YALE UNIVERSITY
LIBRARY

THE LIBRARY OF THE
DIVINITY SCHOOL

RENAISSANCE IN ITALY

EENAISSANCE IN ITALY
THE REVIVAL OF LEARNING

BY
JOHN ADDINGTON SYMONDS
ATJTHOB OP
CAH INTBODUOTION TO THE STUDY OP DANTE ' 'STUDIES 07 THE GREEK POETS'
AND 'SKETCHES IN ITALY AND GREECE'

At tibi fortassis, si, quod mens sperat et optat,
Es post me victura dm, meliora superBunt
Secula ; non omnes veniet lethaBus in annos
Iste sopor ; poterant, discussis forte tenebris,
Ad purnm priscamque jubar remeare nepotes.
Tone Helioona nova revirentem stirpe videbis,
Tunc lauros frondere sacras ; tunc alta resurgent
Ingenia atque animi dociles, quibus ardor honesti
Pieridum studii veterem geminabit amorem PKTfiABOH^i Africa* lib. ix.

NSW EDITION

LONDON
SMITH, ELDER & CO.
NEW YOEK: CHARLES SCRIBNER'S SONS
1915

PREFACE

This volume on the ' Eevival of Learning ' follows that
on the 'Age of the Despots,' published in 1875, and
precedes that on the 'Fine Arts,' which is now also
offered to the public. In dealing with the ' Eevival of
Learning ' and the ' Fine Arts,' I have tried to remember
that I had not so much to write again the history of
these subjects, as to treat their relation to the ' Eenais
sance in Italy.' In other words, I have regarded each
section of my theme as subordinate to the general
culture of a great historical period. The volume on
' Italian Literature,' still in contemplation, is intended
to complete the work.
While handling the theme of the Italian Eenaissance,
I have selected such points, and emphasised such details,
as I felt to be important for the biography of a nation
at the most brilliant epoch of its intellectual activity.
¦The historian of culture sacrifices much that the his
torian of politics will judge essential, and calls attention
to matters that the general reader may sometimes find
1 To the original edition of this volume.

VI PREFACE
superfluous. He must submit to bear the reproach of
having done at once too little and too much. He must
be content to traverse at one time well-worn ground,
and at another to engage in dry or abstruse inquiries.
He must not shrink from seeming to affect the fame of a
compiler ; nor, unless his powers be of the highest, can
he hope altogether to avoid repetitions wearisome alike
to reader and to writer. His main object is to paint
the portrait of national genius identical through all
varieties of manifestation ; and in proportion as he has
preserved this point of view with firmness, he may hope
to have succeeded.
For the History of the Eevival of Learning I have had
continual recourse to Tiraboschi's ' Storia della Lettera
tura Italiana.' That work is still the basis of all re
searches bearing on the subject. 1 owe besides particu
lar obligations to Vespasiano's ' Vite di Uomini Illustri,'
to Comparetti's ' Virgilio nel Medio Evo,' to Eosmini's
' Vita di Filelfo,' ' Vita di Vittorino da Feltre,' and ' Vita
di Guarino da Verona,' to Shepherd's ' Life of Poggio
Bracciolini,' to Dennistoun's ' Dukes of Urbino,' to
Schultze's ' Gemistos Plethon,' to Didot's ' Aide Manuce,'
to Von Eeumont's ' Lorenzo de' Medici,' to Burckhardt's
• Cultur der Eenaissance in Italien,' to Voigt's ' Wieder-
belebung des classischen Alterthums,' and to Gregoro-
vius's 'Geschichte der Stadt Eom.' To Voigt and
Burckhardt, having perforce traversed the same ground
that they have done, I feel that I have been in a special
sense indebted. At the same time I have made it my
invariable practice, as the notes to this volume will
show, to found my own opinions on the study of original

PEEFACE Vii
sources. To mention in detail all the editions of the
works of humanists and scholars I have consulted, would
be superfluous. To me it has been a labour of love to record even the
bare names of those Italian worthies who recovered for
us in the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries ' the ever
lasting consolations ' of the Greek and Latin classics.
The thought that I was tracing the history of an
achievement fruitful of the weightiest results for modern
civilisation has sustained me in a task that has been
sometimes tedious. The collective greatness of the
Eevival has reconciled my mind to many trivialities of
detail. The prosaic minutiae of obscure biographies and
long-forgotten literary labours have been glorified by
what appears to me the poetry and the romance of the
whole theme. It lies not in my province or my power
to offer my readers any adequate apology for such defects
as my own want of skill in exposition, or the difficulty
of transfiguring with vital light and heat a subject so
remote from present interests, may have occasioned. I
must leave this volume in their hands, hoping that some
at least may be animated by the same feeling of grati
tude toward those past workers in the field of learning
which has supported me.
Chiton: March 1877.

CONTENTS

CHAPTER I
THE MEN OF THE RENAISSAKCB FAOI
Formation of Conscious Personality in Italy — Aristocracy of In
tellect — Self -culture as an Aim — Want of National Architecture —
Want of National Drama— Eminence of Sculpture and Painting
— Peculiar Capacity for Literature — Scholarship — Men of Many-
sided Genius — Their Eelation to the Age — Conflict between
Mediaeval Tradition and Humanism — Petrarch — The Meaning of
the Eevival begun by him — Cosmopolitan Philosophy — Toleration
— An Intellectual Empire — Worldliness — Confusion of Impulses
and Inspirations — Copernicus and Columbus — Christianity and
the Classics — Italian Incapacity for Eeligious Eeformation — Free
Thought takes the form of License — Harmonies attempted be
tween Christianity and Antique Philosophy — Florentine Academy
— Physical Qualities of the Italians — Portraits of Two Periods —
Physical Exercises — Determination of the Eace to Scholarship —
Ancient Memories of Eome — The Cult of Antiquity — Desire of
Fame — Fame to be found in Literature — The Cult of Intellect —
The Cult of Character — Preoccupation with Personal Details-
Biography — Ideal Sketches — Posthumous Glory— Enthusiasm for
Erudition — Piero de' Pazzi — Florence and Athens — Paganism—
Real Value of Italian Humanism— Pico on the Dignity of Man . 1

CHAPTER II
B1EST PBBIOD OF HUMANISM
Importance of the Eevival of Learning — Mediasval Bomance — The
Legend of Faustus — Its Value for the Eenaissance — The Devo
tion of Italy to Study— Italian Predisposition for this Labour —
Scholarship in the Dark Ages — Double Attitude assumed by the

t CONTENTS nat
Church — Piety for Virgil — Meagre Acquaintance with the Latin
Classics — No Greek Learning —The Spiritual Conditions of the
Middle Ages adverse to Pure Literature — Italy no Exception to
the rest of Europe — Dante and Petrarch — Definition of Humanism
—Petrarch's Conception of it — His .ffisthetical Temperament —
His Cult for Cioero, Zeal in Collecting Manuscripts, Sense of the
Importance of Greek Studies — Warfare against Pedantry and
Superstition — Ideal of Poetry and Ehetorio — Critique of Jurists
and Schoolmen — S. Augustine — Petrarch's Vanity — Thirst for
Fame — Discord between his Life and his Profession — His Literary
Temperament — Visionary Patriotism — His Influence — His Suc
cessors — Boccaccio and Greek Studies — Translation of Homer —
Philosophy of Literature — Sensuousness of Boccaocio'B Inspiration
— Giovanni da Eavenna — The Wandering Professor — His Pupils
in Latin Scholarship — Luigi Marsigli — The Convent of S. Spirito
—Humanism in Polities — Coluccio de' Salutati — Gasparino da
Barzizza — Improved Style in Letter-writing — Eevival of Greek
Learning — Manuel Chrysoloras— Bis Pupils — Lionardo Bruni —
Value of Greek for the Eenaissanoe ....,, 87

CHAPTEB III
FIRST PERIOD OP HUMANISM
Condition of the Universities in Italy — Bologna — High Schools
' founded from it — Naples under Frederick H. — Under the House
of Anjou — Ferrara — Piacenza— Perugia — Borne — Pisa  Florence
— Imperial and Papal Charters — Foreign Students— Professorial
.Staff— Subjects taught in the High Schools— Place assigned to
Humanism — Pay of the Professors of Eloquence — Francesco
Filelfo — The Humanists less powerful at the Universities — Method
of Humanistic Teaching — The Book Market before Printing—
Mediaeval Libraries— Cost of Manuscripts— ' Stationarii ' and
' Peciarii '—Negligence of Copyists— Discovery of Classical Co
dices — Boccaccio at Monte Cassino — Poggio at Constance — Con
vent of S. Gallen— Brum's Letter to Poggio— Manuscripts Dis-
covered by Poggio— Nicholas of Treves— Collection of Greek
Manuscripts— Aurispa, Filelfo, and Guarino— The Buins of Eome
—Their Influence on Humanism— Dante and Villani— Eienzi—
His Idealistic Patriotism— Vanity— Political Incompetence-
Petrarch's Eelations with Eienzi— Injury to Monuments in Eome
— Poggio's Eoman Topography— Sentimental Feeling for the
Buins of Antiquity — Ciriac of Ancona  83

CONTENTS XI
CHAPTER IV
BBCOND PERIOD OF HUMANISM PAGB
Intricaoy of the Subjeot — Division into Four Periods — Plaoe of
Florenoe — Social Conditions favourable to Culture — Palla degli
Strozzi — His Encouragement of Greek Studies — Plan of a Public
Library — Hia Exile — Cosimo de' Medici — His Patronage of Learn
ing — Political Character — Love of Building — Generosity to Stu
dents — Foundation of Libraries — Vespasiano and Thomas of
Sarzana — Niccolo de' Niccoli — His Collection of Codices — De
scription of his Mode of Life — His Fame as a Latinist — Lionardo
Bruni — His Biography — Translations from the Greek — Latin
Treatises and Histories — His Burial in Santa Croce — Carlo
Aretino — Fame as a Lecturer — The Florentine Chancery — Matteo
Palmieri — Giannozzo Manetti — His Hebrew Studies — His Publio
Career — His Eloquence — Manetti ruined by the Medici — His Life
in Exile at Naples — Estimate of his Talents — Ambrogio Traver-
sari — Study of Greek Fathers — General of the Camaldolese Order
— Humanism and Monasticism — The Council of Florence —
Florentine Opinion about the Greeks — Gemistos Plethon— His
Life — His Philosophy — His Influence at Florence — Cosimo de'
Medici and the Florentine Academy — Study of Plato — Plethon's
Writings — Platonists and Aristotelians in Italy and Greece —
Bessarion — His Patronage of Greek Eefugees in Borne — Hu
manism in the Smaller Bepublics — In Venice . • . .115
CHAPTER V
SECOND PERIOD OF HUMANISM
Transition from Florence to Borne — Vicissitudes of Learning at tha
Papal Court— Diplomatic Humanists — Protonotaries — Apostolio
Scribes — Ecclesiastical Sophists — Immorality and Artificiality
of Scholarship in Borne — Poggio and Bruni, Secretaries — Euge
nius IV.— His Patronage of Scholars — Flavio Biondo — Solid
Erudition— Nicholas V.— His Private History— Nature of his
Talents — His unexpected Elevation to the Boman See — Jubila
tion of the Humanists — His Protection of Learned Men in Borne
—A Workshop of Erudition— A Factory of Translations-
High Sums paid for Literary Labour— Poggio Fiorentino —
His Early Life — His Journeys — His Eminence as a Man of
Letters — His attitude towards Ecclesiastics — His Invectives —
Humanistic Gladiators— Poggio and Filelfo— Poggio and Gua-
rino— Poggio and Valla— Poggio and Perotti— Poggio and
Georgios Trapezuntios— Literary Scandals — Poggio's Collections
of Antiquities — Chancellor of Florenoe — Cardinal Bessarion —

Xll CONTENTS

His Library— Theologioal Studies— Apology for Plato— The
Greeks in Italy — Humanism at Naples — Want of Culture in
Southern Italy — Learning an Exotic — Alfonso the Magnificent —
Scholars in the Camp — Literary Dialogues at Naples — Antonio
Beccadelli— The ' Hermaphroditus '—Lorenzo Valla— The Epi
curean — The Critic — The Opponent of the Church — Bartolom-
meo Fazio — Giannantonio Poroello— Court of Milan — Filippo
Maria Visconti — Decembrio's Description of his Master — Fran-
oesoo Filelfo — His Early Life — Visit to Constantinople — Place at
Court — Marriage — Eeturn to Italy — Venice — Bologna — His Pre
tensions as a Professor — Florence — Feuds with the Florentines
— Immersion in Politics — Siena — Settles at Milan — His Fame —
Private Life and Public Interests— Overtures to Eome — Filelfo
under the Sforza Tyranny — Literary Brigandage — Death at
Florence — Filelfo as the Bepresentative of a Class — Vittorino da
Feltre — Early Education — Scheme of Training Youths as Scholars
— Besidence at Padua — Eesidence at Mantua — His School of
Princes — Liberality to Poor Students — Details of his Life and
System — Court of Ferrara — Guarino da Verona — House Tutor
of Lionello d' Este — Giovanni Aurispa — Smaller Courts — Carpi
— Mirandola — Eimini and tke Malatesta Tyrants — Cesena —
Pesaro — Urbino and Duke Frederick — Vespasiano da Bisticoi . 155
CHAPTER VI
THIRD PERIOD OF HUMANISM
Improvement in Taste and Criticism — Coteries and Academies —
Eevival of Italian Literature — Printing — Florence, the Capital of
Learning — Lorenzo de' Medici and his Circle — Public Policy of
Lorenzo— Literary Patronage— Variety of his Gifts — Meetings
of the Platonic Society — Marsilio Ficino — His Eduoation for
Platonic Studies— Translations of Plato and the Neoplatonists—
Harmony between Plato and Christianity — Giovanni Pico  His
First Appearance in Florenoe— His Theses proposed at Borne—
Censure of the Church— His Study of the Cabbala— Large Con
ception of Learning — Occult Science — Cristoforo Landino  Pro
fessor of Fine Literature— Virgilian Studies— Camaldolese Dis
putations—Leo Battista Alberti— His Versatility— Bartolommeo
Soala— Obscure Origin— Chancellor of Florence— Angelo Poliziano
—Early Life— Translation of Homer— The ' Homericus JuveniB '
—True Genius in Poliziano— Command of Latin and Greek—
Eesuscitation of Antiquity in his own Person— His Professorial
Work— The « Miscellanea '— Eelationto Medici— Eoman Scholar
ship in this Period— Pius II.— Pomponius LfBtus— His Aoademy

CONTENTS xill
PAQl
and Mode of Life — Persecution under Paul II. — Humanism at
Naples — Pontanus — His Academy — His Writings — Academies
established in all Towns of Italy — Introduction of Printing —
Sweynheim and Pannartz — The Early Venetian Press — Florence
— Cennini — Alopa's Homer — Change in Scholarship effected by
Printing — The Life of Aldo Manuzio — The Prinoely House of
Pio at Carpi — Greek Books before Aldo — The Aldine Press at
Venice — History of its Activity — Aldo and Erasmus — Aldo and
the Greek Befugees — Aldo's Death — His Family and Successors
— The Ne-aoademia — The Salvation of Greek Literature . .224
CHAPTER VII
FOURTH PERIOD OF HUMANISM
Pall of the Humanists — Scholarship permeates Society — A New
Ideal of Life and Manners — Latinisation of Names — Classical
Periphrases — Latin Epics on Christian Themes — Paganism — The
Court of Leo X. — Honours of the Church given to Scholars —
Ecclesiastical Men of the World— Maecenases at Eome — Papal and
Imperial Eome— Moral Corruption — Social Eefinement — The
Eoman Academy — Pietro Bembo — His Life at Ferrara — At
Urbino — Comes to Borne — Employed by Leo — Eetirement to
Padua, — His Dictatorship of Letters — Jacopo Sadoleto — A Graver
Genius than Bembo — Paulus Jovius — Latin Stylist — His His
tories — Baldassare Castiglione — Life at Urbino and Eome — The
Courtly Scholar — His Diplomatic Missions — Alberto Pio — Gian
Francesco Pico della Mirandola — The Vicissitudes of his Life —
Jerome Aleander— Oriental Studies — The Library of the Vatican
— His Mission to Germany — Inghirami, Beroaldo, and Acciaiuoli
— The Eoman University — JohnLascaris — Study of Antiquities —
Origin of the ' Corpus Inscriptionum ' — Topographical Studies —
Formation of the Vatican Sculpture Gallery — Discovery of the
Laocoon — Feeling for Statues in Eenaissance Italy — Venetian
Envoys in the Belvedere — Baphael's Plan for Excavating Ancient
Borne — His Letter to Leo — Effect of Antiquarian Besearches on
the Arts- Intellectual Supremacy of Borne in this Period — The
Fall — Adrian VI. — The Sack of Borne— Valeriano's Description of
the Sufferings of Scholars  284
CHAPTER VIII
LATIN POETRT
Special Causes for the Practice of Latin Versification in Italy — The
Want of an Italian Language — Multitudes of Poetasters -Becca-

liv CONTENTS PASS
dolli — Alberti's ' Philodoxus '—Poliziano— The 'Sylvas — 'Nu-
tricia,' ' Eusticus,' ' Manto,' ' Ambra '—Minor Poems — Pontano—
Sannazzaro— Elegies and Epigrams — Christian Epios— Vida's
' Christiad '—Vida's ' Poetioa '— Fracastoro— The ' Syphilis '—•
Barocco Flatteries— Bembo— Immoral Elegies — Imitations of
Ovid and Tibullus— The ' Benacus '—Epitaphs.— Navagero— Epi
grams and Eclogues — Molsa — Poem on his own Death — Casti-
glione— 'Alcon' and 'Lyeidas' — Verses of Society — The Apotheosis
of the Popes— Poem on the Ariadne of the Vatican— Sadoleto's
Verses on the Laocoon — Flaminio — His Life — Love of the
Country — Learned Friends— Scholar-Poets of Lombardy — Extinc
tion of Learning in Florence — Decay of Italian Erudition . . 324
CHAPTER IX
CONCLUSION
3-eneral Survey — The Part played in the Eevival by the Chief Cities
— Preoccupation with Scholarship in spite of War and Conquest —
Place of the Humanists in Society — Distributors of Praise and
Blame — Flattery and Libels — Comparison with the Sophists —
The Form preferred to the Matter of Literature — Ideal of Culture
as an end in itself — Suspicion of Zealous Churchmen — Intrusion
of Humanism into the Church — Irreligion of the Humanists —
Giraldi's ' Progymnasma '— Ariosto— Bohemian Life — Personal
Immorality — Want of Fixed Principles —Professional Vanity —
Literary Pride — Estimate of Humanistic Literature — Study of
Style — Influence of Cicero — Valla's 'Elegantiae' — Stylistio Puerili
ties —Value attached to Ehetorio — ' Oratore ' — Moral Essays —
Epistolography — Histories — Critical and Antiquarian Studies —
Large Appreciation of Antiquity — Liberal Spirit —Poggio and
Jerome of Prague — Humanistic Type of Education — Its Diffusion
through Europe— Future Prospeots — Decay of Learning in Italy . 872

EENAISSANCE IN ITALY
CHAPTEE I
THE MEN OP THE EENAISSANCE
Formation of Conscious Personality in Italy — Aristocracy of Intellect 
Self-culture as an Aim— Want of National Architecture— Want of
National Drama— Eminence of Sculpture and Painting— Peculiar
Capacity for Literature — Scholarship — Men of Many-sided Genius —
Their Belation to the Age — Conflict between Mediasval Tradition
and Humanism— Petrarch— The Meaning of the Eevival begun by
him— Cosmopolitan Philosophy— Toleration— An Intellectual Em
pire — Worldliness — Confusion of Impulses and Inspirations —
Copernicus and Columbus — Christianity and the Classics— Italian
Incapacity for Eeligious Eeformation — Free Thought takes the form
of License — Harmonies attempted between Christianity and Antique
Philosophy — Florentine Academy — Physical Qualities of the Italians
— Portraits of Two Periods — Physical Exercises — Determination of
the Eace to Scholarship — Ancient Memories of Eome — The Cult of
Antiquity — Desire of Fame — Fame to be found in Literature — The
Cult of Intellect — The Cult of Character — Preoccupation with
Personal Details — Biography — Ideal Sketches — Posthumous Glory —
Enthusiasm for Erudition — Piero de' Pazzi — Florenoe and Athens
— Paganism — Beal Value of Italian Humanism — Pico on the Dignity
of Man.
The conditions, political, social, moral, and religious, described
in the first volume of this work, produced among the Italians
a type of character nowhere else observable in Europe. This
character, highly self-conscious and mentally mature, was
needed for the intellectual movement of the Eenaissance.
Italy had proved herself incapable of forming an united
II B

2 EENAISSANCE IN ITALY
nation, or of securing the principle of federal coherence ; of
maintaining a powerful military system, or of holding her
own agamst the French and Spaniards. For these defects
her Communes and her Despots, the Papacy and the kingdom
of Naples, the theories of the medieval doctrinaires and the
enthusiasm of the humanists, were alike responsible ; though
the larger share belongs to Eome, resolutely hostile to the
monarchical principle, and zealous, by espousing the Guelf
faction, to maintain the discord of the nation. At the same
time the very causes of political disunion were favourable to
the intellectual growth of the Italians. Each State, whether
republican or despotic, had, during the last years of the
Middle Ages, formed a mixed society of nobles, merchants,
and artisans, enclosed within the circuit of the city walls,
and strongly marked by the peculiar complexion of their
native place. Every town was a centre of activity and
industry, eagerly competing with its neighbours, proud of
its local characteristics, anxious to confer distinction on
citizens who rose to eminence by genius or practical ability.
Party strife in the republics, while it disturbed their internal
repose, sharpened the intellect and strengthened the per
sonality of the burghers. Exile and proscription, the common
climax of civic warfare, made them still more self-determined
and self-reliant by driving each man back upon his own
resources. The despots, again, through the illegal tenure of
their authority, were forced to the utmost possible develop
ment of individual character : since all their fortunes
depended on their qualities as men. The plots and counter
plots of subjects eager for a change of government, and of
neighbours anxious to encroach upon their territory, kept the
atmosphere of their Courts in a continual state of agitation.
One type of ability was fostered by the diplomatic relations
of the several cities, yielding employment to a multitude
of secretaries and ambassadors ; another by the system of

FOEMATION OF CHAEACTEE 3
Condottiere warfare, offering a brilliant career to ambitious
adventurers. In all departments open to a man of talent
birth was of less importance than natural gifts ; for the social
barriers and grades of feudalism had either never existed in
Italy, or had been shaken and confounded during the struggles
of the twelfth and thirteenth centuries. The ranks of the
tyrants were filled with sons of Popes and captains risen
from the proletariat. The ruling class in the republics con
sisted of men self-made by commerce ; and here the name at
least of Popolo was sovereign. It followed that men were
universally rated at what they proved themselves to be ; and
thus an aristocracy of genius and character grew up in Italy
at a period when the rest of Europe presented but rare
gpecimens of individuals emergent from the common herd.
As in ancient Greece, the nation was of less importance than
the city, and within the city personal ability carried over
whelming weight. The Italian history of the Eenaissance
resumes itself in the biography of men greater than their
race, of mental despots, who absorbed its forces in them
selves. The intellectual and moral milieu created by multitudes
of self-centred, cultivated personalities was necessary for the
evolution of that spirit of inteUigence, subtle, penetrative,
and elastic, that formed the motive force of the Eenaissance.
The work achieved by Italy for the world in that age was less
the work of a nation than that of men of power, less the
collective and spontaneous triumph of a puissant people than
the aggregate of individual efforts animated by one soul of
free activity, a common striving after fame. This is notice
able at the very outset. The Italians had no national Epic :
their Divine Comedy is the poem of the individual man.
Petrarch erects self-culture to the rank of an ideal, and pro
poses to move the world from the standpoint of his study,
B 2

4 EENAISSANCE IN ITALY
darting his spirit's light through all the void circumference,
and making thought a power.
The success and the failure of the Italians are alike refer
able to their political subdivisions, and to this strong develop
ment of their personahty. We have already seen how they
fell short of national unity and of military greatness. Even
in the realm of art and literature the same conditions were
potent. Some of the chief productions of humanity seem to
require the co-operation of whole peoples working sympa
thetically to a common end. Foremost among these are
architecture and the drama. The most splendid triumphs of
modern architecture in the French and English Gothic were
achieved by the half-unconscious striving of the national
genius through several centuries. The names of the builders
of the cathedrals are unknown : the cathedrals themselves
bear less the stamp of individual thought than of popular
instinct ; their fame belongs to the race that made them, to
the spirit of the times that gave them birth. It is not in
architecture, therefore, that we expect the Italians, divided
into small and rival States, and distinguished by salient sub
jectivity, to show their strength. Men like Niccola Pisano,
Arnolfo del Cambio, Alberti, Brunelleschi, and Bramante
were gifted with an individuality too paramount for the
creation of more than mighty experiments in architecture.
They bowed to no tradition, but followed the dictates of their
own inventive impulse, selecting the types that suited them,
and dealing freely with the forms they found around them. In
stead of seeking to carry on toward its accomplishment a style,
not made, but felt and comprehended by their genius, they were
eager to produce new and characteristic masterpieces — signs
and symbols of their own peculiar quahty of mind. Italy is
full of splendid but imperfect monuments of personal ability,
works of beauty displaying no unbroken genealogy of un
known craftsmen, but attesting the skill of famous artists.

ARCHITECTURE AND THE PLASTIC ARTS 3
For the practical architect her palaces and churches may, for
this reason, be less instructive and less attractive than the
pubhc buildings of France. Yet for the student of national
and personal characteristics, who loves to trace the physi
ognomy of a people in its edifices, to discover the mind of
the artist in his work, their interest is unrivalled. In each
city the specific genius loci meets us face to face : from each
town-hall or cathedral the soul of a great man leans forth to
greet our own. These advantages compensate for frequent
extravagances, for audacities savouring of ignorance, and for
awkwardness in the adoption and modification of incongruous
styles. Moreover, it must always be remembered that in
Italy the architect could not forget the monuments of Eoman
and Byzantine art around him. Classic models had to be
suited to the requirements of modern life and Christian
ritual; and when the Germans brought their Gothic from
beyond the Alps, it suffered from its adaptation to a southern
climate. The result was that Italy arrived at no great
national tradition in architecture, and that free scope was
offered to the whims and freaks of individual designers.
When at length, at the end of the sixteenth century, the
Italians attained to uniformity of taste, -it was by the sacrifice
of their originality. The pedantry of the classical revival
did more harm to architecture than to letters, and pseudo-
Eoman purism superseded the genial caprices of the previous
centuries. If architecture may be said to have suffered in Italy from
the supremacy of local characteristics and personal genius,
overruling tradition and thwarting the evolution of a national
style, the case was quite different with the other arts. Paint
ing and scidpture demand the highest independence in the
artist, and are susceptible of a far more many-sided treatment
than architecture. They cannot be the common product of
a people, but require the conscious application of a special

6 EENAISSANCE IN ITALY
ability to the task of translating thought and feeling into
form. As painters, the ItaUans hold the first rank among
civiUsed nations of the modern and the ancient world ; and
their inferiority as sculptors to the Greeks is mainly due to
their mastery over painting, the essentially romantic art.
The sensibUities of the new age craved a more emotional and
agitated expression than is proper to sculpture. As early as
the days of Ghiberti and Donatello it became clear that the
Itahan sculptors were foUowing the methods of the sister art
in their designs, while Michael Angelo alone had force enough
to make marble the vehicle of thoughts that properly belong
to painting or to music. The converse probably held good
with the Greeks. What remains of their work in fresco and
mosaic seems to show that they were satisfied with groups and
figures modelled upon bas-rehefs and statues; just as the
Florentines carved pictures, with architecture and landscape,
in stone. More need not here be said upon this topic, since
the achievements of the ItaUans in painting and in sculpture
wiU form a main part of my history.
As regards Uterature, the subdivision of Italy into
numerous smaU States and the energetic self-assertion of the
individual were distinctly favourable. Though the want of
a great pubhc, such as can alone be found in the capital
of a free, united nation, may be reckoned among the many
reasons which prevented the Italians from developing the
drama, yet the rivalry of town with town and of burgher
with burgher, Court life with its varied opportunities for the
display of talent, and municipal hfe with its restless com
petition in commerce and pubUc affairs, encouraged the
activity of students, historians, statisticians, critics, and poets.
Culture, in the highest and widest sense of the word, was
what Eenaissance Italy obtained and gave to Europe; and
this culture implies a fuU-formed personality in the men who
seek it. It was the highly perfected individuahty of the

CULTUEE 7
ItaUans that made them first emerge from mediaeval bondage
and become the apostles of humanism for the modern world.
It may be regretted that their force was expended upon the
diffusion of learning and the purification of style, instead of
being concentrated on the creation of national masterpieces.
We seek in vain for Dante's equal among the poets of the
Eenaissance. The ' Orlando Furioso ' is but a poor second to
the ' Divina Commedia ; ' and all those works of scholarship,
which seemed to our ancestors the ne plus ultra of refine
ment, are now relegated to the lumber-room of erudition that
has been superseded, or of Uterary ingenuity that has lost its
point. Now that the boon of culture, so hardly won by the
students of the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries, has become
the common heritage of Europe, it is not always easy to
explain the mental grandeur of the ItaUans in that age. Yet
we should fad to recognise their merit, if we did not com
prehend that, precisely by this absorption of their genius in
the task of the Eevival, they conferred the most enduring
benefits upon humanity. What the modern world would
have been, if the Italian nation had not devoted its energies
to the restoration of Uberal learning, cannot even be imagined.
The history of that devotion wiU form the principal subject of
my present volume.
The comprehensive and many-sided natures, frequent in
Eenaissance Italy, were specially adapted for the dissemi
nation of the new spirit. The appearance of such men as
Leo Battista Alberti, Lionardo da Vinci, Lorenzo de' Medici,
BruneUeschi and Buonarroti, PoUziano and Pico della Miran-
dola, upon the stage of the Eenaissance is not the least
fascinating of its phenomena. We can only find their parallels
by returning to the age of Pericles. But the problem for
the Florentines differed from that which the Athenians had
before them. In Greece, the morning-land of civihsation,
men of genius, each perfect in his own capacity, were needed.

8 EENAISSANCE IN ITALY
Standards had to be created for the future guidance of the
world in all the realms of art and thought. We are therefore
less struck with the versatiUty than with the concentration
of Pheidias, Pindar, Sophocles, Socrates. Italy, on the other
hand, had for her task the reabsorption of a bygone culture.
It was her vocation to resuscitate antiquity, to gather up afresh
the products of the classic past, and so to blend them with the
mediaeval spirit as to generate what is specifically modern.
It was indispensable that the men by whom this work was
accomplished should be no less distinguished for largeness of
intelligence, variety of acquirements, quickness of sympathy,
and sensitive susceptibility, than for the complete develop
ment of some one faculty. The great characters of the Greek
age were what Hegel calls plastic, penetrated through and
through with a specific quality. Those of the Itahan age
were comprehensive and encyclopaedic ; the intensity of their
force in any one sphere is less remarkable than its suitableness
to aU. They were of a nature to synthesise, interpret, re
produce, and mould afresh — Uke Mr. Browning's Cleon, with
the addition of the consciousness of young and potent energy
Within them. It consequently happens that, except in the
sphere of the Fine Arts, we are tempted to underrate the
heroes of the Eenaissance. The impression they leave upon
our minds at any one point is slight in comparison with the
estimate we form of them when we consider each man as a
whole. Nor can we point to monumental and colossal works
in proof of their creative faculty.
The biographies of universal geniuses Uke Leo Battista
Alberti or Lionardi da Vinci, so multiform in their capacity
and so creative in their intuitions, prompt us to ask what is
the connection between the spirit of an age and the men in
whom it is incorporated. Not without reason are we forced
to personify the Eenaissance as something external to its
greatest characters. There is an intellectual strength outside

MEN OF THE EENAISSANCE 0
them in the century, a heritage of power prepared for them
at birth. The atmosphere in which they breathe is so charged
with mental vitahty that the least stirring of their special
energy brings them into relation with forces mightier than
are the property of single natures. In feebler periods of
retrospect and criticism we can but wonder at the combina
tion of faculties so varied, and at miracles so easily accom
phshed. These times of clairvoyance and of inteUectual
magnetism, when individuals of genius appear to move like
vibrios in a life- sustaining fluid specially adapted to their
needs, are rare in the history of the world ; nor has our
science yet arrived at analysing their causes. They are
not on that account the less real. To explain them by the
hypothesis of a Weltgeist, the collective spirit of humanity
proceeding in its evolution through successive phases, and
making its advance from stage to stage by alternations of
energy and repose, is simply to restore, in other terms, a
mystery that finds its final and efficient cause in God.1
Gifted with the powerful individuality 1 am attempting
to describe, the men of the Eenaissance received their earliest
education in the religion of the Middle Ages, their second in
the schools of Greece and Eome. It was the many-sided
struggle of personal character with time-honoured tradition on
the one hand, and with new ideals on the other, that lent so
much of inconsistency and contradiction *0 their aims. Dante
remained within the pale of mediaeval thoughts, and gave them
full poetical expression. To him, in a truer sense than to any
other poet, belongs the double glory of immortalising in verse
the centuries behind him, whUe he inaugurated the new age.
1 The analogy of the individual might be quoted. We are aware
within ourselves of times when thought is fertile and insight clear,
times of conception and projection, followed by seasons of slow diges
tion, assimilation, and formation, when the creative faculty stagnates,
and the whole force of the intellect is absorbed in mastering through
years what it took minutes to divine.

10 RENAISSANCE -IN ITALY
The ' Vita Nuova ' and the ' Divina Commedia ' are modern,
in so far as the one is the first complete analysis of personal
emotion, and the other is the epic of the soul conceived as
concrete personality. But the form and colour, the material
and structure, the warp of thought and the woof of fancy, are
not modern. Petrarch opens a new era. He is not satisfied
with the body of mediasval beliefs and intellectual conceptions.
Antiquity presents a more fascinating ideal to his spirit, and
he feels the subjectivity within him strong enough to assimi
late what suits it in the present and the past. The Eevival
of Learning, begun by Petrarch, was no mere renewal of
interest in classic literature. It was the emancipation of
the reason in a race of men, intolerant of control, ready to
criticise accepted canons of conduct, enthusiastic in admiration
of antique liberty, freshly awakened to the sense of beauty,
and anxious above all things to secure for themselves free
scope in spheres outside the region of authority. Men so
vigorous and independent felt the joy of exploration. There
was no problem they feared to face, no formula they were
not eager to recast according to their new convictions. This
liberty of judgment did not of necessity lead to lawlessness ;
nor in any case did it produce that insurgence against Catholic
orthodoxy which marked the German Eeformation. Yet it
lent a characteristic quality to thought and action. Men
were, and dared to be, themselves for good or evil without
too much regard for what their neighbours thought of them.
At the same time they were tolerant. The culture of the
Eenaissance implied a philosophical acceptance of variety in
fashion, faith, and conduct ; and this toleration was no doubt
one reason why Italian scepticism took the form of cynicism,
not of religious revolution. Contact with Islam in the south
and east, diplomatic relations with the Turks, familiarity with
the mixed races of Spain, and commerce with the nations of
the north, had widened the sympathies of the Italians, and

COSMOPOLITAN IDEAL OF THE HUMAN FAMILY 11
taught them to regard humanity as one large family. The
Uberal spirits of the Eenaissance might have quoted Marcus
AureUus with shght alteration : ' I wiU not say, dear City of
St. Peter, but, dear City of Man ! ' And just as their moral
and religious sensibilities were blunted, so patriotism with
them ceased to be an instinct. Instead of patriotism, the
Italians were inflamed with the zeal of cosmopolitan culture.
In proportion as Italy lost year by year the hope of be
coming an united nation, in proportion as the military
instincts died in her, and the political instincts were extin
guished by despotism, in precisely the same ratio did she
evermore acquire a deeper sense of her intellectual vocation.
What was world- embracing in the spirit of the mediaeval
Church passed by transmutation into the humanism of the
fifteenth century. As though aware of the hopelessness of
being Italians in the same sense as the natives of Spain were
Spaniards, or the natives of France were Frenchmen, the
giants of the Eenaissance did their utmost to efface their
nationality in order that they might the more effectually
restore the cosmopolitan ideal of the human family. To this
end both artists and scholars, the depositaries of the real
Italian greatness at this epoch, laboured ; the artists by
creating an ideal of beauty with a message and a meaning
for aU Europe, the scholars by recovering for Europe the
burghership of Greek and Eoman civihsation. In spite of
the invasions and convulsions that ruined Italy between the
years 1494 and 1527, the painters and the humanists pro
ceeded with their task, as though the fate of Italy concerned
them not, as though the destinies of the modern world
depended on their activity. After Venice had been desolated
by the armies of the League of Cambray, Aldus Manutius
presented the peace-gift of Plato to the foes of his adopted
city ; and when the Lutherans broke into Parmegiano's
workshop at Eome, even they were awed by the tranquil

12 EENAISSANCE IN ITALY
majesty of the Virgin on his easel. Stories like these remind
us that Eenaissance Italy met her doom of servitude and
degradation in the spirit of ancient Hellas, repeating as they
do the tales told of Archimedes in his study, and of Paulus
/EmiUus face to face with the Zeus of Pheidias.
As patriotism gave way to cosmopohtan enthusiasm, and
toleration took the place of earnestness, in hke manner the
conflict of mediasval tradition with revived Paganism in the
minds of these self-reUant men, trained to indulgence by their
large commerce with the world, and familiarised with impiety
by the ever-present pageant of an anti-Christian Church, led,
as I have hinted, to recklessness and worldly vices, rather
than to reformed religion. Contented with themselves and
their surroundings, they felt none of the unsatisfied cravings
after the infinite, none of the mysterious intuitions and ascetic
raptures, the self-abasements and transfigurations, stigmata
and beatific visions, of the Middle Ages. The plenitude of
life within them seemed to justify their instincts and their
impulses, however varied and discordant these might be.
The sonorous current of the world around them drowned the
voice of conscience, the suggestion of rehgious scruples. It
is only thus we can explain to ourselves the attitude of such
men as Sixtus and Alexander, serenely vicious in extreme old
age. The gratification of their egotism was so complete as to
exclude self-judgment by the rules and standards they profes-
sionaUy applied ; their personahty was too exacting to admit
of hesitation when their instincts were concerned ; in common
with their age they had lost sight of all but mundane aims
and interests. Three aphorisms, severally attributed to three
representative Italians, may be quoted in illustration of these
remarks. ' You follow infinite objects ; I foUow the finite ;'
said Cosimo de' Medici ; ' you place your ladders in the
heavens ; I on earth, that I may not seek so high or fall so
low.' ' If we are not ourselves pious,' said Julius IL, ' why

CLASSICAL AND CHEISTIAN INFLUENCES 13
should we prevent other people from being so ?' ' Let us
enjoy the Papacy,' said Leo X., ' now that God has given it
to us.' It was only under the influence of some external
terror — a plague, a desolating war, an imminent perU to
the nation — that the religious sense, deadened by worldli-
ness and selfish philosophy, made itself felt. At such
seasons whole cities rushed headlong into fierce revivahsm,
whUe men of violent or profligate lives saw visions, and
betook themselves to penance. Cellini's Memoirs are,
on this point, a valuable mirror of the age in which he
lived. It is clear that his ecstasies of devotion in the dungeons
of S. Angelo were as sincere as the fiery impulses he obeyed
with so much complacency. Passionate and worldly as men
of Cellini's stamp might be, they could not shake off the
associations that bound them to the past. The energy of
their intense individuahty took turn by turn the form and
colour of ascetic piety and Pagan sensuahty ; and at times
these strong contrasts of emotion seemed bordering upon
insanity. Ungovernable natures, swayed by no fixed principle,
and bent on moulding the world of thought afresh to suit
their own desires, became the puppets of astrological super
stition, the playthings of mad lust. Much that appears
unaccountable and contradictory in the Eenaissance may be
referred to this imperfect blending of ecclesiastical tradition
and ideahsed Paganism in natures potent enough to be ori
ginal and wilful, but not yet tamed from semi-savagery into
acquiescence by experience. Experience came to the Italians
in servitude beneath the heel of Spain.
The confusion of influences, classical and mediaeval,
Christian and Pagan, in that age is not the least extra
ordinary of its phenomena. Even Ahe . new thoughts that
illuminated the minds of great discoverers, seemed to them
like reflections from antiquity ; and while they were opening

14 EENAISSANCE IN ITALY
fresh worlds, their hearts were turned toward the Holy Land
of the Crusades. Columbus and Copernicus, the two men
who did more than any others to revolutionise the mental
attitude of humanity, appealed to their contemporaries on
the strength of texts from Aristotle and PhUolaus. Conscious
that the guesses of the Greek cosmographers had stimulated
in themselves that curiosity whereby they made the motion
of the earth a certainty, and found a way across the waves
to a new continent, these mighty spirits forgot how slight in
reahty was their debt to the inert speculators of the classic
age. The truth was that in them throbbed a force of enter
prise and conquering discovery, a spirit of exploration resolute
and hardy, denied to the ancients.
How far this new and fruitful temper of the modern
mind was due to Christianity, is a problem for the deepest
speculation. The conception of a God who had made no part
of His world in vain, of a Christ who had bought with His
blood the whole seed of Adam, and who imposed the preach
ing of the faith upon His followers as a duty, wrought
powerfully on Columbus. The Crusades, again, had fami
liarised the nations with distant objects and ideal quests;
while chivalry was essentially antagonistic to positive and
selfish aims. The spirit of mankind had marched a long
stage during the Middle Ages. It was not possible now to
conceive of God as a tranquil thinking upon thought, with
Aristotle. There was no Augustus to set arbitrary limits to
the empire of the world in the interest of a conquering
nation, or to make the two words orbs and urbs synonymous.
When Strabo hazarded the opinion that there might be
populous islands in the other hemisphere, he added, with
the subhme indifference of a Eoman, ' But these speculations
have nothing in common with practical geography ; and if
such islands exist, they cannot support peoples of Uke origin
with us.' Such language was impossible for a man edu«

RELIGIOUS CONVICTION OF COLUMBUS IS
cated in the Christian faith, and imbued with the instincts
of romanticism. Therefore, though the study of Strabo and
Ptolemy at Pavia impressed Columbus with the certainty of
the new route across the ocean, he owed the courage that
sustained him to the conviction that God was leading him
to a great end. ' When I first undertook to start for the
discovery of the Indies,' he says in his will, ' I intended to
beg the King and Queen to devote the whole of the money
that might be drawn from these realms to Jerusalem.' The
rehgious yearning of the mediaeval pilgrim added fervour to
the conviction of the student, who, by reasoning on antique
texts, guessed the greatest secret of which the world has
record. At the same time there was something more in
Columbus than either antiquity or mediaevalism could pro
vide. The modern spirit is distinct from both ; and though,
in the Eenaissance, creation wore the garb of imitation, and
the new forces used the organs they were destined to outlive
and destroy, yet we must allow to native personaUty the
on's share in such achievement as that of Columbus. It
is the variety of spiritual elements in combination and solu
tion, which he illustrates, that makes the psychology of
the Eenaissance at once so fascinating and so difficult to
analyse. WhUe so much liberty of thought prevailed in Italy, it
may be wondered why the Eenaissance, eminently fertile in
the domains of art and culture, bore but meagre fruit in
those of religion and philosophy. The German Eeformation
was the Eenaissance of Christianity ; and in this the Italians
had no share, though it should be remembered that, without
their previous labours in the field of scholarship, the band
who led the Eeformation could hardly have given that high
intellectual character to the movement which made it a new
starting-point hi the history of the reason. To expect from
Italy the ethical regeneration of the modern world would be

16 EENAISSANCE IN ITALY
to misapprehend her true vocation ; art and erudition were
sufficient to engage her spiritual energies. The Church,
again, though by no means adverse to laxity :a morals, was
jealous of heterodoxy. So long as freethinkers confined
their audacity to such matters as form the topic of Poggio's
'Facetiae,' Beccadelli's ' Hermaphroditus,' or La Casa's
* Capitolo del Forno,' the Eoman Curia looked on and smUed
approvingly. The most obscene books to be found in any
literature escaped the Papal censure, and Aretino, notorious
for ribaldry, aspired not wholly without reason to the scarlet
of a cardinal. But even in the fifteenth century the taint
of heresy was dangerous, and this peril was magnified when
the Lutheran schism had roused the Papacy to a sense of ,
its position. Under the patronage, therefore, of ecclesiastics,
in the depraved atmosphere of Eome, the free thought of
the Italians turned to licentiousness ; this suited the temper
of the people, fascinated by Paganism and little inclined to
raise debate upon matters of no practical utiUty. Those
who reflected on religious topics kept their own counsel.
How purely political were the views of profound thinkers in
Italy upon aU Church questions may be gathered from the
observations of Guicciardini and Machiavelli ; how little the
most earnest antagonist of ungodly ecclesiastics dreamed of
disturbing the Catholic Church system is clear in the bio
graphy of Savonarola.1 The first satire of Ariosto may be
indicated as an epitome of the opinions entertained by sound
and liberal intellects in Italy upon the relation of Papal
Eome to the nation. There is not a trace in it of Teutonic
revolt against authority, of pious yearning for a purer faith.
The standpoint of the critic, though solid and sincere, is
worldly. True to culture as their main preoccupation, the Italian
1 See Vol. I., Age of Despots, pp. 239, 350-356, 415-420, where I have
endeavoured to treat these topics more at length.

THE FAITH OF CULTURE 17
thinkers sought to philosophise faith by bringing Christianity
into harmony with antique speculation, and forming for
themselves a theism that should embrace the systems of the
Platonists and Stoics, the Hebrew Cabbala and the Sermon
on the Mount. There is much that strikes us as both crude
and pedantic, at the same time infantine and pompous, in
the systems elaborated by those pioneers of modern eclec
ticism. They lack the vigorous simplicity that gave its
force to Luther's intuition, the sublime unity of Spinoza's
deductions. The dross of erudition mingles with the pure
gold of personal conviction ; while Pagan phrases, iU suited
to express Christian notions, lend an air of unreality to the
sincerest efforts after rational theology. The Platonic Aca
demy of Florence was the centre of this search after the
faith of culture, whereof the real merit was originality, and
the true force lay in the conviction that humanity is one
and indivisible. Its apostles were Pico della Mirandola and
Ficino. It found lyrical expression in verses like the following,
translated by me from the Greek hexameters of Poliziano : —
0 Father, Lord enthroned on gold, that dwellest in high heaven,
O King of all things, deathless God, Thou Pan supreme, celestial I
That seest all, and movest all, and all with might sustainest,
Older than oldest time, of all first, last, and without ending !
The firmament of blessed souls, of stars the heavenly splendour,
The giant sun himself, the moon that in her circle shineth,
And streams and fountains, earth and sea, are things of Thy creating.
Thou givest life to aU ; all these Thou with Thy Spirit fillesf.
The powers of earth and powers of heaven, and they in pain infernal
Who pine below the roots of earth, all these obey Thy bidding.
Behold, I call upon Thee now, Thy creature on earth dwelling,
Poor, short of life, O God, of clay a mean unworthy mortal,
Bepenting sorely of my sins, and tears of sorrow shedding.
0 God, immortal Father, hear 1 I cry to Thee ; be gracious,
And from my breast of this vain world the soul-enslaving passion,
The demon's wiles, the wilful lust, that damns the impious, banish !
Wash throughly allmy heart with Thypure Spirit's ramabundant,
That I may love Thee, Lord, alone, Thee, King of kings, forjifiR-
II

18 EENAISSANCE IN ITALY
This is but a poor substitute for the Lord's Prayer. HeU
and purgatory are out of place in its theism, xouo-o'fyovos
and a'Oepi vaCwv are tawdry epithets for - Our Father which
art in heaven.' Yet it is precisely in these contradictions
and confusions that we trace the sincerity of the Eenaissance
spirit, seeking to fuse together the vitality of the old faith
and the forms of novel culture, worshipping a Deity created
in the image of its own mind, composite ana incoherent.
Physically, the ItaUans of the Eenaissance were equal to
any task they chose to set themselves. Ho mistake is greater
than to suppose that, because the summer climate of Italy
is hotter than our own, therefore her children must be
languid, pleasure-loving, and relaxed. Twelve months spent
in Tuscany would suffice to dissipate iUusions about the
enervating Italian air, even if the history of ancient Eome
were not a proof that the hardiest race of combatants and
conquerors the world has ever seen were nurtured between
Soracte and the sea. After the downfall of the Empire, what
remained of native vigour in the Latin cities found a refuge
in the lagoons of Venice and other natural strongholds.
WaUed towns in general retained a Eoman population. The
primitive Italic races still existed in the vaUeys of the Apen
nines, while the Ligurians held the Genoese Eiviera ; nor
were the Etruscans extinct in Tuscany. It is true that Eome
had fused these races into a people using the same language.
Yet- the ethnologist wiU hardly aUow that the differences
noticeable between the several districts of Italy were not
connected with original varieties of stock. To the people, as
Eome had made it, fresh blood was added by the Goths,
Lombards, and Germans descending from the North. Greeks,
Arabs, Normans, and, in course of time, Franks influenced
the South. During the Middle Ages a new and mighty breed
of men sprang into being by the combination of these diverse
elements, each district deriving specific quality from the vary-

THE PHYSIQUE OF THE ITALIANS 19
ing proportions in which the chief constituents were mingled.
It is noticeable that where the Eoman-Etruscan blood was
purest probably from mixture, in the vaUey of the Arno, the
modern Itahan genius found its home. Florence and her
sister cities formed the language and the arts of Italy. To
this race, in conjunction with the natives of Lombardy and
Central Italy, was committed the civilisation of Europe in
the fifteenth century. It was only south of Eome, where the
brutaUsing traditions of the Eoman latifundia had never
yielded to the burgh-creating impulse of the Middle Ages,
that the Itahans were unfit for their great duty. On these
southern states the Empire of the East, Saracen marauders
and Norman conquerors, the French and the Spanish
dynasties, had successively exercised a pernicious influence ;
nor did the imperial policy of Frederick II. remain long
enough in operation to effect a radical improvement in the
people. Even at Naples culture was always an exotic. Else
where throughout the peninsula the Italians of the new age
were a noble nation, gifted with physical, emotional, and
mental faculties in splendid harmony. In some districts,
notably in Florence, circumstance and climate had been
singularly favourable to the production of such glorious
human beings as the world has rarely seen. Beauty of
person, strength of body, and civiUty of manners were com
bined in the men of that favoured region with inteUectual
endowments of the highest order: nor were these gifts of
nature confined to a caste apart ; the whole population formed
an aristocracy of genius.
In order to comprehend the greatness of this Italian type
in the Eenaissance, it is only needful to study the pieturs
gaUeries of Florence or of Venice with special attention to
the portraits they contain. When we compare those senators
and sages with the subjects of Diirer's and of Cranach'a
art, we feel the physical superiority of the Italians. In lika
o 2

20 EENAISSANCE IN ITALY
manner a comparison of the men of the fifteenth century with
those of the sixteenth shows how much of that physical
grandeur had been lost. It is easy to wander astray while
weaving subtle theories on this path of criticism. Yet it
cannot be a mere accident that Vandyck's portrait of the
Cardinal de' Bentivogli in the Pitti Palace differs as it does
from that of the Cardinal Ippolito de' Medici by Pontormo
or by Titian. The Medici is an Italian of the Eenaissance,
with his imperious originality and defiance of convention.
He has refused to be portrayed as an ecclesiastic. Titian
has painted him in Hungarian costume of dark red velvet,
moustached, and sworded like a soldier ; in Pontormo's picture
he wears a suit of maU, and rests his left hand on a large
white hound. The Bentivoglio is an Italian of the type pro
duced by the Counter-Eeformation. His delicate lace ruffs,
the coquetry of his scarlet robes, and the fine keen cut of his
diplomatic features betray a new spirit.1 Surely the physical
qualities of a race change with the changes in their thought
and feeling. The beauty of Tasso is more feminine and
melancholy than that of Ariosto, in whom the Uberal genius
of the Eenaissance was yet alive. Among the scowling
swordsmen of the seventeenth century you cannot find a face
like Giorgione's Gattamelata ; 2 the nobles who bear them
selves so proudly on the canvases of Vandyck at Genoa lack
the urbanity of Eaphael's Castiglione ; Moroni's black-robed
students are more pinched and withered than the Pico of the
Uffizzi. It will not do to strain such points. It is enough to
suggest them. What remains, however, for certain is that
the Italians of the fifteenth century — and among these must
1 It would be easy to multiply these contrasts, comprising, for
example, the Cardinals Inghirami and Bibbiena and the Leo of Baphae]
with the Farnesi portraits at Modena or the grave faces of Moroni's
patrons at Bergamo.
- Portrait in the Uffizzi, ascribed to Giorgione, but more probably
by some pupil of Mantegna.

