The Civilisation of the Renaissance in Italy

The Sforza,[523 - The last Visconti divided his interest between Livy, the French chivalrous romances, Dante, and Petrarch. The humanists who presented themselves to him with the promise ‘to make him famous,’ were generally sent away after a few days. Comp. Decembrio, in Murat. xx. col. 1114.] too, were all of them men of more or less learning and patrons of literature; they have been already referred to in passing (pp. 38 sqq.). Duke Francesco probably looked on humanistic culture as a matter of course in the education of his children, if only for political reasons. It was felt universally to be an advantage if the Prince could mix with the most instructed men of his time on an equal footing. Ludovico Moro, himself an excellent Latin scholar, showed an interest in intellectual matters which extended far beyond classical antiquity (p. 41 (#x5_x_5_i1) sqq.).

Even the petty despots strove after similar distinctions, and we do them injustice by thinking that they only supported the scholars at their courts as a means of diffusing their own fame. A ruler like Borso of Ferrara (p. 49 (#x5_x_5_i9)), with all his vanity, seems by no means to have looked for immortality from the poets, eager as they were to propitiate him with a ‘Borseid’ and the like. He had far too proud a sense of his own position as a ruler for that. But intercourse with learned men, interest in antiquarian matters, and the passion for elegant Latin correspondence were a necessity for the princes of that age. What bitter complaints are those of Duke Alfonso, competent as he was in practical matters, that his weakliness in youth had forced him to seek recreation in manual pursuits only![524 - Paul. Jov. Vita Alfonsi Ducis.] or was this merely an excuse to keep the humanists at a distance? A nature like his was not intelligible even to contemporaries.

Even the most insignificant despots of Romagna found it hard to do without one or two men of letters about them. The tutor and secretary were often one and the same person, who sometimes, indeed, acted as a kind of court factotum.[525 - On Collenuccio at the court of Giovanni Sforza of Pesaro (son of Alessandro, p. 28), who finally, in 1508, put him to death, see p. 135, note 4. At the time of the last Ordelaffi at Forli, the place was occupied by Codrus Urceus (1477-80); death-bed complaint of C. U. Opp. Ven. 1506, fol. liv.; for his stay in Forli, Sermo, vi. Comp. Carlo Malagola, Della Vita di C. U. Bologna, 1877, Ap. iv. Among the instructed despots, we may mention Galeotto Manfreddi of Faenza, murdered in 1488 by his wife, and some of the Bentivoglio family at Bologna.] We are apt to treat the small scale of these courts as a reason for dismissing them with a too ready contempt, forgetting that the highest spiritual things are not precisely matters of measurement.

Life and manners at the court of Rimini must have been a singular spectacle under the bold pagan Condottiere Sigismondo Malatesta. He had a number of scholars around him, some of whom he provided for liberally, even giving them landed estates, while others earned at least a livelihood as officers in his army.[526 - Anecdota Literar. ii. pp. 305 sqq., 405. Basinius of Parma ridicules Porcellio and Tommaso Seneca; they are needy parasites, and must play the soldier in their old age, while he himself was enjoying an ‘ager’ and a ‘villa.’] In his citadel—‘arx Sismundea’—they used to hold discussions, often of a very venomous kind, in the presence of the ‘rex,’ as they termed him. In their Latin poems they sing his praises and celebrate his amour with the fair Isotta, in whose honour and as whose monument the famous rebuilding of San Francesco at Rimini took place—‘Divæ Isottæ Sacrum.’ When the humanists themselves came to die, they were laid in or under the sarcophagi with which the niches of the outside walls of the church were adorned, with an inscription testifying that they were laid here at the time when Sigismundus, the son of Pandulfus, ruled.[527 - For details respecting these graves, see Keyssler, Neueste Reisen, s. 924.] It is hard for us nowadays to believe that a monster like this prince felt learning and the friendship of cultivated people to be a necessity of life; and yet the man who excommunicated him, made war upon him, and burnt him in effigy, Pope Pius II., says: ‘Sigismund knew history and had a great store of philosophy; he seemed born to all that he undertook.[528 - Pii II. Comment. l. ii. p. 92. By history he means all that has to do with antiquity. Cortesius also praises him highly, p. 34 sqq.]

CHAPTER VII.

THE REPRODUCTION OF ANTIQUITY: LATIN CORRESPONDENCE AND ORATIONS

THERE were two purposes, however, for which the humanist was as indispensable to the republics as to princes or popes, namely, the official correspondence of the state, and the making of speeches on public and solemn occasions.

Not only was the secretary required to be a competent Latinist, but conversely, only a humanist was credited with the knowledge and ability necessary for the post of secretary. And thus the greatest men in the sphere of science during the fifteenth century mostly devoted a considerable part of their lives to serve the state in this capacity. No importance was attached to a man’s home or origin. Of the four great Florentine secretaries who filled the office between 1427 and 1465,[529 - Fabroni, Costnus, Adnot. 118. Vespasian. Fior. passim. An important passage respecting the demands made by the Florentines on their secretaries (‘quod honor apud Florentinos magnus habetur,’ says B. Facius, speaking of Poggio’s appointment to the secretaryship, De Vir. Ill. p. 17), is to be found in Æneas Sylvius, De Europâ, cap. 54 (Opera, p. 454).] three belonged to the subject city of Arezzo, namely, Lionardo (Bruni), Carlo (Marsuppini), and Benedetto Accolti; Poggio was from Terra Nuova, also in Florentine territory. For a long period, indeed, many of the highest officers of state were on principle given to foreigners. Lionardo, Poggio, and Giannozzo Manetti were at one time or another private secretaries to the popes, and Carlo Aretino was to have been so. Blondus of Forli, and, in spite of everything, at last even Lorenzo Valla, filled the same office. From the time of Nicholas V. and Pius II. onwards,[530 - See Voigt, En. Silvio als Papst Pius II. bd. iii. 488 sqq., for the often-discussed and often-misunderstood change which Pius II. made with respect to the Abbreviators.] the Papal chancery continued more and more to attract the ablest men, and this was still the case even under the last popes of the fifteenth century, little as they cared for letters. In Platina’s ‘History of the Popes,’ the life of Paul II. is a charming piece of vengeance taken by a humanist on the one Pope who did not know how to behave to his chancery—to that circle ‘of poets and orators who bestowed on the Papal court as much glory as they received from it.’ It is delightful to see the indignation of these haughty and wealthy gentlemen, who knew as well as the Pope himself how to use their position to plunder foreigners,[531 - Comp. the statement of Jacob Spiegel (1521) given in the reports of the Vienna Academy, lxxviii. 333.] when some squabble about precedence happened, when, for instance, the ‘Advocati consistoriales’ claimed equal or superior rank to theirs.[532 - Anecdota Lit. i. p. 119 sqq. A plea (‘Actio ad Cardinales Deputatos’) of Jacobus Volaterranus in the name of the Secretaries, no doubt of the time of Sixtus IV. (Voigt, l. c. 552, note). The humanistic claims of the ‘advocati consistoriales’ rested on their oratory, as that of the Secretaries on their correspondence.] The Apostle John, to whom the ‘Secreta cœlestia’ were revealed; the secretary of Porsenna, whom Mucius Scævola mistook for the king; Mæcenas, who was private secretary to Augustus; the archbishops, who in Germany were called chancellors, are all appealed to in turn.[533 - The Imperial chancery under Frederick III. was best known to Æneas Sylvius. Comp. Epp. 23 and 105; Opera, pp. 516 and 607.] ‘The apostolic secretaries have the most weighty business of the world in their hands. For who but they decide on matters of the Catholic faith, who else combat heresy, re-establish peace, and mediate between great monarchs? who but they write the statistical accounts of Christendom? It is they who astonish kings, princes, and nations by what comes forth from the Pope. They write commands and instructions for the legates, and receive their orders only from the Pope, on whom they wait day and night.’ But the highest summit of glory was only attained by the two famous secretaries and stylists of Leo X.: Pietro Bembo and Jacopo Sadoleto.[534 - The letters of Bembo and Sadoleto have been often printed; those of the former, e.g. in the Opera, Basel, 1556, vol. ii., where the letters written in the name of Leo X. are distinguished from private letters; those of the latter most fully, 5 vols. Rome, 1760. Some additions to both have been given by Carlo Malagola in the review Il Baretti, Turin, 1875. Bembo’s Asolani will be spoken of below; Sadoleto’s significance for Latin style has been judged as follows by a contemporary, Petrus Alcyonius, De Exilio, ed. Menken, p. 119: ‘Solus autem nostrorum temporum aut certe cum paucis animadvertit elocutionem emendatam et latinam esse fundamentum oratoris; ad eamque obtinendam necesse esse latinam linguam expurgare quam inquinarunt nonnulli exquisitarum literarum omnino rudes et nullius judicii homines, qui partim a circumpadanis municipiis, partim ex transalpinis provinciis, in hanc urbem confluxerunt. Emendavit igitur ‘eruditissimus hic vir corruptam et vitiosam linguæ latinæ consuetudinem, pura ac integra loquendi ratione.’]

