had treated, that Bracellius was his countryman, and that the painter Pisano of Verona was known to him (pp. 17, 18, 19, 48; but says nothing in speaking of Laurentius Valla of his own violent quarrels with this scholar. On the other hand, he does not fail to express his piety and his hatred to the Turks (p. 64 (#x5_x_5_i27)), to relieve his Italian patriotism by calling the Swiss barbarians (p. 60 (#x5_x_5_i20)), and to say of P. P. Vergerius, ‘dignus qui totam in Italia vitam scribens exegisset’ (p. 9 (#x4_x_4_i17)).

Of all celebrities he evidently sets most store by the scholars, and among these by the ‘oratores,’ to whom he devotes nearly a third of his book. He nevertheless has great respect for the jurists, and shows a special fondness for the physicians, among whom he well distinguishes the theoretical from the practical, relating the successful diagnoses and operations of the latter. That he treats of theologians and philosophers in connection with the physicians, is as curious as that he should put the painters immediately after the physicians, although, as he says, they are most allied to the poets. In spite of his reverence for learning, which shows itself in the praise given to the princes who patronised it, he is too much of a courtier not to register the tokens of princely favour received by the scholars he speaks of, and to characterise the princes in the introduction to the chapters devoted to them as those who ‘veluti corpus membra, ita omnia genera quæ supra memoravimus, regunt ac tuentur.’

The style of the book is simple and unadorned, and the matter of it full of instruction, notwithstanding its brevity. It is a pity that Facius did not enter more fully into the personal relations and circumstances of the men whom he described, and did not add to the list of their writings some notice of the contents and the value of them.

The work of Paolo Cortese (b. 1645, d. 1510), De Hominibus Doctis Dialogus (first ed. Florence, 1734), is much more limited in its character. This work, written about 1490, since it mentions Antonius Geraldinus as dead, who died in 1488, and was dedicated to Lorenzo de’ Medici, who died in 1492, is distinguished from that of Facius, written a generation earlier, not only by the exclusion of all who are not learned men, but by various inward and outward characteristics. First by the form, which is that of a dialogue between the author and his two companions, Alexander Farnese and Antonius, and by the digressions and unequal treatment of the various characters caused thereby; and secondly by the manner of the treatment itself. While Facius only speaks of the men of his own time, Cortese treats only of the dead, and in part of those long dead, by which he enlarges his circle more than he narrows it by exclusion of the living; while Facius merely chronicles works and deeds, as if they were unknown, Cortese criticises the literary activity of his heroes as if the reader were already familiar with it. This criticism is shaped by the humanistic estimate of eloquence, according to which no man could be considered of importance unless he had achieved something remarkable in eloquence, i.e. in the classical, Ciceronian treatment of the Latin language. On this principle Dante and Petrarch are only moderately praised, and are blamed for having diverted so much of their powers from Latin to Italian; Guarino is described as one who had beheld perfect eloquence at least through a cloud; Lionardo Aretino as one who had offered his contemporaries ‘aliquid splendidius;’ and Enea Silvio as he ‘in quo primum apparuit mutati sæculi signum.’ This point of view prevailed over all others; never perhaps was it held so one-sidedly as by Cortese. To get a notion of his way of thinking we have only to hear his remarks on a predecessor, also the compiler of a great biographical collection, Sicco Polentone: ‘Ejus sunt viginti ad filium libri scripti de claris scriptoribus, utiles admodum qui jam fere ab omnibus legi sent desiti. Est enim in judicando parum acer, nec servit aurium voluptati quum tractat res ab aliis ante tractatas; sed hoc ferendum. Illud certe molestum est, dum alienis verbis sententiisque scripta infarcit et explet sua; ex quo nascitur maxime vitiosum scribendi genus, quum modo lenis et candidus, modo durus et asper apparcat, et sic in toto genere tanquam in unum agrum plura inter se inimicissima sparsa semina.’

All are not treated with so much detail; most are disposed of in a few brief sentences; some are merely named without a word being added. Much is nevertheless to be learned from his judgments, though we may not be able always to agree with them. We cannot here discuss him more fully, especially as many of his most characteristic remarks have been already made use of; on the whole, they give us a clear picture of the way in which a later time, outwardly more developed, looked down with critical scorn upon an earlier age, inwardly perhaps richer, but externally less perfect.

Facius, the author of the first-mentioned biographical work, is spoken of, but not his book. Like Facius, Cortese is the humble courtier, looking on Lorenzo de’ Medici as Facius looked on Alfonso of Naples; like him, he is a patriot who only praises foreign excellence unwillingly and because he must; adding the assurance that he does not wish to oppose his own country (p. 48 (#x5_x_5_i7), speaking of Janus Pannonius).

Information as to Cortese has been collected by Bernardus Paperinius, the editor of his work; we may add that his Latin translation of the novel of L. B. Alberti, Hippolytus and Dejanira, is printed for the first time in the Opere di L. B. A. vol. iii. pp. 439-463.

346

How great the fame of the humanists was is shown by the fact that impostors attempted to make capital out of the use of their names. There thus appeared at Verona a man strangely clad and using strange gestures, who, when brought before the mayor, recited with great energy passages of Latin verse and prose, taken from the works of Panormita, answered in reply to the questions put to him that he was himself Panormita, and was able to give so many small and commonly unknown details about the life of this scholar, that his statement obtained general credit. He was then treated with great honour by the authorities and the learned men of the city, and played his assumed part successfully for a considerable time, until Guarino and others who knew Panormita personally discovered the fraud. Comp. Rosmini, Vita di Guarino, ii. 44 sqq., 171 sqq. Few of the humanists were free from the habit of boasting. Codrus Urceus (Vita, at the end of the Opera, 1506, fol. lxx.), when asked for his opinion about this or that famous man, used to answer: ‘Sibi scire videntur.’ Barth. Facius, De Vir. Ill. p. 31, tells of the jurist Antonius Butriensis: ‘Id unum in eo viro notandum est, quod neminem unquam, adeo excellere homines in eo studio volebat, ut doctoratu dignum in examine comprobavit.’

347

A Latin poet of the twelfth century, one of the wandering scholars who barters his song for a coat, uses this as a threat. Carmina Burana, p. 76.

348

Sonnet cli: Lasso ch’i ardo.

349

Boccaccio, Opere Volgari, vol. xvi. in Sonnet 13: Pallido, vinto, etc.

350

Elsewhere, and in Roscoe, Leone X. ed. Bossi, iv. 203.

351

Angeli Politiani Epp. lib. x.

352

Quatuor navigationes, etc. Deodatum (St. Dié), 1507. Comp. O. Peschel, Geschichte des Zeitalters der Entdeckungen, 1859, ed. 2, 1876.

353

Paul. Jov. De Romanis Piscibus, Præfatio (1825). The first decade of his histories would soon be published, ‘non sine aliqua spe immortalitatis.’