PHYSICAL EXEECISES 81
be included those who lived through the first half of the
sixteenth — had physical force and character corresponding to
their robust individuaUty. Until quite late in the Eenais
sance so much survived of feudal customs even in Italy that
riding, the handling of the lance and sword, and all athletic
exercises formed a part of education no less indispensable than
mental training. Great cities had open places set apart for
tournaments and games ; in Tuscan burghs the paUo was run
on feast days, and May mornings saw the prentice lads of
Florence tilting beneath the smiles of girls who danced at
nightfaU on the square of Santa Trinita. Bloody battles in
the streets were frequent. The least provocation caused a
man to draw his dagger. Combats a steccato chiuso were
among the pastimes to which a Pope might lend his counte
nance. SMU in swordsmanship was therefore a necessity.
For the rest, we learn from CastigUone that the perfect
gentleman was bound to be an accomphshed dancer, a bold
rider, a skiUed wrestler, a swift runner, to shoot weU at the
mark, to hurl the javelin and the quoit with grace, and to
play at tennis and pallone. In addition he ought to affect
some one athletic exercise in such perfection as to beat pro
fessors of the same on their own ground. Cesare Borgia took
pride in felling an ox at a single blow, and exhibited his
marksman's cunning by shooting condemned criminals in a
courtyard of the Vatican.
That such men should have devoted their energies to
inteUectual culture at a time when Enghsh nobles could
barely read or write, and when the chivalry of France
regarded learning with disdain, was a proof of their rich
natural endowments. Nor was the determination of the race
to scholarship in any sense an accident. Throughout the
length and breadth of Italy, memories of ancient greatness
spurred her children on to emulation. Ghosts of Eoman
patriots and poets seemed hovering round their graves, and

22 EENAISSANCE IN ITALY
calling on posterity to give them life again. If we cannot
bring back Greece and Eome, at least let us make Florence a
second Athens, and restore the Muses to Ausonian vales.
That was the cry. It was while gazing on the ruins of Eome
that Villani felt impelled to write his chronicle. Pavia
honoured Boethius Uke a saint. Mantua struck coins with
the head of VirgU, and Naples pointed out his tomb. Padua
boasted of Livy, and Como of the PUnies. ' Sulmona,' cried
Boccaccio, ' mourns because she holds not Ovid's dust ; and
Parma is glad that Cassius rests within her walls.' Such
reverence for the great men of antiquity endured throughout
the Middle Ages, creating myths that swayed the fancy, and
forming in the popular consciousness a presentiment of the
approaching age. There is something pathetic in the sur
vival of old Eoman titles, in the freak of the legend-making
imagination that gave to Orlando the style of Eoman senator,
in the outburst of enthusiasm for Eienzi when he caUed
himself Tribunus Populi Eomani. With the Eenaissance
itself this affection for the past became a passion. Pius H.
amnestied the people of Arpino because they were feUow-
citizens of Cicero. Alfonso of Naples received as a most
precious gift from Venice a bone supposed to be the leg of
Livy. AU the patricians of Italy invented classical pedi
grees; and even Paul IL, because he was called Barbo,
claimed descent from the Ahenobarbi. Such instances might
be multiplied indefinitely. It is, however, more to the pur
pose here to notice that in Italy this adoration of the antique
world was common to all classes ; not students alone, but the
people at large regarded the dead grandeur of the classic age
as their especial heritage. To resuscitate that buried glory,
and to reunite themselves with the past, was the earnest aim
of the Italians as a nation. A conviction prevailed that the
modern world could never be so radiant as the old. This
found its expression in the saying that Eome's chief orna-

PASSION FOR ANTIQUITY 23
ments were her ruins ; in the belief that JuUa's corpse, dis
covered in the Appian Way, surpassed all living maidens;
in Matarazzo's observation that Astorre Baglioni's body
was worthy of an ancient Eoman. In their admiration for
antiquity, scholars were blind to the specific glories of the
modern genius. Lionardo Bruni, for example, exclaimed
that 'the ancient Greeks by far excelled us Italians in
humanity and gentleness of heart.' Yet what Greek poem
can be compared for tenderness with Dante's ' Vita Nuova,'
with the ' Canzoniere ' of Petrarch, or with the tale of Griselda
in Boccaccio ? Gentilezza di cuore was the most charac
teristic product of chivalry, and the fourth iEneid is the only
classic masterpiece of pure romantic pathos. This humility
of discipleship was not, however, strong enough to check
emulation. On the contrary, the yearning towards antiquity
acted Uke a potent stimulus on personal endeavour, generating
an acute desire for fame, a burning aspiration to be numbered
with the mighty men of old. When Virgil introduced Dante
to the company of Homer and his peers, the rank of sesto tra
cotanto sennn rewarded him for all his labour in the rhyme
that made him thin through half a lifetime. Petrarch, who
exceeded Dante in the thirst for Uterary honour, turned from
the men of his generation to converse in long epistles with
the buried saints of Latin culture. For men of less am
bition it was enough to feel that they could raise their souls
through study to communion with the stately spirits of
antiquity, passing hke MachiaveUi from trivial affairs into
their closet, where they donned their reading-robes and shook
hands across the centuries with Cicero or Livy. It was the
universal object of the humanists to gain a consciousness of
self distinguished from the vulgar herd, and to achieve this
by joining the great company of bards and sages, whose glorj
could not perish.
Whoever felt within himself the stirring of the spirit under

»4 RENAISSANCE IN ITALY
any form, sought earnestly for fame ; and in this way a new
social atmosphere, unknown to the nations of the Middle
Ages, was formed in Italy. A large and Uberal acceptance,
recognising abUity of aU kinds, irrespective of rank or piety
or martial prowess, displaced the narrower judgments of
the Church and feudalism. Giotto, the peasant's son, ranked
higher in esteem than Cimabue, the Florentine citizen,
because his work of art was worthier. Petrarch had his
place in no official capacity, but as an honoured equal, at
the marriage feasts of princes. Poliziano corresponded with
kings, promising immortality as a more than regal favour.
Pomponius Lsetus could afford to repel the advances of the
Sanseverini, feeling that erudition ranked him higher than
his princely kinsmen. It was not wealth or policy alone
that raised the Medici among the Despots so far above the
Baglioni of Perugia or the Petrucci of Siena. They owed
this distinction rather to their comprehension of the craving
of their age for culture. Thus though birth commanded
respect for its own sake, a new standard of eminence had
been established, and personal merit was the passport which
carried the meanest into the most Ulustrious company. Men
of all conditions and all quaUfications met upon the common
ground of intellectual intercourse. The subjects they dis
cussed may be gathered from the introductions to Firen-
zuola's novels, from Bembo's 'Asolani' and Castiglione's
' Cortegiano,' from Guicciardini's ' Dialogue on Florence,' or
from the ' Camaldolese Discourses ' of Landino. Society of
this kind existed nowhere else in Europe. To Italy belongs
the proud priority of having invented the art of poUte con
versation, and anticipated the French salon after an original
and urbane fashion of her own.
Under these conditions a genuine cultus of intellect
sprang up in Italy. Princes and people shared a common
impulse to worship the mental superiority of men who had

THE CULT OF INTELLECT 25
no claim to notice but their genius. It was in the spirit
of this hero-worship that the terrible Gismondo Pandolfo
Malatesta transferred to Eimini the bones of Pletho, and
wrote his impassioned epitaph upon the sarcophagus outside
Alberti's church. The biographies of the humanists abound
in stories of singular honours paid to men of parts, not only
by princes who rejoiced in their society, but also by cities
receiving them with pubhc acclamation. And, as it often
happens that a parody reveals the nature of the art it
travesties, such hght is thrown upon our subject by the vile
Pietro Aretino, who, because he was a man of talent and
unscrupulous in its employment, held kings and potentates
beneath his satyr's hoof. It is not, however, needful to go thus
far afield for instances. Some lines of our own poet Webster
exactly describe the CathoUcity of the Eenaissance, which
first obtained in Italy for men of marked abihties, and after
wards to some extent prevaUed at large in Europe : —
Virtue is ever sowing of her seeds :
In the trenches for the soldier ; in the wakeful study
For the scholar ; in the furrows of the sea
For men of our profession : of aU which
Arise and spring up honour.
The virtue here described bears the Italian sense of virtu.
the Latin virtus, the Greek a.perr\, that which makes a man.
It might display itself in a thousand ways; but all alike
brought honour, and honour every man was bound to seek.
The standard whereby the Italians judged this virtue was
aesthetical rather than moral. They were too dazzled by
briUiant achievement to test it in the crucible of ethics.
This is the true key to MachiaveUi's critique of Castruccio
Castracane, Gianpaolo BagUoni, Cesare Borgia, and Piero
Soderini. In common with his race, he was fascinated by
character, and attached undue importance to the force that
made men seek success even through crime.

26 RENAISSANCE IN ITALY
The thirst for glory and the worship of ability stimulated
the Italians, earlier than any other nation, to commemorate
what seemed to them noteworthy in their 'own Uves and in
those of their contemporaries. Dante, within the pale of
medievalism, led the way in both of these directions. His
' Vita Nuova ' is a chapter of autobiography restrained within
the hmits of consummate art. His portraits of S. Francis
and S. Dominic (not to mention other medalhons and cameos
of predecessors or contemporaries— Farinata, for example, or
Boniface VIII.) record the special quaUties whereby those
heroes of the faith were distinguished from the herd of men
around them. Boccaccio's ' Life of Dante ' is a further step in
the direction of purely modern biography. Then foUow the
collections of FiUppo Villani, Giovanni Cavalcanti, Vespa
siano, Platina, Decembrio, BeccadeUi, Caracciolo, and Paolo
Giovio. Vasari's ' Lives of the Painters ' are unique in their
attempt to embrace within a single work whatever struck
their author as most characteristic in the career of one par
ticular class of men. For historical precision the portraits
composed by Machiavelli, Guicciardini, Varchi, Pitti, and
many of the minor annaUsts leave nothing to be desired.
Such autobiographies as those of Petrarch, CeUini, Cardano,
and Cornaro are models in their kind ; whether their object
were simply self-glorification, or whether a scientific and
didactic purpose underlay the chronicle of a lifetime, the re-
Bult is equally vivid and interesting. Hero-worship prompted
Gian Francesco Pico to compose the ' Life of Savonarola,' and
Condivi to write that of Michael Angelo. Scorn and hatred
impeUed Platina to transmit the outline of Paul II. to pos
terity in a caricature, the irony of which is so restrained that
it might pass for sincerity. MachiaveUi's ' Biography of Cas
truccio ' is a political romance indited with a phUosophical
intention. What motive, beyond admiration, produced 'the
anonymous ' Memoir of Alberti,' so terse in its portraiture, so

IDEAL CHARACTERS 27
tranquil in style, we do not know ; but this too, like Prendi-
lacqua's 'Life of Vittorino da Feltre,' is a masterpiece of
natural delineation. For these biographies the works of
Plutarch and Suetonius served no doubt as models. Yet this
does not make the preoccupation of the ItaUans with the
phenomena of personahty the less remarkable.
Another phase of the same impulse led to special treatises
upon ideal characters. The picture of the perfect householder
was drawn by Alberti, that of the courtier by Castiglione, that
of the prince by MachiavelU. Da Vinci discoursed upon the
physical proportions of the human form. Firenzuola and
Luigini analysed the beauty of women ; Piccolomini under
took to describe the manners of a well-bred lady; and La
Casa laid down rules for polite behaviour in society. The
names of treatises of this description might easUy be multi-
pUed. Enough, however, has been said to show the tendency
of the Itahan inteUect to occupy itself with salient quaUties,
whether exhibited in individuals or idealised and abstracted
by the reflective fancy. The whole of this literature implies
an intense self-consciousness in the nation, an ardent interest
in men as men, because of the specific virtue to be found in
each. The spirit, therefore, in which these authors of the
Eenaissance approached their task was wholly different from
that which induced the mediasval annalist to register the
miracles of saints, to chronicle the princes of some dynasty
or the abbots of a convent. Nor had it much in common
with the mythologising enthusiasm of romantic poets. The
desire for edification and the fire of fancy had yielded to an
impulse more stri&tly scientific, to a curiosity more positive.
The attention directed in Uterature and social intercourse
upon great men impUed a corresponding thirst for posthumous
glory as a subjective quality of the Eenaissance character.
To perpetuate a name and fame was the most fervent passion,
shared alike by artists and princes, by men of letters and by

28 EENAISSANCE IN ITALY
generals. It was not enough for a man to show forth the
vigour that was in him, or to win the applause of his con
temporaries. He must go beyond and wrest something per
manent for himself from the ideal world that wiU survive our
transient endeavours. When Alfonso the MagnanimouB
employed Fazio to compose his chronicle, when Francesco
Sforza paid Filelfo for his verses by the dozen, when Cosimo
de' Medici regretted that he had not spent more wealth on
bunding, when Bartolommeo Colleoni decreed the erection of
his chapel at Bergamo, and his statue on the pubhc square
of Venice, these men, so different in all things else, were
striving, each after his own fashion, to buy an immortality
his own achievements in the field or Senate might not win.
Dante, here as elsewhere the first to utter the word of the
modern age, has given expression to this thirst for lasting
recoUection in his lines about the planet Mercury : ' —
Questa picciola stella si correda
De' buoni spirti, che son stati attivi,
Perche onore e fama gh succeda.
At the same time Dante, imbued with the mystic spirit
of the Middle Ages, felt an antagonism between worldly
ambition and the ideal of the Christian life. There are
other passages, where fame is mentioned by him as a fleet.
ing breath, a flower that blooms and fades.2 In truth, the
passionate desire for glory was part of the Eenaissance
worldliness, caught from communion with the classic past,
and connected with that vivid apprehension of human life
which gave its vigour to an age of reawakened impulses
and positive ambitions. This world was so much with them,
so much to them, that these men would not lose their grasp
of it in death, or willingly exchange it for a paradise of hopes
beyond. The enthusiasm for antiquity coloured this desire for
• Paradiso, vi. 112. * Notably Purg. xi. 100-117.

IMMOETALITY THROUGH LITEEATUEE 89
fame by forcing on the Italians the conviction that in culture
was the real title to eternity. How could they have entered
into the spiritual kingdom of the Greeks and Eomans, if
it had not been for MSS. and works of art? It became
the fashion, therefore, to seek immortality through literature.
The study of the classics was not then confined to men of
a pecuhar bent. On all aUke, even on women, there weighed
the one belief that to be a scholar was the surest way of
saving something from the wreck that is the doom of human
deeds.1 Only at rare intervals, and in rare natures of the
type of Michael Angelo, did the Christian ideal resume its
sway. Tired with the radiance of art or learning, they
turned to the Cross of Christ, and laid their secular achieve
ments down as vain and worthless. The time, however, had
not yet come when a disgust of culture and an exhaustion
of the inteUect should make asceticism and monastic ecstasy
acceptable once more. That belonged to the age of Spanish
tyranny, and what is caUed the Counter-Eeformation. For
the real Eenaissance Leo's memorable imprimatur, granted
to the editors of Tacitus, struck the true key-note ; while
Sappho's solemn lines of warning to a friend careless of
literature might be paraphrased to speak the feeling of Poli
ziano : — Lo, thou shalt die,
And lie
Dumb in the silent tomb ;
Nor of thy name
Shall there be any fame
In ages yet to be or years to coma :
For of the rose
That on Pieria blows
Thou hast no share ;
But in sad Hades' house,
Unknown, inglorious,
Mid the dim shades that wander there,
Shalt thou flit forth and haunt the filmy air.
1 A curious echo of this Italian conviction may be traced In
Fletcher's Elder Brother.

SO RENAISSANCE IN ITALY
These words found no uncertain echo in Eenaissance
Italy, where lads with long dark hair and liquid eyes left
their loves to listen to a pedant's lectures, where Niccolo de'
NiccoU wooed Piero de' Pazzi from a life of pleasure by the
promise of a spiritual kingdom in the world of books. Piero
was ' a man born with thy face and throat, Lyric ApoUo ! '
His only object was to enjoy — darsi buon tempo, as the
phrase of Florence hath it. Yet these words of the student :
' Seeing thou art the son of such a man, and of comely
person, it is a shame thou dost not give thyself to learn
Latin, the which would be unto thee a great ornament ; and
if thou dost not learn it, thou wUt be nought esteemed ; the
flower of youth once passed, thou wUt find thyself without
virtue ' — these words carried such weight, and sank so deeply
into the young man's heart, that, smitten with the love of
learning, he forsook his boon companions, engaged Pontano
as house-tutor at a salary of one hundred golden florins, and
spent his leisure time in learning Livy and the ' iEneid ' by
heart.1 What he sought he gained; his name is stiU re
corded, now that not only the bloom of youth, but Ufe itself
has passed away, and he has slept for nearly four centuries
in Florentine earth. Yet we, no less wearied of erudition
than Faust was, when he held the cup of laudanum in his
hand and heard the Easter voices singing, may well ask
ourselves what Piero carried with him to the grave more
than Sardanapalus, over whom the Greeks inscribed their
bitter epitaphs. Disenchanted and disillusioned as we are
by those four centuries of learning, the musical lament of
1 Vespasiano, Vita di Piero de' Pazzi. Compare the beautiful
letter of iEneas Sylvius Piccolomini to his nephew (Ep. Lib. i. 4).
He reminds the young man that fair as youth is, and delightful as are
the pleasures of the May of life, learning is more fair and knowledge
more delightful. 'Non enim Lucifer aut Hesperus tam pulcher est
quam sapientia qua* studiis acquiritur litterarum.'

Hellenic Parallels 31
Dido and the stately periods of Latin prose are little better,
considered as spiritual sustenance, to us than the husks that
the swine did eat. How can we picture to ourselves the
conditions of an age when scholarship was an evangel, forcing
the Levis of Florence by the persuasion of its irresistible
beauty to forsake the tables of the money-changers, tempting
young men of great possessions to sell all and give to the
Muses, making of Lucrezia Borgia herself the Magdalen of
polite Uterature? Fortunately for the civihsation of the
modern world, the men of the Eenaissance, untroubled by
a surfeit of knowledge, made none of these reflections. It
was an age of sincere faith in the goodness and the glory
of the inteUect revealed by art and letters. When we read
Vespasiano's account of the grey-haired Niccolo accosting the
young Pazzi on the steps of the BargeUo, our mind turns
instinctively to an earlier dayspring of the reason in ancient
Greece ; we think of the charm exercised by Socrates over
Critias and Alcibiades : and had an Aristophanes appeared
in Italy, we fancy how he might have criticised this seduction
of the youth from citizenship and arms to tranquU contem
plations and the cosmopohtan interests of culture .
It is not without real reason that these Hellenic paraUels
confront us in the study of ItaUan Eenaissance. Florence
borrowed her hght from Athens, as the moon shines with
rays reflected from the sun. The Eevival was the silver age
of that old golden age of Greece. In a literal, not a merely
metaphorical sense, the fifteenth century witnessed a new
birth of the classic spirit. And what, let us ask ourselves,
since here at last is the burning point of our inquiry, what
was the true note of this spirit, in so far as its recovery con
cerned the Italian race? Superficial observers will speak of
the Paganism of the Eenaissance, its unblushing license, its
worldliness, its self-satisfied sensuality, as though that were
all, as though these quaUties were not inherent in human

»2 RENAISSANCE IN ITALY
nature, ready at any moment to emerge when the strain of
nobler enthusiasm is relaxed, or the self-preservative instincts
of society are enfeebled. There is indeed a truth in this rough
and ready answer, which requires to be stated on the thresh
old. The contact of the modern with the ancient world did
encourage a profligate and godless mode of living in men who
preferred Petronius to S. Paul, and yearned less after Gahlee
than Corinth. The humanists were distinguished even above
the Eoman clergy for open disorder in their lives. They
developed filthy speaking as a special branch of rhetoric, and
professed the science of recondite and obsolete obscenity. It
was just this fashion of the learned classes that made Erasmus
mistrust the importation of scholarship into the North. ' One
scruple still besets my mind,' he wrote, ' lest under the cloak
of revived hterature Paganism should strive to raise its head,
there being among Christians men who, while they recognise
the name of Christ, breathe in their hearts the spirit of the
GentUes.' Christianity, especiaUy in Italy, where the spec
tacle of the Holy See inspired disgust, had been prostituted to
the vilest service by the Church.1 Faith was associated with
folly, superstition, ignorance, intolerance, and cruelty. The
manners of the clergy were in flagrant discord with the
Gospel, and Antichrist found fitter incarnation in Eoderigo
Borgia than in Nero. While the essence of religion was thus
sacrificed by its professors, there appeared upon the horizon
of the modern world, hke some bright blazing star, the ideal
of that Pagan civilisation against which in its decadence the
ascendant force of Christianity had striven. It was not un
natural that a reaction in favour of Paganism, now that the
Church had been found wanting, should ensue, or that the
passions of humanity should justify their self-indulgence by
appealing to the precedents of Greece and Eome. Good and
1 It is enough to refer to Luther's Table Talk upon the state of
Borne in Leo's reign.

DEMORALISATION OF ITALIAN SOCIETY 83
bad were mingled in the classical tradition. Vices, loathsome
enough in a Pope who had instituted the censure of the press;
seemed venial when combined with the manliness of Hadrian
or the refined charm of CatuUus. Sin itself lost half its evil
coming from the new-found Holy Land of culture. StiU this
so-caUed Paganism of the Eenaissance, real as it was, had
but a superficial connection with classical studies. The cor
ruption of the Church and the political degeneracy of the
commonwealths had quite as much to do with it as the return
to heathen standards. Nor could the Eenaissance have been
the great world-historical era it truly was, if such demoralisa
tion had been a part and parcel of its essence. Crimes and
vices are not the hotbed of arts and literature : lustful priests
and cruel despots were not necessary to the painting of
Eaphael or the poetry of Ariosto. The faults of the Italians
in the age of the Eenaissance were neither productive of their
high achievements, nor conversely were they generated by
the motion of the intellect toward antique forms of culture.
The historian notes synchronisms, whereof he is not bound
to prove tha interdependence, and between which he may feel
there is no causal Unk.
It does not, moreover, appear that the demoraUsation of
ItaUan society, however this may have been brought about,
produced either physical or intellectual degeneration in the
people. Commercial prosperity, indeed, had rendered them
inferior in brute strength to their semi-barbarous neighbours ;
whUe the cosmopolitan interests of culture had destroyed the
energy of national instincts. But it would be wrong to charge
their neopaganism alone with results whereof the causes were
so complex. Meanwhile, what gave its deep importance to the classical
revival, was the emancipation of the reason, consequent upon
the discovery that the best gifts of the spirit had been enjoyed
by the nations of antiquity. An ideal of existence distinct
n D

34 RENAISSANCE IN ITALY/
from that imposed upon the Middle Ages by the Church, was
revealed in all its secular attractiveness. Fresh value was
given to the desires and aims, enjoyments and activities of
man, considered as a noble member of the universal hfe, and
not as a diseased excrescence on the world he helped to
spoU. Instead of the cloistral service of the ' Imitatio Christi,'
that conception of communion, through knowledge, with God
manifested in His works and in the soul of man, which forms
the indestructible religion of science and the reason, was
already generated. The inteUect, after lying speU-bound
during a long night, when thoughts were as dreams and
movement as somnambuUsm, resumed its activity, interro
gated nature, and enjoyed the pleasures of unimpeded energy.
Without ceasing to be Christians (for the moral principles
of Christianity are the inahenable possession of the human
race), the men of the Eevival dared once again to exercise
their thought as boldly as the Greeks and Eomans had done
before them. More than this, they were now able, as it were,
by the resuscitation of a lost faculty, to do so freely and clear
sightedly. The touch upon them of the classic spirit was hke
the finger of a deity giving hfe to the dead.
That more and nobler use was not made of the new
light which dawned upon the world in the Eevival ; that the
humanists abandoned the high standpoint of Petrarch for a
lower and more literary level; that society assimilated the
Hedonism more readUy than the Stoicism of the ancients ;
that scholars occupied themselves with the form rather than
the matter of the classics ; that all these shortcomings in
their several degrees prevented the Itahans from leading the
inteUectual movement of the sixteenth century in rehgion and
philosophy, as they had previously led the mind of Europe in
discovery and literature— is deeply to be lamented by those
who are jealous for their honour. For the rest, no words can
be found more worthy to express their high conception of

THE DIGNITY OF MAN SS
man, regarded as a free yet responsible personality, sent into
the world to mould his own nature, and by this power of self-
determination severed from both brutes and angels, than the
foUowing passage from Pico della Mirandola's ' Oration on the
Dignity of Man.' It combines antique liberty of thought with
Christian faith in a style distinctive of the Eenaissance at its
best ; nor is its note of mediaeval cosmology uncharacteristic
of an age that divined as yet more than it firmly grasped the
realities of modern science. Here, if anywhere, may be hailed
the Epiphany of the modern spirit, contraposing God and
man in a relation inconceivable to the ancients, unappre
hended in its fulness by the Middle Ages. ' Then the Supreme
Maker decreed that unto Man, on whom He could bestow
nought singular, should belong in common whatsoever had
been given to His other creatures. Therefore He took man,
made in His own individual image, and having placed him in
the centre of the world, spake to him thus : " Neither a fixed
abode, nor a form in thine own likeness, nor any gift peculiar
to thyself alone, have we given thee, 0 Adam, in order that
what abode, what likeness, what gifts thou shalt choose, may
be thine to have and to possess. The nature allotted to aU
other creatures, within laws appointed by ourselves, restrains
them. Thou, restrained by no narrow bounds, according to
thy own free wiU, in whose power I have placed thee, shalt
define thy nature for thyself. I have set thee midmost the
world, that thence thou mightest the more conveniently
survey whatsoever is in the world. Nor have we made thee
either heavenly or earthly, mortal or immortal, to the end
that thou, being, as it were, thy own free maker and moulder,
shouldst fashion thyself in what form may like thee best.
Thou shalt have power to decline unto the lower or brute
creatures. Thou shalt have power to be reborn unto the
higher, or divine, according to the sentence of thy intellect." B 2

36 RENAISSANCE IN ITALY
Thus to Man, at his birth, the Father gave seeds of aU variety
and germs of every form of life.'
Out of thoughts hke these, if Italy could only have been
free, if her society could have been uncorrupted, if her Church
could have returned to the essential truths of Christianity,
might have sprung, as from a seed, the noblest growth of
human science. But dis aliter visum est. The prologue to
this history of culture — the long account taken of selfish
tyrants, vicious clergy, and incapable republics, in my ' Age of
the Despots ' — is intended to make it clear why the conditions
under which the Eevival began in Italy rendered its accom
plishment imperfect.

37

CHAPTEE II
FIRST PBBIOD OF HUMANISM
Importance of the Revival of Learning — Mediaeval Romance — The
Legend of Faustus — Its Value for the Eenaissance — The Devotion of
Italy to Study — Italian Predisposition for this Labour — Scholarship
in the Dark Ages — Double Attitude assumed by the Church— Piety
for Virgil — Meagre Acquaintance with the Latin Classics— No Greek
Learning — The Spiritual Conditions of the Middle Ages adverse to
Pure Literature — Italy no exception to the rest of Europe — Dants
and Petrarch — Definition of Humanism — Petrarch's Conception of
it — His iEsthetical Temperament — His Cult for Cicero, Zeal in
collecting Manuscripts, Sense of the Importance of Greek Studies —
Warfare against Pedantry and Superstition — Ideal of Poetry and
Ehetoric — Critique of Jurists and Schoolmen — S. Augustine-
Petrarch's Vanity — Thirst for Fame — Discord between his Life and
his Profession — His Literary Temperament — Visionary Patriotism —
His Influence — His Successors — Boccaccio and Greek Studies —
Translation of Homer — Philosophy of Literature — Sensuousness of
Boccaccio's Inspiration — Giovanni da Eavenna — The Wandering
Professor — His Pupils in Latin Scholarship — Luigi Marsigli — The
Convent of S. Spirito — Humanism in Politics — Coluccio de' Salutati
— Gasparino da Barzizza — Improved Style in Letter- writing — Ee
vival of Greek Learning — Manuel Chrysoloras — His Pupils — Lionardo
Bruni — Value of Greek for the Eenaissance.
I have already observed that it would be inaccurate to identify
the whole movement of the Eenaissance with the process
whereby the European nations recovered and appropriated the
masterpieces of Greek and Latin literature. At the same
time this reconquest of the classic world of thought was by
far the most important achievement of the fifteenth and six
teenth centuries. It absorbed nearly the whole mental energy
of the Italians, and determined in a great measure the quality

38 EENAISSANCE IN ITALY
of aU their inteUectual production in the period I have under
taken to Ulustrate. Through their activity in the field of
scholarship the proper starting-point was given to the modern
intellect. The revelation of what men were and what they
wrought under the influence of other faiths and other impulses,
in distant ages with a different ideal for their aim, not only
widened the narrow horizon of the Middle Ages, but it also
restored self-confidence to the reason of humanity. Eesearch
and criticism began to take the place of scholastic speculation.
Positive knowledge was substituted for the intuitive guesses of
idealists and dreamers. The interests of this world received
their due share of attention, and the litterce humaniores of
the student usurped upon the divinarum rerum cognitio of
theologians. AU through the Middle Ages uneasy and imperfect memo
ries of Greece and Eome had haunted Europe. Alexander,
the great conqueror; Hector, the noble knight and lover;
Helen, who set Troy town on fire ; Virgil, the magician ; Dame
Venus lingering about the hill of Horsel — these phantoms,
whereof the positive historic truth was lost, remained to sway
the soul and stimulate desire in myth and saga. Deprived
of actual knowledge, imagination transformed what it re
membered of the classic age into romance. The fascination
exercised by these dreams of a half-forgotten past over
the mediasval fancy expressed itself in the legend of Doctor
Faustus. That legend tells us what the men upon the eve of
the Eevival longed for, and what they dreaded, when they
turned their minds towards the past. The secret of enjoy
ment and the source of strength possessed by the ancients,
allured them ; but they believed that they could only recover
this lost treasure by the suicide of their soul. So great was
the temptation that Faustus paid the price. After imbibing
aU the knowledge of his age, he sold himself to the DevU, in
order that his thirst for experience might be quenched, his

DR. FAUSTUS 3»
grasp upon the world be strengthened, and the ennui of his
inactivity be soothed. His first use of this dearly-bought
power was to make blind Homer sing to him. Amphion
tunes his harp in concert with Mephistopheles. Alexander
rises from the dead at his behest, with all his legionaries ; and
Helen is given to him for a bride. Faustus is therefore a
parable of the impotent yearnings of the sphit in the Middle
Ages — its passionate aspiration, its conscience-stricken desire,
its fettered curiosity amid the cramping limits of imperfect
knowledge and irrational dogmatism. That for which Faustus
sold his soul, the freedom he acquired by magic, the sense of
beauty he gratified through visions, the knowledge he gained
by interrogation of demons, was yielded to the world without
price at the time of the Eenaissance. Homer, no longer by
the intervention of a fiend, but by the labour of the scholar,
sang to the new age. The pomp of the empires of the old
world was restored in the pages of historians. The inde
structible beauty of Greek art, whereof Helen was an emblem,
became, through the discovery of classic poetry and sculpture
the possession of the modern world. MediaevaUsm took this
Helen to wife, and their offspring, the Euphorion of Goethe's
drama, is the spirit of the modern world. But how was this
effected ? By long and toUsome study, by the accumulation
of MSS., by the acquisition of dead languages, by the solitary
labour of grammarians, by the lectures of itinerant professors,
by the scribe, by the printing press, by the self-devotion of
magnificent Italy to erudition. In this way the Eenaissance
realised the dream of the Middle Ages, and the genius of the
ItaUans wrought by sohd toU what the myth-making imagina
tion of the Germans had projected in a poem.
It is impossible to exaggerate the benefit conferred upon
Europe by the Itahans at this epoch. The culture of the
classics had to be reappropriated before the movement of the
modern mind could begin : before the nations could start upon

4ft RENAISSANCE IN ITALY
a new career of progress, the chasm between the old and new
world had to be bridged over. This task of reappropriation
the Italians undertook alone, and achieved at the sacrifice of
their literary independence and their pohtical freedom. The
history of Eenaissance literature in Italy is the history of a
national genius deviating from the course of self- development
into the channels of scholarship and antiquarian research.
The language created by Dante as a thing of power, pohshed
by Petrarch as a thing of beauty, trained by Boccaccio as the
instrument of melodious prose, was abandoned even by the
Tuscans in the fifteenth century for revived Latin and newly-
discovered Greek. Patent acquisition took the place of proud
inventiveness ; laborious imitation of classical authors sup
pressed originaUty of style. The force of mind which in the
fourteenth century had produced a 'Divine Comedy' and
a ' Decameron,' in the fifteenth was expended upon the in
terpretation of codices, the settlement of texts, the transla
tion of Greek books into Latin, the study of antiquities, the
composition of commentaries, encyclopaedias, dictionaries,
ephemerides. While we regret this change from creative to
acquisitive Uterature, we must bear in mind that those scholars
who ought to have been poets accomplished nothing less than
the civilisation, or, to use their own phrase, the humanisation,
of the modern world.1 At the critical moment when the
Eastern Empire was being shattered by the Turks, and when
the other European nations were as yet unfit for culture,
Italy saved the arts and sciences of Greece and Eome, and
interpreted the spirit of the classics. Devoting hersetf to
what appears the slavish work of compilation and coUection,
she transmitted an inestimable treasure to the human race ;
and though for a time the beautiful Italian tongue was super
seded by a jargon of dead languages, yet the literature of the
1 Poliziano, Pontano, Sannazzaro, and Bembo divided their powers
between scholarship and poetry, to the injury of the latter.

THE PAST OF ITALY 41
Renaissance yielded in the end the poetry of Ariosto, the
poUtical phUoaophy of Machiavelli, the histories of Guicciar
dini and Varchi. Meanwhile the whole of Europe had received
the staple of its mteUectual education.
It is necessary to repeat the observation that this absorp
tion of energy in the task of scholarship was no less natural
to the ItaUans than necessary for the world at large. The
ItaUans were not a new nation like the Franks and Germans.
Nothing is more remarkable in the mediasval history of Italy
than the sense, shared alike by poets and jurists, by the
leaders of popular insurrections and the moulders of philo
sophic thought, that the centre of national vitality existed in
the Eoman Empire. It was this determination to look back
ward rather than forward, to trust the past rather than the
present, that neutraUsed the forces of the Lombard League,
and prevented the communes from asserting their independ
ence face to face with foreigners who claimed to be the
representatives of Cassar. The ItaUans, unlike any other
European people, sacrificed the reality of poUtical freedom for
the idea of majesty and glory, to be recovered by the restitu
tion of the Empire. GueU and Ghibelline coincided in this
delusion, that Eome, whether Papal or Imperial, was destined
stUl to place the old Italic stock upon the throne of civiUsed
humanity. When the three great authors of the thirteenth
century appeared, each in turn cast his eyes to ancient Eome
as the true source of national greatness. The language of
modern Italy was known to be a scion of the Latin speech,
and the ItaUans caUed themselves Latini. The attempt to
conform their Uterature to the Eoman type was therefore felt
to be but a return to its true standard ; the ' iEneid ' of Virgil
was their Nibelungen-Lied. Thus the humanistic enthu
siasm of the fifteenth century assumed an almost patriotic
character. In it, moreover, the doctrine that had ruled the
Middle Ages, interrupting poUtical cohesion without acquiring

42 RENAISSANCE IN ITALY
the consistency of fact, attained at last its proper sphere of
development. The ideal of Dante in the ' De Monarchia ' had
proved a baseless dream ; no emperor was destined to take his
seat in Eome and sway the world. But the ideal of Petrarch
was realised ; the scholars, animated by his impulse, reacquired
the birthright of culture which belonged of old to Italy, and
made her empress of the inteUect for Europe. Not poUtical
but spiritual supremacy was the real heritage of these new
Eomans. As an introduction to the history of the Eevival, and in
order that the work to be performed by the Itahan students
may be accurately measured, it wiU be necessary to touch
briefly upon the state of scholarship during the dark ages.
To underrate the achievement of that period, especially in
logic, theology, and law, is only too easy, seeing that a new
direction was given to the mind of Europe by the Eenaissance,
and that we have moved continuously on other lines to other
objects since the opening of the fifteenth century. Mediasval
thought was both acute and strenuous in its own region of
activity. What it lacked was material outside the speculative
sphere to feed upon. Culture, in our . sense of the word, did
not exist, and the inteUect was forced to deal subtly with a
very limited class of conceptions.
Long before the fall of the Eoman Empire it became
clear that both fine arts and literature were graduaUy de
clining. Sculpture in the age of Constantine had lost dis
tinction of style ; and though the practice of verse survived
as a rhetorical exercise, no works of original genius were pro
duced. Ausonius and Claudian, just before the division of
the Empire and the irruption of the barbarian races, uttered
the last swan's note of classic poetry. Meanwhile true taste
and criticism were extinct.1 The Church, while battling with
1 For the low state of criticism, even in a good age, see Aulus
GeUius, lib. xiv. cap. vi. He describes the lecture of a rhetor, guispiam

RELATION OF THE CHURCH TO LITERATURE 43
Paganism, recognised her deadUest foes in literature. Not
only were the Greek and Latin masterpieces the stronghold
of a mythology that had to be erased from the popular mind ;
not only was their morality antagonistic to the principles of
Christian ethics : in addition to these grounds for hatred and
mistrust, the classics ideahsed a form of human hfe which
the new faith regarded as worthless. What was culture in
comparison with the salvation of the soul ? Why should
time be spent upon the dreams of poets, when every minute
might be weU employed in pondering the precepts of the
Gospels ? What was the use of making this life refined and
agreeable by study, when it formed but an insignificant
prelude to an eternity wherein mere mundane learning would
be valueless ? Why raise questions about man's condition
on this earth, when the creeds had to be defined and ex
pounded, when the nature of God- and the relation of the
human soul to its Creator had to be established ? It was
easy to pass from this state of mind to the beUef that learn
ing in itself was impious.1 ' Let us shun the lying fables of
the poets,' cries Gregory of Tours, ' and forego the wisdom of
sages at enmity with God, lest we incur the doom of endless
death by sentence of our Lord.' Even Augustine deplored
his time spent in reading Virgil, weeping over Dido's death
by love, when all the whUe he was himself both moraUy and
spirituaUy dead. Alcuin regretted that in his boyhood he
had preferred VirgU to the legends of the Saints, and stigma
tised the eloquence of the Latin writers by the epithet of
wanton. Such phrases as poetarum figmenta, gentilmm fig
menta sive deliramenta (the fictions or mad ravings of Pagan
lingua Latmce literator, on a passage in the seventh ^Eneid. The
man's ¦ explanation of the word bidentes proves an almost more than
mediaeval puerility and ignorance.
1 Most of the following quotations will be found in Comparetti,
Virgilio nel Medio Evo, vol.i., a work of sound scholarship and refined
taste upon the place of Virgil in the Middle Ages.

44 RENAISSANCE IN ITALY
poets} are commonly employed by Christian authors of the
Lives of Saints, in order to mark the inferiority of Virgil and
Ovid to their own more edifying compositions. Belying on
their spiritual pretensions, the monkish scribes gloried in
ignorance and paraded want of grammar as a sign of grace.
' I warn the curious reader,' writes a certain Wolf hard in the
' Life of S. Walpurgis,' ' not to mind the mass of barbarisms
in this Uttle work ; I bid him ponder what he finds upon
these pages, and seek the pearl within the dung-heap.'
Gregory the Great goes further, and defies the pedantry of
pedagogues. ' The place of prepositions and the cases of the
nouns I utterly despise, since I deem it unfit to confine the
words of the celestial oracle within the rules of Donatus.'
' Let philosophers and impure scholars of Donatus,' writes a
fanatic of Cordova, ' ply their windy problems with the bark
ing of dogs, the grunting of swine, snarUng with skinned
throat and teeth ; let the foaming and bespittled grammarians
belch, while we remain evangeUcal servants of Christ, true
followers of rustic teachers.' Thus the opposition of the
Church to Paganism, the conviction that Christianity was
aUen to culture, and the absorption of mteUectual interest
in theological questions contributed to destroy what had
remained of sound scholarship in the last years of the Empire.
The task of the Church, moreover, in the Middle Ages was
not so much to keep learning ahve as to moraUse the savage
races who held Europe at their pleasure. Pure Latinity,
even if it could have been instUled into the nations of the
North, was of less moment than elementary discipline in
manners and religion. It must not be forgotten that the
literature of ancient Eome was artificial in its best days, con
fined to a select few, and dependent on the capital for its
support. After the dismemberment of the Empire the whole
of Europe was thrown open to the action of spiritual powers
who had to use unlettered barbarians for their ministers and

VIRGIL 45
missionaries. To submit this vast field to classic culture at
the same time that Christianity was being propagated, would
have been beyond the strength of the Church, even had she
chosen to undertake this task, and had the vital forces of
antiquity not been exhausted.
At this point an inevitable reaction, Ulustrating the com
promise thrust upon the Church by her peculiar position,
made itself apparent. In proportion as the dangers of
Paganism decreased, the clergy, on whom devolved the double
duty of civiUsing as well as moraUsing society, began to feel
the need of arresting the advance of ignorance. Knowledge
of Latin was required for ecclesiastical uses, for the interpre
tation of Scripture, for the study of the Fathers, and for the
estabhshment of a common language among many divers
nationahties. A middle course between the fanaticism which
regarded classical Uterature as worthless and impure, and the
worldhness that might have been encouraged by enthusiasm
for the ancients, had therefore to be steered. Grammar was
taught in the schools, and where grammar was taught, it was
impossible to exclude VirgU and some other Latin authors.
A conflict in the monkish mind was the unavoidable conse
quence. Since the classics alone communicated sound learn
ing, the study of them formed a necessary part of education ;
and yet these authors were unbaptized Pagans, doomed to
everlasting death because of their impiety and immorality.
Poets who had hitherto been regarded as deadly foes, were
now accepted as auxiliaries in the battle of the Church against
barbarism. While copying the elegies of Ovid, the compas
sionate scribe sought to place them in a favourable light, and
to render them edifying at the cost of contradicting their
plain meaning.1 Virgil was credited with aUegorical signifi-
1 Hoc est quod pueri tangar amore minus, for example, was altered
into Hoc est quod pueri tangar amore nihil ; for lusisset amores was
substituted dampnasset amoves, and so forth.

48 RENAISSANCE IN ITALY
eance ; and the strong sympathy he roused in those who felt
the beauty of his style, produced a belief that, if not quite, he
was almost a Christian. The piety and pity for Virgil as a
gentle soul who had just missed the salvation offered by
Christ, found expression in the service for S. Paul's Day used
at Mantua : l — Ad Maronis mausoleum
Ductus, fudit super eum
PisB rorem lacrymse ;
Quem te, inquit, reddidissem
Si te vivum invenissem,
Poetarum maxime 1
Meanwhile the utter confusion consequent upon the
downfaU of the Eoman Empire and the irruption of the
Germanic races was causing, by the mere brute force of cir
cumstance, a gradual extinction of scholarship too powerful
to be arrested. The teaching of grammar for ecclesiastical
purposes was insufficient to check the influence of many
causes leading to this overthrow of learning. It was impos
sible to communicate more than a mere tincture of knowledge
to students separated from the classical tradition, for whom
the antecedent history of Eome was a dead letter. The
meaning of Latin words derived from the Greek was lost.
Smaragdus, a grammarian, mistook Eunuchus Gomcedia and
Orestes Tragcedia, mentioned by Donatus, for the names of
authors. Eemigius of Auxerre explained poema by positio,
and emblema by habundantia. Homer and VirgU were sup
posed to have been friends and contemporaries, whUe the
1 The hymn quoted above in the text refers to a legend of S. Paul
having visited the tomb of Virgil at Naples : —
¦ When to Maro's tomb they brought him
Tender grief and pity wrought him
To bedew the stone with tears ;
What a saint I might have crowned thee,
Had I only living found thee,
Poet first and without peers I '

VIRGIL IN POPULAR ROMANCES 47
Latin epitome of the 'Iliad,' bearing the name of Pindar, was
fathered on the Theban lyrist. Theological notions, grotesque
and childish beyond description, found their way into etymo
logy and grammar. The three persons of the Trinity were
discovered in the verb, and mystic numbers in the parts of
speech. Thus analytical studies Uke that of language came
to be regarded as an open field lor the exercise of the mytho-
logising fancy ; and etymology was reduced to a system of
ingenious punning. Voluntas and voluptas were distinguished,
for example, as pertaining to the nature of Deus and diabolus
respectively ; and, in order to make the Ust complete, volumtas
was invented as an attribute of homo. It is clear that on this
path of verbal quibbling the intellect had lost tact, taste, and
common sense together.
When the minds of the learned were possessed by these
absurdities to the exclusion of sound method, we cannot
wonder that antiquity survived but as a strange and shadowy
dream in popular imagination. Virgil, the only classic who
retained distinct and living personaUty, passed from poet to
philosopher, from philosopher to Sibyl, from Sibyl to magician,
by successive stages of transmutation, as the truth about him
grew more dim and the faculty to apprehend him weakened.
Forming the staple of education in the schools of the gram
marians, and metamorphosed by the vulgar consciousness
into a wizard,1 he waited on the extreme verge of the dark
ages to take Dante by the hand, and lead him, as the type of
human reason, through the realms of Hell and Purgatory.
With regard to the actual knowledge of Latin literature
possessed in the Middle Ages, it may be said in brief that
VirgU was continuaUy studied, and that a certain famUiarity
with Ovid, Lucan, Horace, Juvenal, and Statius was never
1 The common use of the word grammarie for occult science in our
ballads illustrates this phase of popular opinion. So does the legend of
Friar Bacon. See Thorns, Early English Prose Romances.

48 RENAISSANCE IN ITALY
lost. Among the prose-writers, portions of Cicero were used
in education ; but the compilations of Boethius, Priscian,
Donatus, and Cassiodorus were more widely used. In the
twelfth century the study of Eoman law was revived, and the
scholastic habit of thought found scope for subtlety in the
discussion of cases and composition of glosses. The general
knowledge and intellectual sympathy required for comprehen
sion of the genuine classics were, however, wanting ; and thus
it happened that their place was taken by epitomes and ab
stracts, and by the formal digests of the Western Empire in
its decadence. This lifeless Uterature was better suited to
the meagre intellectual conditions of the Middle Ages than
the masterpieces of the Augustan and SUver periods.
Of Greek there was absolutely no tradition left.1 When
the names of Greek poets or philosophers are cited by mediasval
authors, it is at second hand from Latin sources ; and the
Aristotelian logic of the schoolmen came through Latin trans
lations made by Jews from Arabian MSS. OccasionaUy it
might happen that a Western scholar acquired Greek at
Constantinople or in the south of Italy, where it was spoken ;
but this did not imply Hellenic culture, nor did such know
ledge form a part and parcel of his erudition. Greek was
hardly less lost to Europe then than Sanskrit in the first half
of the eighteenth century.
The meagreness of mediasval learning was, however, a less
serious obstacle to culture than the habit of mind, partly
engendered by Christianity and partly idiosyncratic to the new
races, which prevented students from appreciating the true
spirit of the classics. While mysticism and allegory ruled
supreme, the clearly- defined humanity of the Greeks and
Eomans could not fail to be misapprehended. The httle that
was known of them reached students through a hazy and dis-
1 Didot, in his Life of Aldus, tries to make out that Greek learning
survived in Ireland longer than elsewhere.