All the chanceries did not turn out equally elegant documents. A leathern official style, in the impurest of Latin, was very common. In the Milanese documents preserved by Corio there is a remarkable contrast between this sort of composition and the few letters written by members of the princely house, which must have been written, too, in moments of critical importance.[535 - Corio, Storia di Milano, fol. 449, for the letter of Isabella of Aragon to her father, Alfonso of Naples; fols. 451, 464, two letters of the Moor to Charles VIII. Compare the story in the Lettere Pittoriche, iii. 86 (Sebastiano del Piombo to Aretino), how Clement VII., during the sack of Rome, called his learned men round him, and made each of them separately write a letter to Charles V.] They are models of pure Latinity. To maintain a faultless style under all circumstances was a rule of good breeding, and a result of habit. Besides these officials, private scholars of all kinds naturally had correspondence of their own. The object of letter-writing was seldom what it is nowadays, to give information as to the circumstances of the writer, or news of other people; it was rather treated as a literary work done to give evidence of scholarship and to win the consideration of those to whom it was addressed. These letters began early to serve the purpose of learned disquisition; and Petrarch, who introduced this form of letter-writing, revived the forms of the old epistolary style, putting the classical ‘thou’ in place of the ‘you’ of mediæval Latin. At a later period letters became collections of neatly-turned phrases, by which subjects were encouraged or humiliated, colleagues flattered or insulted, and patrons eulogised or begged from.[536 - For the correspondence of the period in general, see Voigt, Wiederbelebung, 414-427.]

The letters of Cicero, Pliny, and others, were at this time diligently studied as models. As early as the fifteenth century a mass of forms and instructions for Latin correspondence had appeared, as accessory to the great grammatical and lexicographic works, the mass of which is astounding to us even now when we look at them in the libraries. But just as the existence of these helps tempted many to undertake a task to which they had no vocation, so were the really capable men stimulated to a more faultless excellence, till at length the letters of Politian, and at the beginning of the sixteenth century those of Pietro Bembo, appeared, and took their place as unrivalled masterpieces, not only of Latin style in general, but also of the more special art of letter-writing.

Together with these there appeared in the sixteenth century the classical style of Italian correspondence, at the head of which stands Bembo again.[537 - Bembo thought it necessary to excuse himself for writing in Italian: ‘Ad Sempronium,’ Bembi Opera, Bas. 1556, vol. iii. 156 sqq.] Its form is wholly modern, and deliberately kept free from Latin influence, and yet its spirit is thoroughly penetrated and possessed by the ideas of antiquity. These letters, though partly of a confidential nature, are mostly written with a view to possible publication in the future, and always on the supposition that they might be worth showing on account of their elegance. After the year 1530, printed collections began to appear, either the letters of miscellaneous correspondents in irregular succession, or of single writers; and the same Bembo whose fame was so great as a Latin correspondent won as high a position in his own language.[538 - On the collection of the letters of Aretino, see above, pp. 164 sqq., and the note. Collections of Latin letters had been printed even in the fifteenth century.]

But, at a time and among a people where ‘listening’ was among the chief pleasures of life, and where every imagination was filled with the memory of the Roman senate and its great speakers, the orator occupied a far more brilliant place than the letter-writer.[539 - Comp. the speeches in the Opera of Philelphus, Sabellicus, Beroaldus, &c.; and the writings and lives of Giann. Manetti, Æneas Sylvius, and others.] Eloquence had shaken off the influence of the Church, in which it had found a refuge during the Middle Ages, and now became an indispensable element and ornament of all elevated lives. Many of the social hours which are now filled with music were then given to Latin or Italian oratory; and yet Bartolommeo Fazio complained that the orators of his time were at a disadvantage compared with those of antiquity; of three kinds of oratory which were open to the latter, one only was left to the former, since forensic oratory was abandoned to the jurists, and the speeches in the councils of the government had to be delivered in Italian.[540 - B. F. De Viris Illustribus, ed. Mehus, p. 7. Manetti, as Vesp. Bisticci, Commentario, p. 51, states, delivered many speeches in Italian, and then afterwards wrote them out in Latin. The scholars of the fifteenth century, e.g. Paolo Cortese, judge the achievements of the past solely from the point of view of ‘Eloquentia.’]

The social position of the speaker was a matter of perfect indifference; what was desired was simply the most cultivated humanistic talent. At the court of Borso of Ferrara, the Duke’s physician, Jeronimo da Castello, was chosen to deliver the congratulatory address on the visits of Frederick III. and of Pius II.[541 - Diario Ferrarese, in Murat. xxiv. col. 198, 205.] Married laymen ascended the pulpits of the churches at any scene of festivity or mourning, and even on the feast-days of the saints. It struck the non-Italian members of the Council of Basel as something strange, that the Archbishop of Milan should summon Æneas Sylvius, who was then unordained, to deliver a public discourse at the feast of Saint Ambrogius; but they suffered it in spite of the murmurs of the theologians, and listened to the speaker with the greatest curiosity.[542 - Pii II. Comment. l. i. p. 10.]

Let us glance for a moment at the most frequent and important occasions of public speaking.

