The Civilisation of the Renaissance in Italy

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.

1151

Della Valle, Lettere Sanesi, iii. 18.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.’

1159

Brosch, Julius II. (Gotha, 1878), pp. 97 and 323.

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.’

1161

Ranke, Päpste, i. 247.

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.

1163

Firmicus Maternus, Matheseos Libri viii. at the end of the second book.

1164

In Bandello, iii. nov. 60, the astrologer of Alessandro Bentivoglio, in Milan, confessed himself a poor devil before the whole company.

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.

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.’

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

1172

Matteo Villani, xi. 3; see above, p. 508.

1173

Jovian. Pontan. De Fortitudine, l. i. See p. 511 note 1, for the honourable exception made by the first Sforza.

1174

Paul. Jov. Elog. sub v. Livianus, p. 219.