MYSTICISM AND ALLEGORY 48
torting medium. Poems hke VirgU's fourth Eclogue were
prized for what the author had not meant when he was writ
ing them ; while his real interests were utterly neglected.
Against this mental misconception, this original obliquity of
vision, this radical Uein the inteUect, the restorers of learning
had to fight at least as energetically as against brute ignorance
and dulness. It was not enough to multiply books and to
discover codices ; they had to teach men how to read them, to
explain their inspiration, to defend them against prejudice, to
protect them from false methods of interpretation. To purge
the mind of fancy and fable, to prove that poetry apart from
its supposed prophetic meaning was delightful for its own
sake, and that the history of the antique nations, in spite of
Paganism, could be used for profit and instruction, was the
first step to be taken by these pioneers of modern culture J
They had, in short, to create a new mental sensibility by
estabUsbing the truth that pure literature directly contributes;
to the dignity and happiness of human beings. . The achieve-;
ment of this revolution in thought was the great- performance.
of the Italians in the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries.
During the dark ages Italy had in no sense enjoyed
superiority of culture over the rest of Europe. On. the con
trary, the first abortive attempt at a revival of learning was
due to Charlemagne at Aix, the second to the Emperor
Frederick in Apuha and Sicily; and while the Bomance
nations had lost the classical tradition, it was stUl to some
extent preserved by the Moslem dynasties. The more wa
study the history of mediaeval learning, the more we recognise
the debt of civUised humanity to the Arabs for their conserva-;
tion and transmission of Greek thought in altered form to
Europe. Yet, though the Italians came comparatively lata
into the field, their action was decisive. Neither Charlemagne
nor Frederick, neither the philosophy of the Arabian sages
nor the precocious literature of Provence, succeeded in effecti
n e

60 EENAISSANCE IN ITALY
ing for the education of the modern inteUect that which
Dante and Petrarch performed — the one by the production of
a monumental work of art in poetry, the other by the com>
munication of a new enthusiasm for antiquity to students.
Dante does not belong in any strict sense to the history of
the Eevival of Learning. The ' Divine Comedy ' closes the
Middle Ages and preserves their spirit. It stands before the
vestibule of modern literature like a soUtary mountain at the
entrance of a country rich in aU varieties of landscape. In
order to become acquainted with its grandeur, we must leave
the fields and forests that we know, ascend the heights, and
use ourselves to an austerer chmate. In spite of this isolation,
Dante's influence was powerful upon succeeding generations.
The modern mind first found in him its scope, and recognised
its freedom ; first dared and did what placed it on a level with
antiquity in art. Many ideas, moreover, destined to play an
important part in the coming age, received from him their
germinal expression. It may thus be truly said that Dante
initiated the movement of the modern inteUect in its entirety,
though he did not lead the Eevival considered as a separate
moment in this evolution. That service was reserved for
Petrarch. There are spots upon the central watershed of Europe
where, in the stillness of a summer afternoon, the traveUer
may listen to the murmurs of two streams — the one hurrying
down to form the Ehine, the other to contribute to the Danube
or the Po. Born within hearing of each other's voices, and
nourished by the self-same clouds that rest upon the crags
around them, they are henceforth destined to an ever- widening
separation. While the one sweeps onward to the Northern seas,
the other wiU reach the shores of Italy or Greece and mingle
with the Mediterranean. To these two streamlets we might
compare Dante and Petrarch, both of whom sprang from
Florence, both of whom were nurtured in the learning of the

DANTE AND PETRARCH il
schools and in the lore of chivalrous love. Yet how different
was their mission ! Petrarch marks the rising of that great
river of inteUectual energy which flowed southward to recover
the culture of the ancient world. The current of Dante's
genius took the contrary direction. Borne upon its mighty
flood, we visit the lands and cities of the Middle Ages, floating
toward infinities divined and made the heritage of human
nature by the mediasval spirit.
In speaking of Petrarch here, it is necessary to concentrate
attention upon his claims to be considered as the apostle of
scholarship, the inaugurator of the humanistic impulse of the
fifteenth century. We have nothing to do with his Italian
poetry. The Rime dedicated to Madonna Laura have echpsed
the fame of the Latin epic, phUosophical discourses, epistles,
orations, invectives, and dissertations, which made Petrarch
the Voltaire of his own age, and on which he thought his
immortaUty would rest. Yet it is with these latter products
of his genius, not with the Ganzoniere, that we are now con
cerned; nor can it be too emphatically asserted that his
originaUty was even more eminently displayed in the revelation
of humanism to the modern world than in the verses that
impressed their character upon ItaUan Uterature. To have
foreseen a whole new phase of European culture, to have
interpreted its spirit, and determined by his own activity the
course it should pursue, is in truth a higher title to fame than
the composition of even the most perfect sonnets. The artist,
however, has this advantage over the pioneer of intellectual
progress, that his deUcate creations are indestructible, and
that his work cannot be merged in that of a continuator.
Therefore Petrarch lives and wiU Uve in the memory of
miUions as the poet of Laura, whUe only students know how
much the world owes to his humanistic ardour.
As I cannot dispense with the word Humanism in this
portion of my work, it may be well to fix 'the sense I shall
112

52 EENAISSANCE IN ITALY
attach to it.1 The essence of humanism consisted in a new
and vital perception of the dignity of man as a rational being
apart from theological determinations, and in the further
perception that classic literature alone displayed human
nature in the plenitude of intellectual and moral freedom. It
was partly a reaction against ecclesiastical despotism, partly
an attempt to find the point of unity for aU that had been
thought and done by man, within the mind restored to con
sciousness of its own sovereign faculty. Hence the single-
hearted devotion to the literature of Greece and Eome that
marks the whole Eenaissance era. Hence the watchword of
that age, the Littera Humaniores. Hence the passion for
antiquity, possessing thoughtful men, and substituting a
new authority for the traditions of the Church. Hence the
so-called Paganism of centuries bent upon absorbing and'
assimilating a spirit no less life-giving from their point of
view than Christianity itseU. Hence the persistent effort
of phUosophers to find the meeting-point of two divergent
inspirations. Hence, too, the ultimate antagonism between
the humanists, or professors of the new wisdom, and those
uncompromising Christians who, like S. Paul, preferred to
remain fools for Christ's sake.
Humanism in this, the widest, sense of the word was
possessed by Petrarch intuitively. It belonged to his nature
as much as music to Mozart ; so that he seemed sent into
the world to raise, by the pure exercise of innate faculties, a
standard for succeeding workers. Physically and asstheticaUy,
by the fineness of his ear for verbal harmonies, and by the
exquisiteness of his sensibUities, he was fitted to divine what
1 The word Humanism has a German sound, and is in fact modern.
Yet the generic phrase umanitd for humanistic culture, and the name
umanista for a professor of humane studies, are both pure Italian.
Ariosto, in his seventh satire, line 25, writes —
' Senza quel vizio son pochi umanisti.'

NATURAL GIFTS OF PETRARCH 63
it tooi centuries to verify. WhUe stiU a boy, long before he
could grasp the meaning of classical Latin, he used to read
the prose of Cicero aloud, deUghting in the sonorous cadence
and balanced periods of the master's style.1 Nor were the
moral quahties of industry and perseverance, needed to sup
plement these natural gifts, defective. In his maturity he
spared no pains to coUect the manuscripts of Cicero, some
times transcribing them with his own hand, sometimes em
ploying copyists, sending and journeying to distant parts
of Europe where he heard a- fragment of his favourite author
might be found.2 His greatest Uterary disappointment was
the loss of a treatise by Cicero on Glory, a theme exceedingly
significant for the Eenaissance, which he lent to his tutor
Convennevole, and which the old man pawned.3 Though he
could not read Greek, he welcomed with profoundest reverence
the codices of Homer and Plato sent to him from Constanti
nople, and exhorted Boccaccio to dedicate his genius to the
translation of the sovran poet into Latin.4 In this suscepti-
1 See the interesting letter to Luca di Penna, De Libris Oicerdnis,
p. 946, and compare De Ignorantid sui ipsius, &c. p. 1044. These re
ferences, as well as those which follow under the general sign Ibid., are
made to the edition of Petrarch's collected works, Basle, 1581.
• Ibid. p. 948. Cf. the fine letter on the duty of collecting and pre
serving codices (Eam. Epist. lib. iii. 18, p. 619). 'Aurum, argentum,
gemmffi, purpurea vestis, marmorea domus, cultus ager, pictae tabulae,
phaleratus sonipes, caeteraque id genus mutam habent et superficiariam
voluptatem : libri medullitus delectant, colloquuntur, consulunt, et viva
quadam nobis atque arguta familiaritate junguntur.'
3 De Libris Ciceronis, p. 949. Cf. his Epistle to Varro for an
account of a lost MS. of that author. Ibid. p. 708.
* Ibid. p. 948. Of. De Ignorantid, pp. 1053, 1054. See, too, the
letter to Nicolaus Syocerus of Constantinople, Epist. Voir. xx. p. 998,
thanking him for the Homer and the Plato, in which Petrarch gives an
account of his slender Greek studies. ' Homerus tuus apud me mutus,
immo vero ego apud ilium surdus sum. Gaudeo tamen vel aspectu solo,
et sfflpe ilium amplexus et suspirans dico. . . . Plato philosophorum
princeps .... nunc tandem tuo munere Philosophorum prineipi
Poetarum princeps asserit. Quis tantis non gaudeat et glorietur hospi-

54 RENAISSANCE IN ITALY
bility to the melodies of rhetorical prose, in this special cult
of Cicero, in the passion for collecting manuscripts, and in
the intuition that the future of scholarship depended upon
the resuscitation of Greek studies, Petrarch initiated the four
most important momenta of the classical Eenaissance. He,
again, was the first to understand the value of pubhc libra
ries ; ' the first to accumulate coins and inscriptions, as the
sources of accurate historical information ; the first to preach
the duty of preserving ancient monuments. It would seem
as though, by the instinct of genius, he foresaw the future for
at least three centuries, and comprehended the highest uses
whereof scholarship is capable.
So far the outside only of Petrarch's instinct for humanism
has been touched. How fuUy he possessed its large and
Uberal spirit is shown by the untiring war he carried on
against formalism, tradition, pedantry, and superstition.
Whatever might impede the free play of the inteUect aroused
his bitterest hatred. Against the narrow views of scholastic
theologians, against the futile preoccupations of the Middle-
Age materialists, against the lawyers and physicians and
astrologers in vogue, he declared inexorable hostihty.8 These
tibus? .... Grascos spectare, et si nihil aliud, certe juvat.' The
letter urging Boccaccio to translate Homer—' an tuo studio, mea
impensa fieri possit, ut Homerus integer bibliothecse huic, ubi pridem
Graecus habitat, tandem Latinus accedat ' — will be found Ep. Rer. Sen.
lib. iii. 5, p. 775. In another letter, Ep. Rer. Sen. lib. vi. 2, p. 807,
he thanks Boccaccio for the Latin version.
* De RemedMs utriusque Fortunai, p. 43. A plea for public a3
against private collections of useful books. ' Multos in vinculis tenes,'
&c. 2 See the four books of Invectives, Contra Medicum quemdam, and
the' treatise De sui ipsius et aliorum Ignorantid. Page 1038 of the last
dissertation contains a curious list of frivolous questions discussed by
the Averrhoists. Cf. the letter on the decadence of true learning, Ep.
Var. 31, p. 1020 ; the letter to a friend exhorting him to combat
Averrhoism, Epist. sine titulo, 18, p. 731 ; two letters on physicians
Epist. Rerum Senilium, lib. xii. 1 and 2, pp. 897-914 ; a letter to Fran.

HIS LIBERAL SPIRIT SS
men, by their puerilities and falsities, obstructed the natural
action of the mind ; therefore Petrarch attacked them. At
the same time he recognised the hberators of the reason by a
kind of tact. Though he could not interpret the sixteen dia
logues of Plato he possessed in Greek, he perceived intuitively
that Plato, as opposed to Aristotle, would become the saint
of Uberal philosophy, surveyed by him as in a Pisgah-view.
His enthusiasm for Cicero and Virgil was twofold ; in both
respects he proved how capable he was of moulding the taste
and directing the mental force of his successors. As an
artist, he discerned in their style the harmonies of sound and
the proprieties of diction, whereby Latin might once again
become the language of fine thoughts and delicate emotions.
As a champion of intellectual independence, he saw that,
studying their large discourse of all things which the reason
and imagination can appropriate, the thinkers of the modern
age might shake off scholastic fetters, and enter into the
inheritance of spiritual freedom. Poetry and rhetoric he
regarded not merely as the fine arts of Uterature, but as two
chief instruments whereby the man of genius arrives at self-
expression, perpetuates the quahties of his own soul, and
impresses his character upon the age. Since this realisation
of the individual in a high and puissant work of art appeared
to him the noblest aim of man on earth, it foUowed that the
inspired speech of the poet and the eloquence of the orator
became for Petrarch the summit of ambition, the two-peaked
Parnassus he struggled through his lifetime to ascend.1
cesco Bruno on the lies of the astrologers, Epist. Rer. Sen. lib. i. 6,
p. 747; a letter to Boccaccio on the same theme, Epist. Rer. Sen.
lib. iii. 1, p. 765 ; another on physicians to Boccaccio, Epist. Rer. Sen.
lib. v. 4, p. 796. Cf. the Critique of Alchemy, De Remediis utriusque
Fortunm, p. 93.
1 In comparing the orator and the poet, Petrarch gives the palm to
the former. He thought the perfect rhetorician, capable of expressing
sound philosophy with clearness, was rarer than the poet. See De
BemedUs utriusque Fortune, lib. ii. dial. 102, p. 192.

56 RENAISSANCE IN ITALY
The ideal was literary ; but Uterature implied for Petrarch
more than words and phrases. It was not enough to make
melodious verse, or to move an audience with weU-sounding
periods. The hexameters of the epic and the paragraphs of
the oration had to contain soUd thought, to be the genuine
outcome of the poet's or the rhetorician's soul. The writer
was bound to be a preacher, to discover truth, and make the
truths he found agreeable to the world.1 His Ufe, moreover,
ought to be in perfect harmony with all he sought to teach.2
Upon the purity of his enthusiasm, the sincerity of his inspi
ration, depended the future well-being of the world for which
he laboured.3 Thus for this one man at least the art of
letters was a priesthood ; and the earnestness of his vocation
made him fit to be the master of succeeding ages. It is not
easy for us to appreciate the boldness and sincerity of these
conceptions. Many of them, since the days of Petrarch, have
been overstrained and made ridiculous by false pretensions.
Besides, the whole point of view has been appropriated ; and
men invariably undervalue what they feel they cannot lose.
It is only by comparing Petrarch's own philosophy of Utera
ture with the dulness of the schoolmen in their decadence,
and with the styhstic shaUowness of subsequent scholars, that
we come to comprehend how luminous and novel was the
thesis he supported.
Having thus conceived of Uterature, Petrarch obtained a
standard for estimating the barren culture of his century.
He taxed the disputations of the doctors with lifeless repeti-
• See, among other passages, Inn. contra Medicum, lib. i. p. 1092.
'Poets studium est veritatem veram pulohris velaminibus adornare.'
Cf. p. 905, the paragraph beginning ' Officium est ejus fingere,' &c.
2 See the preface to the Epistolce Familiares, p. 570. ' Scribendi
enim mihi vivendique unus (ut auguror) finis erit.'
s For his lofty conception of poetry see the two letters to Boccaccio
andBenvenuto da Imola, pp. 740, 941. Epist. Rerum Senilium, lib.
i. 4, lib. xiv. 11.

BARREN CULTURE OF THE CENTURY 57
tion and unmeaning verbiage. Schoolman after schoolman
had been occupied with formal trifles. The erudition of the
jurist and the theologian revealed nothing fruitful for the
heart or intellect ; and everything was valueless that did not
come straight from a man's soul, speaking to the soul of one
who heard him. At the same time he read the Fathers and
the Scriptures in a new light. Augustine, some few of whose
sentences had been used as links in the catena of dogmatic
orthodoxy, seemed to Petrarch no longer a mere master of
theology, but a man conversing with him across the chasm of
eight centuries. In the ' Confessions,' ' running over with a
fount of tears,' the poet of Vaucluse divined a kindred nature;
one who used exalted eloquence for the expression of vital
thoughts and passionate emotions ; one, moreover, who had
reached the height of human happiness in union with God.1
Not less real was the grasp he laid upon the prophets and
apostles of the Bible. AU words that bore a message to his
heart were words of authority and power. The ipse dixit of
an Aristotle or a Seraphic doctor had for him no weight,
unless it came home to him as a man.2 Even Cicero and
Seneca, the saints of phUosophical antiquity, he dared to
criticise for practising less wisdom than they preached.3
While regarding Petrarch as the first and, in some respects,
the greatest of the humanists, we are bound to recognise the
faults as well as the good quaUties he shared with them. To
1 The references to Augustine as a ' divine genius,' equal to Cicero in
eloquence, superior to the classics in his knowledge of Christ, are too
frequent for citation. See, however, Fam. Epist. lib. ii. 9, p. 601 ; the
letter to Boccaccio, Variorum, 22, p. 1001 ; and Fam,. Epist. lib. iv. 9,
p. 635. The phrase describing the Confessions, quoted in my text, is
from Petrarch's letter to his brother Gerard, Epist. Var. 27, p. 1012,
' Scatentes lachrymis Confessionum libros.'
2 ' Sum sectarum negligens, veri appetens.' Epist. Rer. Sen. lib. i.
6, p. 745. ' Nam apud Horatium Flaccum, nullius jurare in verba
magistri, puer valde didiceram.' Epist. Fam. lib. iv. 10, p. 637.
* See the letters addressed to Cicero and Seneca, pp. 705, 706.

68 RENAISSANCE IN ITALY
dwell on these in detail would be a thankless task, were it
not for the conviction that his personahty impressed itself
too strongly on the fourteenth century to escape our criticism.
We cannot afford to leave even the foibles of the man who
gave a pattern to his generation unstudied. Foremost
among these may be reckoned his vanity, his eagerness to
grasp the poet's crown, his appetite for flattery, his restless
change from place to place in search of new admirers, his
self-complacent garrulity. This vanity was perhaps insepa
rable from the position he assumed upon the threshold of the
modern world. It was hardly possible that the prophet of a
new phase of culture should not look down with contempt
upon the uneducated masses, and believe that learning raised
a man into a demigod. Study of the classics taught him to
despise his age and yearn for immortality ; but the assurance
of the honours that he sought, could only come to him upon
the Ups of his contemporaries. In conflict with the dulness
and the darkness of preceding centuries, he felt the need of a
new motive, unrecognised by the Church and banished from
the cloister. That motive was the thirst for fame, the craving
to make his personahty eternal in the minds of men. Mean
while he was alone in a dim wilderness of transitory interests
and sordid aims, where human hfe was shadowy, and where,
when death arrived, there would remain no memory of what
had been. The gloom of this present in contrast with the
glory of the past he studied, and the glory of the future he
desired, confirmed his egotism. His name and fame depended
on his self-assertion. To achieve renown by writing, to wrest
for himself even in his hfetime a firm place among the
immortals, became his feverish spur to action. He was con
scious how deep a hold the passion for celebrity had taken on
his nature ; and not unfrequently he speaks of it as a disease.1
i ' iEgritudo ' is a phrase that constantly recurs in his epistles to

THEORY AND PRACTICE 69
The Christian within him wrestled vigorously with the re
nascent Pagan. Eeligion taught him to renounce what am
bition prompted him to grasp. Yet he continued to deceive
himself. WhUe penning dissertations on the worthlessness
of praise and the futility of fame, he trimmed his sails to
catch the breeze of popular applause ; and as his reputation
widened, his desires grew ever stronger. The last years of
his hfe were spent in writing epistles to the great men of the
past, in whom alone he recognised his equals, and to posterity,
in whom he hoped to meet at last with judges worthy
of him. This almost morbid vanity, peculiar to Petrarch's tem
perament and encouraged by the circumstances of his life,
introduced a division between his practice and his profession.
He was never tired of praising solitude, and many years of
his manhood he spent in actual retirement at Vaucluse.1
Yet he only loved seclusion as a contrast to the society of
Courts, and would have been most miserable if the world,
taking him at his own estimate, had left him in peace. No
one wrote more eloquently about equal friendship, or professed
a stronger zeal for candid criticism. Yet he admitted few but
professed admirers to his intimacy, and regarded his literary
antagonists as personal detractors. The same sensitive ego
tism led him to depreciate the fame of Dante, in whom he
cannot but have recognised a poet in the highest sense
superior to himself ? Again, whUe he complained of celebrity
as an obstacle to studious employment, he showed the most
acute interest when the detaUs of his hfe were called in ques-
indicate a restless, craving habit of the soul. See, too, the whole second
book of the De Contemptu Mundi.
1 See the treatise De Vitd SoUtarid, pp. 223-292, and the letters on
1 Vaucluse,* pp. 691-697.
1 See the discussion of this point in Baldelli's Vita del Boccaccio,
pp. 130-135.

60 RENAISSANCE IN ITALY
tion.1 Nothing, if we took his phUosophio treatises for record,
would have pleased him better than to Uve unnoticed. His
letters make it manifest that he believed the eyes of the whole
world were fixed upon him, and that he courted this attention
of the pubhc with a greedy appetite.
These quahties and contradictions mark Petrarch as a
man of letters, not of action. He belonged essentiaUy to the
genus irritabile vatum, for whom the sphere of thoughts
expressed on paper is more vivid than the world of facts.
We may trace a corresponding weakness in his chief enthu
siasms. Unable to distinguish between the realities of exis
tence and the dreamland of his study, he hailed in Eienzi
the restorer of old Eome, whUe he stigmatised his friends the
Colonnesi as barbarian intruders.2 The Eome he read of in
the pages of Livy, seemed to the imagination of this visionary
stUl alive and powerful; nor did he feel the absurdity of
addressing the mediaeval rabble of the Eomans in phrases
high-flown for a Gracchus.3 WhUe he courted the intimacy
of the Correggi, and hved as a house-guest with the Visconti,
he denounced these princes as tyrants, and appealed to the
Emperor to take the reins and bring all Italy beneath his
yoke.4 Herein, it may be urged, Petrarch did but share a
delusion common to his age. This is true ; but the point to
notice is the contradiction between his theories and the habits
of his life. He was not a partisan on the Ghibelline side, but
a beUever in impossible ideals. His patriotism was ho less
1 Compare the chapter in the dissertation De Remedies on trouble
some notoriety, p. 177, with the letter on his reception at Arezzo,
p. 918, the letter to Nerius Morandus on the false news of his death,
p. 776, and the letter to Boccaccio on his detractors, p. 749.
3 See the Epistles to Rienzi, pp. 677, 535.
' Epistle to the Eoman people, beginning 'Apud te invictissima
domitorque terrarum popule meus,' p. 712.
1 Epistle to Charles IV., De Pacificandd Italid, p. 531. This con
tradiction struck even his most ardent admirers with painful surprise,
See Boccaccio qucted in Baldelli's Life, p. 116.

A MODEL OF SCHOLAESHIP 61
Uterary than his temperament. The same tendency to mea
sure all things by a student's standard made him exaggerate
mere verbal eloquence. Words, according to his view, were
power. Cicero held the highest place in his esteem, because
his declamation was most copious. Aristotle, in spite of his
profound phUosophy, was censured for his lack of rhetoric.1
Throughout the studied works of Petrarch we can trace this
vice of a stylistic ideal. Though he never writes without
ome sohd germ of thought, he loves to play with phrases,
producing an effect of unreality, and seeming emulous of
casuistical adroitness.2
The foregoing analysis was necessary because Petrarch
became, as it were, a model for his foUowers in the field
of scholarship. Italian humanism never lost the powerful
impress of his genius, and the value of his influence can only
be appreciated when the time arrives for summing up the
total achievement of the Eevival.3 It remains to be regretted
that the weaknesses of his character, his personal pretension
and Uterary idealism, were more easUy imitated than his
strength. Petrarch's egotism differed widely from the insolent
conceit of Filelfo and the pedantic boasts of Alciato. Nor
did bis enthusiasm for antiquity degenerate, like theirs, into
a mere uncritical and servile worship. His humanism was
both loftier and larger. He never forgot that Christianity
was an advance upon Paganism, and that the accomplished
man of letters must acquire the culture of the ancients with
out losing the virtues or sacrificing the hopes of a Christian.
If only the humanists of the Eenaissance could have preserved
this point of view intact, they would have avoided the worst
1 Rerum memorandarum, lib. ii. p. 415.
2 This is particularly noticeable in the miscellaneous collection of
Bssays called De Remediis utriusque Fortunes, where opposite views on
a wide variety of topics are expressed with great dexterity.
' See the last chapter of this volume.

62 RENAISSANCE IN ITALY
evils of the age, and have secured a nobler Uberation of the
modern reason. Petrarch created for himself a creed com
pounded of Eoman Stoicism and Christian doctrine, adapting
the precepts of the Gospels and the teaching of the Fathers,
together with the ethics of Cicero and Seneca, to his own
needs. Herein he showed the freedom of his genius, and led
the way for the most brilhant thinkers of the coming centuries.
The fault of his successors was a tendency to recede from
this high vantage-ground, to accept the customary creed with
cynical facihty, whUe they inclined in secret to a laxity
adopted from their study of the classics. By separating him
self from tradition, without displaying an arrogant spirit of
revolt against authority, Petrarch estabhshed the principle
that men must guide their own souls by the double Ughts of
culture and of conscience. His foUowers were too ready to
make culture aU in aU, and lost thereby the opportunity of
grounding a rational philosophy of Ufe upon a sohd basis for
the modern world. Petrarch made it his sincere aim to be
both moraUy and inteUectuaUy his highest self ; and if he
often failed in practice — if he succumbed to carnal fraUty
while he praised sobriety — U he sought for notoriety while
professing indifference to fame — if he mistook dreams for
reahties and words for facts — stiU the ideal he proposed to
himself and eloquently preached to his contemporaries, was a
new and lofty one. After the lapse of five centuries, few as
yet have passed beyond it. Even Goethe, for example, can
claim no superiority of humanism above Petrarch, except by
right of his participation in the scientific spirit.
We are therefore justified in hailing Petrarch as the
Columbus of a new spiritual hemisphere, the discoverer of
modern culture. That he knew no Greek, that his Latin
verse was Ufeless and his prose style far from pure, that his
contributions to history and ethics have been superseded, and
that his epistles are now only read by antiquaries, cannot

PETRARCH'S INFLUENCE 89
impair his claim to this title. From him the inspiration
needed to quicken curiosity and stimulate a zeal for knowledge
proceeded. But for his intervention in the fourteenth century,
it is possible that the Eevival of Learning, and aU that it
impUes, might have been delayed until too late. Petrarch
died in 1874. The Greek Empire was destroyed in 1453.
Between those dates Italy recovered the Greek classics ; but
whether the ItaUans would have undertaken this labour if no
Petrarch had preached the attractiveness of liberal studies, or
if no school of disciples had been formed by him in Florence,
remains more than doubtful. We are brought thus to recog
nise in him one of those heroes concerning whose relation to
the spirit of the ages Hegel has discoursed in his ' PhUosophy
of History.' Petrarch, by anticipating the tendencies of the
Eevival, created the mteUectual miUeu required for its evolu
tion.1 Yet we are not therefore justified in saying that he
was not himself the product of already existing spiritual
forces in his century. The vast influence he immediately
exercised, whUe Dante, though gifted with a far more power
ful individuahty, remained comparatively inoperative, proves
that the age was speciaUy prepared to receive his inspiration.
What remains to be said about the first period of Italian
humanism is almost whoUy concerned with men who either
immediately or indirectly felt the influence of Petrarch's
genius.2 His shadow stretches over the whole age. Incited
by his brilliant renown, Boccaccio, whUe stUl a young man,
began to read the classical authors, bemoaning the years he
had wasted in commerce and the study of the law to please
his father. From what the poet of the ' Decameron ' has
himself told us about the origin of his Uterary enthusiasm, it
1 The lines from the Africa used as a motto for this volume are a
prophecy of the Eenaissance.
2 It is very significant of Petrarch's influence that his contemporaries
ranked him higher, even as a sonnet-writer, than Dante. See Coluccio
de' Salutati's Letters, part ii. j?. 57.

64 RENAISSANCE IN ITALY
appears that Petrarch's example was decisive in deterrnining
his course. There is, however, another tale, reported by his
fellow-citizen ViUani, so characteristic of the age that to omit
it in this place would be to sacrifice one of the most attractive
legends in the history of literature.1 • After wandering through
many lands, now here, now there, for a long space of time,
when he had reached at last his twenty-eighth year, Boccaccio,
at his father's bidding, took up his abode at Naples in the
Pergola. There it chanced one day that he walked forth
alone for pleasure, and came to the place where Virgil's dust
lies buried. At the sight of this sepulchre, he fell into long
musing admiration of the man whose bones it covered, brood
ing with meditative soul upon the poet's fame, until his
thoughts found vent in lamentations over his own envious
fortunes, whereby he was compelled against his will to give
himself to things of commerce that he loathed. A sudden
love of the Pierian Muses smote his heart, and turning home
ward, he abandoned trade, devoting himself with fervent.
study to poetry ; wherein very shortly, aided alike by his noble
genius and his burning desire, he made marveUous progress.
This when his father noted, and perceived the heavenly
inspiration was more powerful within his son than the paternal
will, he at last consented to his studies, and helped him as
best he could, although at first he tried to make him turn his
talents to the canon law.'
The hero-worship of Boccaccio, not only for the august
Virgil, but also for Dante, the master of his youth and the
idol of his mature age, is the most amiable trait in a character
which, by its geniahty and sweetness, cannot faU to win
affection.2 When circumstances brought him into personal
1 Filippo Villani, Vite d' Uomimi Illustri Fiorentmi, Firenze, 1826,
p. 9. 2 With his own hand Boccaccio transcribed the Divine Comedy,
and sent the MS. to Petrarch, who in his reply wrote thus :— ' Inseris
nominatim hanc hujus officii tui escusationem, quod tibi adolescentulo

BOCCACCIO AT VIEGIL'S TOMB 64
relations with Petrarch, he transferred the whole homage of
his ardent soul to the only man aUve who seemed to him a
fit inheritor of ancient fame.1 Petrarch became the director
of his conscience, the master of his studies, the moulder of his
thoughts upon the weightiest matters of literary philosophy.
The friendship- established between the poet of Vaucluse
and the lover of Fiammetta lasted through more than twenty
years, and was only broken by the death of the former.
Throughout this long space of time Boccaccio retained the
attitude of a humble scholar, while in his published works, the
' Genealogia Deorum ' and the ' Comento sopra i Primi Sedici
Capitoli deU' "Inferno" di Dante,' he uniformly spoke of
Petrarch as his father and his teacher, the wonder of the
century, a heavenly poet better fitted to be numbered with
the giants of the past than with the pygmies of a barren age.
The fame enjoyed by Petrarch, the honours showered upon
him by kings and princes, his own vanity, and even the dis
crepancies between his habits and his theories, produced no
bitterness in Boccaccio's more modest nature. It was enough
for the pupU to use his talents for the propagation of his
master's views ; and thus the influence of Petrarch was com
municated to Florence, where Boccaccio continued to reside.8
primus studiorum dux, prima fax fuerit.' Baldelli, p. 133. The en
thusiasm of Boccaccio for Dante contrasts favourably with Petrarch's
grudging egotism.
1 Boccaccio was present at Naples when Petrarch disputed before
King Bobert for his title to the poet's crown (Gen. Deor. xiv. 22) ; but
he first became intimate with him as a friend during Petrarch's visit to
Florence in 1350.
2 Salutato, writing to Francesco da Brossano, describes his conversa
tions with Boccaccio thus : — ' Nihil aliud quam de Francisco (i.e.
Petrarcha) conferebamus. In cujus laudationem adeo libenter sermones
usurpabat, ut nihil avidius nihilque copiosius enarraret. Et eo magis
quia tali orationis generi me prospiciebat intentum. Sufficiebat enim
nobis Petrarcha solus, et omni posteritati sufficiet in moralitate sermonis,
in eloquentis soliditate atque dulcedine, in lepore prosarum et in oon-
cinnitate metrorum.' Epist. Fam. p. 45.
II F

66 EENAISSANCE IN ITALY
In obedience to Petrarch's advice, Boccaccio in middle
hfe applied himself to learning Greek. Petrarch had never
acquired a real knowledge of the language, though he received
a few lessons at Avignon from Barlaam, a Calabrian, who
had settled in Byzantium, and who sought to advance his
fortunes in Italy and Greece by alternate acts of apostasy,
and afterwards at Venice from Leontius Pilatas.1 The oppor
tunities of Greek study enjoyed by Boccaccio were also very
meagre, and his mastery of the idiom was superficial. Yet
he advanced considerably beyond the point reached by any of
his predecessors, so that he deserves to be named as the first
Grecian of the modern world. Leontius Pilatus, a Southern
Italian and a pupil of Barlaam, who, like his teacher, had
removed to Byzantium and renounced the Latin faith, arrived
at Venice on his way to Avignon in 1360. Boccaccio induced
him to visit Florence, received him into his own house, and
caused him to be appointed Greek Professor in the University.
Then he set himself to work in earnest on the text of Homer.
The ignorance of the teacher was, however, scarcely less than
that of his pupil. While Leontius possessed a fair know
ledge of Byzantine Greek, his command of Latin was very
limited, and his natural stupidity was only equalled by his
impudent pretensions. Of classical usages he seems to have
known nothing. The imbecility of his master could scarcely
have escaped the notice of Boccaccio. Indeed, both he and
Petrarch have described Leontius as a sordid cynic with a
filthy beard and tangled hair, morose in his temper and dis
gusting in his personal habits, who concealed a bovine ignor
ance beneath a Uon's hide of ostentation. It was, however,
necessary to make the best of him ; for Greek in Northern
Italy could nowhere else be gained, and Boccaccio had not
thought, it seems, of journeying to Byzantium in search of
1 Epist. Rer. Sen., lib. xi 9, p. 887 ; lib. vi. 1, p. 806 ; lib. v. 4,
p. 801.

GREEK STUDIES 87
what he wanted.1 Boccaccio, accordingly, drank the muddy
stream of pseudo-learning and Ues that flowed from this man's
Ups, with insatiable avidity. The nonsense administered to
him by way of satisfying his thirst for knowledge may best
be understood from the following etymologies. 'A^iXXevs was
derived from d and x'^°s> ' without fodder.' 2 The names of
the Muses gave rise to these extraordinary explanations : 3 —
Melpomene is derived from Melempio comene, which signifies
facente stare la meditazione ; ThaUa is the same as Tithonlia
or pognente cosa che germini ; Polyhymnia, through Polium
neemen, is the same as cosa che faccia molta memoria ; Erato
becomes Euruncomenon or trovatore del simile, and Terpsi
chore is described as dilettante ammaestramento.
Such was the bathos reached by erudition in Byzantium.
Yet Boccaccio made what use he could of his contemptible
materials. At the dictation of Leontius he wrote out the
' Diad ' and ' Odyssey ' in Latin , and this was the first transla
tion made of Homer for modern readers. The manuscript,
despatched to Petrarch, was, as we have seen already, greeted
with enthusiasm.4 This moment in the history of scholar
ship is so memorable that I may be excused for borrowing
1 Petrarch's letter to Ugone di San Severino, Epist. Rer. Sen. lib.
xi. 9, p. 887, deserves to be read, since it proves that Italian scholars
despaired at this time of gaining Greek learning from Constantinople.
They were rather inclined to seek it in Calabria. ' Grasciam, ut olim
ditissimam, sic nunc omnis longe inopem disciplina? . . . quod desperat
apud Graecos, non diffidit apud Calabros inveniri posse.'
2 De Gen. Dear. xv. 6, 7.
2 Comento sopra Dante, Opp. Volg. vol. x. p. 127. After allowing
for the difficulty of writing Greek, pronounced by an Italian, in Italian
letters, and also for the errors of the copyist and printer, it is clear that
a Greek scholar who thought Melpomene was one ' who gives fixity to
meditation,' Thalia one ' who plants the capacity of growth,' Poly
hymnia she ' who strengthens and expands memory,' Erato ' the dis
coverer of similarity,' and Terpsichore ' delightful instruction,' was on
a comically wrong track.
* See above, p. 53, note 4.
»2

68 EENAISSANCE IN ITALY
BaldelU's extract from an ancient copy of Boccaccio's auto
graph.1 Lycaon addresses his last prayer to Achilles : —
Genu deprecor te Achilles : tu autem venerare et me miserere.
Vada Servus. Jove genite venerabilis.
Penes enim te primo gustavi Cereris farinam,
Die illo, quando me cepisti in bene facto viridario j
Et me transtulisti procul ferens patreque amicisque
Lemnon ad gloriosam. Hecatombium autem honorem inveni,
Nunc autem laesus ter tot ferens. Dies autem mihi est
Haec duodecima, quando ad Ilion veni
Multa passus. Nunc iterum me in tuis manibus posuit
Fatum destructibile. Debeo odio esse Jovi patri,
Qui me tibi iterum dedit, medio cuique, me mater
Genuit Lathoi, filia Altai senis.
Only by keeping firmly in mind that such men as Petrarch
and Boccaccio, the two chief masters of Italian Uterature,
prized this wretched stuff as an inestimable treasm-e, can we
justly conceive how utterly Greek had been lost, and what an
effort it required to restore it to the modern world.
Indefatigable industry was Boccaccio's great merit as a
student. He transcribed the whole of Terence with his own
hands, and showed a real sense of the advantage to be gained
by a critical comparison of texts. In his mythological, geo
graphical, and historical coUections he bequeathed to posterity
a curious mass of miscellaneous knowledge, forming, as it Were,
the first dictionaries of biography and antiquity for modern
scholars.2 Far from sharing the originality of Petrarch's
humanistic ideal, he remained at best a laborious chronicler
of facts and anecdotes. The author of the ' Decameron,' so
richly gifted with humour, pathos, and poetic fancy, when he
wrapped his student's robe around him, became a painstaking
pioneer of antiquarian research.
1 Vita del Boccaccio, p. 264. The autograph was probably burned
with other books of Boccaccio, and some of the unintelligible passages
in the above quotation may be due to the ignorance of the copyist.
2 De Genealogid Deorum; De Casibus Virorum ac Feminarum
lllmtrium; De Claris Muliebribus; De Montibus. Silvis, Fontibus.&e.

PHILOSOPHY OF POETEY «9
One very important part of Petrarch's programme was
eloquently supported by Boccaccio. The fourteenth and
fifteenth books of the ' Genealogia Deorum ' form what may be
termed the first defence of poesy, composed in honour of his
own art by a poet of the modern world. In them Boccaccio
expounds a theory already sketched in outhne by Petrarch.
We have seen that the worst obstacle to humanistic culture
lay, not so much in ignorance, as in misconceptions based
upon prejudice and scruple. The notion of fine literature as
an elevating and purifying influence had been lost. To restore
it was the object of these earhest humanists. By poetry, con
tends Boccaccio, we must understand whatever of weighty
in argument, deep in doctrine, and vivid in imagination the
man of genius may produce with conscious art in prose and
verse. Poetry is instruction conveyed through allegory and
fiction. Theology itseU, he reasons, is a form of poetry ; even
the Holy Ghost may be called a Poet, inasmuch as He used
the vehicle of symbol in the visions of the prophets and the
Eevelation of S. John.1 To such strained arguments was the
apostle of culture driven in order to persuade his hearers,
and to drag Uterature from the Avernus of mediasval neglect.
We must not, however, imagine that Boccaccio was himself
superior to a point of view so puerile. Allegory appeared to
him a necessary condition of art : only a madman could deny
the hidden meaning of the ' Georgics ' and the ' ^Eneid ; ' 2 while
the verses of Dante and of Petrarch owed their value to the
Christian mysteries they shrouded. The poet, according to
this mediasval phUosophy of literature, was a sage and teacher
1 ' La teologia e la poesia quasi una cosa si possono dire ... la
teologia niuna altra cosa e che una poesia d' Iddio.' Vita di Dante,
p. 59. Cf. Comento sopra Dante, loc. cit. p. 45. The explanation of the
Muses referred to above is governed by the same determination to find
philosophy in poetry.
2 See Petrarch's letter ' De quibusdam fictionibus Virgilii.' Ep,
Rer. Sen. lib. iv. 4, p. 785.

?6 RENAISSANCE IN ITALY
wrapping up his august meanings in delightful fictions.1
Though the common herd despised him as a liar and a false
hood-fabricator, he was, in truth, a prophet uttering his dark
speech in parables. How foolish, therefore, reasons the
apologist, are the enemies of poetry — sophistical dialecticians
and avaricious jurists, who have never trodden the Phoebean
hill, and who scorn the springs of Helicon because they do
not flow with gold ! Far worse is the condition of those
monks and hypocrites who accuse the divine art of immorality
and grossness, instead of reading between the lines and seek
ing the sense conveyed to the understanding under veils of
aUegory. Truly, proceeds Boccaccio, we do weU to shun the
errors of Pagans ; nor can it be denied that poets of antiquity
have written verse abhorrent to the Christian spirit. But,
Jesus Christ be praised, the faith has triumphed. Strong in
the doctrines of the Gospel and the Church, the student may
safely approach the masterpieces of classic literature without
fearing the seductions of the Siren.
This argument, forming the gist of the ' Apology for Poetry '
in the ' Genealogia Deorum,' is repeated in the ' Comment upon
Dante.' It is doubly interesting, both as showing the popular
opinion of poetry and the prejudices Boccaccio thought it
needful to attack, and also as containing a full exposition of
the aUegorising theories with which humanism started. For
some time after Boccaccio's death the paragraphs condensed
above supplied the champions of culture with weapons to be
used against their ecclesiastical and scholastic antagonists;
nor was it untU humanism had triumphed, that the aUegorical
interpretation of the ancients was finaUy abandoned.
Independently of his contributions to learning, Boccaccio
occupies a prominent place in the history of the Eevival through
the new spirit he introduced into the vulgar Uterature. He
1 See the privilege granted to Petrarch by the Eoman senator in
1343, Petr. Opp. tom. iii. p. 6.

BOCCACCIO'S SENSUOUS IDEAL 71
was the first who frankly sought to justify the pleasures of
the carnal life, whose temperament, unburdened by asceticism,
found a congenial element in amorous legends of antiquity.
The romances of Boccaccio, with their beautiful gardens and
sunny skies, fair women and luxurious lovers, formed a
transition from the chivalry of the early Italian poets to the
sensuality of Beccadelli and Ponfcano. He prepared the nation
for hterary and artistic Paganism by unconsciously divesting
thought and feeling of their spiritual elevation. Dante had
made the whole world one in Christ. Petrarch put humanity
to school in the lecture-room of Eoman sages and in the
councUs of the Church. A terrestrial paradise of sensual
delight, where aU things were desirable and delicate, contented
the poet of the ' Fiammetta ' and ' FUostrato.' To the beatific
vision of the ' Divine Comedy,' to the ' Trionfo della Morte,'
succeeded the 'Visione Amorosa ' — a review of human life, in
which Boccaccio begins by invoking Dame Venus and ends
with earthly love, II Sior di tutta pace.
The name given to Boccaccio by contemporaries,
Giovanni della Tranquillita, sufficiently indicates his peaceful
temperament. He was, in fact, the scholar, working in his
study, and contributing to the erudition of his age by writings.
Another of Petrarch's disciples, Giovanni Malpaghino, called
from his birthplace Giovanni da Eavenna, exercised a more
active personal influence over the destinies of scholarship.
WhUe stUl a youth he had been employed by Petrarch as
secretary and amanuensis. His general ability, clear hand
writing, and enthusiasm for learning first recommended him
to the poet, who made use of him for copying manuscripts
and arranging his familiar letters. In the course of this
work John of Eavenna became himself a learned man;
acquiring a finer sense of Latinity than was possessed by any
other scholar of his time. Something, too, of the sacred fire
he caught from Petrarch, so that in his manhood the very

72. RENAISSANCE IN ITALY
faults of his nature became instrumental in diffusing through
out Italy the passion for antiquity. He could not long
content himself with being even Petrarch's scribe. Irre
sistible restlessness impelled him to seek adventures in the
outer world, to mix with men and gain the glory he was
always reading of. Petrarch, incapable of comprehending
that any honour was greater than that of being his sateUite,
treated this ambitious pupil like a wilful child. A quarrel
ensued. Giovanni left his benefactor's house and went forth
to try his fortunes. Without repeating the vicissitudes of his
career in detail, it is enough to mention that want and misery
soon drove him back to Petrarch ; that once more the vagrant
impulse came upon him, and that for a season he filled the
post of chancellor in the little principality of Carrara.1 The
one thing, however, which he could not endure, was the
routine of fixed employment. Therefore we find that he
abandoned the Court of the Malaspini, and betook himself
to the more congenial work of a wandering professor. His
prodigious memory, by enabling him to retain, word for word,
the text of authors he had read, proved of invaluable service
to him in this career. His passionate poetic temper made him
apt to raise enthusiasm in young souls for Uterary studies.
Giovanni da Eavenna was in fact the first of those vagabond
humanists with whom we shaU be occupied in the next
chapters, and of whom FUelfo was the most iUustrious
example. Florence, Padua, Venice, and many other cities of
Italy received the Latinist, whose reputation now increased
with every year. In each of these towns in succession he
lectured upon Cicero and the Eoman poets, pouring forth the
knowledge he had acquired in Petrarch's study, and trans
mitting to his audience the inspiration he had received from
1 De Sade, in his Memoirs of Pebrcurch, gives an interesting account
of this romantic episode in his life. See too Petrarch, Epist. Rer. Sen.
lib. v. 6 and 7, pp. 802-806.

JOHN OF RAVENNA 73
his master. The school thus formed was compared a
century later to the Trojan horse, whence issued a band of
heroes destined to possess the capital of classic learning. As
a writer, he produced Uttle that is worth more than a passing
notice. His real merit consisted, as Lionardo Bruni wit
nessed, in his faculty of arousing a passion for pure literature,
and especiaUy for the study of Cicero. Among his most
iUustrious pupils may be mentioned Francesco Barbaro, Palla
degli Strozzi, Eoberto de' Eossi. Francesco Filelfo, Carlo
Marsuppini, Poggio Bracciolini, Lionardo Bruni, Guarino da
Verona, Vittorino da Feltre, Ambrogio Traversari, Ognibene
da Vicenza, and Pier Paolo Vergerio. This Ust, as wUl
appear from the sequel of my work, includes nearly all those
scholars who devoted their energies to erudition at Venice,
Florence, Eome, Mantua, Ferrara, and Perugia in the fifteenth
century. Giovanni da Eavenna deserves, therefore, to be
honoured as the link between the age of Petrarch and the age
of Poggio, as the vessel chosen for communicating the sacred
fire of humanism to the Courts and Bepublics of Italy. None
but a wanderer, vagus quidam, as Petrarch, half in scorn and
haU in sorrow, caUed his proteg6, could so effectually have
carried on the work of propagation.1
The name of the next student claiming our attention as a
disciple of Petrarch, brings us once more back to Florence.
Luigi Marsigli was a monk of the Augustine Order of
S. Spirito. Petrarch, noticing his distinguished abilities, had
exhorted him to make a special study of theology, and to enter
the hsts as a champion of Christianity against the Averrhoists.2
Under the name of Averrhoists in the fourteenth century were
ranged aU freethinkers who questioned the fundamental
doctrines of the Church, doubted the immortality of the soul,
and employed their ingenuity in a dialectic at least as trivial
' Epist. Rer. Sen. lib. xiv. 14, p. 942.
2 Epist. sine titulo, xviii. p. 732.

74 RENAISSANCE IN ITALY
as that of the schoolmen, but directed to a very different end.1
Petrarch disliked their want of Uberal culture as much as ha
abhorred their affectation of impiety. The stupid materialism
they professed, their gross flippancy, and the idle pretence of
natural science upon which they piqued themselves, were
regarded by him as so many obstacles to his own ideal of
humanism. He only saw in them another set of scholastic
wranglers, worse than the theologians, inasmuch as they had
cast off Christ. Against Averrhoes, ' the raging hound who
barked at aU things sacred and Divine,' Petrarch therefore
sought to stimulate the young Marsigli. MarsigU, however,
while he shared Petrarch's respect for humane culture, seems
to have sympathised with the audacity and freedom of his
proposed antagonists. The Convent of S. Spirito became
under his influence the centre of a learned society, who met
there regularly for disputations. The theme chosen for dis
cussion was posted up upon the wall of the debating-room,
metaphysical and ethical subjects forming the most frequent
matter of inquiry.2 Among the members of the circle who
sharpened their wits in this species of dialectic, we find
Coluccio de' Salutati, Eoberto de' Eossi, Niccolo de' Niccoli,
and Giannozzo Manetti. The influence of Marsigli in forming
their character was undoubtedly powerful. Poggio, in his
funeral oration upon Niccolo de' Niccoli, tells us that ' the
house of MarsigU was frequented by distinguished youths,
who set themselves to imitate his life and habits ; it was,
moreover, the resort of the best and noblest burghers of this
city, who flowed together from all quarters to him as to some
oracle of more than human wisdom.' 3 His inteUectual

1 See the exhaustive work of Renan, Averrois et V Averrotsme.
2 See Manetti's Life, Mur. xx. col. 531. Other references will be
found in Vespasiano's Lives. Boccaccio's library was preserved in this
convent. 3 Poggii Opera, p. 271.

COLUCCIO SALUTATO 76
aouteness, soUd erudition, and winning eloquence were
displayed in moral disquisitions upon Virgil, Cicero, and
Seneca. In this way he had the merit of combining the
dialectic method and the bold spirit of the Averrhoists with
the sound learning and polite culture of the newly-discovered
humanities. The Convent of S. Spirito has to be mentioned
as the first of those many private academies to which the free
thought and the scholarship of Italy were afterwards destined
to owe so much.
It is my object in this chapter to show how humanistic
scholarship, starting from Petrarch, penetrated every depart
ment of study, and began to permeate the intellectual life of
the ItaUans. We have now to notice its intrusion into the
sphere of pohtics. Petrarch died in 1374, Boccaccio in 1375.
The latter date is also that of Coluccio de' Salutati's entrance
upon the duties of Florentine Chancellor. Salutato, the friend
of Boccaccio and the disciple of Marsigli, the professed
worshipper of Petrarch and the translator of Dante into Latin
verse, was destined to exercise an important influence in his
own department as a styUst. Before he was called to act as
secretary to the Signory of Florence in his forty-sixth year, he
had already acquired the learning and imbibed the spirit of
his age. He was known as a dUigent coUector of manuscripts
and promoter of Greek studies, as a writer on mythology and
morals, as an orator and miscellaneous author.1 His talents
had now to be concentrated on the weightier business of the
1 Salutato's familiar letters, Lini Coluci Fieri Salutati Epistolarum
Pars Secunda, Florentice, mdccxxxxi., are a valuable source of informa
tion respecting scholarship at the close of the fourteenth century. See
especially his letter to Benvenuto da Imola on the death of Petrarch
(p. 32), his letter to the same about Petrarch's Africa (p. 41), another letter
about the preservation of the Africa(p. 79), a letter to Petrarch's nephew
E'rancesco da Brossano on the death of Boccaccio (p. 44), and a letter to
a certain Comes Magnifious on the literary and philosophical genius of
Petrarch (p. 49).

76 RENAISSANCE IN ITALY
Florentine Eepublic ; but his study of antiquity caused him
to conceive his duties and the poUtical relations of the State
he served, in a new hght. During the wars carried on with
Gregory XI. and the- Visconti, his pen was never idle. For
the first time he introduced into public documents the gravity
of style and melody of phrase he had learned in the school
of classic rhetoricians. The effect produced by this literary
statesman, as elegant in authorship as he was subtle in the
conduct of affairs, can only be estimated at its proper value
when we remember that the ItaUans were now ripe to receive
the influence of rhetoric, and only too ready to attribute
weight to verbal ingenuity. Gian Galeazzo Visconti is said
to have declared that Salutato had done him more harm
by his style than a troop of paid mercenaries.1 The epistles,
despatches, protocols, and manifestoes composed by their
Chancellor for the Florentine priors, were distributed through
out Italy. Eead and copied by the secretaries of other states,
they formed the models of a new State eloquence.2 Elegant
Latinity became a necessary condition of pubhc documents,
and Ciceronian phrases were henceforth reckoned among the
indispensable engines of a diplomatic armoury. Offices of
trust in the Papal Curia, the courts of the Despots, and the
chanceries of the republics were thus thrown open to profes-
1 ' Galeacius Mediolanensium Princeps crebro auditus est dicere non
tam sibi mille Florentinorum equites quam Colucii scripta nocere.' Pii
Secundi Europm Commentarii, p. 454.
2 ' Costui fu de' migliori dittatori di pistole al mondo, perocche
molti quando ne potevano avere, ne toglieano copie ; si piaceano a tutti
gl' intendenti : e nelle corte di Be e di signori del mondo, e anchora de'
cherici era di lui in questa arte maggiore fama che di alcuno altro uomo.'
From the Chronicle of Luca da Scarparia. These epistles were collected
and printed by Josephus Bigaccius.Bibliopola Florentinus Celeberrimus,
in 1741. Among the letters written for the Signory of Florence, that of
congratulation to Gian Galeazzo Visconti on his murder of Bernabo
(p. 16), that to the French Cardinals (p. 18), to Sir John Hawkwood, or
Domino Joanni Aucud (p. 107), to the Marquis of Moravia (p. 110), and
to the Eomans (p. 141) deserve to be read.