It was not for nothing, in the first place, that the ambassadors from one state to another received the title of orators. Whatever else might be done in the way of secret negotiation, the envoy never failed to make a public appearance and deliver a public speech, under circumstances of the greatest possible pomp and ceremony.[543 - The success of the fortunate orator was great, and the humiliation of the speaker who broke down before distinguished audiences no less great. Examples of the latter in Petrus Crinitus, De Honestâ Disciplinâ, v. cap. 3. Comp. Vespas. Fior. pp. 319, 430.] As a rule, however numerous the embassy might be, one individual spake for all; but it happened to Pius II., a critic before whom all were glad to be heard, to be forced to sit and listen to a whole deputation, one after another.[544 - Pii II. Comment. l. iv. p. 205. There were some Romans, too, who awaited him at Viterbo. ‘Singuli per se verba facere, ne alius alio melior videretur, cum essent eloquentiâ ferme pares.’ The fact that the Bishop of Arezzo was not allowed to speak in the name of the general embassy of the Italian states to the newly chosen Alexander VI., is seriously placed by Guicciardini (at the beginning of book i.) among the causes which helped to produce the disaster of 1494.] Learned princes who had the gift of speech were themselves fond of discoursing in Latin or Italian. The children of the House of Sforza were trained to this exercise. The boy Galeazzo Maria delivered in 1455 a fluent speech before the Great Council at Venice,[545 - Told by Marin Sanudo, in Murat. xxii. col. 1160.] and his sister Ippolita saluted Pope Pius II. with a graceful address at the Congress of Mantua.[546 - Pii II. Comment. l. ii. p. 107. Comp. p. 87. Another oratorical princess, Madonna Battista Montefeltro, married to a Malatesta, harangued Sigismund and Martin. Comp. Arch. Stor. iv. i. p. 442, note.] Pius himself through all his life did much by his oratory to prepare the way for his final elevation to the Papal chair. Great as he was both as scholar and diplomatist, he would probably never have become Pope without the fame and the charm of his eloquence. ‘For nothing was more lofty than the dignity of his oratory.’[547 - De Expeditione in Turcas, in Murat. xxiii. col. 68. ‘Nihil enim Pii concionantis majestate sublimius.’ Not to speak of the naïve pleasure with which Pius describes his own triumphs, see Campanus, Vita Pii II., in Murat. iii. ii. passim. At a later period these speeches were judged less admiringly. Comp. Voigt, Enea Silvio, ii. 275 sqq.] Without doubt this was a reason why multitudes held him to be the fittest man for the office, even before his election.

Princes were also commonly received on public occasions with speeches, which sometimes lasted for hours. This happened of course only when the prince was known as a lover of eloquence,[548 - Charles V., when unable on one occasion to follow the flourishes of a Latin orator at Genoa, replied in the ear of Giovio: ‘Ah, my tutor Adrian was right, when he told me I should be chastened for my childish idleness in learning Latin.’ Paul. Jov. Vita Hadriani VI. Princes replied to these speeches through their official orators; Frederick III. through Enea Silvio, in answer to Giannozzo Manetti. Vesp. Bist. Comment. p. 64.] or wished to pass for such, and when a competent speaker was present, whether university professor, official, ecclesiastic, physician, or court-scholar.

Every other political opportunity was seized with the same eagerness, and according to the reputation of the speaker, the concourse of the lovers of culture was great or small. At the yearly change of public officers, and even at the consecration of new bishops, a humanist was sure to come forward, and sometimes addressed his audience in hexameters or Sapphic verses.[549 - Lil. Greg. Gyraldus, De poetis Nostri Temp. speaking of Collenuccio. Filelfo, a married layman, delivered an introductory speech in the Cathedral at Como for the Bishop Scarampi, in 1460. Rosmini, Filelfo, ii. 122, iii. 147.] Often a newly appointed official was himself forced to deliver a speech more or less relevant to his department, as for instance, on justice; and lucky for him if he were well up in his part! At Florence even the Condottieri, whatever their origin or education might be, were compelled to accommodate themselves to the popular sentiment, and on receiving the insignia of their office, were harangued before the assembled people by the most learned secretary of state.[550 - Fabroni, Cosmus, Adnot. 52.] It seems that beneath or close to the Loggia dei Lanzi—the porch where the government was wont to appear solemnly before the people—a tribune or platform (rostra ringhiera) was erected for such purposes.

Anniversaries, especially those of the death of princes, were commonly celebrated by memorial speeches. Even the funeral oration strictly so-called was generally entrusted to a humanist, who delivered it in church, clothed in a secular dress; nor was it only princes, but officials, or persons otherwise distinguished, to whom this honour was paid.[551 - Which, nevertheless, gave some offence to Jac. Volaterranus (in Murat. xxiii. col. 171) at the service in memory of Platina.] This was also the case with the speeches delivered at weddings or betrothals, with the difference that they seem to have been made in the palace, instead of in church, like that of Filelfo at the betrothal of Anna Sforza with Alfonso of Este in the castle of Milan. It is still possible that the ceremony may have taken place in the chapel of the castle. Private families of distinction no doubt also employed such wedding orators as one of the luxuries of high life. At Ferrara, Guarino was requested on these occasions to send some one or other of his pupils.[552 - Anecdota Lit. i. p. 299, in Fedra’s funeral oration on Lod. Podacataro, whom Guarino commonly employed on these occasions. Guarino himself delivered over fifty speeches at festivals and funerals, which are enumerated in Rosmini, Guarino, ii. 139-146. Burckhardt, 332. Dr. Geiger here remarks that Venice also had its professional orators. Comp. G. Voigt, ii. 425.] The church simply took charge of the religious ceremonies at weddings and funerals.

The academical speeches, both those made at the installation of a new teacher and at the opening of a new course of lectures,[553 - Many of these opening lectures have been preserved in the works of Sabellicus, Beroaldus Major, Codrus Urceus, &c. In the works of the latter there are also some poems which he recited ‘in principio studii.’] were delivered by the professor himself, and treated as occasions of great rhetorical display. The ordinary university lectures also usually had an oratorical character.[554 - The fame of Pomponazzo’s delivery is preserved in Paul. Jov. Elogia Vir. Doct. p. 134. In general, it seems that the speeches, the form of which was required to be perfect, were learnt by heart. In the case of Giannozzo Manetti we know positively that it was so on one occasion (Commentario, 39). See, however, the account p. 64, with the concluding statement that Manetti spoke better impromptu than Aretino with preparation. We are told of Codrus Urceus, whose memory was weak, that he read his orations (Vita, at the end of his works. Ven. 1506, fol. lxx.). The following passage will illustrate the exaggerated value set on oratory: ‘Ausim affirmare perfectum oratorem (si quisquam modo sit perfectus orator) ita facile posse nitorem, lætitiam, lumina et umbras rebus dare quas oratione exponendas suscipit, ut pictorem suis coloribus et pigmentis facere videmus.’ (Petr. Alcyonius, De Exilio, ed. Menken, p. 136.)]

With regard to forensic eloquence, the quality of the audience determined the form of speech. In case of need it was enriched with all sorts of philosophical and antiquarian learning.

As a special class of speeches we may mention the addresses made in Italian on the battle-field, either before or after the combat. Frederick of Urbino[555 - Vespas. Fior. p. 103. Comp. p. 598, where he describes how Giannozzo Manetti came to him in the camp.] was esteemed a classic in this style; he used to pass round among his squadrons as they stood drawn up in order of battle, inspiring them in turn with pride and enthusiasm. Many of the speeches in the military historians of the fifteenth century, as for instance in Porcellius (p. 99 (#x6_x_6_i28)), may be, in fact at least, imaginary, but may be also in part faithful representations of words actually spoken. The addresses again which were delivered to the Florentine Militia,[556 - Archiv. Stor. xv. pp. 113, 121. Canestrini’s Introduction, p. 32 sqq. Reports of two such speeches to soldiers; the first, by Alamanni, is wonderfully fine and worthy of the occasion (1528).] organised in 1506 chiefly through the influence of Macchiavelli, and which were spoken first at reviews, and afterwards at special annual festivals, were of another kind. They were simply general appeals to the patriotism of the hearers, and were addressed to the assembled troops in the church of each quarter of the city by a citizen in armour, sword in hand.

Finally, the oratory of the pulpit began in the fifteenth century to lose its distinctive peculiarities. Many of the clergy had entered into the circle of classical culture, and were ambitious of success in it. The street-preacher Bernardino da Siena, who even in his lifetime passed for a saint and who was worshipped by the populace, was not above taking lessons in rhetoric from the famous Guarino, although he had only to preach in Italian. Never indeed was more expected from preachers than at that time—especially from the Lenten preachers; and there were not a few audiences which could not only tolerate, but which demanded a strong dose of philosophy from the pulpit.[557 - On this point see Faustinus Terdoceus, in his satire De Triumpho Stultitiae, lib. ii.] But we have here especially to speak of the distinguished occasional preachers in Latin. Many of their opportunities had been taken away from them, as has been observed, by learned laymen. Speeches on particular saints’ days, at weddings and funerals, or at the installation of a bishop, and even the introductory speech at the first mass of a clerical friend, or the address at the festival of some religious order, were all left to laymen.[558 - Both of these extraordinary cases occur in Sabellicus, Opera, fol. 61-82. De Origine et Auctu Religionis, delivered at Verona from the pulpit before the barefoot friars; and De Sacerdotii Laudibus, delivered at Venice.] But at all events at the Papal court in the fifteenth century, whatever the occasion might be, the preachers were generally monks. Under Sixtus IV., Giacomo da Volterra regularly enumerates these preachers, and criticises them according to the rules of the art.[559 - Jac. Volaterrani. Diar. Roman. in Murat. xxiii. passim. In col. 173 a remarkable sermon before the court, though in the absence of Sixtus IV., is mentioned. Pater Paolo Toscanella thundered against the Pope, his family, and the cardinals. When Sixtus heard of it, he smiled.] Fedra Inghirami, famous as an orator under Julius II., had at least received holy orders and was canon at St. John Lateran; and besides him, elegant Latinists were now common enough among the prelates. In this matter, as in others, the exaggerated privileges of the profane humanists appear lessened in the sixteenth century—on which point we shall presently speak more fully.

What now was the subject and general character of these speeches? The national gift of eloquence was not wanting to the Italians of the Middle Ages, and a so-called ‘rhetoric’ belonged from the first to the seven liberal arts; but so far as the revival of the ancient methods is concerned, this merit must be ascribed, according to Filippo Villani,[560 - Fil. Villani, Vitae, ed. Galetti, p. 30.] to the Florentine Bruno Casini, who died of the plague in 1348. With the practical purpose of fitting his countrymen to speak with ease and effect in public, he treated, after the pattern of the ancients, invention, declamation, bearing, and gesticulation, each in its proper connection. Elsewhere too we read of an oratorical training directed solely to practical application. No accomplishment was more highly esteemed than the power of elegant improvisation in Latin.[561 - See above, p. 237, note 3.] The growing study of Cicero’s speeches and theoretical writings, of Quintilian and of the imperial panegyrists, the appearance of new and original treatises,[562 - Georg. Trapezunt, Rhetorica, the first complete system of instruction. Æn. Sylvius, Artis Rhetoricae Praecepta, in the Opera, p. 992. treats purposely only of the construction of sentences and the position of words. It is characteristic as an instance of the routine which was followed. He names several other theoretical writers who are some of them no longer known. Comp. C. Voigt, ii. 262 sqq.] the general progress of antiquarian learning, and the stores of ancient matter and thought which now could and must be drawn from—all combined to shape the character of the new eloquence.

This character nevertheless differed widely according to the individual. Many speeches breathe a spirit of true eloquence, especially those which keep to the matter treated of; of this kind is the mass of what is left to us of Pius II. The miraculous effects produced by Giannozzo Manetti[563 - His life in Murat. xx. is full of the triumphs of his eloquence. Comp. Vespas. Fior. 592 sqq., and Commentario, p. 30. On us these speeches make no great impression, e.g. that at the coronation of Frederick III. in Freher-Struve, Script. Rer. Germ. iii. 4-19. Of Manetti’s oration at the burial of Lion. Aretino, Shepherd-Tonelli says (Poggio, ii. 67 sqq.): ‘L’orazione ch’ei compose, è ben la cosa la più meschina che potesse udirsi, piena di puerilità volgare nello stile, irrelevante negli argomenti e d’una prolissità insopportabile.’] point to an orator the like of whom has not been often seen. His great audiences as envoy before Nicholas V. and before the Doge and Council of Venice were events not to be soon forgotten. Many orators, on the contrary, would seize the opportunity, not only to flatter the vanity of distinguished hearers, but to load their speeches with an enormous mass of antiquarian rubbish. How it was possible to endure this infliction for two and even three hours, can only be understood when we take into account the intense interest then felt in everything connected with antiquity, and the rarity and defectiveness of treatises on the subject at a time when printing was but little diffused. Such orations had at least the value which we have claimed (p. 232 (#x10_x_10_i5)) for many of Petrarch’s letters. But some speakers went too far. Most of Filelfo’s speeches are an atrocious patchwork of classical and biblical quotations, tacked on to a string of commonplaces, among which the great people he wishes to flatter are arranged under the head of the cardinal virtues, or some such category, and it is only with the greatest trouble, in his case and in that of many others, that we can extricate the few historical notices of value which they really contain. The speech, for instance, of a scholar and professor of Piacenza at the reception of the Duke Galeazzo Maria, in 1467, begins with Julius Cæsar, then proceeds to mix up a mass of classical quotations with a number from an allegorical work by the speaker himself, and concludes with some exceedingly indiscreet advice to the ruler.[564 - Annales Placentini, in Murat. xx. col. 918.] Fortunately it was late at night, and the orator had to be satisfied with handing his written panegyric to the prince. Filelfo begins a speech at a betrothal with the words: ‘Aristotle, the peripatetic.’ Others start with P. Cornelius Scipio, and the like, as though neither they nor their hearers could wait a moment for a quotation. At the end of the fifteenth century public taste suddenly improved, chiefly through Florentine influence, and the practice of quotation was restricted within due limits. Many works of reference were now in existence, in which the first comer could find as much as he wanted of what had hitherto been the admiration of princes and people.

As most of the speeches were written out beforehand in the study, the manuscripts served as a means of further publicity afterwards. The great extemporaneous speakers, on the other hand, were attended by shorthand writers.[565 - E.g. Manetti. Comp. Vesp. Commentario, p. 30; so, too, Savonarola Comp. Perrens, Vie de Savonarole, i. p. 163. The shorthand writers, however, could not always follow him, or, indeed, any rapid ‘Improvisatori.’ Savonarola preached in Italian. See Pasq. Villari: Vita di Savonarola.] We must further remember, that all the orations which have come down to us were not intended to be actually delivered. The panegyric, for example, of the elder Beroaldus on Ludovico Moro was presented to him in manuscript.[566 - It was by no means one of the best (Opuscula Beroaldi, Basel, 1509, fol. xviii.-xxi). The most remarkable thing in it is the flourish at the end: ‘Esto tibi ipsi archetypon et exemplar, teipsum imitare,’ etc.] In fact, just as letters were written addressed to all conceivable persons and parts of the world as exercises, as formularies, or even to serve a controversial end, so there were speeches for imaginary occasions[567 - Letters and speeches of this kind were written by Alberto di Ripalta; comp. the Annales Placentini, written by his father Antonius and continued by himself, in Murat. xx. col. 914 sqq., where the pedant gives an instructive account of his own literary career.] to be used as models for the reception of princes, bishops, and other dignitaries.