SALUTATO'S WORK AT FLORENCE 77
sional humanists. In the next age we shall find that neither
princes, popes, nor priors could do without the services of
trained stylists.
WhUe concentrating attention upon this chief contribution
of Salutato to Itahan scholarship, I must not omit to notice,
however briefly, the patronage he exercised at Florence.
Both Poggio Bracciolini and Lionardo Bruni owed their
advancement to his interest.1 Giacomo da Scarparia, the
first Florentine who visited Byzantium with a view to learn
ing Greek, received from him the warmest encouragement,
together with a commission for the purchase of manuscripts.
To his activity in concert with Palla degli Strozzi was due the
establishment of a Greek chair in the University of Florence.
Nor was this zeal confined to the living. He composed the
Lives of Dante, Petrarch, and Boccaccio, translated a portion
of the ' Divine Comedy ' into Latin for its wider circulation
through the learned world, and caused the ' Africa ' of Petrarch
to be pubUshed.2 When the illustrious ChanceUor died, in the
year 1406, at the age of seventy-six, he was honoured with a
pubhc funeral ; the poet's crown was placed upon his brow, a
panegyrical oration was recited, and a monument was erected
to him in the Duomo.3

' See the letter of Lionardo Bruni, quoted in Lini Coluci Fieri
Salutati Epistolce, p. xv. Coluccio's own letter recommending Lionardo
to Innocent VII., ib. p. 5, and his numerous familiar letters to Poggio,
ib. pp. 13, 173, &c.
2 ' Certe cogitabam revidere librum, et si quid, ut soribis, vel ab-
sonum, vel contra metrorum regulam intolerabile deprehendissem,
curiosius elimare et sicut Naso finxit in iEneida, singulos libros paucis
versiculis quasi in argument! formam brevissime resumere, et exinde
pluribus sumptis exemplis, et per me ipsum correctis et diligenterrevisis,
unum ad Bononiense gymnasium, unum Parisiis, unum in Angliam cum
mea epistola de libri laudibus destinare, et unum in Florentia ponere in
loco celebri,' &c. Epistola, part ii. p. 80.
3 Among the other laureati who filled the post of Florentine Chan
cellor may be mentioned Dante's tutor, Brunetto Latini, Lionardo Bruni,

78 RENAISSANCE IN ITALY
What Salutato accompUshed for the style of public docu
ments, Gasparino da Barzizza effected for familiar correspon
dence. After teaching during several years at Venice and
Padua, he was summoned to Milan in 1418 by FUippo Maria
Visconti, who ordered him to open a school in that capital.
Gasparino made a special study of Cicero's Letters, and caused
his pupils to imitate them as closely as possible, forming in this
way an art of fluent letter- writing known afterwards as the ars
familiariter scribendi. Epistolography in general, considered
as a branch of elegant literature, occupied aU the scholars of
the Eenaissance, and had the advantage of establishing a link
of union between learned men in different parts of Italy. We
therefore recognise in Gasparino the initiator, after Petrarch,
of a highly important branch of Italian culture. This, when.
it reached maturity, culminated in the affectations of the
Ciceronian purists. It must be understood that neither
Salutato nor Gasparino attained to real poUsh or freedom of
style. Compared even with the Latinity of Poggio, theirs is
heavy and uncouth ; whUe that of Poggio seems barbarous by
the side of PoUziano's, and Poliziano in turn yields the palm
of mere correctness to Bembo. It was only by degrees that
the taste of the Italians formed itself, and that facility was
acquired in writing a lost language. The fact that mediasval
Latin was still used in legal documents, in conversation, in
the offices of the Church, and in the theological works which
formed the staple of aU libraries, impeded the recovery of a
classic style. When the Italians had finaUy learned how to
pohsh prose, it was easy to hand on the art to other nations ;
whUe to sneer at their pedantry, as Erasmus did, was no
matter of great difficulty. By that time their scrupulous and
anxious preoccupation with purity of phrase threatened danger
to the interests of liberal learning.
Carlo Marsuppini, Poggio Bracciolini, and Benedetto Accolti, oi whom
more hereafter.

MANUEL CHRYSOLORAS 79
Hitherto, with the exception only of Boccaccio's Greek
studies, I have had to trace the rise of Latin letters and to
call particular attention to the cult of Cicero in Italy. It is
now necessary to mention the advent of a man who played a
part in the revival of learning only second to that of Petrarch.
Manuel Chrysoloras, a Byzantine of noble birth, came to Italy
during the Pontificate of BonUace IX., charged by the Emperor
Palseologus with the mission of attempting to arm the states
of Christendom against the Turk. Like all the Greeks who
visited Western Europe, Chrysoloras first alighted in Venice ;
but the Eepublic of the Lagoons neither understood the secret
nor felt the need of retaining these birds of passage. After a
few months they almost invariably passed on to Florence — the
real centre of the inteUectual life of Italy. As soon as it was
known that Chrysoloras, who enjoyed the fame of being the
most accompUshed and eloquent HeUenist of his age,
had arrived with his companion, Demetrios Kydonios, in
Venice, two noble Florentines, Eoberto de' Eossi and Giacomo
d' Angelo da Scarparia, set forth to visit him. The residence
of the Greek ambassadors in Italy on this occasion was but
brief ; they found that, poUtically, they could effect nothing.
But Giacomo da Scarparia journeyed in their society to By
zantium ; whUe Eoberto de' Eossi returned to Florence, full
of the impression which the erudite phUosophers had left upon
him. The report he made to his feUow-citizens awoke a
passionate desire in Palla degU Strozzi and Niccolo de' NiccoU
to bring Chrysoloras in person to Florence. Their urgent
appeals to the Signory resulted in an invitation whereby
Chrysoloras in 1396 was induced to fill the Greek chair in the
university. A yearly stipend of 150 golden florins, raised
afterwards to 250, was voted for his maintenance. This en
gagement secured the future of Greek erudition in Europe.
The merit of having brought the affair to a successful issue
belongs principally to Palla degli Strozzi, of whom Vespasiano

80 RENAISSANCE IN ITALY
wrote : ' There being, in Florence exceeding good knowledge
of Latin letters, but of Greek none, he resolved that this
defect should be remedied, and therefore did aU he could to
make Manuel Grisolora visit Italy, using all his influence
thereto and paying a large portion of the expense incurred.' '
We must not, however, omit the share which Coluccio Salu
tato,2 by his influence with the Signory, and Niccolo de'
NiccoU, by the interest he exerted with the Uffiziali dello
Studio, may also claim. Among the audience of this the first
true teacher of Greek at Florence were numbered Palla degli
Strozzi, Eoberto de' Eossi, Poggio Bracciolini, Lionardo Bruni,
Francesco Barbaro, Giannozzo Manetti, Carlo Marsuppini, and
Ambrogio Traversari — some of them young men of eighteen,
others old and grey-haired, nearly all of them the scholars
in Latinity of Giovanni da Eavenna. Nor was Florence the
only town to receive the learning of Chrysoloras. He opened
schools at Eome, at Padua, at MUan, and at Venice ; so that
his influence as a wandering professor was at least equal to
that exercised by Giovanni da Eavenna.
The impulse communicated to the study of antiquity by
Chrysoloras, and the noble enthusiasm of his scholars for
pure literature, may best be understood from a passage in the '
' Commentaries ' of Lionardo Bruni, whereof the foUowing is
a compressed translation:3 — 'Letters at this period grew
mightUy in Italy, seeing that the knowledge of Greek, inter
mitted for seven centuries, revived. Chrysoloras of Byzantium,
a man of noble birth and well skilled in Greek literature,
brought to us Greek learning. I at that time was following
the civU law, though not UI- versed in other studies ; for by
nature I loved learning with ardour, nor had I given slight
• Vite d' Vomini IlVustri, p. 271.
* Cf. the letter quoted by Voigt (p. 180) to Giacomo da Scarparia
which shows Colucoio's enthusiasm for Greek.
3 Mur. xix. 920.

BRUNI ON GREEK LEARNING 81
pains to dialectic and to rhetoric. Therefore, at the coming ¦
of Chrysoloras, I was made to halt in my choice of lives, see
ing that I held it wrong to desert law, and yet I reckoned it a
crime to omit so great an occasion of learning the Greek
literature ; and oftentimes I reasoned with myself after this
manner : — Can it be that thou, when thou mayest gaze on
Homer, Plato, and Demosthenes, together with other poets,
phUosophers, and orators, concerning whom so great and so
wonderful things are said, and mayest converse with them,
and receive their admirable doctrine — can it be that thou wilt
desert thyself and neglect the opportunity divinely offered
thee ? Through seven hundred years no one in all Italy has
been master of Greek letters ; and yet we acknowledge that
aU science is derived from them. Of civil law, indeed, there
are in every city scores of doctors ; but should this single and
unique teacher of Greek be removed, thou wilt find no one to
instruct thee. Conquered at last by these reasonings, I de
livered myself over to Chrysoloras with such passion that
what I had received from him by day in hours of waking,
occupied my mind at night in hours of sleep.'
The earnestness of this paragraph is characteristic of the
whole period. The scholars who assembled in the lecture-
rooms of Chrysoloras, felt that the Greek texts* whereof he
alone supplied the key, contained those elements of spiritual
freedom and mteUectual culture without which the civilisation
of the modern world would be impossible. Nor were they
mistaken in what was then a guess rather than a certainty.
The study of Greek imphed the birth of criticism, comparison,
research. Systems based on ignorance and superstition were
destined to give way before it. The study of Greek opened
philosophical horizons far beyond ths dream-world of the
churchmen and the monks ; it stimulated the germs of science,
suggested new astronomical hypotheses, and indirectly led to
the discovery of America. The study of Greek resuscitated
II Q

82 RENAISSANCE IN ITALY
a sense of the beautiful in art and Uterature. It subjected
the creeds of Christianity, the language of the Gospels, the
doctrine of S. Paul, to analysis, and commenced a new era
for Biblical inquiry. If it be true, as a writer no less sober
in his phUosophy than eloquent in his language has lately
asserted, that, ' except the blind forces of nature, nothing
moves in this world which is not Greek in its origin,' we are
justified in regarding the point of contact between the Greek
teacher Chrysoloras and his Florentine pupils as one of the
most momentous crises in the history of civilisation. Indirectly,
the Itahan intellect had hitherto felt Hellenic influence through
Latin literature. It was now about to receive that influence
immediately from actual study of the masterpieces of the
Attic authors. The world was no longer to be kept in ignor
ance of those ' eternal consolations ' of the human race. No
longer could the scribe omit Greek quotations from his Latin
text with the dogged snarl of obtuse self-satisfaction — Grceca
sunt, ergo non legenda. The motto had rather to be changed
into a cry of warning for ecclesiastical authority upon the verge
of dissolution — Grceca sunt, ergo periculosa : since the re
awakening faith in human reason, the reawakening behef in
the dignity of man, the desire for beauty, the Uberty, audacity,
and passion of the Eenaissance, received from Greek studies
their strongest and most vital impulse.

M

CHAPTER ni
FIRST PBEI0D OP HUMANISM
Condition of the Universities in Italy — Bologna— High Schools founded
from it — Naples under Frederick II. — Under the House of Anjou —
Ferrara — Piacenza — Perugia — Eome — Pisa — Florence —Imperial and
Papal Charters — Foreign Students — Professorial Staff — Subjects
taught in the High Schools — Place assigned to Humanism — Pay of
the Professors of Eloquence — Francesco Filelfo — The Humanists less
powerful at the Universities — Method of Humanistic Teaching — The
Book Market before Printing — Mediaeval Libraries — Cost of Manu
scripts — Stationam&ndi Peciarii — Negligence of Copyists — Discovery
of Classical Codices — Boccaccio at Monte Cassino — Poggio at Con
stance — Convent of S.Gallen — Bruni's Letter to Poggio — Manuscripts
discovered by Poggio — Nicholas of Treves — Collection of Greek
Manuscripts — Aurispa, Filelfo, and Guarino — The Buins of Eome —
Their Influence on Humanism — Dante and Villani — Eienzi — His
Idealistic Patriotism — Vanity — Political Incompetence — Petrarch's
Eelations with Eienzi — Injury to Monuments in Eome — Poggio's
Eoman Topography — Sentimental Feeling for the Buins of Antiquity
. — Ciriac of Ancona.
Having so far traced the quickening of a new sense for
antiquity among the ItaUans, it wUl be weU at this point to
consider the external resources of Humanism before continuing
the history of the Eevival in the fifteenth century. The con
dition of the universities, the state of the book trade before
the invention of printing, and the discovery of manuscripts
claim separate attention ; nor may it be out of place to inquire
what stimulus the enthusiasm for classical studies received
from the ruins of Eome. A review of these topics wiU help
to explain the circumstances under which the pioneers of
a 2

84 EENAISSANCE IN ITALY
culture had to labour, and the nature of the crusade they
instituted against ignorance in every part of Europe.
The oldest and most frequented university in Italy, that
of Bologna, is represented as having flourished in the twelfth
century.1 Its prosperity in early times depended greatly on
the personal conduct of the principal professors, who, when
they were not satisfied with their entertainment, were in the
habit of seceding with their pupils to other cities. Thus high
schools were opened from time to time in Modena, Eeggio,
and elsewhere by teachers who broke the oaths that bound
them to reside in Bologna, and fixed their centre of education
in a rival town. To make such temporary changes was not
difficult in an age when what we have to caU an university,
consisted of masters and scholars, without coUege buildings,
without libraries, without endowments, and without scientific
apparatus. The technical name for such institutions seems
to have been studium scholarium, Italianised into studio or
studio pubblico.2 Among the more permanent results of
these secessions may be mentioned the establishment of the
high school at Vicenza by translation from Bologna in 1204,
and the opening of a school at Arezzo under similar circum
stances in 1215 ; the great University of Padua first saw the
light in consequence of political discords forcing the professors
to quit Bologna for a season.3
The first half of the thirteenth century witnessed the
foundation of these studi in considerable numbers. That of
VerceUi was opened in 1228, the municipality providing two
certified copyists for the convenience of students who might

1 Tiraboschi, Storia della Letteratura Italiana, vol. iv. p. 42 et seq.,
vol. v. p. 60 et seq. Large quarto, Modena, 1787.
2 See Muratori, vol. viii. 15, 75, 372. Matteo ViUani, lib. i. cap. 8.
3 'Hoc anno translatum est Studium Scholarium de Bononia Pa-
duam.' Mur. viii. 372.

HIGH SCHOOLS 85
wish to purchase text-books.1 In 1224 the Emperor Frede
rick II. , to whom the south of Italy owed a precocious emi
nence in literature, established the University of Naples by an
Imperial diploma.2 With a view to rendering it the chief seat
of learning in his dominions, he forbade the subjects of the
Eegno to frequent other schools, and suppressed the University
of Bologna by letters general. Thereupon Bologna joined the
Lombard League, defied the emperor, and refused to close the
schools, which numbered at that period about ten thousand
students of various nationaUties. In 1227 Frederick revoked
his edict, and Bologna remained thenceforward unmolested.
Pohtical and internal vicissitudes, affecting all the Italian
universities at this period, interrupted the prosperity of that
of Naples. In the middle of the thirteenth century Salerno
proved a dangerous rival ; but when the House of Anjou was
established in the kingdom of the SiciUes, special privileges
were granted, restoring the high school of the capital to the
first rank. Charles I. created a separate court of jurisdiction
for its management. This consisted of a judge and three
assessors, one for the control of foreigners, another for the
subjects of the Eegno, and the third for Italians from other
states. In 1264 we find a pubUc school in operation at Ferrara.
By its charter the professors were exempt from military ser
vice. The University of Piacenza came into existence a httle
earUer. Innocent IV. estabhshed it in 1248, with privileges
sirrdlar to those of Paris and Bologna. An important group
of studi pubbUci owed their origin to Papal or Imperial
charters in the first half of the fourteenth century. That of
Perugia was founded in 1307 by a Bull of Clement V. That
1 They were called '.Exemplatores.' See Tiraboschi, vol. iv. lib. i
cap. 2.
8 Muratori, vii. p. 997. Amari, Storia dei Mussulmani di SiciUa,
vol. iii. p. 706.

88 RENAISSANCE IN ITALY
of Eome dated from 1303, in which year Boniface VIII. gave
it a constitution by a special edict ; but the translation of the
Papal See to Avignon caused it to faU into premature deca
dence. The University of Pisa had already existed for some
years, when it received a charter in 1343 from Clement VI.
That of Florence was first founded in 1321. ' In 1348 a place
for its public buildings was assigned between the Duomo and
the Palazzo Pubblico, on the site of what was afterwards
known as the Collegium Eugenianum. A councU of eight
burghers was appointed for its management, and a yearly sum
was set apart for its maintenance. In 1349 Clement VI. gave
it the same privileges as the University of Bologna, while in
1364 it received an Imperial diploma from Charles IV. The
same emperor granted charters to Siena in 1357, to Arezzo in
1356, and to Lucca in 1369. In 1362 Galeazzo Visconti ob
tained a charter for his University of Pavia from Charles IV.,
with the privileges of Paris, Oxford, and Bologna.
It will be observed that the majority of the studi pubblici
obtained charters either from the Pope or the emperor, or
from both, less for the sake of any immediate benefit to be
derived from Papal or Imperial patronage, than because
supreme authority in Italy was stiU referred to one or other
of these heads. It was a great object with each city to in
crease its wealth by attracting foreigners as residents, and to
retain the native youth within its precincts. The municipali
ties, therefore, accorded immunities from taxation and military
service to bona fide students, prohibited their burghers from
seeking rival places of learning, and in some cases aUowed the
university authorities to exercise a special jurisdiction over
the motley multitude of scholars from aU countries. How
misceUaneous the concourse in some of the high schools used
to be, may be gathered from the reports extracted by Tira-
boschi from their registers. At Vicenza, for example, in 1209
1 See Von Eeumont, Lorenzo de' Medici, vol. i. p. 521.

IMPORTANCE OF THE HIGH SCHOOLS 87
we find the names of Bohemians, Poles, Frenchmen, Burg
undians, Germans, and Spaniards, as weU as of Italians of
divers towns. The rectors of this studio in 1205 included an
Enghshman, a Provencal, a German, and a Cremonese. The
lists of illustrious students at Bologna between 1265 and 1294
show men of all the European nationalities, proving that the
foreigners attracted by the university must have formed no
inconsiderable element in the whole population.1 This will
account for the prominent part played by the students from
time to time in the poUtical history of Bologna.2
The importance attached by great cities to their universities
as a source of strength, may be gathered from the chapter in
Matteo VUlani's Chronicle describing the foundation of the
studio pubblico in Florence.3 He expressly mentions that
the Signory were induced to take this step in consequence of
the depopulation inflicted by the Black Death of 1348. By
drawing residents to Florence from other States, they hoped
to increase the number of the inhabitants, and to restore the
decayed fame and splendour of the commonwealth.4 At the
same time they thought that serious studies might put an end
to the demoralisation produced in all classes by the plague.
With this object in view, they engaged the best teachers, and
did not hesitate to devote a yearly sum of 2,500 golden florins
to the maintenance of their high school. Bologna, which
owed even more than Florence to its university, is said to
have lavished as much as half of its revenue, about 20,000
ducats, on the pay of professors and other incidental expenses.
The actual cost incurred by cities through their schools can
not, however, be accurately estimated, since it varied from
year to year according to the engagements made with special
' In 1320 there were at least 15,000 students in Bologna.
¦ See Sismondi, vol. iii. p. 349.
• Lib. i. cap. 8.
4 ' Volendo attrarre gente alia nostra citta, e dilatarla in onore. s
dare materia a' suoi cittadini d' essere scienziati e virtudiosi.'

88 RENAISSANCE IN ITALY
teachers. At Pavia, for example, in 1400, the university
supported in Canon Law several eminent doctors, in Civil
Law thirteen, in Medicine five, in Philosophy three, in Astro
logy one, in Greek one, and in Eloquence one.1 Whether
this staff was maintained after the lapse of another twenty
years we do not know for certain.
The subjects taught in the high schools were Canon and
Civil Law, Medicine, and Theology. These faculties, impor
tant for the professional education of the pubhc, formed the
staple of the academical curriculum. Chairs of Ehetoric,
Philosophy, and Astronomy were added according to occasion,
the last sometimes including the study of judicial astrology.
If we inquire how the humanists or professors of classic
literature were related to the universities, we find that, at first
at any rate, they always occupied a second rank. The per
manent teaching remained in the hands of jurists, who enjoyed
life engagements at a high rate of pay, while the Latinista
and Grecians could only aspire to the temporary occupation
of the Chair of Ehetoric, with salaries considerably lower than
those of lawyers or physicians. The cause of this inferiority
is easUy explained. It was natural that important and re
munerative branches of learning like law and medicine should
attract a greater number of students than pure literature, and
that their professors should be better paid than the teachers
of eloquence. Padua, Bologna, and Pavia in particular
retained their legal speciality throughout the period of the
Eenaissance, and remained but Uttle open to humanistic
influences. At Padua we find from Sanudo's Diary a that an
eminent jurist received a stipend of 1,000 ducats. A Doctor
of Medicine at the same university, in 1491, received a simi
lar stipend, together with the right of private practice. At
1 Cf. Corio, p. 290. He gives the names of the professors who
attended at the funeral of Gian Galeazzo Visconti.
* Mur. xxii. 990.

PAY OF JURISTS AND HUMANISTS 89
Bologna the famous jurist Abbas Siculus (Niccolo de' Tudeschi)
drew 800 scudi yearly ; at Padua Giovanni da Imola in 1406,
and Paolo da Castro in 1430, drew a sum of 600 ducats.1
About the same time (1453) Lauro Quirino, who professed
rhetoric at Padua, was paid at the rate of only forty ducats
yearly, while Lorenzo Valla, at Pavia, filled the Chair of
Eloquence with an annual stipend of fifty sequins. The dis
parity between the remuneration of jurists and that of
humanists was not so great at all the universities. Florence
in especial formed a notable exception. From the date of its
commencement the Florentine studio was partial to literature ;
and it is worth remarking that when Lorenzo de' Medici
transferred the high school to Pisa, he retained at Florence
the professors of the Uberal sciences and belles-lettres. The
great reputation of eminent rhetoricians, again, often secured
for them temporary engagements at a high rate. Thus we
gather from Eosmini's ' Life of Filelfo ' that this humanist
received from Venice the offer of 500 sequins yearly as remu
neration for his professorial services. Bologna proposed an
annual stipend of 450 sequins when he undertook to lecture
upon eloquence and moral philosophy. At Florence his
income amounted to 350 golden florins, secured for three
years, and subsequently raised to 450. With Siena he stipu
lated for 350 golden florins for two years. At Milan his
Chair of Eloquence was endowed with 500 golden florins, and
this salary was afterwards mcreased to 700. Nicholas V.
offered him an annual income of 600 ducats if he would devote
himself to the translation of Greek books into Latin, while
Sixtus IV. tried to bring him to Eome by proposing 600
Boman florins as the stipend of the Chair of Ehetoric.
The fact, however, remains that whUe the special study
of antiquity preoccupied the minds of the Italians, and
attracted aU the finer intellects among the youth ambitious
1 See Voigt, p. 447.

90 RENAISSANCE IN ITALY
of distinction, its professors never succeeded in taking com
plete possession of the universities. Their position there was
always that of wandering stars and resident aliens. This
accounts in some measure for the bitter hostihty and arrogant
scorn which they displayed against the teachers of theology
and law and medicine. The real home of the humanists was
in the Courts of princes, the palaces of the cultivated burghers,
the Eoman Curia, and the chanceries of the repubUcs. As
secretaries, house tutors, readers, Court poets, historiographers,
public orators, and companions they were indispensable..
We shall therefore find that the private academies formed
by the Uterati and their patrons, the schools of princes estab
lished at Mantua and Ferrara, and the residences of great
nobles play a more important part in the history of humanism
than do the universities. At the same time the spirit of the
new culture diffused by the humanists so thoroughly per
meated the whole intellectual activity of the Italians, that in
course of time the special studies of the high schools assumed
a more literary and Uberal form. The classics then supplied
the starting-point for juristic and medical disquisitions.
Poliziano was seen lecturing upon the Pandects of Justinian,
while Pomponazzi made the Chair of PhUosophy at Padua
subservient to the exposition of materiaUsm. This triumph
of humanism, Uke its triumph in the Church, was effected
less by immediate working on the universities than by a
gradual and indirect determination of the whole race towards
the study of antiquity.
In picturing to ourselves the method pursued by the
humanists in the instruction of their classes, we must divest
our minds of all associations with the practice of modem
professors. Very few of the students whom the master saw
before him, possessed more than meagre portions of the text
of Virgil or of Cicero ; they had no notes, grammars, lexicons,
or dictionaries of antiquities and mythology, to help them.

A PROFESSOR'S LECTURES 91
It was therefore necessary for the lecturer to dictate quota
tions, to repeat paraUel passages at full length, to explain
geographical and historical aUusions, to analyse the structure
of sentences in detail, to provide copious iUustrations of
grammatical usage, to trace the stages by which a word
acquired its meanmg in a special context, to command a fuU
vocabulary of synonyms, to give rules for orthography, and to
have the whole Pantheon at his fingers' ends. In addition to
this, he was expected to comment upon the meaning of his
author, to interpret his philosophy, to point out the beauties
of his style, to introduce appropriate moral disquisition on his
doctrine, to sketch his biography, and to give some account
of his relation to the history of his country and to his pre
decessors in the field of letters. In short, the professor of
rhetoric had to be a grammarian, a philologer, an historian, a
styhst, and a sage in one. He was obliged to pretend at least
to an encyclopaedic knowledge of the classics, and to retain
whole volumes in his memory. AU these requirements, which
' seem to have been satisfied by such men as Filelfo and Poli
ziano, made the profession of eloquence — for so the varied
subject matter of humanism was often caUed — a very different
business from that which occupies a lecturer of the present
century. Scores of students, old and young, with nothing
but pen and paper on the desks before them, sat patiently
recording what the lecturer said. At the end of his discourses
on the ' Georgics ' or the ' Verrines,' each of them carried away
a compendious volume, containing a transcript of the author's
text, together with a misceUaneous mass of notes, critical,
explanatory, ethical, aesthetical, historical, and biographical.
In other words, a book had been dictated, and as many scores
of copies as there were attentive pupils had been made.1 The
1 Many of the earliest printed editions of the Latin poets give an
exact notion of what such lectures must have been. The text is em
bedded in an all-embracing commentary.

92 RENAISSANCE IN ITALY
language used was Latin. No dialect of Italian could have
been intelUgible to the students of different nationalities who
crowded the lecture-rooms. The elementary education in
grammar requisite for following a professorial course of lec
tures had been previously provided by the teachers of the
Latin schools, which depended for maintenance partly on the
State • and partly on private enterprise. The Church does
not seem to have undertaken the management of these
primary boys' schools.
Since this was the nature of academical instruction in the
humanities before the age of printing, it followed that the
professor had a direct interest in frequently shifting his scene
of operations. More than a certain number of such books as
I have just attempted to describe could not be carried in his
head. After he had dictated his work on the ' Georgics ' at
Florence, he was naturally anxious to move to Milan and to
do the same. A new audience gave new value to his lectures,
and another edition, as it were, of his book was put in circu
lation. In the correspondence which passed between profes- •
sors and the rectors of the high schools previously to an
engagement, we sometimes find that the former undertake to
explain particular authors during their proposed residence.
On these authors they had no doubt bestowed the best years
of their lives, making them the vehicle for all the miscellaneous
learning they possessed, and grounding their fame upon the
beauty, clearness, and copiousness of their exposition.2
Having described the conditions under which professorial
teaching was conducted in the fifteenth century, it is now of
some importance to form a notion of the state of the book
market and the diffusion of MSS. before tho invention of
1 Cf. Villani's Statistics of Florence, and Corio's of Milan.
2 For humorous but vivid pictures of a professor's lecture-room, see
the macaronic poemi of Odassi and Fossa quoted by me in vol. v. of
this work.

SCARCITY OF BOOKS 93
printing. Difficult as it is to speak with accuracy on these
topics, some facts must be collected, seeing that the high price
and comparative rarity of books contributed in a very important
degree to determine the character of the instruction provided
by the humanists.
Scarcity of books was at first a chief impediment to the
study of antiquity. Popes and princes and even great rehgious
institutions possessed far fewer books than many farmers
of the present age. The library belonging to the Cathedral
Church of S. Martino at Lucca in the ninth century contained
only nineteen volumes of abridgments from ecclesiastical
commentaries. The Cathedral of Novara in 1212 could boast
copies of Boethius, Priscian, the ' Code of Justinian,' the
1 Decretals,' and the ' Etymology ' of Isidorus, besides a Bible
and some devotional treatises.1 This slender stock passed for
graat riches. Each of the precious volumes in such a collec
tion was an epitome of mediaaval art. Its pages were com
posed of fine veUum adorned with pictures.2 The initial
letters displayed elaborate flourishes and exquisitely illumin
ated groups of figures. The scribe took pains to render his
caligraphy perfect, and to ornament the margins with crimson,
gold, and blue. Then he handed the parchment sheets to the
binder, who encased them in rich settings of velvet or carved
ivory and wood, embossed with gold and precious stones. The
edges were gUt and stamped with patterns. The clasps were
of wrought sUver, chased with niello. The price of such
masterpieces was enormous. Borso d' Este, in 1464, gave
eight gold ducats to Gherardo Ghislieri of Bologna for an
Uluminated LanceUotto, and in 1469 he bought a Josephus
and Quintus Curtius for forty ducats.3 His great Bible in two
1 See Cantu, Storia della Letteratura Italiana, p. 105, note.
2 'Hodie Scriptores non sunt Scriptores sed Pictores,' quoted by
Tiraboschi, vol. iv. lib. i. cap. 4.
3 See Cantu, loc. cit. p. 104.

94 RENAISSANCE IN ITALY
volumes is said to have cost 1,376 sequins. Einaldo degli
Albizzi notes in his Memoirs that he paid eleven golden florins
for a Bible at Arezzo in 1406. Of these MSS. the greater
part were manufactured in the cloisters, and it was here too
that the martyrdom of ancient authors took place. Lucretius
and Livy gave place to chronicles, antiphonaries, and homilies.
Parchment was extremely dear, and the scroUs which nobody
could read might be scraped and washed. Accordingly, the
copyist erased the learning of the ancients, and fiUed the fair
blank space he gained with litanies. At the same time it is
but just to the monks to add that paUmpsests have occasion
ally been found in which ecclesiastical works have yielded
place to copies of the Latin poets used in elementary educa
tion.1 Another obstacle to the diffusion of learning was the
incompetence of the copyists. It is true that at the great
universities stationarii, who supplied the text-books in use to
students, were certified and subjected to the control of special
censors called peciarii. Yet their number was not large, and
when they quitted the routine to which they were accustomed
their incapacity betrayed itself by numerous errors.2 Petrarch's
invective against the professional copyists shows the depth
to which the art had sunk. ' Who,' he exclaims, ' will discover
a cure for the ignorance and vUe sloth of these copyists, who
spoil everything and turn it to nonsense ? If Cicero, Livy,
and other illustrious ancients were to return to Ufe, do you
think they would understand their own works ? There is no
check upon these copyists, selected without examination
or test of their capacity. Workmen, husbandmen, weavers,
1 See Comparetti, vol. i. p. 114.
2 In Milan, in the fourteenth century, when the population was
estimated at about 200,000, the town could boast of only fifty copyists.
Tirab. loc. cit. cap. 4.

THE COPYISTS 95
artisans, are not indulged in the same Uberty.' ' Coluccio
Salutato repeats the same complaint, averring that the copies
of Dante and Petrarch no more correspond to the originals
than bad statues to the men they pretend to represent. At
the same time the copyists formed a necessary and flourishing
class of craftsmen. TheywereweUpaid. Ambrogio Traversari
told his friend Giustiniani in 1430 that he could recommend
him a good scribe at the pay of thirty golden florins a year
and his keep. Under these circumstances it was usual for
even the most eminent scholars, Uke Petrarch, Boccaccio, and
Poggio, to make their own copies of MSS. Niccolo de' Niccoli
transcribed nearly the whole of the codices that formed the
nucleus of the Library of the Mark. Sometimes they sold
them or made advantageous changes. Poggio, for example,
sold two volumes of S. Jerome's ' Letters ' to LioneUo d' Este
for 100 golden florins. BeccadeUi bought a Livy from him for
120 golden florins, having parted with a farm to defray the
expense. It is clear that the first step toward the revival of
1 DeRemedHs utriusque Fortunes, lib. i. dial. 43, p. 42. The passage
condensed above is so valuable for a right understanding of the human
istic feeling about manuscripts that I shall transcribe portions of the
original : — ' Libri innumerabiles sunt mihi. Et errores innumeri, quidam
ab impiis, alii ab indoctis editi. Illi quidem religioni ac pietati et divinis
Uteris, hi naturae ac justitias moribusque et liberalibus disciplinis seu
historiae rerumque gestarum fidei, omnes autem vero adversi; inque
omnibus, et prassertim primis ubi majoribus agitur de rebus, et vera falsis
immixta sunt, perdimcilis ac periculosa discretio est . . . scriptorum
inscitiae inertiaeque, corrumpenti omnia miscentique . . . ignavissima
astas haec culinae solicita, literarum negligens, et coquos examinans non
scriptores. Quisquis itaque pingere aliquid in membranis, manuque
calamum versare didicerit, scriptor. habebitur, doctrincB omnis ignarus,
expers ingenii, artis egens . . . nunc confusis exemplaribus et exempli s,
unum scribere polliciti, sic aliud scribunt ut quod ipse dictaveris, non
agnoscas . . . accedunt et scriptores nulla frenati lege, nullo probati
examine, nullo judicio electi ; non fabris, non agricolis, non textoribus,
non ulli fere artium tanta licentia est, cum sit in aliis leve periculum, in
hac grave ; sine delectu tamen scribendum ruunt omnes, et cuncta vas-
tantibos certa sunt pretia.'

98 RENAISSANCE IN ITALY
learning implied three things : first, the coUection of MSS.
wherever they could be saved from the indolence of the monks ;
secondly, the formation of Ubraries for their preservation ;
and, thirdly, the invention of an art whereby they might be
mutiphed cheaply, conveniently, and accurately.
The labour involved in the coUection of classical manu
scripts had to be performed by a few enthusiastic scholars,
who received no help from the universities and their academical
scribes, and who met with no sympathy in the monasteries
they were bent on ransacking. The new culture demanded
whoUy new machinery ; and new runners in the torch-race of
civihsation sprang into existence. The high schools were
contented with their summaries and glosses. The monks
performed at best the work of earthworms, who unwittingly
preserve fragments of Greek architecture from corrosion by
heaping mounds of mould and rubbish round them. Mean
while the humanists went forth with the instinct of explorers
to release the captives and awake the dead. From the convent
libraries of Italy, from the museums of Constantinople, from
the abbeys of Germany and Switzerland and France, the
slumbering spirits of the ancients had to be evoked. The
chivalry of learning, banded together for this service, might
be hkened to Crusaders. As the Franks deemed themselves
thrice blest if they returned with relics from Jerusalem, so
these new Knights of the Holy Ghost, seeking not the
sepulchre of a risen God, but the tombs wherein the genius
of the ancient world awaited resurrection, felt holy transports
when a brown, begrimed, and crabbed copy of some Greek or
Latin author rewarded their patient quest. Days and nights
they spent in carefuUy transcribing it, comparing their own
MS. with the original, multiplying facsimiles, and sending
them abroad with free hands to students who in their turn
took copies, tUl the treasure-trove became the common
property of all who could appreciate its value. This work of

BOCCACCIO AT MONTE CASSINO 97
discovery began with Petrarch. I have already alluded to
the journeys he undertook in the hope of collecting the lost
MSS. of Cicero. It was carried on by Boccaccio. The account
given by Benvenuto da Imola of Boccaccio's visit to Monte
Cassino brings vividly before us both the ardour of these first
explorers and the apathy of the Benedictines (who have some
times been called the saviours of learning) with regard to the
treasures of their own Ubraries : J — ' With a view to the clearer
understanding of this text (' Paradiso,' xxii. 74), I will relate
what my revered teacher, Boccaccio of Certaldo, humorously
told me. He said that when he was in Apulia, attracted by
the celebrity of the convent, he paid a visit to Monte Cassino,
whereof Dante speaks. Desirous of seeing the collection of
books, which he understood to be a very choice one, he
modestly asked a monk — for he was always most courteous in
manners — to open the Ubrary, as a favour, for him. The
monk answered stiffly, pointing to a steep staircase, " Go up ;
it is open." Boccaccio went up gladly ; but he found that the
place which held so great a treasure, was without or door or
key. He entered, and saw grass sprouting on the windows,
and aU the books and benches thick with dust. In his astonish
ment he began to open and turn the leaves of first one tome
and then another, and found many and divers volumes of
ancient and foreign works. Some of them had lost several
sheets ; others were snipped and pared all round the text, and
mutUated m various ways. At length, lamenting that the
toU and study of so many iUustrious men should have passed
into the hands of most abandoned wretches, he departed with
tears and sighs. Coming to the cloister, he asked a monk
whom he met, why those valuable books had been so dis-
gracefuUy mangled. He answered that the monks, seeking
to gain a few soldi, were in the habit of cutting off sheets and
1 ' Commentary on the Divine Comedy,' ap. Muratori, Antiq. Ital. vol
i. p. 1296. II H

98 RENAISSANCE IN ITALY
making psalters, which they sold to boys. The margins too
they manufactured into charms, and sold to women. So then,
0 man of study, go to and rack your brains ; make books that
you may come to this ! '
What Italy contained of ancient codices soon saw the
light. The visit of Poggio Bracciolini to Constance (1414)
opened up for Italian scholars the stores that lay neglected in
transalpine monasteries. Poggio's office of Apostolic Secre
tary obliged him to attend the CouncU of Constance for the
purpose of framing reports and composing diplomatic docu
ments. At the same time he had ample leisure on his hands,
and this he spent in exploring the Ubraries of Swiss and
Suabian convents. The treasures he unearthed at Eeichenau,
Weingarten, and above all S. Gallon, restored to Italy many
lost masterpieces of Latin Uterature, and supplied students
with fuU texts of authors who had hitherto been known in
mutilated copies. The account he gave of his visit to S.
Gallen in a Latin letter to a friend is justly celebrated.1 After
describing the wretched state in which the ' Institutions ' of
Quintilian had previously existed,2 he proceeds as foUows : —
' I verUy believe that, if we had not come to the rescue, he
[Quintilian] must speedily have perished ; for it cannot be
imagined that a man magnificent, polished, elegant, urbane,
«md witty could much longer have endured the squalor of the
prison-house in which I found him, the savagery of his jaUers,
the forlorn filth of the place. He was indeed right sad to
look upon, and ragged, hke a condemned criminal, with rough
beard and matted hair, protesting by his countenance and
garb against the injustice of his sentence. He seemed to be
stretching out his hands, calling upon the Eomans, demanding
1 Mur. xx. 160.
2 Petrarch in 1350 found a bad copy at Florence. Poggio describes
it thus : — ' Is vero apud nos antea, Italos dico, ita laceratus erat, ita
circumcisus culpa, ut opinor, temporum, ut nulla forma, nullus habitue
hominis in eo recognosceretur.'

POGGIO AT S. GALLEN 99
to be saved from so unmerited a doom. Hard indeed it was
for him to bear, that he who had preserved the Uves of many
by his eloquence and aid, should now find no redresser of his
wrongs, no saviour from the unjust punishment awaiting him.
But as it often happens, to quote Terence, that what you dare
not wish for comes to you by chance, so a good fortune for
him, but far more for ourselves, led us, while wasting our
time in idleness at Constance, to take a fancy for visiting
the place where he was held in prison. The monastery of
S. GaUen Ues at the distance of some twenty miles from that
city. Thither, then, partly for the sake of amusement and
partly of finding books, whereof we heard there was a large
coUection in the convent, we directed our steps. In the
middle of a weU-stocked Ubrary, too large to catalogue at
present, we discovered QuintiUan, safe as yet and sound,
though covered with dust and filthy with neglect and age.
The books, you must know, were not housed according to
their worth, but were lying in a most foul and obscure dun
geon at the very bottom of a tower, a place into which con
demned criminals would hardly have been thrust ; and I am
firmly persuaded that if anyone would but explore those
ergastvila of the barbarians wherein they incarcerate such
men, we should meet with Uke good fortune in the case of
many whose funeral orations have long ago been pronounced.
Besides QuintiUan, we exhumed the three first books and a
half of the four th book of the " Argonautica " of Flaccus, and the
" Commentaries " of Asconius Pedianus upon eight orations of
Cicero.' Poggio, immediately after this discovery, set himself
to work at transcribing the QuintiUan, a labour accomplished
in the brief space of thirty-two days. The MS. was then
despatched to Lionardo Bruni, who received it with ecstatic
welcome, as appears from this congratulatory epistle addressed
to Poggio : —
' The repubUc of letters has reason to rejoice not only in
b2

100 RENAISSANCE IN ITALY
the works you have discovered, but also in those you have
still to find. What a glory for you it is to have brought to
light by your exertions the writings of the most distinguished
authors! Posterity wiU not forget that MSS. which were
bewailed as lost beyond the possibUity of restoration, have
been recovered, thanks to you. As Camillus was called the
second founder of Eome, so may you receive the title of the
second author of the works you have restored to the world.
Through you we now possess QuintiUan entire ; before we
only boasted of the half of him, and that defective and corrupt
in text. 0 precious acquisition ! 0 unexpected joy ! And
shall I, then, in truth be able to read the whole of that
QuintiUan which, mutilated and deformed as it has hitherto
appeared, has formed my solace ? I conjure you send it me at
once, that at least I may set eyes on it before I die.'
In addition to the authors named above, Poggio discovered
and copied with his own hand MSS. of Lucretius and Colu
mella. SiUus Italicus, ManiUus, and Vitruvius owed their
resurrection to his industry. At Langres he found a copy
of Cicero's oration for Cascina ; at Monte Cassino a MS. of
Frontinus. Ammianus Marcellinus, Nonius MarceUus, Pro-
bus, Flavius Caper, and Eutyches are also to be ranked among
the captives freed by him from slavery. In exploring foreign
convents where he suspected that ancient authors might he
buried, he spared neither trouble nor expense. ' No severity
of winter cold, no snow, no length of journey, no roughness of
roads, prevented him from bringing the monuments of litera
ture to Ught,' wrote Francesco Barbaro.1 Nor did he recoil
from theft, if theft seemed necessary to secure a precious
codex. In a letter to Ambrogio Traversari he relates his
negotiations with a monk for the fraudulent abduction of an
Ammianus and a Livy from .a convent Ubrary in Hersfeld.2
¦ Mur. xx. 169. Cf. the Elegy of Landino quoted in the notes to
Boscoe's Lorenzo, p. 388. 2 Voigt, p. 138.

PASSION FOR COLLECTING 101
Not unfrequently his most golden anticipations with regard to
literary treasures were deceived, as when a Dane appeared at
the Court of Martin V. bragging of a complete Livy to be
found in a Cistercian convent near EoskUde. This man pro
tested he had seen the MS., and described the characters in
which it was written with some minuteness. At Poggio's
instance the Cardinal Orsini sent off a special messenger to
seek for this, which would have been the very phoenix of MSS.
to the Latinists of that period, whUe Cosimo de' Medici put
his agents at Lubeck to work for the same purpose. All
their efforts were in vain, however. The Livy could not be
discovered, and the Dane passed for a liar, in spite of the
corroboration his story received from another traveller.1
Poggio himself, who would wUlingly have ransacked Europe
for a MS., was jealous of money spent on any other object.
In his treatise ' De InfeUeitate Principum ' he complains that
' these exalted personages [popes and princes] spend their days
and their wealth in pleasure, in unworthy pursuits, in pesti
ferous and destructive wars. So great is their mental torpor
that nothing can rouse them to search after the works of ex
ceUent writers, by whose wisdom and learning mankind are
taught the way to true happiness.' This lamentation, written
probably under the unfavourable impression produced upon
his mind by the Papal Court, where as yet the spirit of
humanism had hardly penetrated, must not be taken in any
strict sense. Never was there a time in the world's history
when money was spent more freely upon the collection and
preservation of MSS., and when a more complete machinery
was put in motion for the sake of securing literary treasures.
Prince vied with prince, and eminent burgher with burgher,
in buying books. The commercial correspondents of the
Medici and other great Florentine houses, whose banks anct
discount offices extended over Europe and the Levant, were
1 See Voigt, p. 139, for this story.

102 RENAISSANCE IN ITALY
instructed to purchase relics of antiquity without regard for
cost, and to forward them to Florence. The most acceptable
present that could be sent to a king was a copy of a Eoman
historian. The best credentials which a young Greek arriving
from Byzantium could use to gain the patronage of men
Uke PaUa degli Strozzi was a fragment of some ancient ; the
merchandise ensuring the largest profit to a speculator who
had special knowledge in such matters was old parchment
covered with crabbed characters.
The history of the foundation of Ubraries will form part
of the next chapter. For the present it is requisite to mention
some of Poggio's fellow-workmen in the labour of coUection.
Among these a certain Nicholas of Treves, employed to
receive monies due to the Papal Curia in Germany, deserves
a place, seeing that in 1429 he sent the most complete extant
copy of Plautus to Eome. Bartolommeo da Montepulciano,
foUowing the lead of Poggio, pursued investigations while at
Constance, and discovered the lost writings of Vegetius and
Pompeius Festus. In 1409 Lionardo Bruni chanced upon a
good MS. of Cicero's letters at Pistoja, and about the year
1425 a magnificent capture of Cicero's rhetorical treatises was
made at Lodi in the Duomo by Gherardo Landriani. The
extant works of Tacitus, so ardently desired, were not collected
earUer than the reign of Leo.
WhUe Poggio was releasing the Latin authors from their
northern prisons, and sending them to walk Uke princes
through the Courts and capitals of Italy, three other scholars
devoted no less energy to the coUection of Greek MSS.
Giovanni Aurispa, on his return from Byzantium in 1423,
brought with him 238 codices, while Guarino of Verona and
Francesco Filelfo both arrived in Italy heavUy laden. There
is an old story that Guarino lost a part of his cargo at sea,
and landed with hair whitened by the grief this misfortune
cost him. Considering the special advantages enjoyed by

GREEK MANUSCRIPTS 103
these three scholars, who were pupils of the learned Manuel
Chrysoloras, and before whose eager curiosity the Ubraries of
Byzantium remained open through nearly half a century pre
vious to the faU of the Greek Empire, we have good reason
to beheve that the greater part of Attic and Alexandrian
Uterature known to the later Greeks was transferred to Italy.
The avidity shown by the Florentines for codices and copies,
the opportunities afforded by their mercantile connection with
Constantinople, and the obvious interest which the Court of
Byzantium at that crisis had in gratifying their taste for such
acquisitions, contribute to render it urdikely that any of the
more important and iUustrious authors were destroyed in
the taking of the city by the Turk.1 It is probable that causes
similar to those which slowly wrought the ruin of Latin
Uterature in the West — the apathy of an uncultured public,
the rancorous animosity of a superstitious clergy, and the
decay of students as a class — had long before the age of the
Eenaissance ruined beyond the possibility of recovery those
masterpieces whereof we stiU deplore the loss.2 The pre
servation of Neoplatonic and Patristic literature in comparar
tive completeness, whUe so much that was more valuable
perished, may be ascribed to the theological content of these
writings. 1 See the emphatic language about Palla degli Strozzi, Cosimo de'
Medici, and Niccolo de' Niccoli, in Vespasiano's Lives. Islam, more
over, as is proved by Pletho's Life, was at that period more erudite than
Hellas. 2 I have touched upon this subject elsewhere. See Studies of Greek
Poets, second series, pp. 304-307. In order to form a conception of the
utter decline of Byzantine learning after Photius, it is needful to read
the passages in Petrarch's letters, where even Calabria is compared
favourably with Constantinople. In a state of ignorance so absolute as
he describes, it is possible that treasures existed unknown to professed
students, and therefore undiscovered by Filelfo and his fellow-workers.
The testimony of Demetrius Chalcondylas, quoted by Didot, A Ide Manuce.
p. xiv., goes to show that the Greeks attributed their losses in large
measure to the malice of the priests.

104 EENAISSANCE IN ITALY
Not to render some account of the effect produced upon
the minds of scholars in the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries
by the sight of Eoman ruins in decay, would be to omit an
important branch of the subject I have undertaken. Yet
this part of the inquiry leads us into a region somewhat
different from that hitherto traversed in the present chapter,
since it properly belongs to the history of enthusiasm. No
smaU portion of the motive impulse that determined the
Eevival was derived from the admiration, curiosity, and awe
excited by the very stones of ancient Eome. During the
Middle Ages the right point of view for studying the archi
tectural works of the Eomans had been lost. History yielded
ever more and more to legend, until at last it was beUeved
that demons and magicians had suspended those gigantic
vaults in air. Telesmatic virtues were attributed to figures
carved on temple-fronts and friezes, while the great name
of Virgil attached itself to what remained unhurt of Latin
art in Eome and Naples.1 The Eome of the MirabiUa was
supposed to be the handiwork of fiends constrained by poets
of the bygone age with spells of power to move heU from its
centre. This transference of interest from the real to the
fanciful, from the substantial to the visionary, was character
istic of the whole attitude assumed by the mind in the
Middle Ages. History, literature, and art aUke submitted to
the alchemy of the imagination.2 At the same time the very
grossness of these fables testified to the profound impression
produced by the ruins of the Eternal City, and to the haunting
magic of a memory surviving degradation and decay. When
the Anglo-Saxon pilgrims returned from Eome in the eighth
century, the fascination of the great works they had seen
1 The details of Virgil's romance occupy the first half of Comparetti's
second volume on Virgil in the Middle Ages. For the English version
of this legend see Thorns.
* See above, pp. 38-49.

THE RUINS OF ROME 10«
expressed itself in a memorable prophecy.1 ' As long as the
Coliseum stands, Eome shaU stand ; when the Coliseum
faUs, Eome will faU ; when Eome faUs, the world will fall.'
About the year 1300 a new historic sense appears to have
arisen in Italy. Instead of dreams and legends, the positive
facts of the past began to have once more their value. This
change might be compared to the discovery we make upon
the borderland of sleep and waking, when what we fancied
was a figure draped in white by our bedside turns out to be
the wall with moonhght shining on it. Giovanni ViUani,
when he gazed upon the baths and amphitheatres of Eome,
was not moved to think of the fiends who raised them, but of
the buried grandeur of the Eoman commonwealth.2 What
Eome once was, Florence may one day become, was the
reflection that impeUed him to write the chronicle of his
native town. Dante, who with ViUani witnessed the Jubilee
of 1300, cried that the very stones of Eome were sacred.
'Whoso robs her, or despoUs her, with blasphemy of act
offendeth God, who- only for His own use made her holy.' 3
The city was to him the outward symbol and terrestrial
station of that God-appointed Monarchy for ruling all the
peoples of the earth in peace. His most enthusiastic specula
tions, as weU as the practical pohcy set forth in his epistles,
attached themselves to Eome as a reahty ; nor did he ever tire
of bidding German emperors return and fix their throne upon
the bank of Tiber. We know now that this idealism was a
delusion, no less incapable of realisation than it was pernicious
to the hberties of the Italians. It haunted the imagination
of the race, however, untU at last, as I have said above, the
proper vent was found in humanism.
The same passion for Eome took different form in the
mind of another and less noble patriot. It impelled Eienzi
' Gibbon, ch. Ixsi. J Vol. I., Age of the Despots, p. 200.
• Purg. xxxiii. 58.