For oratory, as for the other arts, the death of Leo X. (1521) and the sack of Rome (1527) mark the epoch of decadence. Giovio,[568 - Pauli Jovii Dialogus de Viris Litteris Illustribus, in Tiraboschi, tom. vii. parte iv. Yet he says some ten years later, at the close of the Elogia Litteraria: ‘Tenemus adhuc (after the leadership in philology had passed to the Germans) sincerae et constantis eloquentiae munitam arcem,’ etc. The whole passage, given in German in Gregorovius, viii. 217 sqq. is important, as showing the view taken of Germany by an Italian, and is again quoted below in this connection.] but just escaped from the desolation of the eternal city, describes, not exhaustively, but on the whole truly, the causes of this decline.

‘The plays of Plautus and Terence, once a school of Latin style for the educated Romans, are banished to make room for Italian comedies. Graceful speakers no longer find the recognition and reward which they once did. The Consistorial advocates no longer prepare anything but the introductions to their speeches, and deliver the rest—a confused muddle—on the inspiration of the moment. Sermons and occasional speeches have sunk to the same level. If a funeral oration is wanted for a cardinal or other great personage, the executors do not apply to the best orators in the city, to whom they would have to pay a hundred pieces of gold, but they hire for a trifle the first impudent pedant whom they come across, and who only wants to be talked of whether for good or ill. The dead, they say, is none the wiser if an ape stands in a black dress in the pulpit, and beginning with a hoarse, whimpering mumble, passes little by little into a loud howling. Even the sermons preached at great papal ceremonies are no longer profitable, as they used to be. Monks of all orders have again got them into their hands, and preach as if they were speaking to the mob. Only a few years ago a sermon at mass before the Pope, might easily lead the way to a bishopric.’

CHAPTER VIII.

LATIN TREATISES AND HISTORY

FROM the oratory and the epistolary writings of the humanists, we shall here pass on to their other creations, which were all, to a greater or less extent, reproductions of antiquity.

Among these must be placed the treatise, which often took the shape of a dialogue.[569 - A special class is formed by the semi-satirical dialogues, which Collenuccio, and still more Pontano, copied from Lucian. Their example stimulated Erasmus and Hutten. For the treatises properly so-called parts of the ethical writings of Plutarch may have served as models.] In this case it was borrowed directly from Cicero. In order to do anything like justice to this class of literature—in order not to throw it aside at first sight as a bore—two things must be taken into consideration. The century which escaped from the influence of the Middle Ages felt the need of something to mediate between itself and antiquity in many questions of morals and philosophy; and this need was met by the writer of treatises and dialogues. Much which appears to us as mere commonplace in their writings, was for them and their contemporaries a new and hardly-won view of things upon which mankind had been silent since the days of antiquity. The language too, in this form of writing, whether Italian or Latin, moved more freely and flexibly than in historical narrative, in letters, or in oratory, and thus became in itself the source of a special pleasure. Several Italian compositions of this kind still hold their place as patterns of style. Many of these works have been, or will be mentioned on account of their contents; we here refer to them as a class. From the time of Petrarch’s letters and treatises down to near the end of the fifteenth century, the heaping up of learned quotations, as in the case of the orators, is the main business oi most of these writers. The whole style, especially in Italian, was then suddenly clarified, till, in the ‘Asolani,’ of Bembo, and the ‘Vita Sobria,’ of Luigi Cornaro,[570 - See below, part iv. chap. 5.] a classical perfection was reached. Here too the decisive fact was, that antiquarian matter of every kind had meantime begun to be deposited in encyclopædic works (now printed), and no longer stood in the way of the essayist.

It was inevitable too that the humanistic spirit should control the writing of history. A superficial comparison of the histories of this period with the earlier chronicles, especially with works so full of life, colour, and brilliancy as those of the Villani, will lead us loudly to deplore the change. How insipid and conventional appear by their side the best of the humanists, and particularly their immediate and most famous successors among the historians of Florence, Lionardo Aretino and Poggio![571 - Comp. the epigram of Sannazaro:‘Dum patriam laudat, damnat dum Poggius hostem,Nec malus est civis, nec bonus historicus.’] The enjoyment of the reader is incessantly marred by the sense that, in the classical phrases of Facius, Sabellicus, Folieta, Senarega, Platina in the chronicles of Mantua, Bembo in the annals of Venice, and even of Giovio in his histories, the best local and individual colouring and the full sincerity of interest in the truth of events have been lost. Our mistrust is increased when we hear that Livy, the pattern of this school of writers, was copied just where he is least worthy of imitation—on the ground, namely,[572 - Benedictus: Caroli VIII. Hist. in Eccard, Scriptt. vi. col. 1577.] ‘that he turned a dry and naked tradition into grace and richness.’ In the same place we meet with the suspicious declaration, that it is the function of the historian—just as if he were one with the poet—to excite, charm, or overwhelm the reader. We must further remember that many humanistic historians knew but little of what happened outside their own sphere, and this little they were often compelled to adapt to the taste of their patrons and employers. We ask ourselves finally, whether the contempt for modern things, which these same humanists sometimes avowed openly[573 - Petrus Crinitus deplores this contempt, De honesta disciplina, l. xviii. cap. 9. The humanists here resemble the writers in the decline of antiquity, who also severed themselves from their own age. Comp. Burckhardt, Die Zeit Constantin’s des Grossen. See for the other side several declarations of Poggio in Voigt, Wiederbelebung, p. 443 sqq.] must not necessarily have had an unfortunate influence on their treatment of them. Unconsciously the reader finds himself looking with more interest and confidence on the unpretending Latin and Italian annalists, like those of Bologna and Ferrara, who remained true to the old style, and still more grateful does he feel to the best of the genuine chroniclers who wrote in Italian—to Marin Sanudo, Corio, and Infessura—who were followed at the beginning of the sixteenth century by that new and illustrious band of great national historians who wrote in their mother tongue.

Contemporary history, no doubt, was written far better in the language of the day than when forced into Latin. Whether Italian was also more suitable for the narrative of events long past, or for historical research, is a question which admits, for that period, of more answers than one. Latin was, at that time, the ‘Lingua franca’ of instructed people, not only in an international sense, as a means of intercourse between Englishmen, Frenchmen, and Italians, but also in an interprovincial sense. The Lombard, the Venetian, and the Neapolitan modes of writing, though long modelled on the Tuscan, and bearing but slight traces of the dialect, were still not recognised by the Florentines. This was of less consequence in local contemporary histories, which were sure of readers at the place where they were written, than in the narratives of the past, for which a larger public was desired. In these the local interests of the people had to be sacrificed to the general interests of the learned. How far would the influence of a man like Blondus of Forli have reached if he had written his great monuments of learning in the dialect of the Romagna? They would have assuredly sunk into neglect, if only through the contempt of the Florentines, while written in Latin they exercised the profoundest influence on the whole European world of learning. And even the Florentines in the fifteenth century wrote Latin, not only because their minds were imbued with humanism, but in order to be more widely read.

Finally, there exist certain Latin essays in contemporary history, which stand on a level with the best Italian works of the kind. When the continuous narrative after the manner of Livy—that Procrustean bed of so many writers—is abandoned, the change is marvellous. The same Platina and Giovio, whose great histories we only read because and so far as we must, suddenly come forward as masters in the biographical style. We have already spoken of Tristan Caracciolo, of the biographical works of Facius and of the Venetian topography of Sabellico, and others will be mentioned in the sequel. Historical composition, like letters and oratory, soon had its theory. Following the example of Cicero, it proclaims with pride the worth and dignity of history, boldly claims Moses and the Evangelists as simple historians, and concludes with earnest exhortations to strict impartiality and love of truth.[574 - Lorenzo Valla, in the preface to the Historia Ferdinandi Regis Arag.; in opposition to him, Giacomo Zeno in the Vita Caroli Zeni, Murat. xix. p. 204. See, too, Guarino, in Rosmini, ii. 62 sqq., 177 sqq.]

The Latin treatises on past history were naturally concerned, for the most part, with classical antiquity. What we are more surprised to find among these humanists are some considerable works on the history of the Middle Ages. The first of this kind was the chronicle of Matteo Palmieri (449-1449), beginning where Prosper Aquitanus ceases, the style of which was certainly an offence to later critics like Paolo Cortese. On opening the ‘Decades’ of Blondus of Forli, we are surprised to find a universal history, ‘ab inclinatione Romanorum imperii,’ as in Gibbon, full of original studies on the authors of each century, and occupied, through the first 300 folio pages, with early mediæval history down to the death of Frederick II. And this when in Northern countries nothing more was wanted than chronicles of the popes and emperors, and the ‘Fasciculus temporum.’ We cannot here stay to show what writings Blondus made use of, and where he found his materials, though this justice will some day be done to him by the historians of literature. This book alone would entitle us to say that it was the study of antiquity which made the study of the Middle Ages possible, by first training the mind to habits of impartial historical criticism. To this must be added, that the Middle Ages were now over for Italy, and that the Italian mind could the better appreciate them, because it stood outside them. It cannot, nevertheless, be said that it at once judged them fairly, and still less that it judged them with piety. In art a fixed prejudice showed itself against all that those centuries had created, and the humanists date the new era from the time of their own appearance. ‘I begin,’ says Boccaccio,[575 - In the letter to Pizinga, Opere Volgari, vol. xvi. p. 38. With Raph. Volaterranus, l. xxi. the intellectual world begins in the fourteenth century. He is the same writer whose early books contain so many notices—excellent for his time—of the history of all countries.] ‘to hope and believe that God has had mercy on the Italian name, since I see that His infinite goodness puts souls into the breasts of the Italians like those of the ancients—souls which seek fame by other means than robbery and violence, but rather, on the path of poetry, which makes men immortal.’ But this narrow and unjust temper did not preclude investigation in the minds of the more gifted men, at a time, too, when elsewhere in Europe any such investigation would have been out of the question. A historical criticism[576 - Here, too, Petrarch cleared the way. See especially his critical investigation of the Austrian Charter, claiming to descend from Cæsar. Epp. Sen. xvi. 1.] of the Middle Ages was practicable, just because the rational treatment of all subjects by the humanists had trained the historical spirit. In the fifteenth century this spirit had so far penetrated the history even of the individual cities of Italy, that the stupid fairy tales about the origin of Florence, Venice, and Milan vanished, while at the same time, and long after, the chronicles of the North were stuffed with this fantastic rubbish, destitute for the most part of all poetical value, and invented as late as the fourteenth century.

The close connection between local history and the sentiment of glory has already been touched on in reference to Florence (part i. chap. vii.). Venice would not be behind-hand. Just as a great rhetorical triumph of the Florentines[577 - Like that of Giannozzo Manetti in the presence of Nicholas V., of the whole Papal court, and of a great concourse of strangers from all parts. Comp. Vespas. Fior. p. 591, and more fully in the Commentario, pp. 37-40.] would cause a Venetian embassy to write home post-haste for an orator to be sent after them, so too the Venetians felt the need of a history which would bear comparison with those of Lionardo Aretino and Poggio. And it was to satisfy this feeling that, in the fifteenth century, after negotiations with Giovanni Maria Filelfo and others had failed, the ‘Decades’ of Sabellico appeared, and in the sixteenth the ‘Historia rerum Venetarum’ of Pietro Bembo, both written at the express charge of the republic, the latter a continuation of the former.

The great Florentine historians at the beginning of the sixteenth century (pp. 81 sqq.) were men of a wholly different kind from the Latinists Bembo and Giovio. They wrote Italian, not only because they could not vie with the Ciceronian elegance of the philologists, but because, like Macchiavelli, they could only record in a living tongue the living results of their own immediate observations—and we may add in the case of Macchiavelli, of his observation of the past—and because, as in the case of Guicciardini, Varchi, and many others, what they most desired was, that their view of the course of events should have as wide and deep a practical effect as possible. Even when they only write for a few friends, like Francesco Vettori, they feel an inward need to utter their testimony on men and events, and to explain and justify their share in the latter.

And yet, with all that is characteristic in their language and style, they were powerfully affected by antiquity, and, without its influence, would be inconceivable. They were not humanists, but they had passed through the school of humanism, and they have in them more of the spirit of the ancient historians than most of the imitators of Livy. Like the ancients, they were citizens who wrote for citizens.

CHAPTER IX.

GENERAL LATINISATION OF CULTURE

WE cannot attempt to trace the influence of humanism in the special sciences. Each has its own history, in which the Italian investigators of this period, chiefly through their rediscovery of the results attained by antiquity,[578 - In fact, it was already said that Homer alone contained the whole of the arts and sciences—that he was an encyclopædia. Comp. Codri Urcei Opera, Sermo xiii. at the end. It is true that we met with a similar opinion in several ancient writers. The words of C. U. (Sermo xiii., habitus in laudem liberalium artium; Opera, ed. Ven. 1506, fol. xxxviii. b) are as follows: ‘Eia ergo bono animo esto; ego graecas litteras tibi exponam; et praecipue divinum Homerum, a quo ceu fonte perenni, ut scribit Naso, vatum Pieriis ora rigantur aquis. Ab Homero grammaticum dicere poteris, ab Homero rhetoricam, ab Homero medicinam, ab Homero astrologiam, ab Homero fabulas, ab Homero historias, ab Homero mores, ab Homero philosophorum dogmata, ab Homero artem militarem, ab Homero coquinariam, ab Homero architecturam, ab Homero regendarum urbium modum percipies; et in summa, quidquid boni quidquid honesti animus hominis discendi cupidus optare potest, in Homero facile poteris invenire.’ To the same effect ‘Sermo’ vii. and viii. Opera, fol. xxvi. sqq., which treat of Homer only.] mark a new epoch, with which the modern period of the science in question begins with more or less distinctness. With regard to philosophy, too, we must refer the reader to the special historical works on the subject. The influence of the old philosophers on Italian culture will appear at times immense, at times inconsiderable; the former, when we consider how the doctrines of Aristotle, chiefly drawn from the Ethics[579 - A cardinal under Paul II. had his cooks instructed in the Ethics of Aristotle. Comp. Gaspar. Veron. Vita Pauli II. in Muratori, iii. ii. col. 1034.] and Politics—both widely diffused at an early period—became the common property of educated Italians, and how the whole method of abstract thought was governed by him;[580 - For the study of Aristotle in general, a speech of Hermolaus Barbarus is specially instructive.] the latter, when we remember how slight was the dogmatic influence of the old philosophies, and even of the enthusiastic Florentine Platonists, on the spirit of the people at large. What looks like such an influence is generally no more than a consequence of the new culture in general, and of the special growth and development of the Italian mind. When we come to speak of religion, we shall have more to say on this head. But in by far the greater number of cases, we have to do, not with the general culture of the people, but with the utterances of individuals or of learned circles; and here, too, a distinction must be drawn between the true assimilation of ancient doctrines and fashionable make-believe. For with many antiquity was only a fashion, even among very learned people.