166 RENAISSANCE IN ITALY
to conceive the plan of rehabilitating the EepubUc. The Popes
were far away at Avignon. The emperors seemed to have
forgotten Italy. Yet Eome remained, and the mere name of
Eome was Empire. Why should not the Senatus Populusque
Romanus, whose initials stiU survived in uncial letters upon
blocks of travertine and marble, be restored to place and
power ? Wandering among those spacious vaults, and
lingering beneath the triumphal arches, where the marks of
chariot-wheels were traced upon the massive paved work of
the Eoman ways, the young enthusiast conceived that even he
might live to be the Tribune of that people, born invincible,
and caUed by destiny to rule the world. With what energy
he devoted himself to studying the histories of Livy, SaUust,
and Valerius Maximus ; how he strove to master the mean
ing of inscriptions found among the wrecks of Eome ; with
what eloquence he moved his feUow-citizens to sympathy —
are familiar matters not only to scholars, but to readers of
romance. His vision of the restored Eepublic seemed for
a moment destined to become reaUty. The Eomans placed
the power of hfe and death, of revenues and armies, in the
hands of the seer, who had stirred them by his rhetoric.
Rienzi took rank among the potentates of Italy. Even the
Papal Court acknowledged him.
What foUowed proved the poUtical incapacity of the new
dictator, his want of critical insight into the ideal he had set
before himself. There is something both pathetic and ridicu-
lous in the vanity displayed by this barber's son exalted to -a
place among the princes. Not satisfied with calling himself
Tribune and Knight, the style he affected in his correspondence
with Clement VI. ran as follows : — ' Candidatus, Spiritus
Sancti Miles, Nicolaus Severus et Clemens, Liberator Urbis,
Zelator ItaUas, Amator Orbis, et Tribunus Augustus.' Like
Icarus, he spread these waxen wings to the sun's noontide
blaze. The same extravagant confusion of things sacred and

PETRARCH AND ElEN2l 107
profane, classical and mediaeval, marked the pageantry of his
State ceremonials in Eome. On August 15, 1347, in celebra
tion of his election to the Tribunate, he assumed six crowns —
of ivy, myrtle, laurel, oak, olive, and gUt silver. His arms
were blazoned with the keys of Peter and the letters
S.P.Q.E. His senatorial sceptre was surmounted, not with
the eagle or the wolf of Eomulus, but with a golden baU and
cross enclosing the reUc of a saint. The poetic fancy could
not have suggested a more striking aUegory to illustrate an
undlscriminating reverence for the Imperial and Pontifical
prestige of Eome, than was presented in this tragic farce of
actual history. Not in this way, by a mixture of Christian
and Pagan titles, by emblematic pomp, by heraldry and decla
mation, could the old EepubUc be brought to life again. The
very attempt to do so proved how far the mind of man,
awaking from the long sleep of the Middle Ages, was removed
from the severe simplicity that gave its strength to ancient
Eome. Along those giddy parapets of fame we watch Eienzi
walking through his months of glory like a somnambule
sustained by an internal dream. That he should fall was
inevitable. With him expired the Utopia of a Eoman
commonwealth, to be from time, to time revived as an
ineffectual fancy in the brains of a few visionaries.1
The relations of Petrarch to Eienzi offer matter for curious
reflection, whUe they iUustrate the part played by the enthu
siasm for ancient Eome in the early history of humanism.
Petrarch and Eienzi had been friends and correspondents
before the emergence of the latter into pubhc notice ; and
when the Tribune seemed about to satisfy the dearest desire
of the poet's heart by re-establishing the Eoman common
wealth, Petrarch addressed him with an animated letter of
congratulation and encouragement.* In his charmed eyes he
1 Stefano Porcari, for example. See Vol. I., Age of the Despots, pr
296, 302. 2 De Capessendd Libertate, Hortatoria, p. 535.

108 RENAISSANCE IN ITALY
seemed a hero, vir magnanimus, worthy of the ancient world,
a new Eomulus, a third Brutus, a Camillus. The Eoman
burghers, that scum and sediment of countless races, bar-
barised by the lingering miseries of the Middle Ages, needed
nothing, it appeared, but words and wishes to make them
once again cives Romani, no longer clamorous for bread and
games, but ready to reconquer aU their ancestors had lost.1
' Where,' cried Petrarch, • can the empire of the world be
found, except in Eome ? Who can dispute the Eoman right ?
What force can stand against the name of Eomans?'
Neither the patriot nor the scholar discerned that the revival
they were destined to inaugurate was intellectual. Though
the spirit of the times refused a political Eenaissance, refused
to Italy the maintenance of even such freedom as she then
possessed, far more refused a resuscitation of ancient Eome's
imperial sway, yet both Eienzi and Petrarch persisted in
believing that, because they glowed with fervour for the past,
because they could read inscriptions, because they expressed
their desires eloquently, the world's great age was certain to
begin anew. It was a capital fault of the Eenaissance to
imagine that words could work wonders, that a rhetorician's
stylus might become the wand of Prospero. Seeming passed
for being in morals, politics, and aU affairs of Ufe. I have
already touched on this as a capital defect in Petrarch's
character ; but it was a weakness inherent not only in him
and in the age he inaugurated, but one, moreover, that has
influenced the whole history of the Italians for evil. Sounding
phrases Uke the barbaros expellere of Julius II. , like the
va fuori d' Italia of Garibaldian hymns, from time to time
have roused the nation to feverish enthusiasm, too soon suc
ceeded by dejected apathy. When the inefficiency of Eienzi
was proved, all that remained for Petrareh was to warn and
scold. 1 See Petrarch's Epistle to the Roman People, p. 712.

PETRARCH IN ROME 109
The interest excited in Petrarch by the sight of Eome's
ruins was important for his humanistic ideal. They stirred
him as a moralist, an antiquarian, and a man who owed his
mental vigour to the past. He tells how often he used to
climb above the huge vaults of the Baths of Diocletian in com
pany with his friend Giovanni Colonna.1 Seated there among
the flowering shrubs and scented herbs that clothed decay
with loveliness, they held discourse concerning the great men
of old, and deplored the mutability of aU things human.
Whatever the poet had read of Eoman grandeur was brought
back to his mind with vivid meaning during his long sohtary
walks. He never doubted that he knew for certain where
Evander's palace stood, and where the cave of Cacus opened
on the Tiber. The difficulties of modern antiquarian research
had not been yet suggested, and his fancy was free to map out
the topography of the seven hills as pleased him best. Yet
he complained that nowhere was less known about Eome than
in Rome itseU.2 This ignorance he judged the most fatal
obstacle to the resurrection of the city.3 The palaces where
dwelt those heroes of the past, had faUen into ruins ; the
temples of the gods were desecrated ; the triumphal arches
were crumbling ; the very waUs had yielded to decay. None
of the Eomans cared to arrest destruction ; they even robbed
the marble columns and entablatures in order to deck Naples
with the spoils.4 The last remnants of the city would soon,
1 Epist. Fam. lib. ii. 14, p. 605 ; lib. vi. 2, p. 657.
2 ' Qui enim hodie magis ignari rerum Romanarum sunt, quam
Eomani Cives ? Invitus dico, nusquam minus Boma cognoscitur quam
Eomie.' Epist. Fam. lib. ii. 14, p. 658.
3 ' Quis enim dubitare potest, quin illico surrectura sit si coeperit se
Eoma eognoscere ? ' Ibid.
4 ' Vi vel senio collapsa palatia, qua quondam ingentes tenuere viri,
diruptos arcus triumphales . . . indignum de vestris marmoreis colum-
nis, de liminibus templorum, ad quae nuper ex toto orbe concursus devo-
tissimus fiebat, de imaginibus sepulchrorum, sub quibus patrum ves-
trorum venerabilis cinis erat, ut reliquas sileam, desidiosa Neapolis
adornatur.' Ibid. p. 536.

UO RENAISSANCE IN ITALY
he exclaimed, be leveUed with the ground. Time has been
unable to destroy them ; but man was ruining what Time had
spared.1 There is no doubt that, shortly before the date of Petrarch's
visits to Eome, the city had suffered grievously in its monu
ments. We know, for instance, that the best preserved of the
theatres, baths, and tombs formed the residences and fortresses
of nobles in the Middle Ages ; and when we read that in 1258
the senator Brancaleone found it necessary to destroy one
hundred and forty of these fortified dwellings, we obtain a
standard for measuring the injury that must have ensued to
precious works of classic architecture. The ruins, moreover,
as Petrarch hinted, had been used as quarries. What was worse,
the burghers burned the marbles, rich, perhaps, with inscrip
tions and carved bas-reliefs, for Ume. We shall shortly see
what Poggio relates upon this topic. For the present it wUl
suffice to quote an epigram of Pius H., written some time
after the revival of enthusiasm for antiquity : —
Oblectat me, Roma, tuas spectare ruinas.
Ex cujus lapsu gloria prisca patet.
Sed tuus hic populus muris d'efossa vetustis
Calcis in obsequium marmora dura coquit.
Impia ter centum si sic gens egerit annos,
Nullum hic indicium nobilitatis erit.2

¦ ' Quanta quod integrae fuit olim gloria Romas,
Reliquiae testantur adhuc, quas longior aatas
Frangere non valuit, non vis, aut ira cruenti
Hostis, ab egregiis franguntur civibus heu, heu.'
Petr. Epist. Metr. lib. ii. p. 98.
* ' It delights me to contemplate thy ruins, Eome, the witness amid
desolation to thy pristine grandeur. But thy people burn thy marbles
for lime, and three centuries of this sacrilege will destroy all sign of thy
nobleness.' Compare a letter from Alberto degli Alberti to Giovanni
de' Medici, quoted by Fabroni, Cosmi Vita, Adnot. 86. The real pride
of Eome was still her ruins. Nicole and Ugo da Este journeyed in 1396
to Eome, ' per vedere queUe magnificenze antiche ohe al presente si
possono vedere in Eoma.' Murat. xxiv. 845.

POGGIO ON THE EUINS OF EOME 111
Poggio Bracciolini opens a new epoch in Eoman topo
graphy. The ruins that had moved the superstitious wondei
of the Middle Ages, that had excited Eienzi to patriotic enthu
siasm, and Petrarch to reflections on the instabiUty of human
things, were now for the first time studied in a truly anti
quarian spirit. Poggio read them like a book, comparing the
testimony they rendered with that of Livy, Vitruvius, and
Frontinus, and seeking to compile a catalogue of the existing
fragments of old Eome. The first section of his treatise
'De VarietateFortunaa,' forms by far the mostimportant source
of information we possess relating to the state of Eome in the
fifteenth century.1 It appears that the Baths of Caracalla
and Diocletian could still boast of columns and marble incrus
tations, but that within Poggio's own recollection the marbles
had been stripped from Caeciha Metella's tomb, and the so-
caUed Temple of Concord had been pUlaged.2 Among the
ruins ascribed to the period of the EepubUc are mentioned a
bridge, an arch, a tomb, a temple, a buUding on the Capitol,
and the pyramid of Cestius.3 Besides these, Poggio enume
rates, as referable chiefly to the Imperial age, eleven temples,
seven thermce, the Arches of Titus, Severus, and Constantine,
parts of the Arches of Trajan, Faustina, and GaUienus, the
Cohseum, the Theatres of Pompey and MarceUus, the Circus
Agonahs and Circus Maximus, the Columns of Trajan and
Antonine, the two horses ascribed to Pheidias and Praxiteles.

1 My references are made to the Paris edition of 1723. The first
book is sometimes cited under the title of Urbis Romee Descriptio.
2 ' Juxta viam Appiam, ad secundum lapidem, integrum vidi sepul
chrum L. Cseciliaa Metellse, opus egregium, et id ipsum tot sfficulis in-
tactum, ad calcem postea majori ex parte exterminatum ' (p. 19).
'Capitolio contigua forum versus superest porticus aedis Concordias,
quam, cum primum ad urbem accessi, vidi fere integram, opere mar-
moreo admodum specioso ; Eomani postmodum, ad calcem sedem totam
et porticus partem, disjectis columnis, sunt demoliti.' Ibid.
5 Pp. 8. 9.

112 EENAISSANCE IN ITALY
together with other marble statues, one bronze equestrian
statue, and the mausoleums of Augustus and Hadrian.
We have to regret that Poggio's description was subser
vient and introductory to a rhetorical dissertation. Had he
apphed himself to the task of tabulating more minutely what
he had observed, his work would have been infinitely precious
to the archaeologist. No one knew more about the Eoman
buildings than he did. No one felt the impression of their
majesty in desolation more profoundly. The mighty city
appeared to him, he said, like the corpse of a giant, like a
queen in slavery. The sight of her magnificence, despoUed
and shorn of ornaments as she had been, moved him daUy
to deeper admiration. It was his custom to lead strangers
from point to point among the ruins, in order to enjoy the
effect produced upon fresh minds by their stupendous
evidence of strength and greatness in decay.
The pathos of this former empress of the world exposed
to insult and indignity had not been first felt by Poggio.
Petrarch described her as an aged matron with grey hair and
pale cheeks, whose torn and sordid raiment iU accorded with
the nobleness of her demeanour.1 Fazio degli Uberti personi
fied her as a majestic woman, wrapped around with rags,
who pointed out to him the ruins of her city, ' to the end
that he might understand how fair she was in years of old.' 2
In this way a sentimental feehng for the rehcs of the
past grew up and flourished side by side with the archaeo
logical interest they excited. The literature of the Eenaissance
abounds in matter that might be used in iUustration of this
remark,3 while nothing was commoner in art than to paint
for backgrounds broken arches and decayed buildings, 'whose
1 De PacificanM Italid, Ad Carolum Quartum, p. 531.
* In the Dittamondo, about 1360.
• Such, for example, as Boccaccio's description of the ruins of Baite
in the Fiammetta, Sannazzaro's lines on the ruins of Cumaa, tineas
Sylvius Picoolomini's notes on ancient sites in Italy.

CIEIAC OF ANCONA 113
ruins are even pitied.' The double impulse of romantic
sentiment and antiquarian curiosity, set going in this age of
the Eevival, contributed no Uttle to the development of
architecture, sculpture, and painting. In the section of my
work which deals with the fine arts in Italy wiU be found
the proper sequel to this subject. Meanwhile the history of
antiquarian research in Eome itself wiU be resumed in an •
other chapter of this volume.
Among the representative men of the first period of the
Eevival must be mentioned an enthusiast who devoted his
whole life to topographical studies and to the copying of
classical inscriptions. Ciriaco de' PizzicoUi was born about
1404 at Ancona, and from this town he took the name he
bears among the learned. Like many other pioneers of
erudition, he was educated for commerce, and had slender
opportunities for acquiring the dead languages in his youth.
His manhood was spent in restless journeying, at first under
taken for the purposes of trade, but afterwards for the
sole object of discovery. Smitten with the zeal for classical
antiquity, he made himself a tolerable Latin scholar, and
gained a fair knowledge of Greek. In the course of his long
wanderings he ransacked every part of Italy, Greece, and
the Greek islands, collecting medals, gems, and fragments of
sculpture, buying manuscripts, transcribing records, and
amassing a miscellaneous store of archaeological information.
The enthusiasm that possessed him was so untempered by
sobriety that it excited the suspicion of contemporaries.
Some regarded him as a man of genuine learning ; others
spoke of him as a flighty, boastful, and untrustworthy fanatic.'
1 Filippo Maria Visconti is said to have denounced him as an im
postor. Ambrogio Traversari mentions his coins and gems with mis
trust. Poggio describes him as a conceited fellow with no claim to
erudition. On the other hand, he gained the confidence of Eugenius IV.,
and received the panegyrics of Filelfo, Barbaro, Bruni, and others
Sec Tiraboschi, vol. vi. lib. i. cap. 5.
II I

114 RENAISSANCE IN ITALY
The mistakes he made in copying inscriptions depreciated the
general value of his labours, whUe he was even accused of
having passed off fabrications on the credulity of the public.
The question of his alleged forgeries has been discussed at
length by Tiraboschi.1 To settle it at this distance of time
is both unimportant and impossible. WhUe we may well
believe that Ciriac was a conceited enthusiast, accepting as
genuine what he ought to have rejected, and interpreting
according to his fancy rather than the letter of his text, his
life retains real value for the student of the Eevival. In him
the curiosity of the new age reached its acme of expansiveness,
The passion for discovery pursued him from shore to shore,
and the vision of the past, to be reconquered by the energy of
the present, haunted his imagination tiU the moment of his
death. When asked what object he had set his heart upon in
those perpetual journeyings, he answered, ' I go to awake the
dead.' That word, the motto for the first age of the Eevival,
explains the fanaticism of Ciriac, and is a sufficient title to
fame. 1 In the place just cited. The temptation, at this epoch of discovery,
when criticism was at a low ebb, and curiosity was frantic, to pass off
forgeries upon the learned world must have been very great. The most
curious example of this literary deception is afforded by Annius of
Viterbo, who, in 1498, published seventeen books of spurious histories,
pretending to be the lost works of Manetho, Berosus, Fabius Pictor,
Archilochus, Cato, &c. Whether he was himself an impostor or a dupe
is doubtful. A few of his contemporaries denounced the histories as
patent fabrications. The majority accepted them as genuine. Their
worthlessness has long been undisputed. See Tiraboschi, vol. vi. lib,
iii. cap. 1.

115

CHAPTEE IV
BEOOND PEEIOD OF HUMANISM
Intricacy of the Subject — Division into Four Periods — Place of Florenoe
— Social Conditions favourable to Culture — Palla degli Strozzi — His
Encouragement of Greek Studies — Plan of a Pubhc Library — His
Exile — Cosimo de' Medici — His Patronage of Learning — Political
Character — Love of Building — Generosity to Students — Foundation
of Libraries — Vespasiano and Thomas of Sarzana — Niccolo de' Niccoli
— His Collection of Codices — Description of his Mode of Life
— His Fame as a Latinist — Lionardo Bruni — His Biography —
Translations from the Greek — Latin Treatises and Histories — His
Burial in Santa Croce — Carlo Aretino — Fame as a Lecturer — The
Florentine Chancery — Matteo Palmieri — Giannozzo Manetti — His
Hebrew Studies — His Public Career — His Eloquence — Manetti ruined
by the Medici — His Life in Exile at Naples — Estimate of his Talents
— Ambrogio Traversari — Study of Greek Fathers — General of the
Camaldolese Order— Humanism and Monasticism — The Council of
Florence — Florentine Opinion about the Greeks — Gemistus Pletho
— His Life — His Philosophy — His Influence at Florence — Cosimo de'
Medici and the Florentine Academy — Study of Plato— Pletho's
Writings — Platonists and Aristotelians in Italy and Greece — Bessarion
—His Patronage of Greek Eefugees in Eome — Humanism in the
Smaller Bepublics — In Venice.
The great difficulty with which a critic desirous of rendering
a succinct account of this phase of Italian culture has to deal,
is the variety and complexity of the subject. It is easy to
perceive the unity of the humanistic movement, and to regard
the scholars of the fifteenth century as a Uterary community
with weU-defined relations to each other. Yet when we
attempt to trace the growth of scholarship in aU its branches,
the peculiar conditions of poUtical and social Ufe in Italy
present almost insuperable obstacles to any continuity of
treatment. The republics, the principalities, and the Church i2

116 EENAISSANCE IN ITALY
have each their separate existence. Venice, Florence, Naples,
Milan, Eome, Ferrara, form distinct and independent centres,
imposing their own speciaUties upon the intellectual activity
of citizens and aliens. The humanists, meanwhUe, to some
extent efface these local differences, spreading a network of
common culture over cities and societies divided by aU else
but interest in learning. To these combinations and permu
tations, arising from the contact of the scholars with their
patrons in the several States of Italy, is due the intricacy of the
history of the Eevival. The same men of eminence appear by
turns in each of the chief Courts and commonwealths, passing
with bewUdering rapidity from north to south and back again,
in one place demanding attention under one head of the sub
ject, in another presenting new yet not less important topics
for investigation. What Filippo Maria Visconti, for instance,
required from Filelfo had but httle in common with the claims
made on him by Nicholas V., while his activity as a satirist
and partisan at Florence differed from his labour as a lecturer
at Siena. Again, the biography of each humanist to some
extent involves that of all his contemporaries. The coteries
of Eome are influenced by the cliques of Naples' ; the quarrels
of Lorenzo VaUa ramify into the squabbles of Guarino;
political animosity combines with Uterary jealousy in the
disputes of Poggio with Filelfo. While some of the most emi
nent professors remain stationary in their native or adopted
towns, others move to and fro with the speed of comets.
From time to time, at Eome or elsewhere, a patron rises, who
assembles all the wandering stars around himself. His death
disperses the group ; or accidents rouse jealousy among them,
and cause secessions from the circle. Then fresh combina
tions have to be considered. In no one city can we trace firm
chronological progression, or discover the fixed local character
which justifies our dividing the history of Italian painting
by its schools. To avoid repetition, and to preserve an even

FOUE PEEIODS UT
ourrent of narration amid so much that is shifting, is almost
impossible. Some method may be introduced by sketching briefly at
the outset the principal periods through which the humanistic
movement passed. Though to a certain extent arbitrary,
these periods mark distinct moments in an evolution uniform
in spite of its complexity.
The first, starting with Petrarch, and including the lives
and labours of those men he personaUy influenced, has been
traced in a preceding chapter. This was the age of inspiration
and discovery, when the enthusiasm for antiquity was gener
ated and the remnants of the classics were accumulated. The
second may be described as the age of arrangement and trans
lation. The first great hbraries were founded in this period ;
the study of Greek was pursued in earnest, and the Greek
authors were rendered into Latin. Bound Cosimo de' Medici
at Florence, AUonso the Magnanimous at Naples, and Nicho
las V. in Eome the leaders of the Eenaissance at this time
converge. The third is the age of academies. The literary
repubUc, formed during the first and second periods, now
gathers into coteries, whereof the Platonic Academy at Flo
rence, that of Pontanus at Naples, that of Pomponius Laetus
in Eome, and that of Aldus Manutius at Venice are the most
important. Scholarship begins to exhibit a marked improve
ment in aU that concerns style and taste. At the same time
ItaUan erudition reaches its maximum in PoUziano. Exter
nally this third period is distinguished by the rapid spread of
printing and the consequent downfall of the humanists as a
class. In the fourth period we notice a gradual decline of
learning ; BBsthetic and styhstic scholarship begins to claim
exclusive attention. This is the age of the purists, over whom
Bembo exercises the sway of a dictator, whUe the Court of
Leo X. furnishes the most briUiant assemblage of literati in
Europe. Erudition, properly so called, is now upon the point

118 EENAISSANCE IN ITALY
of being transplanted beyond the Alps, and the Eeviva of
Learning closes for the historian of Italy.
Although the essential feature of this subject is variety,
and though each city of Italy contributed its quota to the sum
of culture, attention has now to be directed in a special sense
on Florence. Nothing is more obvious to the student who
has mastered the first difficulties caused by the intricacy of
ItaUan history, than the fact that all the mental force of the
nation was generated in Tuscany, and radiated thence, as
from a centre of vital heat and Ught, over the rest of the
peninsula. This is true of the fine arts no less than of Itahan
poetry, of the revival of learning as well as of the origin of
science. From the repubUcs of Tuscany, and from Florence
in particular, proceeded the impulse and the energy which led
to fruitful results in aU of these departments. In proportion
as Florence continued to absorb the neighbouring free States
into herself, her mteUectual pre-eminence became the more
unquestionable. Arezzo, Volterra, Cortona, Montepulciano,
Prato, and Pistoja were but rivulets feeding the stream of
Florentine industry.
What caused this superiority of the Tuscans is a problem
as difficult to solve as the similar problem with respect to
Athens among the states of Greece. Something may no
doubt be attributed to ethnology, and something to chmate.
Much, again, was due to the purity of a dialect which retained
more of native energy and literary capacity, and which had
suffered less from barbarian admixtures than the dialects of
northern or of southern Italy. The conquest of the Lombards
passed the Tuscans by, nor did feudal institutions take the
same root in the valley of the Arno which they struck in the
kingdom of Naples. The cities of Tuscany were therefore
less exposed to foreign influences than the rest of Italy.
While they pursued their course of internal growth in com
parative traiiquilUty, they were better fitted for reviving the

FLORENCE 119
past glories of Latin civihsation upon its native soil. The free
institutions of the Florentine commonwealth must also be
taken into account.
In Florence, U anywhere in Italy, existed the conditions
under which a repubhc of letters and of culture could be
formed. The aristocracy of Naples indulged the semi-savage
tastes of territorial seigneurs ; the nobles of Eome dehghted
in feats of arms and shared their wealth with retinues of bravi ;
the great families of Umbria, Eomagna, and the March fol
lowed the profession of condottieri ; the Lombards were down
trodden by their Despots and deprived of individual freedom ;
the Genoese developed into Uttle better than traders and sea-
robbers ; the Sienese, divided by the factions of their Monti,
had small leisure or common public feeling left for study.
Florence meanwhile could boast a population of burghers
noble by taste and culture, owing less to ancestry than to
personal eminence, devoting their energies to civic ambition
worthy of the Eomans, and to mental activity which reminds
us of the ancient Greeks. Between the people and this aris
tocracy of wealth and intellect there was at Florence no
division hke that which separated the Venetian gentiluomini
from the cittadini. The so-caUed nobili and popolani did not,
as in Venice, form a caste apart, bound to the service of a
tyrannous state-system. The very mobility which proved the
ultimate source of disruption and of ruin to the commonwealth,
aided the inteUectual development of Florence. Stagnation
and oppression were aUke unknown. Here, therefore, and
here alone, was created a public capable instinctively of com
prehending what is beautiful in art and humane in letters, a
race of craftsmen and of scholars who knew that their labours
could not faU to be appreciated, and a class of patrons who
sought no better bestowal of their wealth than on those arts
and sciences which dignify the life of man. The Florentines,
moreover, as a nation, were animated with the strongest sense

120 EENAISSANCE IN ITALY
of the greatness and the splendour of Florence. Like the
Athenians of old, they had no warmer passion than their love
for their city. However much we may deplore the rancorous
dissensions which from tune to time spUt up the common
wealth into parties, the remorseless foreign policy which
destroyed Pisa, the pohtical meanness of the Medici, and the
base egotism of the ottimati, the fact remains that, asstheti-
cally and intellectually, Florence was ' a city glorious,' a
realised ideal of culture and humanity for aU the rest of Italy,
and, through Italian influence in general, for modern Europe
and for us.
What makes the part played by Florence in the history of
learning the more remarkable is, that the chiefs of the poUtical
factions were at the same time the leaders of intellectual pro
gress. Einaldo degli Albizzi and Cosimo de' Medici, while
opposed as antagonists in a duel to the death upon the stage
of the republic, vied with each other in the patronage they
extended to men of letters. Einaldo was himself no mean
scholar ; and he chose one of the greatest men of the age,
Tommaso da Sarzana, to be tutor to his ehUdren. Of PaUa
degU Strozzi's services in the cause of Greek learning I have
already spoken in the second chapter of this volume. Beside
the invitation which he caused to be sent to Manuel Chryso
loras, he employed his wealth and influence in providing books
necessary for the prosecution of Hellenic studies. 'Messer
Palla,' says Vespasiano, ' sent to Greece for countless volumes,
all at his own cost. The " Cosmography " of Ptolemy, together
with the picture made to Ulustrateit, the " Lives " of Plutarch,
the works of Plato, and very many other writings of phUoso-
phers, he got from Constantinople. The " Pohtics" of Aristotle
were not in Italy until Messer Palla sent for them ; and when
Messer Lionardo of Arezzo translated them, he had the copy
from his hands.' ' In the same spirit of practical generosity
' Vespasiano, p. 272,

MESSEE PALLA'S EXILE 121
Palla degli Strozzi devoted his leisure and his energies to the
improvement of the studio pubblico at Florence, giving it that
character of humane culture which it retained throughout the
age of the Eenaissance.1 To him, again, belongs the glory of
having first coUected books for the express purpose of found
ing a pubhc Ubrary. This project had occupied the mind of
Petrarch, and its utUity had been recognised by Coluccio
de' Salutati,2 but no one had as yet arisen to accomplish it.
' Being passionately fond of Uterature, Messer Palla always
kept copyists in his own house and outside it, of the best who
were hi Florence, both for Greek and Latin books ; and all
the books he could find he purchased, on aU subjects, being
minded to found a most noble hbrary in Santa Trinita, and
to erect there a most beautiful building for the purpose. He
wished that it should be open to the pubhc, and he chose
Santa Trinity because it was in the centre of Florence, a site
of great convenience to everybody. His disasters supervened,
and what he had designed he could not execute.' 3
The calamities aUuded to by Vespasiano may be briefly
told. PaUa degU Strozzi, better fitted by nature for study
than for party warfare, was one of the richest of the merchant
princes of Florence. In the catasto of 1427 his property was
valued at one-fifth more than that returned by Giovanni, then
che chief of the Medicean famUy ; and the extraordinary tax
(gravezza) imposed upon it reached the sum of 800 florins.4
During the conflict for power carried on between the Albizzi
and the Medici he strove to preserve a neutral attitude ; but
after Cosimo's return from exile, in 1434, the presence of so
powerful and rich a leader in the State seemed dangerous
to the Medicean party. It was their pohcy to annihUate all
greatness but their own, and to reduce the Florentines to
slavery by creating a body of dependents and allies whose
1 Vespasiano, p. 273. ' See Voigt, p. 202.
« Vespasiano, p. 275. « Ibid. p. 276.

122 EENAISSANCE IN ITALY
interests should be bound up with their own supremacy.1
Palla degli Strozzi was accordingly banished to Padua for ten
years, nor, at the expiration of this period, was he suffered
to return to Florence. He died in exile, separated from his
children, who shared the same fate in other parts of Italy,
while Florence lost the services of the most enlightened of her
sons.2 Amid the many tribulations of his latter years Palla
continued to derive comfort from study. John Argyropoulos
was his guest at Padua, where the collection of books and
the cultivation of Greek learning went on with no less vigour
than at Florence.
The work begun by PaUa degU Strozzi at Florence was
ably continued by his enemy Cosimo de' Medici. Though
the historian cannot respect this man, whose mean and selfish
ambition undermined the hberties of his native city, there is
no doubt that he deserves the credit of a prudent and munifi
cent Maecenas. No Italian of his epoch combined zeal for
learning and generosity in all that could advance the interests
of arts and letters, more characteristicaUy, with pohtical cor
ruption and cynical egotism. Early in life Cosimo entered
his father's house of business, and developed a rare faculty
for finance. This faculty he afterwards employed in the
administration of the State, as well as in the augmentation
of the riches of his famUy by trade. As he gained political
importance, he made it his prime object to place out monies
in the hands of needy citizens, and to involve the public
affairs of Florence with his own commerce by means of loans
and other expedients. He not only attached individuals by
debts and obhgations to his person, but he also rendered it
difficult to control the State expenditure without regard to
his private bank. Few men have better understood the value
' See Von Eeumont, vol. i. pp. 147-153, for the cruel treatment ol
the Albizzi and other leading oitizens.
" See Vespasiano, pp. 283-287.

COSIMO DE' MEDICI 123
of money in the acquisition of power, or the advantage of so
using it that jealousy should not be roused by personal
display. ' Envy,' he remarked, ' is a plant you must not
water.' Accordingly, whUe he spent large sums on public
works, he declined BruneUeschi's sumptuous project for a
palace, on the score that such a dwelling was more fitted
for a prince than a citizen. In his habits he was temperate
and simple. Games of hazard he abhorred, and found his
recreation in the company of learned men. Sometimes, but
rarely, he played at chess. Contemporaries recorded how,
hke an ancient Eoman, he rose early in the morning to prune
his own pear trees and to plant his vines. In aU things
he preferred the reality to the display of power and riches.
WhUe wielding the supreme authority of Florence, he seemed
intent upon the duU work of the counting-house. Other men
were put forward in the execution of designs that he had
planned ; and this pohcy of ruUng the State by cat's-paws
was foUowed so consistently, that at the end of his Ufe his-
influence was threatened by the very instruments he had
created. At the same time he exercised -virtual despotism
with a pitUess tenacity unsurpassed by the Visconti. The
cruelty with which he pushed the Albizzi to their ruin, pro
longed the exUe of PaUa degU Strozzi, reduced Giannozzo
Manetti to beggary, and oppressed his rivals in general with
forced loans — using taxation like a poignard, to quote a phrase
from Guicciardini — is enough to show that only prudence
caused him to refrain from violence.1 A cold and calculating
policy, far-sighted, covert, and secretive, governed aU the
measures he took for fastening his famUy on Florence. The
result was that the roots of the Medici, whUe they seemed to
take hold slowly, struck deep ; you might fancy they were
1 Manetti's obligations to the commune were raised by arbitrary im
positions to the enormous sum of 135,000 golden florins. He was broken
in his trade and forced to live on charity in exile.

124 EENAISSANCE IN ITALY
nowhere, just because they had left no part unpenetratei
The EepubUc, Uke GulUver in Liliput, was tied down by a
thousand threads, each almost imperceptible, but so varied in
quality and so subtly interwoven that to escape from the net
work was impossible.
Much of the influence acquired by Cosimo, and transmitted
to his descendants, was due to sympathy with the intellectual
movement of the age. He had received a solid education ;
and though he was not a Greek scholar, his mind was open
to the interests which in the fifteenth century absorbed
the Florentines. He collected manuscripts, gems, coins, and
inscriptions, employing the resources of his banking house
and engaging his commercial agents in this work. Painters
and sculptors, no less than scholars and copyists, found in
him a liberal patron. At the death of his son Piero the
treasures of the Casa Medici, not counting plate and costly
furniture, were valued at 30,000 golden florins.1 The sums
of money spent by him in building were enormous. It was
reckoned that, one year with another, he disbursed from
15,000 to 18,000 golden florins annually in edifices for the
public use.2 Of these the most important were the Convent
of S. Marco, which altogether cost about 70,000 florins ; S.
Lorenzo, which cost another 40,000 ; and the Abbey of Fiesole.
On his own palace he expended 60,000 florins, whUe the
building of his viUas at Careggi and Cafaggiuolo impUed a
further large expenditure. Not a shilling of this money was
wasted ; for while Cosimo avoided the reproach of personal
extravagance, he gave work to multitudes of labourers, who
received their wages regularly every Saturday at his office.
To this free use of wealth in the employment of artisans may
be ascribed the popularity of the Medici with the lower classes,
which was more than once so useful to them at a perUous
turn of fortune.
' See Von Eeumont, vol. ii. p. 176. s Vespasiano, p. 257.

MONEY SPENT IN BUILDING 12«
Comprehending the conditions under which tyranny might
be successfuUy practised in the fifteenth century, Cosimo
attached great value to this generosity. He used, in later
Ufe, to regret that ' he had not begun to spend money upon
pubhc works ten years earlier than he did.' 1 Every costly
buUding that bore his name, each library he opened to the
pubUc, and all the donations lavished upon scholars served
the double purpose of cementing the despotism of his house
and of gratifying his personal enthusiasm for culture. Super
stition mingled with these motives of the tyrant and the
dUettante. Knowing that much of his wealth had been ill-
gotten, he besought the Pope, Eugenius, to indicate a proper
way of restitution. Eugenius advised him to spend 10,000
florins on the Convent of S. Marco. Thereupon Cosimo laid
out considerably more than four times that sum, adding the
famous Marcian Library, and treating the new foundation of
the Osservanza, one of the Pope's favourite crotchets, with
more than princely Uberality.2
Of his generosity to men of letters the most striking
detaUs are recorded. When Niccolo de' Niccoli ruined him
self by buying books, Cosimo opened for him an unlimited
credit with the Medicean bank. The cashiers received orders
to honour the old scholar's drafts ; and in this way Niccolo
drew 500 ducats for his private needs.3 Tommaso Parentu-
ceUi was treated with no less magnificence. As Bishop of
Bologna, soon after his patron Albergati's death, he found
himseK with very meagre revenues and no immediate pros
pect of preferment. Yet the expenses of his station were con-
1 Vespasiano, p. 257.
* Ibid. p. 252. Cosimo ordered his clerks to honour all drafts pre
sented with the signature of one of the chief brethren of the convent.
4 Aveva ordinato al banco, che tutti i danari, che gli fussino tratti per
polizza d' uno religioso de primi del convento, gli pagasse, e mettessegli
a suo conto, e fussino che somma si volessino.'
' Vespasiano, pp. 264, 475.

126 RENAISSANCE IN ITALY
siderable, and he had occasion to request a loan from the
Medici. Cosimo issued a circular letter to his correspondents,
engaging them to supply Tommaso with what sums of money
he might want.1 When the Bishop of Bologna assumed the
tiara, with the name of Nicholas V., he rewarded Cosimo by
making him his banker; and the Jubilee bringing 100,000
ducats into the Papal treasury, the obligation was repaid a
hundredfold.2 The chief benefit conferred by Cosimo de' Medici on learn
ing was the accumulation and the housing of large publio
libraries. During his exUe (Oct. 3, 1433— Oct. 1, 1434) he
built the Library of S. Giorgio Maggiore at Venice, and after
his return to Florence he formed three separate collections of
MSS. While the haU of the Library of S. Marco was in
process of construction, Niccolo de' NiccoU died, in 1437,
bequeathing his 800 MSS., valued at 6,000 golden florins, to
sixteen trustees. Among these were Cosimo and Lorenzo de'
Medici, Ambrogio Traversari, Lionardo Bruni, Carlo Marsup
pini, Poggio Bracciolini, Giannozzo Manetti, and Franco
Sacehetti. At the same time the estate of Niccolo was com
promised by heavy debts. These debts Cosimo canceUed,
obtaining in exchange the right to dispose of the Ubrary. In
1441 the hall of the convent was finished. Four hundred of
Niccolo's MSS. were placed there, with this inscription upon
each : Ex hereditate doctissimi viri Nicolai de Nicolis de
Florentid. Tommaso ParentuceUi made a catalogue at
Cosimo's request, in which he not only noted the titles of
NiccoU's books, but also marked the names of others wanting
to complete the collection. This catalogue afterwards served
as a guide to the founders of the Ubraries of Fiesole, Urbino,
and Pesaro, and was, says Vespasiano, indispensable to book-
collectors.3 Of the remaining 400 volumes Cosimo kept some
' Vespasiano, pp. 29, 264. * Ibid. pp. 34, 265.
* See Vespasiano's Life of Nicholas V. p. 26.

LIBRARIES 127
for his own (the Medicean) Ubrary, and some he gave to
friends. At the same time he spared no pains in adding to
the Marcian collection. His agents received instructions to
buy codices, while Vespasiano and Fra Giuliano Lapaccini
were employed in copying rare MSS. As soon as Cosimo had
finished building the Abbey of Fiesole, he set about providing
this also with a Ubrary suited to the wants of learned ecclesi
astics. Of the method he pursued, Vespasiano, who acted as
his agent, has transmitted the foUowing account : ' — ' One
day, when I was in his room, he said to me, " What plan can
you recommend for the formation of this library ? " I answered
that to buy the books would be impossible, since they could
not be purchased. " What, then, do you propose ? " he
added. I told him that they must be copied. He then asked
if I would undertake the business. I replied that I was
willing. He bade me begin at my leisure, saying that he left
all to me ; and for the monies wanted day by day, he ordered
that Don Arcangelo, at that time prior of the monastery,
should draw cheques upon his bank, which should be
honoured. After beginning the coUection, since it was his
wUl that it should be finished with all speed possible, and
money was not lacking, I soon engaged forty-five copyists, and
in twenty-two months provided two hundred volumes, fol
lowing the admirable Ust furnished by Pope Nicholas V."
The two libraries thus formed by Cosimo for the Convents of
S. Marco and Fiesole, together with his own private coUec-
tions, constitute the oldest portion of the present Laurentian
Library. On the title-pages of many venerable MSS. may
still be read inscriptions, testifying to the munificence of the
Medici, and calUng upon pious students to remember the
souls of their benefactors in their prayers2 — Orato itaque
lector ut gloria et dwitioe sint in domo ejus justitia ejus et
maneat in steculum scecuH.
1 Vita di Cosimo, p. 254. 2 See Von Eeumont, vol. i. p. 578.

128 EENAISSANCE IN ITALY
Cosimo's zeal for learning was not confined to the build
ing of libraries or to book-coUecting. His palace formed the
centre of a Uterary and phUosophical society, which united
all the wits of Florence and the visitors who crowded to the
capital of culture. Vespasiano expressly states that ' he was
always the father and benefactor of those who showed any
exceUence.' * Distinguished by versatiUty of tastes and com
prehensive intellect, he formed his own opinion of the men of
eminence with whom he came in contact, and conversed with
each upon his special subject. ' When giving audience to a
scholar, he discoursed concerning letters ; in the company of
theologians he showed his acquaintance with theology, a
branch of learning always studied by him with delight. So
also with regard to philosophy. Astrologers found him well
versed in their science, for he somewhat lent faith to astrology
and employed it on certain private occasions. Musicians in
like manner perceived his mastery of music, wherein he much
delighted. The same was true about sculpture and painting ;
both of these arts he understood completely, and showed
great favour to aU worthy craftsmen. In architecture he
was a consummate judge, for without his opinion and advice
no building was begun or carried to completion.' 2
The discernment of character, possessed by Cosimo in a
very high degree, not only enabled him to extend enlightened
patronage to arts and letters, but also to provide for the future
needs of erudition. Stimulated by the presence of the Greeks
who crowded Florence during the sitting of the Council in
1438, he formed a plan for encouraging HeUenic studies. It
was he who founded the Platonic Academy, and educated
Marsilio Ficino, the son of his physician, for the special
purpose of mterpreting Greek phUosophy. Ficino, in a letter
to Lorenzo de' Medici, observes that during twelve years he
1 Vita di Cosimo, p. 266.
Condensed from Vespasiano, p. 258.

NICCOLO DE' NICCOLI 129
had conversed with Cosimo on matters of philosophy, and
always found him as acute in reasoning as he was prudent
and powerful in action. ' I owe to Plato much, to Cosimo no
less. He reaUsed for me the virtues of which Plato gave me
the conception.' Thus the man whose poUtical cynicism is
enshrined in such apophthegms as these : — ' A few eUs of
scarlet would fiU Florence with citizens;' 'You cannot
govern a State with paternosters ;' ' Better the city ruined
than the city lost to us' — must, by his relations to scholars
and his enthusiasm for culture, stiU command our admiration
and respect.
Among the friends of Cosimo, to whose personal influence
at Florence the Eevival of Learning owed a vigorous impulse,
Niccolo de' NiccoU claims our earliest attention.1 The part he
took in promoting Greek studies has been already noticed, and
we have seen that his private library formed the nucleus
of the Marcian coUection. Of the eight hundred volumes
bequeathed to his executors, the majority had been tran
scribed by his own hand ; for he was assiduous in this labour,
and plumed himself upon his skill in cursive as well as
printed character.2 His whole fortune was expended long
before his death in buying manuscripts or procuring copies
from a distance. ' If he heard of any book in Greek or Latin
not to be had in Florence, he spared no cost in getting it ; the
number of the Latin books which Florence owes entirely to
his generosity cannot be reckoned.' 3 Great, therefore, must
have been the transports of delight with which he welcomed
on one occasion a manuscript containing seven tragedies of
1 What follows I have based on Vespasiano's Life of Niccolo.
Poggio's Funeral Oration, and his letter to Carlo Aretino on the death
of his friend Niccolo, are to the same effect. PoggU Opera, pp. 270,
342. 2 Vespasiano, p. 471. ' Le scriveva di sua mano o di lettera eorsiva
o formata, che dell' una lettera e dell' altra era bellissimo sorittore.'
3 Ibid. p. 473.
II X

180 RENAISSANCE IN ITALY
Sophocles, six of53schylus,andthe'Argonautica' ofApoUoniue
Ehodius.1 Nor was he only eager in coUecting for his own
use. He lent his books so freely that, at the moment of his
death, two hundred volumes were out on loan ; 2 and, when it
seemed that Boccaccio's library would perish from neglect, at
his own cost he provided substantial wooden cases for it in the
Convent of S. Spirito. We must not, however, conclude that
Niccolo was a mere copyist and coUector. On the contrary,
he made a point of collating the several MSS. of an author
on whose text he was engaged, removed obvious errors, and
suggested emendations, helping thus to lay the foundations of
modern criticism. His judgment in matters of style was so
highly valued that it was usual for scholars to submit their
essays to his eyes before they ventured upon publication.
Thus Lionardo Bruni sent him his 'Life of Cicero,' calUng him
' the censor of the Latin tongue.' 3 Notwithstanding his fine
sense of language, Niccolo never appeared before the world
of letters as an author. His enemies made the most of this
reluctance, averring that he knew his own ineptitude, while
his friends referred his silence to an exquisite fastidiousness of
taste.4 It may have been that he remembered the Tacitean
epigram on Galba — omnium consensu capax imperii nisi
imperdsset — and applied it to himself. Certainly his reserve,
in an age noteworthy for arrogant display, has tended to con
fer on him distinction. The position he occupied at Florence
was that of a literary dictator. AU who needed his assistance
and advice were received with urbanity. He threw his house
open to young men of parts, engaged in disputations with the
curious, and provided the ill-educated with teachers. Fo
reigners from all parts of Italy and Europe paid him visits:
' the strangers who came to Florence at that time, if they
1 See a letter of Ambrogio Traversari, quoted by Voigt, p. 155.
* Vespasiano, p. 476. Poggio, p. 271.
* Vespasiano, pp. 473, 478. « Ibid. p. 478. Poggio, p. 343.

THE PORTRAIT OF A SCHOLAR 131
missed the opportunity of seeing him at home, thought they
had not been in Florence." ' The house where he lived was
worthy of his refined taste and cultivated judgment ; for he
had formed a museum of antiquities — inscriptions, marbles,
coins, vases, and engraved gems. There he not only received
students and strangers, but conversed with sculptors and
painters, discussing their inventions as freely as he criticised
the essays of the scholars. It is probable that the classicism
of BruneUeschi and DonateUo, both of whom were among his
intimate friends, may be due in part at least to his discourses
on the manner of the ancients.2 PUny, we know, was one of
his favourite authors ; for, having heard that a complete codex
of the ' Natural Histories ' existed at Lubeck, he left no stone
unturned tiU it had been transferred to Florence.3
Vespasiano's account of his personal habits presents so
vivid a picture that I cannot refrain from translating it at
length : — ' First of aU, he was of a most fair presence ; hvely,
for a smUe was ever on his lips ; and very pleasant in his talk.
He wore clothes of the fairest crimson cloth, down to the
ground. He never married, in order that he might not be
impeded in his studies. A housekeeper provided for his daily
needs. He was above aU men the most cleanly in eating, as
also in all other things. When he sat at table, he ate from
fair antique vases ; and, in like manner, aU his table was
covered with porcelain and other vessels of great beauty. The
cup from which he drank was of crystal or of some other pre
cious stone. To see him at table — a perfect model of the men
of old — was of a truth a charming sight. He always wiUed
that the napkins set before him should be of the whitest, as
weU as aU the linen. Some might wonder at the many vases
he possessed, to whom I answer that things of that sort were
neither so highly valued then, nor so much regarded, as they
1 Vespasiano, p. 477. * Und. p. 479.
» Ibid. p. 474.
k2

132 EENAISSANCE IN ITALY
have since become ; and Niccolo having friends everywhere,
anyone who wished to do him a pleasure would send him
marble statues, or antique vases, carvings, inscriptions, pic
tures from the hands of distinguished masters, and mosaic
tablets. He had a most beautiful map, on which all the parts
and cities of the world were marked ; others of Italy and
Spain, aU painted. Florence could not show a house more
fuU of ornaments than his, or one that had in it a greater
number of graceful objects ; so that aU who went there found
innumerable things of worth to please varieties of taste.'
What distinguished Niccolo was the combination of refinement
and humane breeding with Open-handed generosity and devo
tion to the cause of culture. He. knew how to bring forward
men of promise, and to place them in positions of eminence.
Yet, in return for benefits conferred, he exacted more com
pliance than could be expected from the haughty and unbend
ing temper of distinguished scholars. Opposition and contra
diction roused his jealousy and barbed his caustic speech with
sarcasm. Chrysoloras and Guarino, Aurispa and Filelfo,
after visiting Florence at his invitation, found the city un
endurable through the opposition raised by Niccolo against
them. Among the men of abihty who adorned Florence at this
period, no one stands forth with a more distinguished person
ality than Lionardo Bruni. In his boyhood at Arezzo, where
his parents occupied a humble position, he used, as he tells us
in his 'Commentaries,' ' to gaze on Petrarch's portrait, fervently
desiring that he might win like laurels in the field of scholar
ship. At first, however, being poor and of no reputation, he
was forced to apply his talents to the study of the law. Prom
these uncongenial labours the patronage of Salutato and the
1 Muratori, xix. p. 917. 'Erat in ipso cubiculo picta Francisoi
Petrarcha imago, quam ego quotidie aspiciens, incredibili ardore stu-
diorum ejus incendebar.'

LIONARDO BEUNI 133
influence of Chrysoloras J saved him. Having begun to write
for the pubhc, his fame as a Latinist soon spread so wide that
he was appointed Apostolic Secretary to the Eoman Curia.
After sharing the iU fortunes of John XXIII. at Constance,
and serving under Martin V. at Florence, he was appointed
to the Chancery of the Eepublic in 1427, a post which he
occupied until his death in 1443. His biography, therefore,
illustrates aU that has been said concerning the employment
of humanists in high offices of Church and State. His diplo
matic letters were regarded as models in that kind of com
position, and his pubUc speeches, carefully prepared before
hand, were compared with those of Pericles. Florence was
crowded with the copyists who multiphed his MSS., dispersing
them aU over Europe ; and when he walked abroad, a numerous
train of scholars and of foreigners attended him.2 He moved
with gravity and majesty of person, wearing the red robes
of a Florentine burgher, using few words, but paying marked
courtesy to men of wealth. Among the compositions which
secured his reputation should first be mentioned the Latin
'History of Florence,' a work unique in its kind at that time
in Italy.3 The grateful Eepubhc rewarded their chancellor
by bestowing upon him the citizenship of Florence, and by
exempting the author and his children from taxation. The
high value at which Bruni rated his own Latin scholarship
is proved by his daring to restore the second Decade of Livy
in a compilation entitled ' De Primo BeUo Punico.' His
mediasval erudition was exercised in the history of the Gothic
invasion of Italy, while his more elegant style found ample
scope in Latin Lives of Cicero and Aristotle, in a book of Com
mentaries on his own times, and in ten volumes of Collected
Letters. These original works were possibly of less impor
tance than Bruni's translations from the Greek, which passed
' See above, pp. 77, 80. '' See Vespasiano, p. 436
3 See Vol. I., Age of Despots, pp. 216-218.