Nevertheless, all that looks like affectation to our age, need not then have been actually so. The giving of Greek and Latin names to children, for example, is better and more respectable than the present practice of taking them, especially the female names, from novels. When the enthusiasm for the ancient world was greater than for the saints, it was simple and natural enough that noble families called their sons Agamemnon, Tydeus, and Achilles,[581 - Bursellis, Ann. Bonon. in Murat. xxiii. col. 898.] and that a painter named his son Apelles and his daughter Minerva.[582 - Vasari, xi. pp. 189, 257. Vite di Sodoma e di Garofalo. It is not surprising that the profligate women at Rome took the most harmonious ancient names—Julia, Lucretia, Cassandra, Portia, Virginia, Penthesilea, under which they appear in Aretino. It was, perhaps, then that the Jews took the names of the great Semitic enemies of the Romans—Hannibal, Hamilcar, Hasdrubal, which even now they commonly bear in Rome. [This last assertion cannot be maintained. Neither Zunz, Namen der Juden, Leipzig, 1837, reprinted in Zunz Gesammelte Schriften, Berlin, 1876, nor Steinschneider in his collection in Il Buonarotti, ser. ii. vol. vi. 1871, pp. 196-199, speaks of any Jew of that period who bore these names, and even now, according to the enquiries of Prince Buoncompagni from Signer Tagliacapo, in charge of the Jewish archives in Rome, there are only a few who are named Asdrubale, and none Amilcare or Annibale. L. G.] Burckhardt, 352. A careful choice of names is recommended by L. B. Alberti, Della familia, opp. ii. p. 171. Maffeo Vegio (De educatione liberorum. lib. i. c. x.) warns his readers against the use of nomina indecora barbara aut nova, aut quae gentilium deorum sunt. Names like ‘Nero’ disgrace the bearer; while others such as Cicero, Brutus, Naso, Maro, can be used qualiter per se parum venusta propter tamen eximiam illorum virtutem.] Nor will it appear unreasonable that, instead of a family name, which people were often glad to get rid of, a well-sounding ancient name was chosen. A local name, shared by all residents in the place, and not yet transformed into a family name, was willingly given up, especially when its religious associations made it inconvenient; Filippo da San Gemignano called himself Callimachus. The man, misunderstood and insulted by his family, who made his fortune as a scholar in foreign cities, could afford, even if he were a Sanseverino, to change his name to Julius Pomponius Laetus. Even the simple translation of a name into Latin or Greek, as was almost uniformly the custom in Germany, may be excused to a generation which spoke and wrote Latin, and which needed names that could be not only declined, but used with facility in verse and prose. What was blameworthy and ridiculous was, the change of half a name, baptismal or family, to give it a classical sound and a new sense. Thus Giovanni was turned into Jovianus or Janus, Pietro to Petreius or Pierius, Antonio to Aonius, Sannazzaro to Syncerus, Luca Grasso to Lucius Crassus. Ariosto, who speaks with such derision of all this,[583 - ‘Quasi che ‘l nome i buon giudici inganni,E che quel meglio t’ abbia a far poeta,Che non farà lo studio di molt’ anni!’So jests Ariosto, to whom fortune had certainly given a harmonious name, in the Seventh Satire, vs. 64.] lived to see children called after his own heroes and heroines.[584 - Or after those of Bojardo, which are in part the same as his.]

Nor must we judge too severely the Latinisation of many usages of social life, such as the titles of officials, of ceremonies, and the like, in the writers of the period. As long as people were satisfied with a simple, fluent Latin style, as was the case with most writers from Petrarch to Æneas Sylvius, this practice was not so frequent and striking; it became inevitable when a faultless, Ciceronian Latin was demanded. Modern names and things no longer harmonised with the style, unless they were first artificially changed. Pedants found a pleasure in addressing municipal counsellors as ‘Patres Conscripti,’ nuns as ‘Virgines Vestales,’ and entitling every saint ‘Divus’ or ‘Deus;’ but men of better taste, such as Paolo Giovio, only did so when and because they could not help it. But as Giovio does it naturally, and lays no special stress upon it, we are not offended if, in his melodious language, the cardinals appear as ‘Senatores,’ their dean as ‘Princeps Senatus,’ excommunication as ‘Dirae,’[585 - The soldiers of the French army in 1512 were ‘omnibus diris ad inferos devocati!’ The honest canon, Tizio, who, in all seriousness, pronounced a curse from Macrobius against foreign troops, will be spoken of further on.] and the carnival as ‘Lupercalia.’ This example of this author alone is enough to warn us against drawing a hasty inference from these peculiarities of style as to the writer’s whole mode of thinking.

The history of Latin composition cannot here be traced in detail. For fully two centuries the humanists acted as if Latin were, and must remain, the only language worthy to be written. Poggio[586 - De infelicitate principum, in Poggii Opera, fol. 152: ‘Cujus (Dantis) exstat poema praeclarum, neque, si literis Latinis constaret, ullâ ex parte poetis superioribus (the ancients) postponendum.’ According to Boccaccio, Vita di Dante, p. 74, ‘Many wise men’ even then discussed the question why Dante had not written in Latin. Cortesius (De hominibus doctis, p. 7) complains: ‘Utinam tam bene cogitationes suas Latinus litteris mandare potuisset, quam bene patrium sermonem illustravit!’ He makes the same complaint in speaking of Petrarch and Boccaccio.] deplores that Dante wrote his great poem in Italian; and Dante, as is well known, actually made the attempt in Latin, and wrote the beginning of the ‘Inferno’ first in hexameters. The whole future of Italian poetry hung on his not continuing in the same style,[587 - His work De vulgari eloquio was for long almost unknown, and, valuable as it is to us, could never have exercised the influence of the Divina Commedia.] but even Petrarch relied more on his Latin poetry than on the Sonnets and ‘Canzoni,’ and Ariosto himself was desired by some to write his poem in Latin. A stronger coercion never existed in literature;[588 - To know how far this fanaticism went, we have only to refer to Lil. Greg. Gyraldus, De poetis nostri temporis, passim. Vespasiano Bisticci is one of the few Latin writers of that time who openly confessed that they knew little of Latin (Commentario della vita di G. Manetti, p. 2), but he knew enough to introduce Latin sentences here and there in his writings, and to read Latin letters (ibid. 96, 165). In reference to this exclusive regard for Latin, the following passage may be quoted from Petr. Alcyonius, De exilio, ed. Menken, p. 213. He says that if Cicero could rise up and behold Rome, ‘Omnium maxime illum credo perturbarent ineptiae quorumdam qui, amisso studio veteris linguae quae eadem hujus urbis et universae Italiae propria erat, dies noctesque incumbunt in linguam Geticam aut Dacicam discendam eandemque omni ratione ampliendam, cum Goti, Visigothi et Vandali (qui erant olim Getae et Daci) eam in Italos invexerant, ut artes et linguam et nomen Romanum delerent.’] but poetry shook it off for the most part, and it may be said, without the risk of too great optimism, that it was well for Italian poetry to have had both means of expressing itself. In both something great and characteristic was achieved, and in each we can see the reason why Latin or Italian was chosen. Perhaps the same may be said of prose. The position and influence of Italian culture throughout the world depended on the fact that certain subjects were treated in Latin[589 - There were regular stylistic exercises, as in the Orationes of the elder Beroaldus, where there are two tales of Boccaccio, and even a ‘Canzone’ of Petrarch translated into Latin.]—‘urbi et orbi’—while Italian prose was written best of all by those to whom it cost an inward struggle not to write in Latin.

From the fourteenth century Cicero was recognised universally as the purest model of prose. This was by no means due solely to a dispassionate opinion in favour of his choice of language, of the structure of his sentences, and of his style of composition, but rather to the fact that the Italian spirit responded fully and instinctively to the amiability of the letter-writer, to the brilliancy of the orator, and to the lucid exposition of the philosophical thinker. Even Petrarch recognised clearly the weakness of Cicero as a man and a statesman,[590 - Comp. Petrarch’s letter from the earth to illustrious shades below. Opera, p. 704 sqq. See also p. 372 in the work De rep. optime administranda: ‘Sic esse doleo, sed sic est.’] though he respected him too much to rejoice over them. After Petrarch’s time, the epistolary style was formed entirely on the pattern of Cicero; and the rest, with the exception of the narrative style, followed the same influence. Yet the true Ciceronianism, which rejected every phrase which could not be justified out of the great authority, did not appear till the end of the fifteenth century, when the grammatical writings of Lorenzo Valla had begun to tell on all Italy, and when the opinions of the Roman historians of literature had been sifted and compared.[591 - A burlesque picture of the fanatical purism prevalent in Rome is given by Jovian. Pontanus in his Antonius.] Then every shade of difference in the style of the ancients was studied with closer and closer attention, till the consoling conclusion was at last reached, that in Cicero alone was the perfect model to be found, or, if all forms of literature were to be embraced, in ‘that immortal and almost heavenly age of Cicero.’[592 - Hadriani (Cornetani) Card. S. Chrysogoni de sermone latino liber, especially the introduction. He finds in Cicero and his contemporaries Latinity in its absolute form (an sich). The same Codrus Urceus, who found in Homer the sum of all science (see above, p. 249, note 1) says (Opp. ed. 1506, fol. lxv.): ‘Quidquid temporibus meis aut vidi aut studui libens omne illud Cicero mihi felici dedit omine,’ and goes so far as to say in another poem (ibid.): ‘Non habet huic similem doctrinae Graecia mater.’] Men like Pietro Bembo and Pierio Valeriano now turned all their energies to this one object. Even those who had long resisted the tendency, and had formed for themselves an archaic style from the earlier authors,[593 - Paul. Jov. Elogia doct. vir. p. 187 sqq., speaking of Bapt. Pius.] yielded at last, and joined in the worship of Cicero. Longolius, at Bembo’s advice, determined to read nothing but Cicero for five years long, and finally took an oath to use no word which did not occur in this author. It was this temper which broke out at last in the great war among the scholars, in which Erasmus and the elder Scaliger led the battle.

For all the admirers of Cicero were by no means so one-sided as to consider him the only source of language. In the fifteenth century, Politian and Ermolao Barbaro made a conscious and deliberate effort to form a style of their own,[594 - Paul Jov. Elogia, on Naugerius. Their ideal, he says, was: ‘Aliquid in stylo proprium, quod peculiarem ex certâ notâ mentis effigiem referret, ex naturae genio effinxisse.’ Politian, when in a hurry, objected to write his letters in Latin. Comp. Raph. Volat. Comment. urban. l. xxi. Politian to Cortesius (Epist. lib. viii. ep. 16): ‘Mihi vero longe honestior tauri facies, aut item leonis, quam simiae videtur;’ to which Cortesius replied: ‘Ego malo esse assecla et simia Ciceronis quam alumnus.’ For Pico’s opinion on the Latin language, see the letter quoted above, p. 202.] naturally on the basis of their ‘overflowing’ learning, though they failed to inspire their pupils with a similar desire for independence; and our informant of this fact, Paolo Giovio, pursued the same end. He first attempted, not always successfully, but often with remarkable power and elegance, and at no small cost of effort, to reproduce in Latin a number of modern, particularly of æsthetic, ideas. His Latin characteristics of the great painters and sculptors of his time contain a mixture of the most intelligent and of the most blundering interpretation.[595 - Paul. Jov. Dialogus de viris literis illustribus, in Tiraboschi, ed. Venez. 1766, tom. vii. p. iv. It is well known that Giovio was long anxious to undertake the great work which Vasari accomplished. In the dialogue mentioned above it is foreseen and deplored that Latin would now altogether lose its supremacy.] Even Leo X., who placed his glory in the fact, ‘ut lingua latina nostra pontificatu dicatur factu auctior,’[596 - In the ‘Breve’ of 1517 to Franc. de’ Rosi, composed by Sadoleto, in Roscoe, Leone X. ed. Bossi, vi. p. 172.] was inclined to a liberal and not too exclusive Latinity, which, indeed, was in harmony with his pleasure-loving nature. He was satisfied when the Latin which he had to read and hear was lively, elegant, and idiomatic. Then, too, Cicero offered no model for Latin conversation, so that here other gods had to be worshipped beside him. The want was supplied by representations of the comedies of Plautus and Terence, frequent both in and out of Rome, which for the actors were an incomparable exercise in Latin as the language of daily life. The impulse to the study of the old Latin comedies and to modern imitations of them was given by the discovery of plays by Plautus in the ‘Cod. Ursinianus,’ which was brought to Rome in 1428 or 1429. A few years later, in the pontificate of Paul II., the learned Cardinal of Teano[597 - Gasp. Veronens. Vita Pauli II. in Murat. iii. ii. col. 1031. The plays of Seneca and Latin translations of Greek dramas were also performed.] (probably Niccolò Forteguerra of Pistoja) became famous for his critical labours in this branch of scholarship. He set to work upon the most defective plays of Plautus, which were destitute even of the list of the characters, and went carefully through the whole remains of this author, chiefly with an eye to the language. Possibly it was he who gave the first impulse for the public representations of these plays. Afterwards Pomponius Laetus took up the same subject, and acted as manager when Plautus was put on the stage in the houses of great churchmen.[598 - At Ferrara, Plautus was played chiefly in the Italian adaptations of Collenuccio, the younger Guarino, and others, and principally for the sake of the plots. Isabella Gonzaga took the liberty of finding him dull. For Latin comedy in general, see R. Peiper in Fleckeisen and Masius, Neue Jahrb. für Phil. u. Pädag., Lpzg. 1874, xx. 131-138, and Archiv für Literaturgesch. v. 541 sqq. On Pomp. Laetus, see Sabellici Opera, Epist. l. xi. fol. 56 sqq., and below, at the close of Part III.] That these representations became less common after 1520, is mentioned by Giovio, as we have seen (p. 242 (#x10_x_10_i23)), among the causes of the decline of eloquence.

We may mention, in conclusion, the analogy between Ciceronianism in literature and the revival of Vitruvius by the architects in the sphere of art.[599 - Comp. Burckhardt. Gesch. der Renaissance in Italien, 38-41.] And here, too, the law holds good which prevails elsewhere in the history of the Renaissance, that each artistic movement is preceded by a corresponding movement in the general culture of the age. In this case, the interval is not more than about twenty years, if we reckon from Cardinal Hadrian of Corneto (1505?) to the first avowed Vitruvians.

CHAPTER X.

MODERN LATIN POETRY

THE chief pride of the humanists is, however, their modern Latin poetry. It lies within the limits of our task to treat of it, at least in so far as it serves to characterise the humanistic movement.