134 RENAISSANCE IN ITALY
in his own age for models of sound scholarship as weU as pure
Latinity. The erudition of the fifteenth century had to thank
his industry for critical renderings of Aristotle's ' Ethics,'
' Pohtics,' and ' Economics.' J The ' Politics ' were dedicated to
the Earl of Worcester, and the autograph was sent to England.
Some delay in the acknowledgment of so magnificent a tribute
of respect caused the haughty scholar to transfer the honour
of his dedication to Eugenius IV. He cancelled his first pre
face, substituted a new one, and received the praise and thanks
he sought, in plenty from his Holiness.2 Of Plato Bruni trans
lated the ' Phaedo,' ' Crito,' and ' Apology,' the ' Phsedrus ' and
the ' Gorgias,' together with the ' Epistles.' To these versions
must be added six Lives of Plutarch and two Orations of
Demosthenes. Nor have we thus by any means exhausted the
list of Brum's Latin compositions, which included controver
sial writings, invectives, moral essays, orations, and tracts
on Uterary or antiquarian topics. If we consider that, in the
midst of these severe labours, and under the pressure of his
public engagements, he stiU found time to compose Itahan
Lives of Dante and Petrarch, we shall understand the admir
ation universally expressed by his contemporaries for his com
prehensive talents, and share their gratitude for services so
numerous in the cause of learning. When Messer Lionardo
died in 1443, the priors decreed him a pubUc funeral, ' after the
manner of the ancients.' His corpse was clothed in dark silk,
and on his breast was laid a copy of the Florentine History.
Thus attired, he passed in state to S. Croce, where Giannozzo
Manetti, in the presence of the Signory, the foreign ambassadors,
and the Court of Pope Eugenius, pronounced a funeral oration,
and placed the laurel crown upon his head.3 The monument
1 These last were then thought genuine.
1 Vespasiano, p. 436.
* Ibid. Vita di Manetti, p. 452. Manetti was himself a prior at this
time.

MESSER CARLO ARETINO 1S5
beneath which Messer Lionardo's bones repose is an excel
lent specimen of Florentine sepulchral statuary, executed by
Bernardo EosseUino.
Facing Brum's tomb in S. Croce is that of Carlo Aretino,
wrought with subtler art and in a richer style by Desiderio da
Settignano. Messer Carlo, who succeeded Bruni in the Chan
cery of the EepubUc, shared during his lifetime, as well as in
the pubhc honours paid him at his death, very similar fortunes.
His family name was Marsuppini, and he was born of a good
famUy in Arezzo. Having come to Florence while a youth to
study Greek, he fell under the notice of Niccolo de* Niccoli,
who introduced him to the Medicean family, and procured
him an engagement at a high salary from the UffiziaU dello
Studio. At the time when he began to lecture, Eugenius was
holding his Court at Florence. The cardinals and nephews
of the Pope, attended by foreign ambassadors, and followed
by the apostoUc secretaries, mingled with burghers of
Florence and students from a distance round the desk of the
young scholar. Carlo's reading was known to be extensive,
and his memory was celebrated as prodigious. Yet on the
occasion of this first lecture he far surpassed all that was
expected of him. 'Before a crowd of learned men,' says.
Vespasiano, ' he gave a great proof of his memory, for neither
Greeks nor Eomans had an author from whom he did not
quote.' ' FUelfo, who was also lecturing in Florence at the
time, had the mortification of seeing the larger portion of
his audience transfer themselves to Marsuppini. This wound
to his vanity he never forgave. Through the influence of
Lorenzo de' Medici (Cosimo's younger brother), Carlo
Marsuppini was first made ApostoUc Secretary, and then
promoted to the Chancery of Florence. He was grave in
manner, taciturn in speech, and much given to melancholy.
His contemporaries regarded him as a man of no religion,
' Vita di Carlo d' Arezzo, p. 440.

136 RENAISSANCE IN ITALY
and he was said to have died without confession or commu
nion.1 This did not prevent his being buried in S. Croce with
ceremonies similar to those decreed for Messer Lionardo.
Matteo Palmieri pronounced the funeral oration, and placed
the laurel on his brows. Marsuppini's contributions to
scholarship were chiefly in verse ; among these his translations
of the ' Batrachomyomachia ' and the first book of the ' Iliad '
were highly valued.
Matteo Palmieri, who pronounced the funeral oration of
Messer Carlo Aretino, sprang from an honourable Florentine
stock, and by his own abilities rose to a station of considerable
public influence. He is principally famous as the author of
a mystical poem called ' Citta di Vita,' which, though it was
condemned for its heretical opinions, obtained from Ficinus
for its author the title of Poeta Theologicus. To discuss the
circumstances under which this aUegory in the style of Dante
was composed, the secresy in which it was involved until the
poet's death, and the relation of Palmieri's views to heresies
in vogue at Florence, belongs to a future section of my work,2
He claims a passing notice here among the humanists who
acquired high place and honour by the credit of his eloquence
and style.
Giannozzo Manetti belonged to an illustrious house, and
in his youth, like other weU-born Florentines, was trained for
mercantUe affairs.3 At the age of five-and-twenty he threw
off the parental control, and gave himseU entirely to letters.
So obstinate was his industry in the acquisition of knowledge,
that he allowed himself only five hours of sleep, and spent the '
1 See Tiraboschi, tom. vi. p. 1094.
« Se-e Vespasiano, p. 500. Tiraboschi, vol. vi. p. 678. App. iii. to
vol. v. of this work.
s The sources for Manetti's Life are Vespasiano and an anonymous
Latin biography in Muratori. Besides the small Life of Vespasiano in
his Vite d' Vommi Illustri, I have had recourse to his Comentario delta
Vita di Gianozo Manetti, Turin, 1862.

GIANNOZZO MANETTI 187
rest of his life in study. During nine whole years he never
crossed the Arno, but remained within the walls of his house
and garden, which communicated with the Convent of S.
Spirito. Being passionately fond of disputation, he sought his
chief amusement there in the debating society founded by
MarsigU. Ambrogio Traversari was his master in Greek.
Latin he had no difficulty in acquiring, and soon gained such
facility in its exercise that even Lionardo Bruni is said to have
envied his fluency. He was not, however, contented with
these languages, and in order to perfect himself in Hebrew
he kept a Jew in his own house.1 When he had acquired
sufficient famUiarity with Hebrew, he turned the arms supplied
him by his tutors against their heresies, basing his arguments
upon such interpretations of texts as his superior phUology
suggested to him. The great work of his Uterary leisure was
a polemical discourse 'Contra Judaeos et Gentes,' for, unlike
Marsuppini, he placed his erudition solely at the service of
the Christian faith. Another fruit of his Hebrew studies
was a new translation of the Psalms from the original.
Manetti was far from being a mere student. During the
best years of his Ufe he was continuaUy employed as am
bassador to the EepubUc at Venice, Naples, Eome, and other
Courts of Italy. He administered the government of Pescia,
Pistoja, and Scarparia in times of great difficulty, winning a
singular reputation for probity and justice. On all occasions
of state his eloquence made him indispensable to the Signory,
while the lists of his writings include numerous speeches upon
varied topics addressed to potentates and princes throughout
Italy.2 There is a curious story related in his Life, which
illustrates the importance attached at this time to public
1 ' Tenne in casa dua Greci et uno Ebreo che s'era fatto Cristiano, et
non voleva che il Greco parlasse con lui se non in greco, et il simile il
Ebreo in ebreo.' — Comentario, p. 11.
2 'Se ignuna oosa difficile o cura disperata, la davano a Messer
Giacozo.' — Ibid. p. 22.

138 RENAISSANCE IN ITALY
speaking. After the coronation of the Emperor Frederick III.,
the Florentines sent fifteen ambassadors, including Manetti,
attended by the ChanceUor Carlo Aretino, to congratulate
him. Manetti was a CoUeague of the Signory, and on him
would therefore have naturally faUen the fulfilment of the
task, had not this honour been conferred, by private machina
tions of the Medicean family, on Carlo. The ChanceUor duly
delivered a prepared oration, which was answered by iEneas
Sylvius in the name of the Emperor. Some topics raised in
this reply required rejoinder from the Florentines ; but Messer
Carlo declared himself unable to speak without previous study.
To be forced to hold their tongues before the Emperor and
all his suite was a bitter humUiation to the men of Florence.
How could they return home and confess that the rhetoric of
then: ChanceUor had been silenced by a witty secretary ? In
their sore distress they besought Manetti to help them ; where
upon he rose and deUvered an extempore oration. ' When it was
finished,' says Vespasiano,1 ' aU competent judges who under
stood Latin, and could follow it, declared that Messer Gian-
nozzi's extempore speech was superior to that which Messer
Carlo had prepared.'
The Latin Life of Manetti contains innumerable instances
of the miracles wrought by his rhetoric.2 Yet we should err
if we imagined that the speeches pronounced upon solemn
occasions, by even such iUustrious orators as Manetti or
Pius II. , were marked by any of the nobler qualities of
eloquence.3 They consist of commonplaces freely interspersed
with historical examples and voluminous quotations. With
out charm, without originality, they survive as monuments of
1 Vita di Gianozo Manetti, p. 462. Compare Burckhardt, p. 182.
There is another story, told in the Comentario, of Manetti's speaking
before Alfonso at Naples. The King remained so quiet that he did not
even brush the flies from his face. P. 30.
2 Muratori, vol. xx.
' For Pius Ii.'s reputation see Burckhardt, p. i82.

GIANNOZZO MANETTI EXILED 18»
the enthusiasm of that age for classic erudition, and of the
patience with which popes and princes lent their ears for two
or three hours at a stretch to the self-complacent mouthings
of a pompous pedant.
Giannozzo Manetti became at last so great a power in
Florence that he excited the jealousy of the Medicean party.
They ruined him by the imposition of extravagant taxes, and
he was obhged to end his Ufe an exile from his native land.1
Florence never behaved worse to a more blameless citizen ; for
Manetti, by his cheerful acceptance of pubUc burdens, by his
prudence in the discharge of weighty offices, by the piety and
sobriety of his private Ufe, by his vast acquirements, and by the
single-hearted zeal with which he burned for learning, had
proved himself the model of such men as might have saved the
State, if safety had been possible. He retired to the Court of
Nicholas V., who had previously named him Apostolic Secre
tary ; and on the death of that Pope he sought a final refuge
with Alfonso at Naples.2 There he devoted himself entirely
to Uterature, translating the whole of the New Testament and
the ethical treatises of Aristotle into Latin, and carrying his
great controversial work against the Jews and Gentiles onwards
to completion. Few men deserve a higher place on the muster-roU of
ItaUan worthies than Manetti. He was free from many vices
of the Eenaissance ; his piety and moraUty remaining untainted
by the contact with antiquity. Nor did he sink the citizen in
the student. His learning was varied and profound. Instead
of applying himself to Greek and Latin scholarship alone,
he mastered Hebrew, and sought to acquire a comprehensive
grasp of aU the knowledge of the ancient world. At the same
time he Uved in constant sympathy with his age, sharing its
' Vespasiano, p. 465. Muratori, xx. 600.
2 Alfonso gave him a pension of 900 scudi. He wrote a history of
his life and deeds.

140 EENAISSANCE IN ITALY
delight in rhetorical displays and wordy disputations, and
furthering the diffusion of knowledge by his toil as a translator.
It may weU be wondered how it happens that a man in many
points akin to Pico should have fallen so far short of him in
fame. The explanation Ues in this : Manetti was deficient
in aU that elevates mere learning to the rank of art. His
Latin style was tedious ; his thoughts were commonplace.
When the influence of his voice and person passed away,
nothing remained to prove his eloquence but Ul-digested facts
and Ul-appUed citations. StiU the work which he effected in
his day was good, and the place he held was honourable.
Posterity may be grateful to him as one of the most active
pioneers of modern culture.
A man of different stamp and calling claims attention
next. Ambrogio Traversari was far from sharing the neopagan
impulse of the classical revival ; yet he owed poUtical influence
and a high place among the leaders of his age to humanistic
enthusiasm. Born in Eomagna, and admitted while yet a
child into the Convent degli AngeU at Florence, he gave early
signs of his capacity for Uterature. At a time when knowledge
of Greek was stiU a rare title to distinction,1 Ambrogio
mastered the elements of the language and studied the Greek
Fathers in the original. His cell became the meeting-place
of learned men, where Cosimo and Lorenzo de' Medici, the
stately Bruni and the sombre Marsuppini, joined with caustic
Niccoli and Uvely Poggio in earnest conversation. His volu
minous correspondence connected him with students in all
parts of Italy ; nor was there any important discovery of MSS.
or plan for library or university in which he did not take his
part among the first.
It seemed as though he were destined to pursue a peace-
1 Niccolo de' Niccoli, it must be remembered, was not a Greoian.
Ambrogio used to insert the Greek words into his transcripts of Latin
codices.

AMBEOGIO TEA VERSARI 141
ful student's life among his books ; and for this career nature
had marked out the Uttle, meagre, Uvely, and laborious man.
To be eminent in scholarship, however, and to avoid the bur
dens of celebrity, was impossible in that age. Eugenius IV.,
whUe resident in Florence, was so impressed with his Uterary
eminence and strength of character that he made him General
of the Camaldolese Order in 1431 ; and from this time forward
Traversari's hfe was divided between public duties, for which
he was scarcely fitted, and private studies that absorbed his
deepest interests. He presented the curious spectacle of a
monk distracted between the scruples of the cloister and the
wider claims of humanism, who showed one mind to his
Order and another to his literary friends. He made a point
of never citing heathen poets in his writings, as though the
verses of Homer or of VirgU were inconsistent with the sobriety
of a Christian ; yet his anxiety to round his style with Cicero
nian phrases, and to bequeath models of pure Latinity in his
epistles to posterity, proved how much he valued literary
graces. Having vowed to consecrate his talents to the services
of ecclesiastical learning, he undertook the translation of
Diogenes Laertius, at Cosimo's request, with reluctance, and
performed the task with bitter self-bemoaning. In his person
we witness the conflict of the humanistic spirit with ecclesias
tical tradition — a conflict in which the former was destined
to achieve a complete and memorable victory.
These men — NiccoU, Bruni, Marsuppini, Manetti, and
Traversari — formed the Uterary oligarchy who surrounded
Cosimo de' Medici, and through their industry and influence
restored the studies of antiquity at Florence. While they
were carrying on the work of revival, each in his own sphere,
with impassioned energy, a combination of external circum
stances gave fresh impulse to their activity. Eugenius IV.,
having been expelled from Eome in 1434, had fixed his
headquarters in Florence, whither in 1438 he transferred the

142 RENAISSANCE IN ITALY
Council which had first been opened at Ferrara for negotiating
the union of the Greek and Latin Churches. The Emperor
of the East, John Palaeologus, surrounded by his theologians
and scribes, together with the Pope of Eome, on whom a train
of cardinals and secretaries attended, now took up their
quarters in the city of the Medici. A temporary bunding at
Santa Maria NoveUa was erected for the sessions of the
CouncU, and for several months Florence entertained as
guests the chiefs of the two great sections of Christendom.
Unimportant as were the results, both political and ecclesias
tical, of this CouncU, the meeting of the Eastern and the
Western powers in conclave vividly impressed the imagination
of the Florentines, and communicated a more than transient
impulse to their intellectual energies. Italy was on the eve of
becoming not only the depositary of Greek learning, but also
the sole interpreter of the Greek spirit to the modern world.
Fifteen years after the closing of the Council, the thread which
had connected Byzantium with Athens through an unbroken
series of historical traditions, was snapped ; already it was
beginning to be felt in Europe that nothing but the ghost of
Greek culture survived upon the shores of the Bosphorus, and
that if the genius of antiquity was to illuminate the modern
world, the light must dawn in Italy.1
The feelings with which the Florentines regarded their
Greek guests were strangely mingled. WhUe honouring them
as the last scions of the noblest nation of the past, as the
authentic teachers of HeUenic learning and the masters of
the Attic tongue, they despised their empty vanity, their facile
apostasy, their trivial pedantry, their personal absurdities.
The long beards, trailing mantles, painted eyebrows, and
fantastic headgear of the Byzantine sophists moved the
1 See the emphatic words of Poliziano, quoted by Voigt, p. 189, on
the revival of extinct Hellenism by the Florentines, and on their fluent
command of the Attic idiom.

GEMISTOS PLETHON 143
laughter of the common folk, accustomed to the grave and
simple lucco of their own burghers. In vain did Vespasiano
teU them that this costume descended from august antiquity
through fifteen centuries of unchanged fashion.' The more
educated citizens, again, soon discovered that the erudition of
these strangers was but shaUow, and that their magnificent
pretensions reduced themselves to the power of speaking the
emasculated Greek, which formed their mother tongue, with
fluency. The truth is that, however necessary the Byzan
tines were at the very outset of the Eevival of Learning, Greek
studies owed less to then: traditional lore than to the curiosity
of Italian scholars. The beggarly elements of grammar,
caligraphy, and bibUographical knowledge were supplied by
the Greeks ; but it was not Chrysoloras even, nor yet Argy-
ropoulos, so much as Ficino and Aldo, Palla degli Strozzi
and Cosimo de' Medici, who opened the literature of Athens
to the comprehension of the modern world.
Some exceptions must be made to these remarks ; for it
is not certain that, without guidance, the Florentines would
have made that rapid progress in phUosophical studies which
contrasts so singularly with their comparative neglect of the
Attic dramatists. Gemistos Plethon in particular stands forth
as a man who combined real knowledge with natural eloquence,
and who materiaUy affected the whole course of the Eenais
sance by directing the intelligence of the Florentines to Plato.
Inasmuch as Plethon's residence in Italy during the session
of the CouncU formed a decisive epoch in the Eevival of
Learning, to pass him by without some detailed notice would
be to omit one of the most interesting episodes in the history
of the fifteenth century. At the same time, his biography so
well illustrates the state of thought in the Greek Empire at
the moment of its faU, as well as the speculations which inte-
1 See the curious passage in the Vita di Eugenio IV., Papa, p. J4.

144 RENAISSANCE IN ITALY
rested phUosophic intellects at that period in Italy, that I
trust the following digression wUl be judged excusable.
Georgios Gemistos was born of noble parents at Byzan
tium about the year 1355.1 During a long lifetime, chiefly
spent in the Morea, he witnessed all the miseries that racked
his country through its lingering agony of a hundred years,
and died at last in 1450, just before the final downfaU of the
Greek Empire. Of his early Ufe little is known beyond the
fact that he left Constantinople as a young man in order to
study phUosophy at Brusa. Brusa and AdrianopoUs, at that
time the two Western seats of the Mahommedan power, out-
rivaUed Byzantium in culture, whUe the mental vigour of the
Mussulmans was far in advance of that of their effete neigh
bours. The young Greek, who seems already to have lost his
faith in Christianity, was attracted to the Moslem Court by
EUssaios, a sage of Jewish birth. From this teacher he
learned what then passed for the doctrines of Zoroaster.
After quitting Brusa, Gemistos settled at Mistra in the Pelo-
ponnese, upon the site of ancient Sparta, where with some
interruptions he continued to reside until his death. The
Greek Emperor was stiU nominally lord of the Morea, though
the conquests of Frankish Crusaders and the incursions of
the Turks had rendered his rule feeble. Gemistos, who en
joyed the confidence of the Imperial House, was made a judge
at Mistra, and thus obtained clear insight into the causes of
the decadence of the Hellenic race upon its ancient soU. The
picture he draws of the anarchy and immorality of the penin
sula is frightful. He also professed philosophy, and at the
age of thirty-three became a teacher of repute. The views
he formed concerning the corruption of the Greek Church
and the degradation of the Greek people, combined with his
1 I owe the greater part of the facts presented in this sketch of
Gemistos to Fritz Schultze's Geschiehte der Philosophic der Renaissance,
vol. i.

HIS PHILOSOPHY 146
philosophical opinions, inspired him with the visionary
ambition of reforming the creed, the ethics, and the political
conditions of HeUas on a Pagan basis. There is something ludi
crous as well as sad in the spectacle of this sophist, nourish
ing the vain fancy that he might coin a complete religious
system, which should supersede Christianity and restore
vigour to the decayed body of the Greek Empire. In the
dotage of HeUenism Gemistos discovered no new principle
of vitahty, but returned to the speculative mysticism of the
Neoplatonists. Their attempt at a Pagan revival had failed
long ago in Alexandria, while force stiU remained to the
Greek race, and whUe the Christian Church was stiU com
paratively UI -assured. To propose it as a panacea in the
year 1400 for the evUs of the Empire threatened by the
Turks was mere childishness. Perhaps it is doing the sage
injustice to treat his system seriously. Charity prompts us
to regard it as a plaything invented for the amusement of his
leisure hours. Yet nothing can be graver than his own
language and that of his disciples.
The work in which he embodied his doctrine was called
'The Laws* — ^ rwv vofiw ovyypaffi, or simply vo/xoi. It
comprised a metaphysical system, the outlines of a new
religion, an elaborate psychology and theory of ethics, and a
scheme of political administration. According to his notions,
there is one Supreme God, Zeus, the absolute and eternal
reahty, existing as homogeneous and undiscriminated Being,
WUl, Activity, and Power. Zeus begets everlasting Ideas,
or Gods of the second order ; and these gods, to whom Gemistos
gave the name of Greek divinities, constitute a hierarchy cor-
responding to the abstract notions of his logic. With the
object of harmonising the double series of immortal and
mortal existences they are subdivided, by a singularly clumsy
contrivance, into genuine and spurious children of Zeus.
First among the genuine sons stands Poseidon, the idea of
" L

148 RENAISSANCE IN ITALY
ideas, the logical summum genus, who includes within him
self the inteUectual universe potentiaUy. Next in rank is
Hera, the female deity, created immediately by Zeus, but by
a second act, and therefore inferior to Poseidon. These two
are the primordial authors of the world as it exists. After them
come three series, each of five deities, whereof the first set,
including ApoUo, Artemis, Hephaestus, Dionysus, and Athena,
represent the most general categories. The second set,
among whom we find Atlas and Pluto, are the ideas of im
mortal substance existing for ever in the world of Uving
beings. The third, which reckons among others Hecate and
Hestia, are the ideas of immortal substance existing for ever
in the inanimate world. Next in the descending order come
the spurious offspring of Zeus, or Titans, two of whom, Cronos
and Aphrodite, are the ideas respectively of form and matter
in things subject to decay and dissolution ; whUe Kore, Pan,
and Demeter are the specific ideas of men, beasts, and plants.
Hitherto we have been recording the genealogy of divine
beings subject to no laws of time or change, who are, in fact,
pure thoughts or logical entities. We arrive in the last place
at deities of the third degree, the genuine and the spurious
children, no longer of Zeus, but of Poseidon, chieftain of the
second order of the hierarchy. The planets and the fixed
stars constitute the higher of these inferior powers, whue the
daemons fiU the lowest class of aU. At the very bottom of
the scale, below the gods of every quality, stand men, beasts,
plants, and the inorganic world.
It wUl be perceived that this scheme is bastard Neo-
platonism — a mystical fusion of Greek mythology and Greek
logic, whereby the products of speculative analysis are hypo-
stasised as divine persons. Of many difficulties patent in his
doctrine Gemistos offered no solution. How, for example,
can we ascribe to Zeus the procreation of spurious as well
as genuine offspring ? It is possible that the philosopher, if

HIERARCHY OF LOGICAL NOTIONS 147
questioned on such topics, would have fallen back on the con
venient theory of progressively diminished efficacy in the
creative act ; for though he guards against adopting the hypo
thesis of emanation, it is clear, from the simUe of multipUed
reflections in a series of mirrors, which he uses to explain the
genealogy of gods, that some such conception modified his
views. To point out the insults offered to the ancient myths,
whereof he made such Uberal and arbitrary use, or to insist
upon the foUy of the whole conceit, considered as the sub
stance of a creed which should regenerate the world, would be
superfluous ; nothing can be more grotesque, for instance, than
the personification of identity and self-determining motion
under the titles of Apollo and Dionysus, nor any confusion
more fatal than the attribution of sex to categories of the un
derstanding. The sole merit of the system consists in the
classification of notions, the conception of an intellectual
hierarchy, descending by interdependent stages from the
primordial cause through pure ideas to their copies and
material manifestations in the world of things. Dreams of
this kind have always haunted the metaphysical imagination,
giving rise to hybrids between poetry and logic ; and the
system of Gemistos may fairly take rank among a hundred
simUar attempts between the days of Plato and of Hegel.
Such as it was, his metaphysic supphed Gemistos with the
basis of a cult, a psychology, a theory of ethics, and a poU
tical programme. He founded a sect, and was called by his
esoteric followers ' the mystagogue of sublime and celestial
dogmas.'1 They believed that the soul of Plato had been
reincarnated in their master, and that the new creed, pro
fessed by him, would supersede the faiths existing in the
world. Among the most distinguished of these neophytes
was the famous Bessarion, who adopted so much at any rate
of his teacher's doctrine as rendered him indifferent to the
1 See Schultze, p. 53. l2

148 RENAISSANCE IN ITALY
points at issue between the Greek and Latin Churches, when
a cardinal's hat was offered as the price of his apostasy.
Bessarion, however, was too much a man of the world to
dream that Gemistos would triumph over Christ and
Mahomet.1 WhUe using the language of the mystic, and
recording his conviction that Plato's soul, released from the
body of Gemistos, had joined the choir of the Olympian
deities,2 it is probable that he was only playing, after the
fashion of his age, with speculations that amused his fancy
though they took no serious hold upon his Ufe. It was a
period, we must remember, when scholars affected the man
ners of the antique world, Latinised their names, and
adopted fantastic titles in their academies and learned clubs.
At no time of the world's history has this kind of masquerad
ing attained to so much earnestness of rather more than half-
behef. The attitude assumed by Gemistos and his disciples
is, therefore, not without its value for illustrating the intellec
tual conditions of the earUer Eenaissance. Practical religion
had but Uttle energy among the educated classes. The
interests of the Church were more political than spiritual.
Science had not yet asserted her real rights in any sphere of
thought. Art and Uterature, invigorated by the passion for
antiquity, meanwhile absorbed the genius of the Italians ; and
through a dim aesthetic haze the waning lights of Hellas
mingled with the dayspring of the modern world.
The most important event of Gemistos's life was the
journey which he took to Italy in the train of John Palaeologus
in 1438. Secretly disliking Christianity in general, and the
Latin form of it in particular, he had endeavoured to dissuade
the emperor from attending the Council. Now he found
himself elected as one of the six champions of the cause of
the Greek Church. For the subtle Greek intellect in that
dotage of a doomed civilisation, no greater interest survived
1 See Schultze, p. 77, note. « Ibid. p. 107.

GEMISTOS IN THE MEDICEAN CIRCLE 149
than could be found in dialectic ; and to dispute about the
filioque of the Christian creed was fair sport, when no chance
offered itself of forcing rationalistic Paganism down the
throat of popes and cardinals. Therefore it is probable that
Gemistos did not find his position at the CouncU peculiarly
irksome, even though he had to Usten to reasonings about
purgatory and the procession of the Holy Ghost, and to
suggest arguments in favour of the Eastern dogma, while in
his inmost soul he equaUy despised the combatants on either
Bide. The effect he produced outside the CouncU was far more
flattering than the part he had to play within the waUs of
Santa Maria NoveUa. Instead of power-loving ecclesiastics
and pig-headed theologians, anxious only to extend their
privileges and establish their supremacy, he found a multi
tude of sympathetic and enthusiastic listeners. The Floren
tines were just then in the first flush of their passion for
Greek study. Plato, worshipped as an unknown god, whose
rising would dispel the mists of scholastic theology, was upon
the Ups of every student. Men were thirsting for the philo
sophy that had the charm of poetry, that dehghted the
imagination whUe it fortified the understanding, and that
lent its glamour to the dreams and yearnings of a youthful
age. What they wanted, Gemistos possessed in abundance.
From the treasures of a memory stored with Platonic, Pytha
gorean, and Alexandrian mysticism he poured forth copious
streams of indiscriminate erudition. The ears of his audience
were open; their intellects were far from critical. They
accepted the gold and dross of his discourse alike as purest
metal. Hanging upon the Ups of the eloquent, grave, beauti
ful old man, who knew so much that they desired to learn,
they caUed him Socrates and Plato in their ecstasy. It was
during this visit to Florence that he adopted the name of
Plethon, which, whUe it played upon Gemistos, had in it the

150 RENAISSANCE IN ITALY
ring of his great master's surname.1 The devotion of his
Greek disciples bore no comparison with the popularity he
acquired among ItaUans ; and he had the satisfaction of being
sure that the seed of Platonic philosophy sown by him would
spring up in the rich soU of those powerful and eager minds.
Cosimo de' Medici, convinced of the importance of Platonic
studies by his conversations with Gemistos, founded the
famous Florentine Academy, and designated the young
Marsilio Ficino for the special task of translating and explain
ing the Platonic writings.2 When we caU to mind the
influence which the Platonic Academy of Florence, through
Ficino and Pico deUa Mirandola, exerted over the whole
thought of Italy, and, through Beuchlin and his pupil
Melanchthon, over that of Germany, we are able to estimate
the impulse given by Gemistos to the movement of the
fifteenth century. It may be added that Platonic studies
in Italy never recovered from the impress of Neoplatonio
mysticism which proceeded from his mind.
WhUe resident in Florence he published two treatises on
Fate and on the differences between Plato and Aristotle. The
former was an anti-Christian work, in so far as it denied the
freedom of arbitrary activity to God as well as men. The
latter raised a controversy in Italy and Greece, which long
survived its author, exercising the scholars of the Eenaissance
to some purpose on the texts and doctrines of the chief great
1 TepurrSs and yepilfa, n\4i8vi> and it\^0<d. Both mean to be full.
Plato, however, is said to have been called TOiAtuv, because of his broad
shoulders or his breadth of eloquence.
2 See the translation of Plotinus by Ficino, quoted by Schultze,p. 76:
' Magnus Cosmus, Senatus consulto patriae pater, quo tempore concilium
inter GracOB atque Latinos sub Eugenio pontifice Florentise tractabatur,
philosophum Grsecum nomine Gemistum, cognomine Plethonem quasi
Platonem alterum, de mysteriis Platonicis disputantem frequenter
audivit. E cujus ore ferventi sic afflatus est protinus, sic animates, ut
inde Academiam quandam alia mente conceperit, hanc opportune!
primum tempore pariturus.'

LAST YEARS OF GEMISTOS • 151
thinkers of antiquity. Gemistos attacked Aristotle in general
for atheism and irreUgious morality, while he proved that the
Platonic system, as interpreted by him, was deeply theological.
Without entering into the details of a dispute that continued
to rage for many years, and aroused the bitterest feelings on
both sides, it is enough to observe that- Aristotle had for cen
turies been regarded as the pillar of orthodoxy in the Latin
Church, whUe Plato supplied eclectic thinkers with a fair cloak
for rationahstic speculations and theistic heresies. The
opponents of Aristotle were undermining the foundations of
the time-honoured scholastic fabric. The opponents of Plato
accused his votaries of drowning the Christianity they pre
tended to maintain, in a vague ocean of heretical mysticism.
It is indeed difficult to understand how Ficino, who worshipped
Plato no less fervently than Christ, could avoid reducing
Christianity to the level of Paganism, while he attempted to
demonstrate that the Platonic system contained the essence
of the Christian faith. This was, in fact, nothing less than
abandoning the exclusive pretensions of revealed religion and
the authority of the Church.
Before the year 1441 Gemistos had returned to Mistra,
where he continued to exercise his magistracy. His old age
was embittered by the fierce attacks directed by Gennadios,1
afterwards Patriarch of Constantinople, against the esoteric
doctrines of the No'/^oi. Gennadios accused him roundly of
Paganism, continuing his polemic against the book long after
the death of its author. That event happened in 1450.
Gemistos was buried at Mistra ; but five years later Sigis-
mondo Pandolfo Malatesta, moved by ardent love of learning
and by veneration for the philosopher, exhumed his bones,
and transferred them to the Church of S. Francesco at Eimini,
which Leo Alberti had but recently built for him.51
1 Schultze, p. 92. His secular name was Georgios Scholarios.
' See Vol. I., Age of the Despots, pp. 134, 135, and Sketches in Italy
and Greece, article ' Bimini.'

152 RENAISSANCE IN ITALY
Of Bessarion I shall have to speak elsewhere ; but, in ordei
to complete the review of Greek studies in Florence at this
epoch, mention must now be made of two Greeks who filled
the chair of the University with distinguished success.
That John Argyropoulos, a native of Byzantium, visited
Italy before the faU of the Greek Empire, appears from
Vespasiano's account of his residence with Palla Strozzi
at Padua during the first years of his exile.1 In 1456
Cosimo caUed him to Florence, secured him good appoint
ments from the studio pubblico, and installed him as public
and private teacher of Greek language and philosophy.
Argyropoulos laboured at Florence for a space of fifteen years,
counting the most distinguished citizens among his pupils.
- From Florence he removed to Eome, where Eeuchlin heard
him lecture upon Thucydides in the pontificate of Sixtus IV.
Eeuchlin's scholarship, if we may trust Melanchthon, was
rated at so high a value by this master that, on his departure
from Eome, he exclaimed, ' Now hath Greece flown beyond
the Alps ! ' A more commanding personage than Argyro
poulos was Georgios Trapezuntios, who came to Italy as
early as 1420, and professed Greek at Venice, Florence, Borne,
and other cities. His temper was proud, choleric, and
quarrelsome ; but the history of his disputes belongs to the
next chapter, which wiU treat of Eome. I may here mention'
that, during the residence of the Papal Court at Florence, he
gave instruction both public and private,2 without, however,
entering into intimacy with the Medicean circle. After Manuel
Chrysoloras, it can be said with certainty that the revival of
Hellenism in the fifteenth century at Florence was due to the
three men of whom I have been speaking — Georgios Gemistos,
Joannes Argyropoulos, and Georgios Trapezuntios. Of the
labours of the last in Eome, as weU as of Theodoros Gaza,
1 Vita di Palla diNoferi Strozzi, p. 284,
1 See Vespasiano, p. 4S6.

LEARNING IN THE OTHER REPUBLICS 159
Demetrius Chalcondylas, AndrQnicus Callistus and the Lascari,
it is not yet time to speak in detail. Each deserves a separate
commemoration, since to their joint activity in teaching,
Europe owes Greek scholarship.1
Before passing from Florence to Eome, which at this time
formed the second centre of Italian humanism, something
should be said about the state of learning in the other
republics. The causes that decided the pre-eminence of
Florence have been already touched upon. It is enough to
observe here that, while the Universities of Bologna, Siena,
and Perugia engaged professors of eloquence at high salaries,
the Uterary enthusiasm of those cities was in no way compar
able to that of Florence. Their culture depended on the
iUustrious visitors who fixed their residence from time to time
within their waUs. Genoa remained almost dead to learning.
At Venice the study of the classics engaged the attention of a
few nobles, without permeating the upper classes or giving a
decided tone to society at large. Though the illustrious Greek
refugees made it their custom to halt for a season at Venice,
whUe nearly aU Italian teachers of note lectured there on
short engagements, it is none the less true that the Venetians
were backward to encourage Uterature. They opened no
pubhc Ubraries, made no efforts to retain the services of
scholars for the State, and regarded the pretensions of the
humanists with cold contempt. In letters, as in the fine arts,
Venice waited till the rest of Italy had blossomed. Bembo
succeeded to Poliziano, as Titian to Eaphael. Much good,
however, was done by men Uke the Giustiniani and Paolo Zane,
who furnished young students with the means of visiting
Constantinople, and who provided them with professorial
chairs on their return. The gentiluomini could also count
among their number Francesco Barbaro, no less distinguished
1 See long lists in Tiraboschi, vol. vi. pp. 812, 822-837, of foreign
and Italian Grecians.

154 RENAISSANCE IN ITALY
by his knowledge of both learned languages than by th«
correspondence he maintained with aU the scholars of his
time. While yet a young man, he had imbibed the Florentine
spirit in the house of Cosimo de' Medici. On his return to
Venice he studied under the best masters, and soon attained
such exceUence of style that Poggio compared his treatise on
marriage to the ' De Officiis ' of Cicero. The Eepublic of Venice,
however, demanded more of patriotic service from her high
born citizens than the commonwealth of Florence ; and
Barbaro had to spend his life in the discharge of grave State
duties, finding Uttle leisure for the cultivation of his Uterary
talents. It remained for him to win the fame of a Maecenas,
who, had he chosen, might have disputed laurels with the
ablest of the scholars he protected.

155

CHAPTEE V
SECOND PERIOD OF HUMANISM
Transition from Florence to Eome — Vicissitudes of Learning at the
Papal Court — Diplomatic Humanists — Protonotaries — Apostoiic
Scribes — Ecclesiastical Sophists — Immorality and Artificiality of
Scholarship in Borne — Poggio and Bruni, Secretaries — Eugenius IV.
— His Patronage of Scholars — Flavio Biondo — Solid Erudition —
Nicholas V. — His Private History — Nature of his Talents — His
unexpected Elevation to the Eoman See — Jubilation of the
Humanists — His Protection of Learned Men in Borne— A Workshop
of Erudition — A Factory of Translations— High Sums paid for
Literary Labour — Poggio Fiorentino — His Early Life — His Journeys
— His Eminence as a Man of Letters — His Attitude toward Ecclesias
tics—His Invectives — Humanistic Gladiators — Poggio and Filelfo —
Poggio and Guarino — Poggio and Valla— Poggio and Perotti — Poggio
and Georgius Trapezuntios — Literary Scandals — Poggio's Collections
of Antiquities — Chancellor of Florence — Cardinal Bessarion — His
Library — Theological Studies — Apology for Plato— The Greeks in
Italy — Humanism at Naples — Want of Culture in Southern Italy —
Learning an Exotic— Alfonso the Magnificent — Scholars in the
Camp — Literary Dialogues at Naples — Antonio Beccadelli — 'The
Hermaphroditus ' — Lorenzo VallaJ-vThe Epicurean — The Critic —
The Opponent of the Church — Bartolommeo Fazio — Giannantonio
Poroello — Court of Milan— Filippo Maria Visconti— Decembrio's
Description of his Master — Francesco Filelfo — His Early Life — Visit
to Constantinople — Place at Court — Marriage— Beturn to Italy
— Venice — Bologna — His Pretensions as a Professor — Florence-
Feuds with the Florentines — Immersion in Politics— Siena — Settles
at Milan — His Fame — Private Life and Public Interests— Overtures
to Borne — Filelfo under the Sforza Tyranny — Literary Brigandage —
Death at Florence — Filelfo as the Eepresentative of a Class — Vit-
torino da Feltre — Early Education — Scheme of Training Youths as
Scholars— Eesidence at Padua -Eesidence at Mantua— His School
of Princes — Liberality to Poor Students— DetaOs of his Life and
System — Court of Ferrara— Guarino da Verona — House Tutor of

15« EENAISSANCE IN ITALY
Lionello d' Este— Giovanni Aurispa— Smaller Courts— Carpi-
Mirandola— Eimini and the Malatesta Tyrants — Cesena— Pesaro—
Urbino and Duke Frederick — Vespasiano da Bisticci.
In passing from Florence to Eome, we are struck with the fact
that neither in letters nor in art had the Papal city any real
life of her own. Her intellectual enthusiasms were imported;
her activity varied with the personal interests of successive
Popes. Stimulated by the munificence of one Holy Father,
starved by the niggardliness of another ; petted and caressed
by Nicholas V., watched with jealous mistrust by Paul II. ;
thrust into the background by Alexander, and brought into
the light by Leo — learning was subjected to rude vicissitudes
at Eome. Very few of the scholars who shed lustre on the
reigns of liberal Pontiffs were Eomans, nor did the nobles of
the Papal States affect the fame of patrons. We have, there
fore, in dealing with humanism at Eome, to bear in mind that
it flourished fitfully, precariously, as an exotic, its growth
being alternately checked and encouraged at the pleasure of
the priest in office.
In spite of these variable conditions, one class of humanists
never failed at Eome. During the period of schisms and
councUs, when Pope and Anti-pope were waging wordy war.
fare in the Courts of congregated Christendom, it was impos
sible to dispense with the services of practised writers and
accomplished orators. As composers of diplomatic despatches,
letters, bulls, and protocols ; as disseminators of squibs and
invectives ; as redactors of state papers ; as pleaders, legates,
ambassadors, and private secretaries — scholars swarmed
around the person of the Pontiff. Their official titles varied,
some being called Secretaries to the Chancery, others Apos
toUc Scriptors, others again Protonotaries ; while their duties
were divided between the regular business of the Curia and
the miscellaneous transactions that arose from special emer
gencies of the Papal See. Their services were weU rewarded.

SCHOLARSHIP IN ROME 157
In addition to about 700 florins of pay and perquisites, they,
for the most part, entered into minor orders and held benefices.
Men of acute inteUect and finished style, who had absorbed
the culture of their age, and could by rhetoric enforce what
arguments they chose to wield, found, therefore, a good market
for their talents at the Court of Eome. They soon became a
separate and influential class, divided from the nobihty by
their birth and foreign connections, and from the churchmen
by their secular status and avowed impiety, yet mingling in
society with both and trusting to their talents to support their
dignity. At the CouncU of Basle the protonotaries even
claimed to take precedence of the bishops on occasions of high
ceremony, arguing, from the nature of their office and the
rarity of their acquirements, that they had a better right than
priests to approach the person of the Sovereign Pontiff.
Poggio and Bruni, Losco, Aurispa, and Biondo raised their
voices in this quarrel, which proved how indispensable the
mundane needs of the Papacy had rendered these free-lances
of Uterature. Through them the spirit of humanism, antago
nistic to the spirit of the Church, possessed itself of the Eternal
City; and much of the flagrant immorality which marked
Eome during the Eenaissance may be ascribed to the
influence of paganising scholars, freed from the restrictions of
family and local opinion, indifferent to religion, and less
absorbed in study for its own sake than in the profits to be
gained by the exercise of a practised pen. There was a real
discord between the principles which the Church professed,
and the new culture that flourished on a heathen soil. WhUe
merely secular interests blinded the Popes to the perils which
might spring from fostering this discord, humanistic enthu
siasm had so thoroughly penetrated Italy that to exclude it
from Eome was impossible. Neopagan scholarship added,
therefore, lustre to the Papal Court, as one among the many
splendours of that worldly period which raised the See of

158 RENAISSANCE IN ITALY
Eome to eminence above the States of Italy. The light it
shed, however, had no vital heat. Learning was always
an article of artificial luxury at Eome, not, as at Florence,
part of the nation's life ; and when the gilded pomp of Leo
dwindled down to Clement's abject misery and utter ruin, it
was found that such encouragement as Popes had given to
literature had been a source of weakness and decay. We may
stUl be sincerely thankful that the Pontiffs took the Une they
did; for had they placed themselves in a position of anta
gonism to the humanistic movement, instead of utilising and
approving of it, the free development of Itahan scholarship
might have sustained a dangerous check.
It was from Florence that Eome received her intellectual
stimulus. The connection began in 1402, when Boniface IX.
appointed Poggio to the post of Apostolic Secretary, which he
held for fifty years. In 1405 Lionardo Bruni obtained the
same office from Innocent VII. The powerful personahty of
these men, in whom the energies of the humanistic revival
were concentrated, impressed the Eoman Curia with a stamp
it never lost. Good Latinity became a sine qua non in the
Papal Chancery ; and when Gregory XII. named Antonio
Losco of Verona one of his secretaries, it was natural that
this distinguished scholar, following the Florentine example
of Coluccio Salutato, should compose a book of forms in
Ciceronian style for the use of his office.1 During the in
significant pontificate of Martin V., while the Curia resided in
exUe at Florence, the chain which was binding Eome to the
city of Italian culture continued to gain strength. The result
of all the discords which rent the Church in the first haU of
the fifteenth century was to Italianise the Papal See ; nor. did
anything contribute to this end more powerfully than the
Florentine traditions of three successive Popes — Martin V.,
Eugenius IV., and Nicholas V.
1 See Facius, De Viris Illustrious, p. 3, quoted by Voigt, p. 278.

EUGENIUS IV. 169
Eugenius was a Venetian of good family, who inherited
considerable wealth from his father. Having realised his
fortune, he bestowed 20,000 ducats on charitable institu
tions and took orders in the Church.1 In 1431 he was raised
to the Papacy ; but the disturbed state of Eome obliged him to
quit the Vatican in mean disguise, and to seek safety by flight
from Ostia. He spent the greater portion of his life in
Tuscany, occupied less with humanistic interests than with
the reformation of monastic orders and the conduct of ecclesi
astical affairs in the Councils of Basle and Florence. Though
he did not share the passion of his age for learning, the
patronage which he extended to scholars was substantial and
important. Giovanni Aurispa received from him the title of
ApostoUc Secretary, and was appointed interpreter between
the Greeks and Italians at the CouncU of the two Churches.
Even the paganising Carlo Marsuppini was enroUed upon
the hst of Papal secretaries, while Filelfo and Piero Candido
Decembrio, who added lustre at this epoch to the Court of
Milan, were invited by Eugenius with highly flattering
promises. The value of these meagre statements consists in
this, that even a Pope, whose personal proclivities were
monastic rather than humanistic, felt the necessity of borrow
ing aU the strength he could obtain from men of letters in an
age when learning itself was power. More closely attached to
his Court than those who have been mentioned, were Maffeo
Begio, the poet, and Flavio Biondo, one of the soundest and
most conscientious students of the time.8
Though Biondo had but Uttle Greek, and could boast of no
beauty of style, his immense erudition raised him to high rank
among Italian scholars. The work he undertook was to
Ulustrate the antiquities of Italy in a series of historical, topo-
1 See Vespasiano, p. 6.
1 He was born at Forli in 1388, and died in 1463, the father of five

180 RENAISSANCE IN ITALY
graphical, and archaeological studies. His' Eoma Instaurata,'
' Eoma Triumphans,' and ' Italia Hlustrata,' three bulky ency.
clopaedias of information concerning ancient manners, laws,
sites, monuments, and races, may justly be said to have formed
the basis of aU subsequent dictionaries of Eoman antiquities.
Another product of his industry was entitled ' Historiarum ab
IncUnatione Eomanorum.' Three decades and a portion of
the fourth were written, when death put a stop to the com
pletion of this gigantic task. Inestimating the value of Biondo's
contributions to history, we must remember that he had no
previous compilations whereon to base his own researches.
The vast stores of knowledge he collected and digested were
derived from original sources. He grasped the whole of
Latin Uterature, both classical and mediaeval, arranged the
results of his comprehensive reading into sections, and
furnished the learned world with tabulated materials for the
study of Eoman institutions in the State, the camp, the
law courts, private life, and religious ceremonial. Obstinate
indeed must have been the industry of the scholar, who, in
addition to these classical researches, undertook to narrate the
dissolution of antique society and to present a faithful picture
of Italy in the dark ages. Biondo's ' History of the Decline
and FaU of the Eoman Empire,' conceived in an age devoted
to stylistic niceties and absorbed by the attractions of re
nascent HeUenism, inspires our strongest admiration. Yet its
author failed in his Ufetime to win the distinction he deserved.
Though he held the office of ApostoUc Secretary under four
Popes, his marriage stopped the way to ecclesiastical prefer
ment, while his incapacity to use the arts of the styUst, the
sophist, the flatterer, and the translator, lost him the favour
his more soUd qualities had at first procured. Eugenius
could appreciate a man of his stamp better than Nicholas V.,
whose special tastes inclined to elegant humanism rather
than to ponderous erudition.

THOMAS OF SARZANA 161
The Uves of aU the humanists Ulustrate the honours and
the wealth secured by learning for her votaries in the Ee
naissance. No example, however, is so striking as that
furnished by the biography of Nicholas V. Tommaso
ParentucelU was born at Pisa in 1398. While he was stiU an
infant his parents, in spite of their poverty and humble sta
tion, which might have been expected to shield them from
poUtical tyranny, were exiled to Sarzana ; J and at the age of
nine he lost his father at that place. Sarzana has consequently
gained the credit of giving birth to the first great Pope of
the Eenaissance period. The young Tommaso found means,
though extremely poor, to visit the University of Bologna,
where he studied theology and made himself a master in the
seven Uberal arts. After six years' residence at Bologna, his
total destitution, combined, perhaps, with a desire for more
instruction in elegant scholarship than the university afforded,
led him to seek work in Florence. He must have already ac
quired some reputation, since Einaldo degU Albizzi received
him as house-tutor to his chUdren for one year, at the expira
tion of which time he entered the service of Palla degU
Strozzi in a simUar capacity. The money thus obtained
enabled him to return to Bologna, and to take his degree as
Doctor of Theology at the age of twenty-two. He was now
fuUy launched in hfe. The education he had received at
Bologna qualified him for office in the church, while his two
years' residence at Florence had rendered him famUiar with
men of pohte learning and of gentle breeding. Niccolo degU
Albergati, Archbishop of Bologna, became his patron, and
appointed him controUer of his household. Albergati was one
of the cardinals of Eugenius IV., a man of considerable
capacity, and aUve to the inteUectual interests of his age.
When he foUowed the Papal Court to Florence, Tommaso
attended him, and here began the period which was destined
1 So Vespasiano relates the cause of their removal from Pisa. P. 20.
II M

162 RENAISSANCE IN ITALY
to influence his subsequent career. Inspired with a passion.
ate devotion to books for their own sake, and gifted with
ardent curiosity and aU-embracing receptivity of inteUect, the
young scholar found himself plunged into a society of which
literature formed the most absorbing occupation. He soon
became familiar with Cosimo de' Medici, and no meetings of
the learned were complete without him. A glimpse may be
obtained of the Uterary circle he frequented at this time from
a picturesque passage in Vespasiano.1 ' It was the wont of
Messer Lionardo d' Arezzo, Messer Giannozzo Manetti, Messer
Poggio, Messer Carlo d' Arezzo, Messer Giovanni Aurispa,
Maestro Gasparo da Bologna, and many other men of learning
to congregate every morning and evening at the side of the
Palazzo, where they entered into discussions and disputes on
various subjects. As soon, then, as Maestro Tommaso had
attended the Cardinal to the Palazzo, he joined them, mounted
on a mule, with two servants on foot ; and generally he was
attired in blue, and his servants in long dresses of a darker
colour. At that time the pomp of the Court of Eome was not
by any means what it is nowadays. In the place I have
named he was always to be found, conversing and disputing,
since he was a most impassioned debater.'
Tommaso was not a man of genius ; his talents were
better suited for collecting and digesting what he read, than
for original research and composition. He had a vast memory,
and was an indefatigable student, not only perusing but
annotating all the books he purchased. Pius II. used to say
of him that what he did not know, must he outside the sphere
of human knowledge. In speech he was fluent, and in
disputation eager ; but he never ranked among the ornate
orators and stylists of the age. His wide acquaintance with
all branches of literature, and his faculty for classification,
rendered him useful to Cosimo de' Medici, who employed him
1 P. 28.

NICHOLAS V. 163
on the catalogue of the Marcian Library. From Cosimo in
return, Tommaso caught the spirit which sustained him in his
coming days of greatness. Already, at this early period,
while Uving almost on the bounty of the Medici, he never lost
an opportunity of accumulating books, and would even borrow
money to secure a precious MS.1 He used to say that, if
ever he acquired wealth, he would expend it in book-buying
and building — a resolution to which he adhered when he rose
to the Pontificate.
Soon after the death of Albergati in 1443, Eugenius pro
moted Tommaso to the see of Bologna; a cardinal's hat
foUowed within a few months ; and in 1447 he was elected
Pope of Eome. So sudden an elevation from obscurity and
poverty to the highest place in Christendom has rarely
happened ; nor is it even now easy to understand what com
binations of unsuccessful intrigues among the princes of the
Church enabled this Uttle, ugly, bright-eyed, restless -minded
scholar to creep into S. Peter's seat. Perhaps the simplest
explanation is the best. The times were somewhat adverse
to the Papacy, nor was the tiara quite as much an object
of secular ambition as it afterwards became. Humanism
meanwhUe exercised strong fascination over every class in
Italy, and it would seem that Tommaso ParentuceUi had
nothing but his reputation for learning to thank for his
advancement. ' Who in Florence would have thought that a
poor beU-ringer of a priest would be made Pope, to the con
fusion of the proud?' This was his own complacent ex
clamation to Vespasiano, who had gone to kiss his old friend's
feet, and found him seated on a throne with twenty torches
blazing round him a
The rejoicings with which the humanists hailed the eleva
tion of one of their own number to the Papal throne may be
readUy imagined ; nor were their golden expectations, founded
1 Vespasiano, p. 27. * Ibid. p. 33. m 2

164 RENAISSANCE IN ITALY
on a previous knowledge of his Uberality in all things thai
pertained to learning, destined to be disappointed. Nicholas V.,
to quote the words of Vespasiano, who knew him well, ' was
a foe to ceremonies and vain flatteries, open and candid,
without knowing how to feign ; avarice he never harboured,
for he was always spending beyond his means.' J His revenues
were devoted to maintaining a splendid Court, rebuUding the
fortifications and palaces of Eome, and showering wealth on
men of letters. In the protection extended by this Pope to
Uterature we may notice that he did not attempt to restore the
studio pubblico of Eome, and that he showed a decided pre
ference for works of solid learning and translations. His
tastes led him to delight in critical and grammatical treatises,
and his curiosity impelled him to get Latin versions made of
the Greek authors. It is possible that he did nothing for the
Eoman university because he considered Florence sufficient
for the humanistic needs of Italy, and his own Alma Mater
for the graver studies of the three professions. StiU this
neglect is noticeable in the case of a Pontiff whose one public
aim was to restore Eome to the rank of a metropohs, and
whose chief private interest was study.
The most permanent benefit conferred by him on Roman
studies was the foundation of the Vatican Library, on which
he spent about 40,000 scudi forming a collection of some
5,000 volumes.2 He employed the best scribes, 'and obtained
the rarest books ; nor was there anyone in Italy better quali
fied than himself to superintend the choice and arrangement
of such a Ubrary. It had been his intention to place it in
S. Peter's and to throw it open to the public ; but he died
before this plan was matured. It remained for Sixtus IV. to
carry out his project.
During the pontificate of Nicholas Eome became a vast
workshop of erudition, a factory of translations from Greek
1 Vespasiano, pp. 25, 27. 2 Ibid. p. 38.

TRANSLATIONS FROM THE GREEK. 165
into Latin. These were done for the most part by Greeks
who had an imperfect knowledge of Latin, and by Italians
who had not complete mastery of Greek. The work achieved
was unequal and of no great permanent value; yet for the
time being it served a purpose of utihty, nor could the require
ments of the age have been so fuUy satisfied by any other
method. Nearly all the eminent scholars at that time in
Italy were engaged in this labour. How liberally they
were rewarded may be gathered from the foUowing details.
Lorenzo VaUa obtained 500 scudi for his version of Thucy-
dides ;• Guarino received the larger sum of 1,500 scudi for
Strabo ; Perotti 500 ducats for Polybius ; whUe Manetti was
pensioned at the rate of 600 scudi per annum to enable him
to carry on his sacred studies. Nicholas delighted in Greek
history. Accordingly, Appian was translated by Piero Can-
dido Decembrio, Diodorus Siculus and the ' Cyropsedia ' of
Xenophon by Poggio,1 Herodotus by Valla. Valla and
Decembrio were both engaged upon the 'Iliad' in Latin
prose ; but the dearest wish of Nicholas in his last years was
to see the poems of Homer in the verse of FUelfo. Nor were
the Greeks then resident in Italy neglected. To Georgios
Trapezuntios the Pope entrusted the ' Physics,' ' Problems,'
and ' Metaphysics ' of Aristotle. The same scholar tried bis
hand at the 'Laws' of Plato, and, in concert with Decembrio,
produced a version of the 'Eepublic' Gregorios Tifernas
undertook the ' Ethics ' of Aristotle, and Theodorus Gaza the
' History of Animals.' To this list should be added the Greek
Fathers, Theophrastus, Ptolemy, and minor works which
it would be tedious to enumerate.2
The profuse UberaUty of Nicholas brought him thus into
relation with the whole learned world of Italy. Among the
humanists who resided at his Court in Eome, mention must
1 The latter was intended for Alfonso of Naples.
s Tiraboschi is the authority for these details.

160 RENAISSANCE IN ITALY
be made of Lorenzo Valla, who was appointed Apostolio
Scriptor in 1447, and who opened a school of eloquence in
1450. Piero Candido Decembrio obtained the post of
secretary and overseer of the Abbreviators.1 Giovanni
Tortello, of Arezzo, the author of a useful book on the ortho
graphy of Greek words, superintended the Pope's hbrary.
Piero da Noceto, whose tomb in the cathedral at Lucca is one
of Matteo da Civitale's masterpieces, was private secretary and
comptroller of the Pope's affairs. Of the circle gathered round
Bessarion I shall have occasion to speak later on. Our present
attention must be concentrated on a man who, more even
than Nicholas himself, might claim the right to give his own
name to this age of learning.
Gian Francesco Poggio Braceiohni is better known in the
annals of Uterature as Poggio Fiorentino, though he was not
made a burgher of Florence until late in life. Born in 1380
at Terranova, a village of the Florentine contado, he owed his
education to Florence. In Latin he was the pupil of John
of Eavenna, and in Greek of Manuel Chrysoloras. During
his youth he supported himself by copying MSS. for the
Florentine market. Coluccio Salutato and Niccolo de' Niccoli
befriended the young student, who entered as early as the
year 1402 or 1403 into the Papal Chancery.2 Though
Poggio's life for the following half-century was spent in
the service of the Eoman Curia, he refused to take orders in
the Church, and remained at heart a humanist. With the
1 The more complete notices which Valla and Decembrio deserve
will be given in the history of scholarship at Naples and at Milan.
2 Of his debt to Niccolo de' Niccoli Poggio speaks with great warmth
of feeling in a letter on his death addressed to Carlo Aretino : ' Quem enim
patrem habui cui plus debuerim quam Nicolao 1 Hic mihi parens ab
adolescentia, hic postmodum amicus, hic studiorum meorum adjutor
atque hortator fuit, hic consilio, libris, opibus semper me ut filium et
amicum fovit atque adjuvit.' — Poggii Opera, Basilem, ex adibus Hewrwi
Petri, MDXxxvrn. p. 342. To this edition of Poggio's works mv future
references are made.

POGGIO'S NOTES OF TRAVEL 167
Florentine circle of scholars he maintained an unremitting
correspondence, sending them notices of his discoveries in the
convents of Switzerland and Germany, receiving from them
literary gossip in return, joining in their disputes, and more
than once engaging in fierce verbal duels to befriend his
Medicean aUies. His duties and his tastes alike made him a
frequent traveUer, and not the least of the benefits conferred
by him upon posterity are his pictures of foreign manners.
At the Council of Constance, for example, he saw and heard
Jerome of Prague, in whom he admired the firmness and
mtrepid spirit of a Cato.1 At Baden in Switzerland he
noticed the custom, strange to Italian eyes, of men and
women bathing together, eating, drinking, and playing at
chess or cards upon floating tables in the water, while visitors
looked down upon them from galleries above, as they now
do at Leukerbad.2 In England he observed that the gentry
preferred residence hi their country houses and secluded
parks to the town hfe then, as now, fashionable in Italy,
and commented upon the vast wealth and boorish habits of
the great ecclesiastics.3 Concerning his discoveries of MSS.
I have had already occasion to write ; nor need I here repeat
what I have said about his antiquarian researches among
the ruins of ancient Eome. Poggio was a man of wide sym
pathies, active curiosity, and varied interests — no mere book
worm, but one whose eyes and mind were open to the world
around him.
In Uterature he embraced the whole range of contem
porary studies, making his mark as a public orator, a writer of
1 ' Stabat impavidus, intrepidus, mortem non contemnens solum sed
appetens ut alteram Catonem dixeris.' Opp. Omnia, p. 301. This most
interesting letter, addressed to Libnardo Bruhi, is translated by Shepherd,
Life of Poggio Bracciolini, pp. 78-88.
1 Opera Omnia, p. 297. See Shepherd, pp. 67-76, for a translation
of this letter to Niccolo de' Niccoli.
3 Cardinal Beaufort had invited him to England.

168 RENAISSANCE IN ITALY
rhetorical treatises and dialogues, a panegyrist of the dead, a
violent impeacher and impugner of the Uving, a translator
from the Greek, an elegant epistolographer, a grave historian,
and a facetious compUer of anecdotes and epigrams. He
possessed a style at once easy and pointed, correct in
diction and varied in cadence, equally adapted for serious
discourse and witty trifling, and not less formidable in abuse
than delicate in flattery. This at least was the impression
which his copious and facUe Latin, always fluent and yet always
fuU of sense, produced on his contemporaries. For us its
finest flights of rhetoric have lost then: charm, and its best
turns of phrase their point. So impossible is it that the
fashionable style of one age should retain its magic for
posterity, unless it be truly classical in form, or weighted with
sound thought, or animated with high inspiration. Just
these quaUties were missed by Poggio and his compeers.
Setting no more serious aim before them than the imitation
of Livy and Cicero, Seneca and Caesar, they feU far short of
their originals ; nor had they matter to make up for their
defect of elegance. Poggio's treatises ' De NobUitate,' ' De
Varietate Fortunas,' ' De Miseria Humanse Conditionis,' ' De
Infelicitate Principum,' ' An Seni sit Uxor ducenda,' ' Historia
Disceptiva Convivialis,' and so forth, were as interesting to
Italy in the fifteenth century as Voltaire's occasional essays
to our more immediate ancestors. His controversial writings
passed for models of destructive eloquence, his satires on the
clergy for masterpieces of sarcastic humour, his Florentine
history for a supreme achievement in the noblest Latin
manner. Yet the whole of this misceUaneous literature seems
coarse and ineffective to the modern taste. We read it, not
without repugnance, in order to obtain an insight into the
spirit of the author's age.
Two important points in Poggio's biography wiU serre
to iUustrate the social circumstances of the humanists. The

SATIRE ON CHURCHMEN 160
first is the attitude adopted by him toward the churchmen,
with whom he passed the best years of his life in close
intimacy ; the second, his fierce warfare waged with rivals and
opponents in the field of scholarship. Though Poggio served
the Church for half a century, no one exposed the vices of the
clergy with more ruthless sarcasm, or turned the follies of the
monks to ridicule with more relentless scorn. After reading
his ' Dialogue against the Hypocrites,' his ' Invective against
Fehx the Antipope,' and his 'Facetiae,' it is difficult to under
stand how a satirist who knew the weak points of the Church
60 intimately, and exposed them so freely, could have held
high station and been honoured in the Papal Curia. They
confirm in the highest degree aU that has been written in
the previous volume about the division between religion and
morality in Italy, the cynical self-satisfaction of the clergy,
and the secular indifference of the Papacy, proving at the
same time the proudly independent position which the talents
of the humanists had won for them at Eome. At the end of
the ' Facetia? ' — a coUection of grossly indecent and not
always very witty stories— Poggio refers to the meetings with
which he and his comrades entertained themselves after the
serious business of the day was over.1 Their place of resort
was in the precincts of the Lateran, where they had esta
bhshed a club which took the name of ' Bugiale,' or Lie
Factory.2 Apostolic secretaries, writers to the Chancery,
protonotaries, and Papal scribes here met together after
laying down the pens they had employed in drafting Bulls
and dispensations, encycUcal letters and diplomatic missives.
To make puns, tell scandalous stories, and invent amusing
plots for novelettes was the chief amusement of these Eoman
1 Poggi Florentine Facetiarum Libellus Unions, Londini, 1798, vol. i.
p. 282. 9 ' Mendaciorum veluti ofBolna ' is Poggio's own explanation of the
phrase.

176 RENAISSANCE IN ITALY
wits. Their most stinging shafts of satire were reserved foi
monks and priests ; but they spared no class or profession,
and made free with the names of Uving persons.1 Against
the higher clergy it might not have been safe to utter even
the truth, except in strictest privacy, seeing that preferment
had to be expected from the Sacred College and the Holy
Father. The mendicant orders and the country parsons,
therefore, bore the brunt of their attack, while the whole tone
of their discourse made it clear how Uttle they respected the
religion and the institutions of the Church. Such fragments
of these conversations as Poggio thought fit to preserve,
together with anecdotes borrowed from the ' Cent Nouvelles
nouvelles ' and other sources, he committed to Latin, and
printed in the later years of his Ufe. The title given to
the book was ' Facetiarum Liber.' It ran speedily through
numerous editions, and was read aU over Europe with the
same eagerness that the 'Epistolas Obscurorum Virorum'
afterwards excited. Underneath its ribaldry and nonsense,
however, there lay no serious intention. The satires on the
clergy were contemptuous and flippant, arguing more hking
on the part of their author for scurrUous jests than any
earnest wish to prove the degradation of monasticism. Not a
word of censure from the Vatican can I find recorded against
this marvellous production of a Papal secretary's pen. Here,
by way of illustration, it may be mentioned that FUeUo, on
his way through Eome to Naples, placed his satires — the
most nauseous compositions that coarse spite and filthy fancy
ever spawned — in the hands of Nicholas V. The Pope re
tained them for nine days, read them, returned them with
thanks, and rewarded their author with a purse of 500
ducats. The ' Dialogue against the Hypocrites ' contains less of
1 ' Ibi parcebatur nemini, in lacessendo ea quee non probabantur a
nobis,'

INVECTIVES AGAINST FILELFO 171
mere scurrility and more that bears with real weight on the
vices of the clergy. Begging friars, preachers, confessors,
and aspirants to the fame of hoUness are cited by name and
scourged with pitiless impartiahty, while the worldly ambition
of the Eoman churchmen is unmasked. The 'Fratres Obser-
vantiaa,' who flourished under Pope Eugenius, receive stern
castigation at the hands of Carlo Aretino. Shepherd
remarks, not without justice, on this dialogue that, had the
author ' ventured to advance the sentiments which it contains
in the days of Eugenius, he would in aU probability have
expiated his temerity by the forfeit of his life.1 Nicholas V.,
who appreciated the pungency of its satiric style, instead of
resenting its free speech, directed his friend Poggio's pen
against his rival Felix. Eaised to the Papacy by the Council
of Basle in 1439, Amadeus, the ex-Duke of Savoy, stiU per
sisted in his Papal title after the election of Nicholas ; and
though the Sovereign of the Vatican could weU afford to seorn
the hermit of Eipaille, he thought it prudent to discharge the
heavy guns of humanistic eloquence agamst the Antipope. A
ponderous invective was the result, wherein Poggio described
the unfortunate Felix as ' another Cerberus,' ' a rapacious
wotf,' ' a golden calf,' ' a perverter of the faith and foe to true
religion,' ' a high priest of malignity,' ' a roaring Uon ' —
stigmatising the CouncU to whom he owed his election as
' that sink of iniquity the Synagogue of Basle,' ' a monstrous
birth,' ' conventicle of reprobates,' ' tumultuary band of de
bauched men,' ' apostates, fornicators,ravishers, deserters, men
convicted of most shameful crimes, blasphemers, rebels against
God.' 2 To such amenities of controversial rhetoric did even
Popes descend, substituting sound and fury for sense, and trust
ing to vituperation in the absence of more valid arguments.
Poggio, next to Filelfo, was the most formidable gladiator
in that age of Uterary dueUists. ' In his invectives he
1 Life of Poggio, p. 423. * Opera Omma, pp. .155-164.

172 RENAISSANCE IN ITALY
displayed such vehemence,' writes Vespasiano,1 'that the
whole world was afraid of him.* Even AUonso of Naples
found it prudent to avert his anger by a timely present of 600
ducats, when Poggio complained of his remissness in acknow
ledging the version of Xenophon's ' Cyropsedia,' 2 and hinted
at the same time that a scholar's pen was powerful enough
to punish kings for their ingratitude. The overtures, again,
made to Poggio by FiUppo Maria Visconti, and the considera
tion he received from Cosimo de' Medici, testified to the desire
of princes for the goodwiU of a spiteful and unscrupulous
pamphleteer.3 The most celebrated of Poggio's feuds with
men of letters began when FUelfo assailed the character of
Cosimo, and satirised the whole society of Florence hi 1433.
The fuU history of Filelfo's animosity against the Florentines
belongs to the biography of that famous scholar. It is enough
here to mention that he ridiculed Cosimo under the name
of Mundus, described Poggio as BambaUo, Carlo Aretino as
Codrus, and Niccolo de' NiccoU as Outis,4 accusing them of
literary imbeciUty, and ascribing to them aU the crimes and
vices that disgrace humanity. Poggio girded up his loins for
the combat, and, in reply to FileUo's ponderous hexameters,
discharged a bulky invective in prose against the common
adversary. This was answered by more satires, Poggio re
plying with new invectives. The quarrel lasted over many
years ; when, having heaped upon each other all the insults it
is possible for the most corrupt imagination to conceive, they
joined hands and rested from the contest.5 To suUy these
1 P-422. ' Ibid. V.i23.
* See the correspondence between Filippo Maria and Poggio, Opp,
pp. 333-358. Letter to Cosimo, p. 339.
* ' The World, the Stammering Simpleton, the Execrable Poet, and
the Nobody.' See Auree Francisci Philelphi Poete OratoHsque Cele-
berrimi Satyre. Paris, 1508. Passim.
« Opp. Omn. pp. 164-187. The first invective is the most veno-
mous, and deserves to be read in the original. The last, entitled

LITERARY GLADLATORS 178
pages with translations of Poggio's rank abuse would be
impossible. I must content myself with referring readers,
who are anxious to gain a more detaUed acquaintance with
the Uterary warfare of that age, to the excerpts preserved
by Shepherd and Eosmini.1 Suffice it to say that he poured
a torrent of the filthiest calumnies upon FUeUo's wife and
mother, that he accused FUelfo himself of the basest vice in
youth and the most flagrant debauchery in manhood, that he
represented him as a pubhc thief, a professed cut-purse, a
blasphemous atheist, soiled with sordid immoralities of every
kind, and driven by his exposed felonies from town to town in
search of shelter for his hated head. FUelfo replied in the
same strain. AU the resources of the Latin language were
exhausted by the combatants in their endeavours to befoul
each other's character, and the lowest depths of human
nature were explored to find fresh accusations. The learned
world of Italy stood by applauding, while the valiant an
tagonists, like gladiators of the Eoman arena, plied their
diverse weapons, the one discharging darts of verse, the other
wielding a heavy club of prose.2 UnhappUy, there was enough
of scandalous material in both their Uves to give some colour
to their accusations. Yet the virulence with which they lied
against each other defeated its own object. Baking that Ute
rary dunghUl, it is now impossible to distinguish the true from
the false; aU proportion is lost in the mass of overcharged
and indiscriminate scurriUty. That such encounters should
have been enjoyed and applauded by polite society is one of
the strangest signs of the times ; and that the duelUsts them-
' Invectiva Excusatoria et Reconciliatoria,' is amusing from its tone of
sulky and sated exhaustion.
1 Life of Poggio, pp. 263-272, 354. Vita di Filelfo.
2 The language of the arena was used by these literary combatants.
Thus Valla, in the exordium of his Antidote, desoribes his weapon of
attack in this sentence : — ' Heec est mea fusana, quandoquidem gladiator
a gladiatore fieri cogor, et ea duplex et utraque tridens,' p. 9.

174 RENAISSANCE IN ITALY
selves should have imagined they were treading in the steps
of Cicero and Demosthenes is even more astounding.
The dispute with Filelfo was rather personal than Uterary.
Another duel into which Poggio entered with Guarino turned
upon the respective merits of Scipio and JuUus Caesar. Poggio
had occasion to explain, in correspondence with a certain
Scipione Ferrarese, his reasons for preferring the character of
Scipio Africanus. Guarino, with a view to pleasing his pupU
Lionello d' Este, a professed admirer of Cassar, tcok up the
cudgels in defence of the dictator,1 and treated Poggio, whom
hecalled Caasaromastix, with supreme contempt. Poggio replied
in a letter to the noble Venetian scholar Francesco Barbaro.2
Hard words were exchanged on both sides, and the antagon
ists were only reconcUed on the occasion of Poggio's marriage
in 1435. Eome, however, was the theatre of his most cele
brated exploits as a disputant. It chanced one day that he
discovered a copy of his own epistles annotated by a Spanish
nobleman who was a pupil of Lorenzo VaUa.3 Poggio's
Latinity was not spared in the marginal strictures penned by
the young student ; and the fiery scholar, flying to the con
clusion that the master, not the pupU, had dictated them, dis
charged his usual missile, a furious invective, agamst Valla.
Thus attacked, the author of the ' Elegantiae ' responded in
a similar composition, entitled ' Antidotum in Poggium,' and
dedicated to Nicholas V.4 Poggio followed with another in
vective ; nor did the quarrel end till he had added five of these
disgusting compositions to his previous achievements in the
1 See Eosmini, Vita di Guarino da Verona, vol. ii. p. 96.
* Poggii Opera, p. 365.
• ' Adolescens quidam auditor meus,' says Valla in the Antidotum,
p. 2. The story is lold at length, p. 151. I quote from the Cologne
edition of 1527 : ' Laurentii Vallte viri clarissimi in Pogium Floren-
tinum antidoti libri quatuor : in eundem alii duo libelli in dialogo con-
joripti.' * See Shepherd's Poggio, pp. 470, 471, for specimens of the sourrility
on both sides.

QUARREL WITH VALLA 175
Eame style, and had drawn a young Latinist of promise,
Niccolo Perotti, into the disgraceful fray.1 What makes the
termination of the squabble truly comic is that Filelfo, him
self the worst offender in this way, was moved at last to write
a serious letter of admonishment to the contending parties,
exhorting them to consult their own dignity and to lay down
arms.2 Concerning the invectives and antidotes by which
this war was carried on Tiraboschi writes, ' Perhaps they are
the most infamous libels that have ever seen the light ; there
is no sort of vituperation which the antagonists do not vomit
forth agamst each other, no obscenity and roguery of which
they are not mutuaUy accused.'
The inconceivably slight occasions upon which these
learned men rushed into the arena, and flung dirt upon one
another, may be imagined when we find Lorenzo Valla at
feud on the one side with Georgios Trapezuntios because the
one preferred Cicero and the other Quintilian, and on the other
with Benedetto Morando because that scholar doubted whether
Lucius and Aruns were the grandsons of Tarquinius Priscus.
Sometimes private incidents aroused their wrath, as in the
curious rupture between Lionardo Bruni and Niccolo de* NiccoU
at Florence. The story, since it is characteristic of the time,
may be briefly told. Niccolo had stolen his brother's mis
tress Benvenuta, and made her his concubine.3 His relatives,
1 The invectives against Valla fill from p. 188 to p. 251 of Poggio's
collected works. Part of them is devoted to a defence of his own Latinity,
and to a critique of Valla's Elegantim. But by far the larger part con
sists of vehement incriminations. Heresy, theft, lying, forgery, cowardice,
filthy living of the most odious description, drunkenness, and insane
vanity— such are the accusations, supported with a terrible array of
apparent evidence. As in the case of Filelfo, Poggio does not spare his
antagonist's father and mother, but heaps the vilest abuse upon everyone
connected with him. Valla's Antidote is written in a more tempered
spirit and a purer Latin style.
2 Shepherd, Life of Poggio, p. 474.
3 Ambrogio Traversari, General of the Camaldolese Order, called her
1 fidelis3ima foemina.'

176 RENAISSANCE IN ITALY
indignant at the domestic scandal, insulted Benvenuta in
the street, and Niccolo bemoaned himself to aU his friends.
Lionardo, to whom he appUed for sympathy, very properly
observed that a student ought to be better occupied than with
the misfortunes of a kitchen wench. This tart reply roused
Niccolo's bile, and set his caustic tongue wagging against his
old friend ; whereupon Lionardo Bruni launched a fierce in
vective in nebulonem maledicum against him, and the learned
society of Florence indulged in a free fight on both sides.
Such quarrels were not always confined to words. There
is no doubt that the dagger was employed against FUelfo by
the Medicean party, while it now and then happened that the
Uterary gladiators came to actual fisticuffs. A scene of this
sort occurred at Eome in public. Georgios Trapezuntios com
plained that the credit of Poggio's translations from Diodorus
and Xenophon reaUy belonged to him, since he had done the
work of them. Poggio shrieked out, ' You Ue in your throat ! '
Georgios retorted with a box on Poggio's ears. Then Poggio
came to close quarters, catching his adversary by the hair ;
and the two professors pommelled each other tiU their
respective pupUs parted them.1 Such anecdotes might be
multipUed indefinitely. Nor would it be unprofitable to give
some account of the vehement warfare waged in Italy between
the Platonists and AristoteUans, were it not that enough has
already been said to Ulustrate the acrimonious temper of the
times. The animosity displayed by scholars in these disputes
may be taken as a proof of their enthusiasm for their studies.
Men have always quarrelled about poUtics, because pohtics
furnish matter of profound interest to everyone. Theology,
for a similar reason, never fails to rouse the deepest rancours,
hatreds, and hostiUties of which the human breast is capable.
Science, as we know from the annals of our days, sets the
1 Tiraboschi. vol. vi. lib. ii. cap. 2, sect. 15.

POGGIO'S LIFE AT FLORENCE 177
upholders of antagonistic theories by the ears ; and at times
when politics have been duU, theology dormant, and science
undemonstrative, even music has been found sufficient to
excite a nation. In the fifteenth century scholarship was all-
absorbing. It corresponded to science in our age, since it
engaged the talents of the strongest workers and supplied
the sources of progressive intellectual discovery. Moreover, it
included both phUosophy and theology, and formed the most
attractive topic in aU conversation. No wonder, therefore, that
the limpid fountains of classical erudition were troubled by
the piques and jealousies of students.
It is pleasant to turn from Poggio's wranghng to more
honourable passages in his biography. Since the year 1434
he had owned a farm not far from Florence. Here he built
a country residence, vying, if not in splendour, at least in
elegance, with the viUas of the Florentine burghers. He
called it his Valdarniana, and adorned it with the fragments
of antique sculpture, inscriptions, and coins, collected by him
partly in person on the Eoman Campagna and partly by
purchase from Greece. In the following year (1435) Poggio,
then a man of fifty-five, married a girl of eighteen, named
Vaggia, of the noble Buondelmonte blood. In forming this
connection he had to separate from a mistress who had borne
him fourteen chUdren, four of them then living. His bio
grapher, Shepherd, indulges in some sentimental reflections
upon the pain this leave-taking must have cost him. Yet the
impartial critic wUl hardly be brought to pity Poggio, seeing
that he cancelled the brief whereby he had previously legiti
mised his natural chUdren, and responded with raptures to
the congratulations of friends upon his new engagement. He
had already been admitted to the burghership of Florenoe,
and exempted from its taxes in consideration of his literary
services ; so that, on the death of his friend Carlo Aretino, in
1453, no one was found more fitting for the post of Chancellor
II N

178 RENAISSANCE IN ITALY
to the EepubUc. As an increase of dignity, Poggio fulfiUed
the office of Prior, and sat among the Signory. The ' His
tory of the Florentine Eepublic,' written in continuation of
Lionardo Aretino's, occupied the closing years of his life.
He left it still unfinished in the year 1459, when he died,
and was buried in the Church of Santa Croce. I cannot find
that his funeral was accompanied by the peculiar honours
voted in the case of his two predecessors. The Florentines,
however, erected his statue on the fa9ade of Santa Maria del
Fiore, and placed his picture by Antonio dai Pollajuolo in the
hall of the Proconsolo. The fate of this statue, a work of
Donatello's, was not a Uttle curious. On the occasion of some
alterations in 1560, it was removed from its first station, and
set up as one among the Twelve Apostles in another part of
the cathedral.
Any survey of the Court of Nicholas V. would be incom
plete without some notice of the Cardinal Bessarion. Early
in Ufe he rose to high station in the Greek Church, and
attended the CouncU of Florence as Archbishop of Nicea.
Eugenius IV., by making him a cardinal in 1439, converted
him to the Latin faith ; and, as it so happened, he missed the
Papacy almost by an accident thirty-two years later.1 His
palace at Eome became the meeting-place of scholars of
all nations,2 where refugee Greeks in particular were sure of
finding hearty welcome. In obedience to the reigning passion
for book-coUecting, he got together a considerable Ubrary of
Greek and Latin authors, the number of which Vespasiano
estimated at 600 volumes, whUe Platina reckoned their total
cost at 30,000 scudi. In 1468 he offered this collection to the
Church of S. Mark at Venice. The EepubUc accepted his gift,
but showed no alacrity to build the Ubrary. It was not until
1 Vespasiano, p. 146.
2 See Platina's panegyric, quoted by Tiraboschi, vol. vi. lib. i. cap. 3,
22. Platina and Perotti were among his Italian protigis.

CARDINAL BESSARION 179
the next century that Bessarion's books were finally housed
according to their dignity.1 The Cardinal's own studies lay
in the direction of theological phUosophy. We have already
seen that in his youth he was a pupil of Gemistos, and he
now appears as the defender of Plato. Georgios Trapezuntios
had published a treatise in the year 1458, in which, on the
pretence of upholding Aristotle, he vilified Plato's moral cha
racter, accused him of having ruined Greece, and maintained
that Mahomet was a far better legislator. Bessarion repUed
by the oration ' In Calumniatorem Platonis,' vindicating the
morality of the phUosopher and supporting him against
Aristotle. This book was printed by Sweynheim and Pan-
nartz in the infancy of the Eoman press. Theodoros Gaza,2
who, on his settlement in Eome in 1450, had been received
into Bessarion's household, entered the Usts with a critique of
Gemistos; to which Bessarion replied: and so the warfare
begun by Gennadios at Byzantium was continued by the
Greek exUes at Eome. The titles of the works issued in
this contest, among which we find 'De Natura et Arte,'
* Utrum Natura Consilio Agat,' ' Comparationes PhUoso-
phorum AristoteUs et Platonis,' sufficiently indicate the extent
of ground traversed. The chief result was the rousing of
Itahan scholars to weightier points of issue in philosophy
than had at first been raised by mystical Neoplatonists and
pedantic Peripatetics.
Among the Greeks protected by Bessarion, passing notice
may be made of Andronicus CaUistus, whose lectures found
less favour at Eome than they afterwards obtained at Florence,
where he had the great PoUziano for his pupil. He was one
1 A striking instance of the want of literary enthusiasm at Venice.
1 He first came to Italy in 1430, professed Greek at Ferrara from
1441 to 1450, and died in Campania about 1478. He translated many
works of Aristotle. His own book on Grammar was printed by Aldus in
1495.
n2

180 RENAISSANCE IN ITALY
of the first of the Greeks to seek fortune in France.1 Nor
must Demetrius Chalcondylas be omitted, who fled from
Byzantium to Eome about the year 1447, and afterwards
professed Greek in the University of Perugia. A letter written
by one of his pupils, Gian Antonio Campano,2 gives such an
agreeable impression of the effect he produced in the city of
the BagUoni, that I will translate a portion of it. ' A Greek
has just arrived, who has begun to teach me with great pains,
and I to listen to his precepts with incredible pleasure, because
he is a Greek, because he is Athenian, and because he is
Demetrius. It seems to me that in him is figured aU the
wisdom, the civility, and the elegance of those so famous and
illustrious ancients. Merely seeing him, you fancy you are
looking on Plato ; far more when you hear him speak.' It
was a young man of twenty-three who wrote this, the com
panion, probably, of such magnificent youths as Signorelli
loved to paint and Matarazzo to describe.3 It is interesting
to compare this letter with the panegyric passed upon
Ognibene da Lonigo five years after his death by Bartolommeo
Pagello in an oration delivered at Vicenza. The young men
of Vicenza, said the rhetorician, left their dice, their duels,
their wine cups, and their loves to listen to this humanist ;
his learning wrought a reformation hi the morals of the town.4
Such were the fascinations of scholarship in the fifteenth
century. The Greeks hitherto mentioned quitted their country
before the capture of Constantinople. It is, therefore, wrong
to ascribe to that event the importation of HeUenic studies
into Italy. Their Italian pupils carried on the work they had
begun, with wider powers and nobler energy. AU the great
1 Raffaello Volaterrano, quoted by Tiraboschi, vol. vi. lib. iii. cap.
2, 16. 2 See Tiraboschi, vol. vi. lib. iii. cap. 2, 17.
1 See my Sketches in Italy and Greece, article ' Perugia.1
* Tiraboschi, vol. vi. lib. iii. cap. 5, 46.

CULTURE AT NAPLES 181
Greoians of the third age of humanism are ItaUans. Florence
received learning from Byzantium at the very moment when
the Greek Empire was about to be extinguished, and spread
it far and wide through Europe, herself achieving by far the
largest and most arduous portion of the task.
In passing down to Naples, we find a marked change in
the external conditions under which literature flourished.
Men of learning at the Courts of Italy occupied a position
different from that of their brethren in the Papal Chancery.
They had to suit their habits to the customs of the Court and
camp, to place their talents at the service of their patron's
pleasure, to entertain him in his hours of idleness, to frame
compliments and panegyrics, and to repay his bounty by the
celebration of his deeds in histories and poems. Their footing
was less official, more subject to the temper and caprices
of the reigning sovereign, than at Eome ; while the peculiar
advantages, both poUtical and social, which, even under the
sway of the Medicean famUy, made Florence a real repubUc of
letters, existed in no other town of Italy.
At Naples there was no such thing as native culture. The
semi-feudal nobUity of the South were addicted to field sports,
feats of arms, and idleness. The people of the country were
sunk in barbarism. In the cities there was no middle class
analogous to that of the more northerly republics. Neverthe
less, the kingdom of the Two Sicilies played an important part
in the development of ItaUan Uterature. While the Mussul
mans held sway at Palermo, Sicily was the most refined and
enhghtened state of Southern Europe. Under the Norman
dynasty this Arabic civihsation began to influence North Italy,
and during the reign of Frederick II. Naples bade fair to
become the city of iUumination for the modern world. The
faUure of Frederick's attempt to restore Ufe to arts and
letters in the thirteenth century belongs to the history of his
warfare with the Church. What his courtiers effected for the

182 RENAISSANCE IN ITALY
earliest poetry of the ItaUans is told by Dante in the treatise
De Vulgari Eloquio.' For our present purpose it is enough
to notice that the zeal for knowledge planted by the Arabs,
tolerated by the Normans, and fostered by the House of
Hohenstauffen in the south of Italy, was an exotic which took
no deep root in the people. No national poem was produced
in the golden age of Frederick's brief supremacy ; no stories
are told of Neapolitan carters and boatmen reciting the
sonnets of his courtiers. As culture began, so it continued to
exist at Naples — flourishing at intervals in close connection
with the sovereign's taste, and owing to local influences not
life and vigour, but colour and complexion, suavity and soft
ness, caught from the surrounding beauties of the sea and
shore. Each of the dynasties which held the throne of the Two
Sicilies could boast a patron of Uterature. Eobert of Anjou
was proud to caU himseU the friend of Petrarch, and Boc
caccio, found the flame of inspiration at his Court.1 In the
second age of humanism, with which we are now occupied,
Alfonso of Aragon deserved the praise bestowed on him by
Vespasiano of being, next to Nicholas V., the most munificent
promoter of learning.2 His love of letters was genuine.
After making aU deductions for the flattery of official historio
graphers, it is clear that Alfpnso found his most enduring
satisfaction in the company of students, Ustening to their
debates on points of scholarship, attending their public
lectures, employing them in the perusal of ancient poets and
historians, insisting on their presence in his camp, and freely
supplying them with money for the purchase of books and
for their maintenance while engaged in works of erudition.
Vespasiano relates that BeccadeUi's daily readings to his
1 I may refer to Petrarch's Letters passim, and to the solemn perora
tion of the Africa.
2 See Vol. I., Age of the Despots, pp. 445, 446.

ALFONSO THE MAGNANIMOUS 183
master were not interrupted during the campaign of 144rf,
when AUonso took the field against Francesco Sforza's armies
in the March.1 The Neapohtan captams might be seen
gathered round their monarch, hstening to the scholar's
exposition of Livy, instead of wasting their leisure at games
of hazard. BeccadeUi himself professes to have cured an iU
ness of AHonso's in three days by reading aloud to him
Curtius's Life of Alexander, while Lorenzo Valla describes the
concourse of students to his table during the recitations of
Virgil or of Terence.2 Courtiers with no taste for scholarship
were excluded from these' Uterary meetings; but free access
was given to poor youths who sought to profit by the learning
of the lecturers. The king, meantime, sat at meat, now and
then handing fruits or confectionery to refresh the reader
when his voice seemed faUing. His passion for the antique
assumed the romantic character common in that age. When
the Venetians sent him one of the recently discovered bones
of Livy, he received it Uke the relic of a saint ; nor could the
fears of his physicians prevent him from opening and reading
the MS. of Livy forwarded from Florence by Cosimo de'
Medici, who was then suspected of wishing to poison him. On
his mihtary excursions he never neglected the famous sites
of antiquity, saluting the genius loci with pious thanks at
Ovid's birthplace, and expressly forbidding his engineers to
trespass on the site of Cicero's villa at Gaeta.3 Alfonso was
no less assiduous than his contemporaries in the collection of
books. The Palace Ubrary at Naples was his favourite place
of recreation ; here Giannozzo Manetti found him among his
scholars on the famous occasion when the king sat through a
long congratulatory oration hke a brazen statue, without so
1 Vita di Alfonso, p. 59. Vita di Manetti, p. 451.
* See Tiraboschi, vol. vi. lib. i. cap. 2, 17.
1 Pontano, De Principe, and Panormita, De Dictis et Factis Alphor.si
Begit, furnish these anecdotes.

184 RENAISSANCE IN ITALY
much as brushing away the flies that settled on his face. HiB
MSS. were dispersed when Charles VIII. occupied Naples,
and what became of them is doubtful.1
Among the humanists who stood nearest to the person
of this monarch, Antonio Beccadelli, called from his birth
place II Panormita, deserves the first place. Born at Palermo
in 1394, he received his education at Siena, where he was a
fellow-student with JSneas Sylvius Piccolomini. The city of
Siena, molles Sence, as the poet himself caUed it, was noto
rious throughout Italy for luxury of Uving. Here, therefore,
it may be presumed that BeccadeUi in his youth enjoyed the
experiences which he afterwards celebrated in ' Hermaphro-
ditus. ' 2 Nothing is more striking in that amazing coUection
of elegies than the frankness of then: author, the free and
Uberal delight with which he dwells on shameless sensualities,
and the. pride with which he publishes his own name to the
world. Dedicated to Cosimo de' Medici, welcomed withapplause
by the grey-headed Guarino da Verona,3 extoUed to the skies by
Antonio Losco, eagerly sought after by Bartolommeo, Bishop
of Milan — this book, which Strato and Martial might have
blushed to own, passed from copyist to copyist, from hand to
hand. Among the learned it found no serious adversaries.
Poggio, indeed, gently reminded the poet that even the
elegance of its Latinity and the heat of its author's youth
were hardly sufficient excuses for its wantonness.4 Yet the
almost unanimous verdict of students was favourable. Its
open animalism, as free from satire as from concealment, took
1 The MS. of Livy referred to above is now in the library at Hoik-
ham ; see Roscoe's Lorenzo, p. 389.
2 Published at Paris in 1791 among Quinque illustrium Poettmm
Lusus in Venerem, and again at Coburg in 1824, with annotations by
F. G. Forberg.
3 A man of about sixty-three, and father of twelve legitimate
children. * Poggii Opera, pp. 349-354.

BECCADELLI'S ' HERMAPHRODITUS ' 185
the world by storm ; whUe the facUe elegance of fluent verse
with which the sins of Sodom and Gomorrha were described
placed it, in the opinion of scholars, on a level with CatuUus.1
When the Emperor Sigismund crowned BeccadeUi poet at
Siena in 1433, he only added the weight of Imperial approval
to the verdict of the lettered pubhc.
The Church could not, however, tolerate the scandal.
Ever since the days of Petrarch and Boccaccio, monks had
regarded the study of antique poetry with suspicion. Now
their worst fears were reaUsed. BeccadeUi had proved that the
vices of renascent Paganism were not only corrupting Itahan
society in secret, but that a young scholar of genius could
openly proclaim his participation in the shame, abjure the
first principles of Christian moraUty, and appeal with confi
dence to princes and humanists for sympathy. The Minorite
Friars denounced the ' Hermaphroditus ' from their pulpits,
and burned it, together with portraits of the poet, on the public
squares of Bologna, Milan, and Ferrara.2 Eugenius IV.
proscribed the reading of it under penalty of excommunication.
Dignitaries of the Church, who found it in the hands of their
secretaries, did not scruple to tear it to pieces, as a book for
bidden by the Pope and contrary to sound morality.3 Yet all
this made but Uttle difference to Beccadelli's reputation.4 He
lectured with honour at Bologna and Pavia, received a stipend
1 Poggio, while professing to condemn the scandals of these poems,
writes thus : — ' Delectatus sum mehercle varietate rerum et elegantia.
versuum, simulque admiratus sum res adeo impudicas, adeo ineptas,
tam venuste, tam composite, a te dici, atque ita multa exprimi turpi is-
cula ut non enarrari sed agi videantur, nee ficta a te jocandi causa, ut
existimo, sed acta existimari possint.' — Poggii Opera, p. 349.
2 Especially Bernardino da Siena, Eoberto da Lecce, and Alberto da
Sarteano. See the note to p. 353 of Vol. I., Age of the Despots.
* See Vespasiano, Vita di GiuUano Cesarini, p. 134.
4 A curious letter from Guarino to BeccadeUi (Rosmini's Vita di
Guwrmo, vol. ii. p. 44, and notes, p. 171) describes the enthusiastic re
ception given in public to an impostor who pretended to be the author
of Hermaphroditus.

186 RENAISSANCE IN ITALY
of 800 scudi from the Visconti, and in 1435 was summoned to
the Court of Naples. Alfonso raised him to the rank of noble,
and continuaUy employed him near his person, enjoying his
wit, and taking special delight in his readings of classic authors.
As official historiographer, BeccadeUi committed to writing the
memorable deeds and sayings of his royal master.1 As ambas
sador and orator, he represented the King at foreign Courts.
As tutor to the Crown Prince, Ferdinand, he prepared a
sovereign for the State of Naples. This favour lasted till the
year 1471, when he died, old, rich, and respected, in his lovely
villa by the Bay of Naples. A more signal instance of the
value attached in this age to pure scholarship, irrespective
of moral considerations, and apart from profound learning—
since BeccadelU was, after aU, only an elegant Latinist—
cannot be adduced. The ' Hermaphroditus,' therefore, de
serves a prominent place in the history of Eenaissance
manners. Those among us who have had the curiosity to study
Beccadelli's * Hermaphroditus ' wiU find sufficient food for
reflection upon his post of confidence and honour at the Court
of Alfonso.2 Yet the position of Lorenzo Valla at the same
Court is even more remarkable. While BeccadeUi urged the
levity of youth in extenuation of his heathenism, and spoke
with late regret of his past follies,3 Valla showed the steady
front of a deliberate critic, hostUe at aU points to the traditions
and the morals of the Church. The parents of this remark-
' De Dictis et Faclis Alphonsi Regis Memorabilibus. Mn&as Sylvius
wrote a commentary on this work, in the preface to which he says,
1 Legere potui, quod feci, corrigere vero non potui ; nam quid est quod
manu tua emissum correctione indigeat ? ' — Opp. Omnia, p. 472. This
proves Beccadelli's reputation as a stylist.
2 What the biographers, especially Vespasiano, relate of Alfonso's
ceremonious piety and love of theological reading makes the contrast
between him and his Court poet truly astounding.
* * Hie faeces varias Venerig moresque profanos,
Quos natura fugit, me docnisse pudet.'

LORENZO VALLA 187
able man were natives of Piacenza, though, having probably
been born at Eome, he assumed to himself the attribute of
Eoman.1 Before he fixed his residence at Naples, he had
aheady won distinction by a 'Dialogue on Pleasure,' in which
he contrasted the principles of the Stoics and Epicureans,
making it clear, in spite of cautious reservation, that he up
held the rights of the flesh in opposition to the teaching of
philosophies and Churches. The virtue of virginity, so
strongly prized by Christian saints, was treated by him as a
violence to nature's laws, an intolerable torment inflicted upon
man as God has made him.2
The attack opened by VaUa upon the hypocrisies and
false doctrines of monasticism was both powerful and novel.
Humanistic freedom of thought, after assuming the form of
witty persiflage in Poggio's anecdotes and appearing as pure
Paganism in BeccadeUi's poems, now put on the sterner mask
of common sense and criticism in Lorenzo VaUa. The arms
which he assumed in his first encounter with Church doctrine,
he never laid aside. To the end of his life Valla remained
the steady champion of unbiassed criticism, the living incarna
tion of that ' verneinender Geist ' to which the reason of the
modern world has owed its motive force.
Before leaving Eome at the age of twenty-four, Valla tried
to get the post of ApostoUc Secretary, but without success. It
is probable that his youth told less against him than his
reputation for plain speech and fearlessness. In 1431 we
hear of him at Pavia, where, according to the slanders of his
enemies,3 he forged a wiU and underwent public penance at
1 'Romam, in qua natus sum . . . ego sum ortus Romas oriundus a
Piacentia.' 2 The naive surprise with which Vespasiano records the fact of
virginity (see especially the Lives of Ambrogio Traversari and the
Cardinal Portogallo) shows how rare the virtue was, and what
mysterious honour it conferred upon men who were reputed to he
chaste. 3 Poggio and Fazio are the authorities for this incident.

188 RENAISSANCE IN ITALY
the order of the Bishop. This, however, is just one of those
stories on which the general character of the invectives that
contain it, throws uncertainty. Far more to our purpose is
the fact that at this period he became the supreme authority
on points of Latin style in Italy by the pubhcation of his
' Elegantiae.' True to his own genius, Valla displayed in this
masterly treatise the qualities that gave him a place unique
among the scholars of his day. The forms of correct Latinity
which other men had picked out as they best could by close
adherence to antique models, he subjected to critical analysis,
establishing the art of style on scientific principles.
When Alfonso invited Valla to Naples in 1437, giving
him the post of private secretary, together with the poet's
crown, he must have known the nature of the man who was
to play so prominent a part in the history of free thought.
It is not improbable that the feud between the House of
Aragon and the Papal See, which arose from Alfonso's
imperfect title to the throne of Naples, and was embittered
by the intrigues of the Church, disposed the King to look
with favour on the uncompromising antagonist of Papacy.
At all events, Valla's treatise on 'Constantine's Donation,'
which appeared in 1440, assumed the character of a political
pamphlet.1 The exordium contained fierce personal abuse of
Eugenius IV. and Cardinal Vitelleschi. The body of the tract
destroyed the fabric of lies which had imposed upon the
Christian world for centuries. The peroration ended with a
menace. Worse chastisement was in store for a worldly and
simoniacal priesthood, if the Popes refused to forego their
usurped temporalities, and to confess the sham that criticism
had unmasked. War to the death was thus declared between
Valla and Eome. The storm his treatise excited, raged at
first so wildly that Valla thought it prudent to take flight.
He crossed the sea to Barcelona, and remained there a short
1 De falso Creditd et Ementitd Constantini Donatione.

HIS ATTACKS ON CHURCH DOCTRINE 189
while, until, being assured of Alfonso's protection, he once
more returned to Naples. From beneath the shield of his
royal patron, he now continued to shoot arrow after arrow at
his enemies, affirming that the letter of Christ to Abgarus,
reported by Eusebius, was a palpable forgery, exposing the
bad Latin style of the Vulgate, accusing S. Augustine of
heresy on the subject of predestination, and denying the
authenticity of the Apostles' Creed. That a simple humanist,
trusting only to his learning, should have dared to attack the
strong places of orthodoxy — its temporahties, its favourite
code of ethics, its creed, and its patristic authorities — may
weU excite our admiration. With the stones of criticism and
the sling of rhetoric, this David went up against the Goliath of
the Church ; and though he could not slay the Philistine, he
planted in his forehead the first of those many missiles with
which the battery of the reason has assaUed tyrannical tradi
tion in the modern world.
The friars, whom Valla attacked with frigid scorn, and
whose empire over the minds of men he was engaged in
undermining, could not be expected to leave him quiet.
Sermons from aU the pulpits of Italy were launched at the
heretic and heathen ; the people were taught to loathe him as
a monster of iniquity ; and finally a Court of Inquisition was
opened, at the bar of which he was summoned to attend. To
the interrogatories of the inquisitors Valla replied that ' he
believed as Mother Church believed : it was quite true that
she knew nothing : yet he believed as she beheved.' That
was aU they could extract from the disdainful scholar, who,
after openly defying them, walked away to the king and
besought him to suspend the sitting of the Court. Alfonso
told the monks that they must leave his secretary alone, and
the process was dropped.
On the death of Eugenius, Nicholas V. summoned Valla
to Eome, not to answer for his heresies and insults at the

190 RENAISSANCE IN ITALY -
Papal bar, but to receive the post of Apostolic Writer, with
magnificent appointments. The entry of Valla into the
Eoman Curia, though marked by no external ceremony, was
the triumph of humanism over orthodoxy and tradition. We
need not suppose that Nicholas was seeking to bribe a dan
gerous antagonist to silence. He simply wanted to attach an
iUustrious scholar to his Court, and to engage him in the
labour of translation from the Greek. To heresy and scep
ticism he showed the indifference of a tolerant and enhghtened
spirit ; with the friars who hated Valla the Pope in Eome had
nothing whatsoever in common. The attitude assumed by
Nicholas on this occasion Ulustrates the benefit which learning
in the Eenaissance derived from the worldUness of the Papacy.
It was not until the schism of the Teutonic Churches, and tha
intrusion of the Spaniards into Italy, that the Court of Eome
consistently adopted a policy of persecution and repression.
A large portion of VaUa's biography is absorbed by the
history of his quarrels with Poggio, Georgios Trapezuntios,
and other men of mark. Enough has already been said
about these literary feuds ; nor need I aUude to them again;
except for the purpose of bringing a third Court-scholar of
Alfonso's into notice. Bartolommeo Fazio, a native of La
Spezzia, occupied the position of historiographer at Naples.
In addition to his annals of the Ufe of Alfonso, he compiled
a book on celebrated men, and won the reputation of being
the neatest Latinist in prose of his age. Fazio ventured to
criticise the style of Valla, in whose works he professed to
have detected five hundred faults of language. Eight books
of invectives and recriminations were exchanged between
them ; and when both died in 1457, this epigram was com«
posed in celebration of their animosity : —
Ne vel in Elysiis sine vindioe Valla susurret,
Facius haud multos post obit ipse dies.
The amusement afforded to Eoman emperors by fights in

POROELLO 101
the arena, and to feudal nobles by the squabbles of their fools,
seems to have been extracted by ItaUan patrons from the
duels of weU-matehed humanists. What personal jealousies,
what anxious competition for the princely favour, such war
fare concealed may be readUy imagined ; nor is it improbable
that Fazio's attack on VaUi was prompted by the covert spite
of BeccadeUi. Scarcely less close to the person of Alfonso
than the students with whom we have been occupied, stood
Giannantonio PorceUo, a native of Naples. He was distin
guished by his command of versification : the fluency with
which he poured fourth Latin elegiacs and hexameters ap
proached that of an improvisatore of the Molo. Alfonso sent
him to the camp of the Venetians during the war waged by
their general Piccinino in 1452-3 with Sforza. PorceUo, who
shared the tent of Piccinino on this occasion, wrote a Lathi
history of the campaign in the style of Livy, with moral
reflections, speeches, and all the apparatus of Eoman rhetoric.
Piccinino figured as Scipio JEmilianus ; Sforza as Hannibal.
The work was dedicated to Alfonso.1
With the exception of Lorenzo VaUa,2 the scholars of the
Court of Naples were stylists and poets rather than men of
erudition. Freedom both of speculation and of morals marked
society in Southern Italy, where the protection of a powerful
monarch at war with the Church, and the license of a luxurious
capital, released the humanists from such slight restraints as
pubhc opinion and conventional decorum placed on them in
Eome and Florence.
Owing to the marked diversity exhibited by the different
states of Italy, the forms assumed by art and literature are
never exactly the same in any two cities. If the natives of
1 It is printed in Muratori, vol. xx.
* The protection extended to Manetti and to Filelfo ought, however,
to be here mentioned. Nearly all the contemporary scholars of Italy
dedicated works to Alfonso.

192 RENAISSANCE DN ITALY
the Two SiciUes were not themselves addicted to severe
scholarship, the Ughter kinds of writing flourished there
abundantly, and Naples gave her own pecuUar character to
literature. This was not the case with MUan. Yet Milan,
during the reigns of the last Visconti and the first Sforza,
claims attention, owing to the accident of Filelfo's residence
at the Ducal Court. Filippo Maria Visconti was one of the
most repulsive tyrants who have ever disgraced a civUised
country. Shut up within his palace walls among astrologers,
minions, and monks, carefuUy protected from the public eye,
and watched by double sets of mutuaUy suspicious body
guards, it was impossible that he should extend the free en
couragement to learned men which we admire at Naples.
Around despots of the stamp of the Visconti there must of
necessity reign the solitude and silence of a desert, where arts
and letters cannot flourish, though Pactolus be poured forth
to feed their roots. The history of humanism at MUan has,
therefore, less to do with the city or the Ducal circle than
with the private labours of students allured to Lombardy by
promise of high pay.
Piero Candido Decembrio began Ufe as FiUppo Maria's
secretary. To his vigorous pen the student of Itahan history
owes the minutest and most vivid sketch now extant of the
habits and the vices of a tyrant. This remains the best title
of Decembrio to recoUection, though his works, original and
translated, if we may trust his epitaph in S. Ambrogio,
amounted to 127 books when he died in 1447. Contemporary
with Decembrio, Gasparino da Barzizza, of whom mention
has already been made,1 occupied the place of Court orator
and letter- writer. This office he transmitted to his son,
Guiniforte, who was also employed in the education of Fran
cesco Sforza's children. None of these men, however, shed
much splendour upon Milan ; they were simply the instru-
1 Above, p. 78.

FRANCESCO FILELFO 193;
ments of ducal luxury, part of a prince's parade, at an epoch
when even warlike sovereigns sought to crowd their Courts
with pedagogues and rhetoricians.
With Filelfo the case was different. His singular abilities
rendered him independent of local patronage, and drew uni
versal attention to any place where he might choose to fix his
residence. Of aU the humanists he was the most restless in
his humour and erratic in his movements. StUl Milan,
during a long period of his life, formed his head-quarters ; to.
MUan he returned when fortune frowned on him elsewhere ;
and with MUan his name wUl always be connected.
Francesco FUeUo was born in 1398 at Tolentino, in the
March of Ancona. He studied grammar, rhetoric, and Latin
Uterature at Padua, where he was appointed professor at the
early age of eighteen. In 1417 he received an invitation to
teach eloquence and moral philosophy at Venice. Here he
remained two years, deriving much advantage from the society
of Guarino da Verona and Vittorino da Feltre, and forming
useful connections with the Venetian nobility. Young as he
was, FUelfo had already made his mark, and won the con
sideration which attaches to men of decided character and
extraordinary powers. The proof of this is that, after being
admitted citizen of Venice by pubUc decree, he was appointed
Secretary to the Baily (Bailo, or Consul-General) of Con
stantinople through the interest of his friend Lionardo
Giustiniani. Giustiniani having also provided him with
money for his voyage, Filelfoset off in 1419 for the capital
of Greek learning. Of the three Italian teachers — Guarino,
Aurispa, and FUelfo — who made this journey for the express
purpose of acquiring the Greek language and collecting Greek
books, Filelfo was by far the most distinguished. The history,
therefore, of his adventures may be taken as a specimen of
what befell them aU. The time spent at sea between Venice
and Byzantium was five months ; Filelfo did not arrive tiU the
II o

194 RENAISSANCE IN ITALY
year 1420 was already weU advanced. He put himself at
once under the tuition of John Chrysoloras, the brother of
Manuel, whose influence at the Imperial Court brought FUelfo
into favour with John Palaeologus. The young Italian
student, having speedily acquired famiUarity with the Greek
tongue, received the titles of Secretary and CounseUor,
and executed some important diplomatic missions for his
Imperial master. We hear, for instance, of his being sent to
Sigismund, the German Emperor, at Buda, and of his reciting
an Epithalamial Oration at Cracow on the marriage of King
Ladislaus. The Venetian Baily, again, despatched him to the
Court of Amurath IL, in order to negotiate terms of treaty
between the Eepublic and the Turk.
The confidence extended alike by his Venetian and Greek
patrons to Filelfo may well have inclined Chrysoloras to look
with favour on the affection which now sprang up between
the Italian stranger and his daughter Theodora. Theodora
was but fourteen years of age ; yet her youth probably sug
gested no impediment to marriage in the semi-Oriental
society of the Greek capital. That she was connected by
blood with the Imperial family made the aUiance honourable
to Filelfo; stUl there is no sufficient reason to conclude
for certain that the match was so unequal as to justify the
malignant suggestions thrown out at a later date by Poggio.1
1 ' Itaque Chrysoloras, moerore conf ectus, compulsus precibus, malo
coactus, filiam tibi nuptui dedit a te corruptam, quas si extitisset integra,
ne pilum quidem tibi abrasum ab illius natibus ostendisset. An tu
illam un ;uam duxisses uxorem si virginitatem per te servare potuisset?
Tibi pater illam dedisset profugo, ignobili, impuro 7 Primariis subs
civitatis viris servabatur virgo, non tibi, insulssB pecudi et asello
bipedali, quem ille domi alebat tanquam canem aliquem solent senio et
cetate confectum.' — Poggii Opp. p. 167. This is just one of the tales
with which the invectives of that day abound, and with which it is
almost impossible to deal. It may be true ; for certainly Filelfo, by his
immorality and grossness in after-life, justified the worst calumnies that
his enemies could invent. Yet there is little but Poggio's word to prove
it, while Eosmini has shown that Filelfo's position at Byzantium was

FILELFO AT VENICE 19S
Of ancient blood there was enough and to spare at Constan
tinople; but wealth was wanting, while the talent wh'cb
rendered Filelfo serviceable to great states and empires
was itself sufficient guarantee for Theodora's maintenance
in a becoming station.
Not long after their marriage Filelfo received an offer of the
Chair of Eloquence at Venice, with a stipend of 500 sequins.
In 1427, tempted by the prospect of good pay and growing
fame, he landed with his wife, their infant son, four female
slaves, and two men servants on the quay before S. Mark's.1
The object of his journey to Constantinople had been amply
attained. After an absence of seven and a half years, he
returned to his native country with Greek learning, increased
reputation, and a large supply of Greek books.2 His proud
very different from what his foe suggests. Tiraboschi accepts the charge
as ' not proven ; ' but he clearly leans in private against Filelfo, moved
by the following passage from a letter of Ambrogio Traversari : —
'Nuper a Guarino accepi litteras, quibus vehementer in fortunam
invenitur quod filiam Joannis ChrysolortB clarissimi viri is acceperit,
exterus, qui quantum libet homo bono ingenio, longe tamen illis
nuptiis irapar esset, queriturque substomachans uxorem ChrysolorBe
venalem habuisse pudicitiam, mcechumque ante habuisse quam socerum.'
Vol. vi. lib. iii. cap. v. 21. All that can be said now is that Filelfo's
own morality and the corruption of Byzantine society render a story
believed by Guarino and Traversari, and openly told by Poggio, not
improbable. 1 This retinue shows that Filelfo was at least able to support a large
household. 2 The catalogue of his library, communicated by him in a letter to
Ambrogio Traversari, shows so clearly what the most indefatigable
student and omnivorous reader of the age, to whom all the museums
and bookshops of Byzantium must have been open, could then collect,
that I will transcribe it : — ' Qui mihi nostri in Italiam libri gesti sunt,
horum nomina ad te scribo : alios autem nonnullos per primas ex
Byzantio Venetorum naves opperior. Hi autem sunt Plotinus, iBlia-
nus, Aristides, Dionysius Halicarnasseus, Strabo Geographus, Her-
mogenes, Aristotelis Ehetorice, Dionysius Halicarnasseus de Numeris
et Characteribus, Herodotus, Dio Chrysostomus, Appollonius Pergasus,
Thucydides, Plutarchi Moralia, Proclus in Platonem, Philo Judseus,
Ethica Aristotelis, Ejus magna Moralia et Eudemia, et (Economics
o2

186 RENAISSANCE IN ITALY
boast, frequently repeated in after-Ufe, that no man Uving but
himself had mastered the whole literature of the ancients in
both languages, that no one else could wield the prose of
Cicero, the verse of Horace and of VirgU, and the Greek of
Homer and of Xenophon with equal versatiUty, was not
lltogether an empty vaunt.1 We may indeed smUe at his
pretension to have surpassed Virgil because he was an orator,
and Cicero because he was a poet, and both of them together
because he could write Greek as well as Latin.2 We know
that his Latin hexameters are such as not only Virgil but
Cicero would have scorned to own, that his Latin orations
would have been hissed before the Eoman rostra, and that his
et Politica, quaedam Theophrasti Opuscula, Homeri Hias, Odyssea,
Philostrati de Vita Appollonii, Orationes Libanii, et aliqui Sermones
Luciani, Pindarus, Aratus, Euripidis Tragoediae Septem, ¦ Theocritus,
Hesiodus, Suidas, Phalaridis, Hippocratis, Platonis et multorum ex
veteribus Philosophis Epistolae, Demosthenes, iEschinis Orationes et
Epistolse, Pleraque Xenophontis Opera, Una Lysise Oratio, Orphei
Argonautica et Hymni, Callimachus, Aristoteles de Historiis Aniraalium,
Physica, et Metaphysica, et de Anima, de Partibus Anim alium, et alia
quaedam, Polybius, Nonnulli Sermones Chrysostomi, Dionysiaca, et
alii Poets plurimi. Habes qui mihi sint, et his utere seque ac tuis.'
1 ' Unum Philelphus audet affirmare, vel insaniente Candido, ne
minem esse hac tempestate, nee fuisse unquam apud Latinos, quantum
constat ex omni hominum memoria, qui prseter se unum idem unus
tenuerit exercuitque et Grsecam pariter et Latinam orationem in omni
dicendi genere et prosa et versu. Tu si quidem habeas alteram, me-
mora. Quid taces, homo miserrime 7 ' Letter to Piero Candido Decem
brio. Cf. what P. C. Decembrio wrote to Poggio in 1453: — 'Dixit (le.
Philelphus) enim neminem litteras scire prseter ipsum, alios semilatinos
et semigrsecos esse, se autem principatum inter stultos obtinere.'
Rosmini, vol. iii. p. 150.
8 ' Quod si Virgilius superat me carminis ullis
Laudibus, orator ille ego sum melior.
Sin Tulli eloquio prsestat facundia nostro,
Versibus ille meis cedit ubique minor.
Adde quod et lingua possum hsec prsestare Pelasga
Et Latia. Talem quem mihi des alium ? '
Lib. ix., De S'ocis et Seriis. Elegy to Alessandro Sforza. Reported bj
Rosmini, vol. iii. p. 149. One specimen of these boasts may stand for
thousands.

FILELFO'S LEARNING 107
Greek style is at the same time tame and tumid. Neither he
nor his contemporaries were sufficiently critical to compre
hend the force of these objections. They only saw that he
possessed the keys to aU the learning of the ancient world,
and that, besides unlocking those treasures for modern
students, he was also competent to give to current thoughts a
form that aped the classic masterpieces each in its own kind.
Taken at their lowest valuation, the claims of FUelfo, weU
founded in fact, mark him out as the most universal scholar
of his age. A genius he was not : for while his perceptions
were coarse, his intellect was receptive rather than originative.
Of deep thought, true taste, penetrative criticism, or delicate
fancy he knew nothing. The unimaginable bloom of style is
nowhere to be found upon his work. Yet a man of his stamp
was needed at that epoch to act as a focus for the streams of
light which flooded Italy from divers sources, to collect them
in himself, and to bequeath to students of a happier age
the ideal of comprehensive scholarship which Poliziano and
Erasmus reaUsed.
Filelfo's reception at Venice by no means corresponded to
the promises by which he had been tempted, or to the value
which he set on his own services. The plague was in the
city ; the nobles had taken flight to then: country houses ; and
there was no one to attend his lectures. He therefore very
readily accepted an offer sent him from Bologna, and early in
the year 1428 we find him settled in that city as professor
of eloquence and moral philosophy, with a stipend of 450
sequins. He was not destined to remain there long, however,
for the disturbed 3tate of the town rendered teaching impos
sible ; and when flattering proposals arrived from the Floren
tines, he set off in haste and transferred his whole famUy
across the Apennines from Imola.1 The dehght which he
1 The invitation came from Niccoli, Lionardo Bruni, Ambrogio
Traversari, and Palla Strozzi.

198 RENAISSANCE IN ITALY
experienced in viewing the architectural monuments of Flo
rence, and the enthusiasm he aroused by his stupendous learning
in an audience of unprecedented variety and multitude, are
expressed with almost childish emphasis in his correspondence.
' The whole State,' he writes,1 ' is turned to look at me. All
men love and honour me, and praise me to the skies. My
name is on every Up. Not only the leaders of the city, but
women also of the noblest birth make way for me, paying
me so much respect that I am ashamed of their worship. My
audience numbers every day four hundred persons, mostly
men advanced in years and of the dignity of senators.' These
were the halcyon days of Filelfo's residence at Florence,3 when
he was stiU enjoying the friendship of learned men, receiving
new engagements from the University with augmentations of
pay,3 and when as yet he had not won the hatred of the
Medicean faction. His industry at this epoch was amazing.
He began the day by reading and explaining the ' Tusculans '
and rhetorical treatises of Cicero ; then he proceeded to Livy
or Homer ; after a brief rest at midday he resumed his labours
with Terence and a Greek author, Thucydides or Xenophon.
On holidays he read Dante to an audience assembled in the
Duomo, bestowing these lectures as a free gift on the people
of Florence. Amid these public labours, the weight of which
may be estimated by remembering what was required of pro
fessors in the fifteenth century,4 Filelfo stUl found leisure for
private work. He translated two speeches of Lysias, the
' Ehetoric ' of Aristotle, two Lives of Plutarch, and Xenophon's
panegyrics of AgesUaus and the Spartan institutions.
At the same time he had abundant energy for the prosecu
tion of the feuds in which he soon found himself engaged with
1 Quoted by Cantii, p. 128.
* He stayed there from 1429 till the autumn of 1434.
» Engagement renewed October 17, 1431, for two years, with stipend
Df 350 sequins ; again, in 1433, with stipend of 4S0 sequins.
' See above, pp. 90, 91.

FEUD WITH THE MEDICEAN PARTY 199
the Florentine scholars. So great was the arrogance displayed
by Filelfo, his meanness in private Ufe, and his imprudence in
pubhc,' that even the men who had invited him became his
bitter foes. Niccolo de' NiccoU, always jealous of superiority,
and apt to take offence, was the first with whom he quarrelled ;
then followed Carlo Marsuppini and Ambrogio Traversari,
untU at last the whole of the Medicean party were inflamed
against him. Filelfo on his side spared neither satires nor
slanders ; and when the political crisis, which for a time
depressed the Medicean faction, was impending, he declared
himseh the pubhc opponent of Cosimo. Already in the spring
of 1433 he had been stabbed in the face while walking to the
University one morning by Filippo, a cut-throat from Casale ;
nor does there seem any reason to doubt that, as Filelfo him
self firmly believed, the man was paid to kiU him by the
Medici. When the same bravo afterwards followed him to
Siena,2 Filelfo hired a Greek, by name Antonio Maria, to
retahate upon his foes in Florence. It is not probable that a
merely literary quarrel would have run to these extremities.
Even the foulness of Poggio's invectives and the fury of
FUelfo's satires fail to account for the intervention of assassins.
We know, however, that Filelfo had not confined himself
to calumnies and criticisms of his literary rivals. During
Cosimo's imprisonment he urged the Signory in open terms
to take his Ufe ; when he was living in exUe at Venice, he
pursued him with abominable slanders ; and now, on Cosimo's
return, though himself expeUed from the city as a rebel and a
proscript, he kept stirring up the burghers of Florence and
the Courts of Italy against the tyrant.3
1 See Eosmini, vol. i. pp 43, 48.
8 Ibid. vol. i. p. 83, for the trial, torture, and confession of this
bravo. * The original source of information concerning Filelfo's quarrels
with the Florentines is his Satires, divided into ten books or decadeB,
each consisting of ten satires or hecatostichse of one hundred verses each.

&66 RENAISSANCE IN ITALY
The occasion of FUelfo's removal to Siena was this :—
When his position at Florence had become untenable, he
received an invitation from Antonio Petrucci to lecture for
two years, with a stipend of 850 florins. FileUo replied that
he preferred smaU pay and quiet to a larger income among the
swords and poisons of his envious rivals. Accordingly he
took up his abode at Siena for four years in the Piccolomini
Palace. Like many greater and more admirable men, he had
a restless disposition, always pleased with what is new, yet
always grumbling when the taste of bitter mounted to his hps.
The most honourable invitations now began to shower upon
him. The Council of Basle, the Venetian Senate, the Em
peror of the East, Eugenius IV., the Universities of Perugia
and Bologna, and the Duke of MUan applied for his services.
It was not, however, untU the year 1439 that his love of change,
combined with the aUurements of higher pay, induced him to
close with the offers of the Senate of Bologna. Once more,
then, he crossed the Apennines, and once more, after a brief
sojourn of a few months, he again quitted Bologna, and
transferred himself to Milan. His reception by FUippc
Maria Visconti was most flattering. Placing a diamond ring
In the copy of this book, printed at Paris, 1508, by Robert and John
Gourmont, these virulent libels are called ' Divinum Francisci Philelphi
Poetse Christiani Satyrarum Opus.' As their motto the publishers give
these sentences : — ' Finis laus Deo, Spes mea Jesus.' For the abuse of
the Medicean circle see Dec. i. Hec. 5 ; Dec. i. Hec. 6 ; Dec. ii. Hec. 1,
3, 7 ; Dec. iii. Hec. 10 ; Dec. vi. 10 ; Dec. viii. 5. For Filelfo's attack
on Cosimo during his imprisonment, see Dec. iv. Hec. 1. For his in
vective against Cosimo on his return from exile, see Dec. iv. Hec. 9.
For an appeal to Filippo Maria Visconti against Cosimo, see Deo. v.
Hec. 1. For a similar appeal to Eugenius IV., see Dec. v. Hec. 2. For
the episode of the assassin Filippo, see Deo. v. Hec. 6. A political
attack on Cosimo addressed to Einaldo Albizzi is contained in Dec. v.
Hec. 8. A furious denunciation of Cosimo's tyranny, in Dec. v. Heo. 9.
Palla degli Strozzi, as an opponent of Cosimo, is praised in Dec. iii. 1;
Dec. vi. 4. In Dec. vii. 8, Filelfo promises to moderate his fury. In
addition to these sources see the MS. invectives mentioned in Rosmini,
vol. i. p. 47.

FILELFO AT MUAN 201
upon his finger, the Duke welcomed him among the nobles of
his Court on New Year's Day in 1440. Thus began FUelfo's
connection with the Lombard capital, which, though often
interrupted, was never whoUy broken till his death.
The munificence of the Visconti exceeded that of any of
FUelfo's patrons,1 while the mode of Ufe at Milan exactly
suited his vainglorious temperament. He loved to throw his
money about among lords, to appear at high Court festivals,
and to take the lead on ceremonial occasions in his rank of
orator. There was, moreover, no rival strong enough to
threaten the blasting of his popularity.2 We find him,
during his residence at MUan, continually engaged in the
exercise of rhetoric. Public and private incidents of the most
various character employed his skill, nor is there any doubt
that his large professorial income was considerably increased
by presents received from patrons and employers.3 In addition
1 His professorial stipend was soon raised from 500 to 700 golden
florins. 2 Vespasiano says that the concourse of people to Carlo Aretino's
lectures was the first cause of Filelfo's feuds at Florence.
s Here are the dates of some of these displays : —
1440. Funeral oration on Stefano Federigo Todeschini.
1441. Epithalamial on the Marriage of Giovanni Marliani.
1442. Discourse on Duties of a Magistrate.
1446. Panegyric of Filippo Maria Visconti, and oration on the Election
of Jacopo Borromeo to the See of Pavia.
1450. Oration of Welcome to Francesco Sforza.
1455. Epithalamial on the Marriage of Tristano Sforza to Beatrice
d' Este.
1458. Epithalamials for Antonio Crivelli and Teodoro Piatti.
1459. Oration to Pius II. on his Crusade.
1460. Oration on the Election of the Bishop of Como.
1464. Funeral oration for the Senator Filippo Borromeo.
1466. Ditto for Francesco Sforza.
It is probable that all of these were not recited ; but all were conceived in
the lumbering and pedantic style that passed for eloquence at that
period. With regard to rewards received on these occasions, note the
gift of a silver basin from Jacopo Antonio Marcello in return for a
consolatory epistle. Rosmini, vol. ii. p. 127. Cf. p. 197.

262 RENAISSANCE IN ITALY
to the labours of his chair, he engaged in various literary
works. His Satires and Odes were gradually growing into
ponderous volumes.1 Other fugitive pieces in prose he put
together under the title of ' Convivia Mediolanensia.' Mean
while he carried on an active correspondence, both familiar
and hortatory, with the scholars and the princes of his day.2
There was no branch of letters with which, sustained by
sublime self-approval, he was not wiUing and eager to meddle.
As he had professed Dante at Florence, so here at Milan, by
ducal command, he undertook to comment upon Petrarch,
and actually composed a poem on S. John the Baptist in
terza rima. There is something ludicrous in the thought
of this Visconti, would-be Herod as in truth he was, com
missioning Filelfo, the outrageous Pagan, to versify the life of
Christ's forerunner. If Filelfo despised anything more than
sacred history, it was the Italian language ; and if there was
a task for which he was unfitted, it was the composition of
poetry. During the second year of his MUanese residence Filelfo
lost his wife Theodora. He speedily married again, choosing
for his bride a beautiful young lady of good family in Milan.
Her name was Orsina Osnaga. Since I have touched upon
this matter of Filelfo's private Ufe, it may be weU to add that
1 The Satires, collected into ten decades, each satire consisting of
100 lines, were dedicated to Alfonso of Naples in 1451. Printed at
Milan, 1446. The Odes, entitled De Seriis et Jocis, were finished in
1465, and dedicated partly to Malatesta Novello of Cesena, partly to
Alessandro Sforza. There were ten books, each book containing 1,000
lines. Never printed. Rosmini, who inspected the MSS., reports that
their obscenity exceeds description, and is only equalled by the vulgarity
of the author's fancy and the coarseness of his style. In addition to
these unpublished Latin poems, Filelfo collected three books of Greek
elegies and epigrams, amounting to 2,400 verses. It is significant that
he measured his poetry by lines, and trained his jog-trot muse to paceB
of 100 verses.
1 The Epistle to Ladislaus of Hungary on his victories over the
Tuiks, for instance.

HIS THREE MARRIAGES 203
when he lost his second wife, he took in wedlock for the third
time Laura Magiolini. By each of his marriages he acquired
no inconsiderable property, and all his brides belonged to
highly distinguished famihes. The best thing that can be said
about FUelfo as a man is, that he was undoubtedly attached
to his wives and to the numerous children they bore him.1
This feehng did not, however, protect him from numerous
infidelities, or save his fortune from the burden of Ulegitimate
chUdren.8 It is even doubtful whether credence should not
be accorded to suggestions of worse debauchery, repeated
with every appearance, of belief by his enemies, and on his
side but imperfectly refuted. FUelfo was, in truth, a man of
' great physical vigour, whose energies the mere labour of the
student was insufficient to exhaust. ' Loves and hatreds,
domestic sympathies and turbulent passions, absorbed a por
tion of his superfluous force ; nor was he at any time restrained
by scruples of rehgion or morality. What was good for
Greeks and Eomans was good for him. It is also to be noted
that the innate sense of delicacy which sometimes forms the
safeguard of excessive temperaments was altogether aUen to
his nature.
During the disasters that befell the State of Milan on the
death of FUippo Maria, Filelfo at first espoused the cause of
the burghers. A letter to the Florentines is extant, in which
he exhorts them to aid their sister commonwealth at the ex
treme hour of her peril. It was not natural, however, that
a humanist, who had no zeal for freedom, and whose personal
interests led him to desire a settled government at any price,
should continue staunch to a repubUc so unnerved as that of
' He had twelve sons and twelve daughters. They did not all
live. * A curious sign of current feeling is that Filelfo frequently boasted
of being rprfpxns. See Rosmini, i. p. 15, and the verse quoted, ib. p. 113.
He mentioned two natural children in his will and had many more.
Rosmini, vol. iii. p. 78.

204 RENAISSANCE IN ITALY
Milan. When Carlo Gonzaga played the Milanese false by
admitting the troops of Francesco Sforza, Filelfo was the first
to welcome the new monarch with a set oration. He professed
great admiration for the general who, by careful management
and double-dealing, had placed himself at the head of the third
state in the peninsula. Yet his correspondence at this period
proves that his mind was uneasy, and that he desired a change,
In an impudent letter addressed to Nicholas V., he solicited
ecclesiastical preferment, suggesting that the promise of a
bishop's mitre would secure his splendid talents for the service
of the Papacy.1 However desirous the Pope might be to
engage Filelfo for his translation factory at Eome, the price
demanded was too great. He could not recognise a vocation
so clearly inspired by mercenary motives ; arid to receive into
the high places of the Church, at his own request, a man
accused of many vices, who had twice been married, would
have established a dangerous precedent. FUelfo, receiving
neither substantial encouragement nor a flat refusal, turned
his thoughts to matrimony for the third time, and addressed a
prayer on this occasion to Dame Venus, in which he besought
the mother of Priapus to befriend her votary. - The inteUigent
student of the Eenaissance will not fail to notice the state of
mind impUed by the juxtaposition of this letter to the Holy
Father and this ode to Venus.
Filelfo was now fain to content himself with the patronage
of Francesco Sforza, a prince who had no natural turn for
literature, but who was wise enough to know that a parvenu
could least of aU afford to neglect the ruhng fashions of his
age. The letters he wrote at this period abound in impudent
demands for money, querulous outcries over the poverty to
which the first scholar of the century was condemned, and
violent menaces of retaliation if his salary remained in
1 Rosmini, vol. ii. p. 54. It may be remembered that Pietro Aretino
hinted he should like to be a cardinal.

FILELFO'S RAPACITY 205
arrears.' Not only Francesoo Sforza, but all the patrons upon
whom FUelfo thought he had a claim, were assailed with
reptile lamentations and more reptile menaces. Alessandro
Sforza, Lodovico Gonzaga, and three Popes in succession may
be mentioned among the more distinguished princes who
suffered from this Uterary brigandage.2 Not without strict jus
tice did a contemporary describe him in the foUowing severe
terms : — ' He is calumnious, envious, vain, and so greedy of
gold that he metes out praise or blame according to the gifts
he gets, both despicable as proceeding from a tainted source.'3
FUetfo's rapacity is truly disgusting when we remember that
he received far more than any equally distinguished student of
his age. Not the iUiberality of patrons, but his own luxurious
1 As a specimen of Filelfo's Grub Street style of begging, I tran
scribe the following elegy (Rosmini, vol. ii. p. 285) : —
' Haec autem altisone dum carmina Celsius effort
Defecisse suo sentit ab ore tubam,
Nam quia magni fici data non est copia nummi
Cogitur huic uti carmine raucidulo.
Quod neque mireris ; vocem pretiosa canoram
Esca dat, et potus excitat ingenium.
Ingenium spurco suevit languescere vino,
Humida mugitum reddere rapa solet.'
Francesco Sforza's anxiety to retain Filelfo in his service is expressed
in a letter to his treasurer (ib. p. 295) : — ' Noi per niuno modo el vogliamo
perdere, la qual cosa seguirebbe quando gli paresse essere deluso, e non
potesse seguitare per manchamento delli dicti 250 fiorini la nobilissima
opera per lui in nostra gloria comenzata ne suplire agli altri suoi bisogni.'
The tuba and the nobilissima opera both refer to Filelfo's Sforziad.
2 I may call particular attention to Filelfo's behaviour with regard
to Pius H. — the free pension of 200 florins granted (Rosmini, vol. ii.
p. 106), the menaces because it is not paid (ib. p. 115), the scurrilous
epigrams on the Pope's. death (ib. p. 321), the abusive letter addressed
to Paul n. (ib. p. 136), the sentence of imprisonment for calumny issued
against him and his son Mario (ib. p. 140), the final palinode in which
he basely praises the Pope whom he had basely abused (ib. p. 146). The
whole series of transactions is disgraceful.
3 Letter of Gregorio Lollio to the Cardinal of Pavia, reported by
Eosmini (vol. ii. p. 147).

206 RENAISSANCE IN ITiLY
habits, reduced him to beggary. AU the whUe that he was
screaming in bad Latin verse, he Uved expensively, indulging
ostentatious tastes, and finding money for unclean indulgences.
In order to confirm his claim on the Duke of Milan's genero
sity, he began a gigantic Latin epic upon the life of Sforza.
Without plan, a mere versified chronicle, encumbered with
fooUsh mythological machinery, and loaded with fulsome
flatteries, this leaden Sforziad crawled on untU 12,800 fines
had been written. Only the first eight books of it were pub
lished in MS., nor were these ever printed.1
By fair means and by foul, Filelfo had managed to secure
a splendid reputation throughout Italy. His journey to Naples
in 1453 resembled a triumphal progress. Nicholas V. enter
tained him with distinction, read his infamous satires, pre
sented him with a purse of 500 ducats, and offered him a yearly
stipend of 600 if he would dedicate his talents to translation.
Alfonso dubbed him knight, and placed the poet's laurel on
his brow with his own royal hands. As he passed through their
capitals, the princes received him Uke an equal. At Ferrara
he enjoyed the hospitalities of Duke Borso, at Mantua the
friendship of the Marchese Lodovico Gonzaga ; the terrible
Gismondo Pandolfo Malatesta welcomed him in Eimini,
and the General Jacopo Piccinino in his camp at Fossom-
brone. Nor was this fame confined to Italy. On the faU of
Constantinople he addressed a letter to the Sultan, beseeching
him to release his mother-in-law and her two daughters from
captivity ; the humanist's eloquence obtained this favour from
the Turkish conqueror, who refused to accept a ransom for the
relatives of so iUustrious an orator.2
Until the death of Francesco Sforza MUan continued to be
1 The whole poem ran to sixteen books. Therefore, according to
Filelfo's art of poetry, the first eight contained 6,400 verses.
2 See Rosmini, vol. ii. p. 90. The Greek epistle which he sent is
printed, ib. p. 305.

JOURNEY TO ROME 207
the city of Filelfo's choice. After that event he turned his
thoughts to Eome. Pius IL, Paul H., and Sixtus IV., in
succession, had testified their regard for him, either by
moderate presents, sufficient to excite his cupidity and check
his slanderous temper, or by negotiations which came to
nothing. At last, in 1474, he received from Eome the offer
of a professorial chair, with a stipend of 600 florins, and the
promise of the first vacant post in the Apostolic Chancery.
The old man of seventy-seven years once more journeyed
across the plains of Lombardy, ascended the Apennines,
passed through Florence,1 and began his lectures with the
' Tusculans ' of Cicero, on the twelfth day of January, 1475, in
Eome. The marks of favour with which Sixtus had received
him were highly honourable. Filelfo was permitted to sit in
the Pope's presence, and on Christmas Day he stood among
the ambassadors while Sixtus celebrated mass. The vigorous
old scholar at first felt that aU his previous Ufe had been
a tedious prologue to this blissful play. Soon, however, a
cloud arose on the horizon. The Pope's treasurer, Milhardo
Cicala, was remiss in payments. Filelfo retaliated by de
scribing Cicala's vices in the most lurid colours to Sixtus.2
Though his style and eloquence were always vulgar, the con
centrated fury and impassioned hatred of these invectives
cannot fail to impress the imagination. Such a picture of the
dissolute and grasping treasurer, painted by Filelfo and sent
to Sixtus, has a sinister humour which might recommend
itseU to the audience of an infernal comedy. It is only
necessary to have some knowledge of the three men in order
to perceive its force. Nor did Sixtus himseU long continue
in FUelfo's graces. Frequent journeys prove how unsettled
he became ; at last he left Eome in 1476, never to return.
When the Pazzi Conjuration faUed at Florence, FUelfo wrote
1 He had long since made peace with the Medici.
4 See the original letters in Rosmini, vol. ii. pp. 411-419.

208 RENAISSANCE IN ITALY
to congratulate Lorenzo de' Medici on his escape, and under-,
took the task of composing a history of the whole intrigue.
Two long and violent letters addressed to Sixtus, accusing
him of participation in the conspiracy, and heaping on
him charges of vice, were the result of this determination.1
These epistles were dated from MUan, whither FileUo had
retired in 1476, to find his third wife dead of the plague, and
buried on the eve of his arrival. His sorrow on this occasion
was genuine ; nor is it likely that he derived much comfort
from a curious epistle addressed to him by Paolo Morosini,
who, himself a husband and father, attempted to console the
septuagenarian professor by elaborate abuse of matrimony.8
To such ridiculous vagaries did the rhetorical spirit of human
ism lead its votaries.
FUeUo's last journey was undertaken hi 1481. DI at ease,
and sore of heart, the veteran of scholarship stUl longed for
further triumphs. All his wishes for some time past had
been set on ending his days at Florence, near the person of
Lorenzo de' Medici ; and when an invitation to the Chair of
Greek Literature arrived, it found him eager to set forth. He
was so poor, however, that the Duke's secretary, Jacopo
Antiquari, had to lend him money for the journey.2 He just
managed to reach Florence, where he died of dysentery a fort
night after his arrival, at the age of eighty-three. The Floren
tines buried him in the Church of the Annunziata.
' Rosmini, vol. ii. p. 261, note. ! Ib. p. 248.
• I cannot allow this mention of Antiquari's name to pass without
a note upon his life and services to letters. He was born and educated
at Perugia, entered the service of the Papal Legate Battista Savelli as
secretary at Bologna, and afterwards received the post of secretary and
diplomatic writer to the Sforza family at Milan. The Duke Galeazzo
Maria was his first master. At Milan he played the part of an amiable
and refined Msecenas, while he carried on a correspondence in Latin-
still delightful to read — with Poliziano and all the greatest scholars of
his age. His biography, written at some length, with valuable miscel>
laneorm appendices by Vermiglioli, was published at Perugia in 1819.

VITTORINO DA FELTRE 209
The sketch which I have given of FUelfo's Ufe, abounds in
detaUs beyond the just proportions of the present chapter.
This is due partly to the copiousness and the excellence of the
authorities coUected by Eosmini in his exhaustive biography,
but more to the undoubted fact that Filelfo ranks as the
typical humanist of his age. The universality of his acquire
ments and the impression they made upon contemporaries,
his enormous physical vigour and incessant mental activity,
the vehemence with which he prosecuted his Uterary warfares
and the restlessness that drove him from capital to capital in
Italy, are themselves enough to mark him out as the repre
sentative hero of the second period of humanism. Not less
characteristic were the quahty and the form of his Uterary
work — ridiculously over-valued then, and now perhaps too
readily depreciated. There is something pathetic in the
certainty of everlasting fame that sustained the student
through so many years of unremitting labour. It makes us
wonder whether the achievements of the human inteUect, in
science and discovery, acceptable as these may be to their own
time, are not, equaUy with FUelfo's triumph of scholarship,
foredoomed to speedy obscuration. Nothing is imperishable
but high thought, to which art has communicated the inde
structible form of beauty.
The ' Age of the Despots ' ¦ contains a promise of further
detaUs concerning Vittorino da Feltre, to redeem which the
time has now come. His father's name was Bruto de'
Eambaldoni; but having been born at Feltre in the year
1378, he took from his birthplace the surname by which he is
best known.
Like the majority of his contemporaries, Vittorino studied
Latin under John of Eavenna and rhetoric under Gasparino
da Barzizza. His poverty compeUed him at the same time to
support himself by taking pupUs; this drudgery, however,
' Pp. 138, 139.
H p

210 RENAISSANCE IN ITALY
was so unremunerative that, when he wanted to attend the
mathematical lectures of Biagio Pelacane, he had to pay
that avaricious and eccentric teacher by personal service. As
Haydn got his much- desired instruction from Porpora by
playing the part of valet,1 so Vittorino became the scullery boy
of Pelacane,2 in order that he might acquire geometry. These
early studies were carried on at Padua, from which town he
appears to have moved about the year 1417 to Venice. Here
he entered into friendship with Guarino da Verona, and
having learned Greek, returned to his old university as
professor of rhetoric.3 The bias of Vittorino's genius inclined
toward private teaching, and it is this by which he is dis
tinguished among contemporary humanists. Accordingly we
find that, as soon as he was settled in Padua, he opened a
school for a fixed number of young men, selected without
regard to rank or wealth. From the richer pupils he required
fees proportioned to their means ; from the poor he exacted
nothing : thus the wealthy were made to support the needy,
WhUe the teacher obtained for himself the noble satisfaction
of relieving aspirants after knowledge from the pressure of
want and privation. Other gain than this he never thought
of. Only genuine students were aUowed to remain in
Vittorino's school ; the moral rule was strict, and high
thinking and plain Uving were expected from all his pupils.
This generous devotion to the cause of learning for its own
sake contrasts strongly with the self-seeking and vainglory of
other humanists. When FUelfo was urged on one occasion
to open a school for promising young men of noble birth,
he asked disdainfuUy whether his friends expected him to
take rank as a Ucensed victuaUer.4 He was unable to

1 Grove's Dictionary of Music and Musicians, vol. i. p. 704 b.
2 ' Usque ad mundandam supellectilem quee sumpto cibo lavare
Bonsuerit.' — Rosmini, Vita di Vittorino, p. 38, note.
¦ In 1422 apparently. 4 Locandiere. Rosmini, vol. i. p. 67'

SCHOOL AT MANTUA 211
comprehend the possibUity of doing anything that would
not reflect lustre on himself or place him in the Ught of
popular applause.
Vittorino found it difficult to govern his school at Padua
as strictly as he wished. The pubUc Gymnasium was ill-
ordered, and great Ucense of life was permitted to its
students. He therefore removed to Venice in 1423, where
he continued his work as private tutor. By this time,
however, he had acquired considerable reputation as an
educator, to whose care the youth of both sexes might be
entrusted with implicit confidence — no smaU testimony to
his goodness in that age of ungoverned passions and
indescribable vices. The Marchese Gian Francesco Gonzaga
was looking out for a master for his children, and his
choice feU on Vittorino. The admiration of antiquity
was no mere matter of fashion with this prince. He
loved history for its own sake, and professed a special
reverence for the Eoman CamiUus. His practical good sense
made him understand that, if he wished his sons and
daughters to become thoroughly educated, not only in the
humanities and mathematics, but also in the republican
virtues of the ancients, which then formed the ideal of Ufe
in Italy, he must be wUling to commit them whoUy to the
charge of their appointed governor. Vittorino, who would
have undertaken the duty on no other condition, obtained
fuU control of the young princes and their servants. An
appointment of twenty sequins per month was assigned to
him, together with a general order on the treasury of
Mantua. A viUa, caUed Casa Zojosa, which we may trans
late Joyous Gard, was allotted to the new household, and
there Vittorino estabhshed himself as master in 1425. He
had much to do before this dweUing could be converted from
the pleasure house of a mediaeval sovereign into the semi-
monastic resort of earnest students. Through its open
p2

tl2 RENAISSANCE IN ITALY
gaUeries and painted banquet chambers the young Gonzaghi
lounged with favourite friends selected from the Mantuan
nobility. The tables groaned under gold and sUver plate,
while perfumed lacqueys handed round rich wines and
highly seasoned dishes, and the garden alleys echoed to the
sound of lute and viol. Without making any brusque or
sudden reformation, Vittorino managed, by degrees, and on
various pretexts, to dismiss the more dangerous friends and
servants of his pupils. A strict house-porter was engaged,
with orders to exclude suspicious visitors. Plain clothes,
simple habits, and frugal meals became the rule of the
household, Vittorino contriving to render these changes no
less agreeable than salutary to his pupUs. When complaints
arose from the former companions of the princes and their
parents, he laid his plan of training clearly before the
Marquis, who had the good sense to approve of aU that he
had done.
The eldest of Gian Francesco's children, Lodovico, was a
youth of lazy habits, inclined to gluttony, and already too fat
for his age. The next, Carlo, had outgrown his strength,
and needed more substantial food. Vittorino devised systems
of diet and physical training suited to their several tempera
ments, making it his one object to increase their vigour, and
by multiplying sources of rational enjoyment to dispose them
to the energetic exercise of their faculties. He by no means
neglected what we call athletics. Indeed, it was a funda
mental axiom of his method that a robust body could alone
harbour a healthy mind. Boys who sat poring over books,
or haunted sohtary places, lost in dreaming, found no favour
in his eyes. To exercises in the gymnasium or the riding-
school he preferred games in the open air; hunting and
fishing, wrestUng and fencing, running and jumping, were
practised by his pupils in the park outside their palace. To
harden them against severities of heat and cold, to render

COURSE OF STUDIES 213
them temperate in food and drink, to train their voices, and
to improve their carriage was his first care. Since he could
not himsetf superintend their education in aU its branches,
he engaged a subordinate staff of tutors ; grammarians,
logicians, mathematicians, painters, and masters of riding,
dancing, singing, swimming, fencing, began to crowd the
haUs of Joyous Gard. Each had his own aUotted task to
perform, whUe Vittorino surveyed the whole scheme.
' Perhaps,' says Eosmini,1 ' the only sciences that were not
taught in this academy were civU and canon law and
natural physics.'
It must not be imagined that so extensive an apparatus
existed solely for the young Gonzaghi. Noble youths from
aU the Courts of Italy, and students from remote parts of
Europe, sought admittance to Vittorino's school. The more
promising of these pupils, who were fitted by their rank and
disposition to associate with his princely charges, the master
housed under his own roof ; whUe for the rest he provided
suitable lodgings near at hand. Many were the poor
students who thus owed to his generosity participation in the
most refined and scientific culture their century afforded.2
WhUe paying this tribute to Vittorino da Feltre, we must
remember the honour that is also due to Gian Francesco
Gonzaga. Had this prince not been endowed with true
liberality of soul and freedom from petty prejudice,
Vittorino could never have developed a system based upon
pure democratic principles, which even now may rank as an
unrivalled educational ideal. If the master, again, was able
to provide for sixty poor scholars at a time — teaching,
feeding, clothing, and furnishing them with costly books,
' P. 111.
2 Sixty poor scholars were taught, fed, clothed, and provided with
implements of study at his cost. He also subsidised their families in
distress. Rosmini, Vita di Vittorino, pp. 165, 166.

214 RENAISSANCE IN ITALY
his friend the Marquis must, we feel sure, have supplied his
purse with extra funds for charitable purposes.1
The numerous biographers of Vittorino have transmitted
many detaUs in illustration of his method of teaching. He
used to read the classic authors aloud, prefixing biographical
notices by way of introduction, and explaining the matter, as
weU as the language of his text, as he proceeded. Sometimes
he made his pupils read, correcting their pronunciation, and
obhging them to mark the meaning by emphasis. He relied
much on learning by heart and repetition, as the surest
means of forming a good style. Gifted with a finer instinct
for language than the majority of his contemporaries, he was
careful that his pupils should distinguish between different
types of Uterary exceUence, not confounding Cicero with
Seneca or Virgil with Lucan, but striving to appreciate the
special qualities of each. With a view to the acquisition of
pure principles of taste, he confined them at first to Virgil
and Homer, Cicero and Demosthenes. These four authors
he regarded as the supreme masters of expression. Ovid
was too luxuriant, Juvenal top coarse, to serve as guides
for tiros. Horace and Persius among the satirists, Terence
among the comic poets, might be safely studied. In spite of
Seneca's weight as a philosophic essayist, Vittorino censured
the affectations of his rhetoric ; and while he praised the
beauty of the Latin elegists, he judged them iU-suited for the
training of the young. Criticism of this kind, though it may
sound to us obvious and superficial, was extremely rare in
the fifteenth century, when scholars were too apt to neglect
differences of style in ancient authors, and to ignore the
ethics of their works. The refinement which distinguished
Vittorino, made him prefer the graces of a chastened manner
1 Rosmini, Vita di Vittorino, p. 165. Vespasiano, p. 492, tells a
story which illustrates these relations between Vittorino and the Marquis.
Cf., too, p. 494.

VHTORINO'S PUPDLS 218
to the sounding phrases of emphatic declamation. His pupils
were taught to see that they had something to say first, and
then to say it with simplicity and elegance.
This purity of taste was no mere matter of aesthetic
sensibility with Vittorino. Habits which brutalise the mind
or debase the body, however sanctioned by the usage of the
times, met with httle toleration in his presence. Swearing,
obscene language, vulgar joking, and angry altercation were
severely punished. Personal moraUty and the observance of
religious exercises he exacted from his pupils. Lying was a
heinous offence. Those who proved intractable upon these
points were excluded from his school. Of the rest Vespasiano
writes with emphasis that ' his house was a sanctuary of
manners, deeds, and words.' '
Concerning the noble Italian youths who were educated
with the Gonzaga family at Mantua, enough has been said
in another place.2 Appended to Eosmini's copious biography
wiU be found, by those who are curious to read such details,
the notices of forty more or less distinguished pupUs.3 Beside
the two sons of Gian Francesco Gonzaga already mentioned,
Vittorino educated three other chUdren of his master — Gian-
lucido, Alessandro, and CecUia.4 Wholly dedicated to the
cares of teaching, and more anxious to survive in the good
fame of his scholars than to secure the immortaUty of Utera
ture, Vittorino bequeathed no writings to posterity. He Uved
to a hale and hearty old age ; and when he died, in 1446, it
was found that the Ulustrious scholar, after enjoying for so
many years the UberaUty of his princely patron, had not
accumulated enough money to pay for his own funeral.

1 P. 492. * Vol. I., Age of the Despots, p. 138.
'• Pp. 249-476.
4 See Bosmini, p. 183, and Vespasiano, p. 493, for the record of he?
virtues, her learning, and her refusal to wed the infamous Oddo da
Montefeltro.

110 RENAISSANCE IN ITALY
Whatever he possessed, he spent in charity during his Hfetime,
trusting to the kindness of his friends to bury him when dead.
Few lives of which there is any record in history, are so per
fectly praiseworthy as Vittorino's ; few men have more nobly
realised the idea of living for the highest objects of their age ;
few have succeeded in keeping themselves so whoUy unspotted
by the vices of the world around them.
By the patronage extended to Vittorino da Feltre the
Court of Mantua took rank among the high schools of
humanism in Italy. Ferrara won a similar distinction through
the liberality of the House of Este. What has already been
said about MUan applies, however, in a less degree to Ferrara.
The arts and letters, though they flourished with exceeding
brilliance beneath the patrons of Boiardo, Ariosto, and Tasso,
were but accessories to a splendid and voluptuous Court life.
Literature was little better than an exotic, cultivated for its
rarity and beauty by the princes of the Este famUy.
The golden age of culture at Ferrara began in 1402, when
Niccolo IH. reopened the university. Twenty-seven years
later Guarino da Verona made it one of the five chief seats of
Southern learning. The life of this eminent scholar in many
points resembles that of Filelfo, though their characters were
very different. Guarino was born of respectable parents at
Verona in 1370. He studied Latin in the school of Giovanni
da Eavenna, and while stiU a lad of eighteen traveUed to
Constantinople at the cost of a noble Venetian, Paolo Zane,
in order to learn Greek. After a residence of five years in
Greece he returned to Venice, and began to lecture to crowded
audiences.1 Like all the humanists, he seems to have pre
ferred temporary to permanent engagements — passing from
Venice to Verona, from Trent to Padua, from Bologna to
Florence, and everywhere acquiring that substantial reputation
1 See his Life by Rosmini, p. 11. for his brilliant reception at
Venice.

GUARINO 217
as a teacher to which he owed the invitation of Niccolo d' Este
in 1429. He was now a man of nearly sixty, master of
the two languages, and well acquainted with the method of
instruction. The Marquis of Ferrara engaged him as tutor
to his Ulegitimate son LioneUo, heir apparent to his throne.
For seven years Guarino devoted himself wholly to the educa
tion of this youth, who passed for one of the best scholars of
his age. Granting that the reputation for learning was Ughtly
conferred on princes by their Uterary parasites, it seems
certain that LioneUo derived more than a mere smattering in
culture from his tutor. Amid the pleasures of the chase, to
which he was passionately devoted, and the distractions of the
gayest Court in Italy, he found time to correspond on topics
of scholarship with Poggio, FUelfo, Decembrio, and Francesco
Barbaro. His conversation turned habitually upon the
fashionable themes of antique ethics, and his favourite com
panions were men of pohte education. It is no wonder that
the humanists, who saw in him a future Augustus, deplored
his early death with unfeigned sorrow, though we, who can
only judge him by the general standard of his family, may
be permitted to reserve our opinion. The profile portrait of
LioneUo, now preserved in the National Gallery, does not, at
any rate, prepossess us very strongly in his favour.
Guarino, Uke his friend Vittorino, was celebrated for the
method of his teaching and for the exact order of his dis
cipline.1 Students flocked from aU the cities of Italy to his
lecture-room; for, as soon as his tutorial engagements with
the prince permitted, he received a pubhc appointment as
professor of eloquence from the Ferrarese Consiglio de' Savi.
In this post he laboured for many years, maintaining his
reputation as a student and fining the universities of Italy
with his pupils. A sentence describing his manner of Ufe in
' See the details collected by Rosmini, Vita di Guarino, pp. 79-87.

2i s RENAISSANCE IN ITALY
extreme old age might be used to illustrate the enthusiasm
which sustained the vital energy of scholars in that genera
tion : — ' His memory is marvellous, and his habit of reading
is so indefatigable, that he scarcely takes the time to eat, to
sleep, or to go abroad ; and yet his Umbs and senses have tha
vigour of youth.' l Guarino was one of the few humanists
whose moral character won equal respect with his learning.
When he died at the age of ninety, the father of six boys and
seven girls by his wife Taddea Cendrata of Verona, it was
possible to say with truth that he had reaUsed the ideal of a
temperate scholar's Ufe. Yet this incomparable teacher of
youth undertook the defence of BeccadelU's obscene verses ;
this anchorite of humanism penned virulent invectives with
the worst of his contemporaries.2 Such contrasts were com
mon enough in the fifteenth century.
The name of Giovanni Aurispa must not be omitted in
connection with Ferrara. Born in 1369 at Noto in Sicily, he
Uved to a great age, and died in 1459. He too travelled in
early youth to Constantinople, and returned, laden with MSS.
and learning, to profess the humanities in Italy. His life
forms, therefore, a close parallel with that of both Guarino
and FileKo. Aurispa, however, was gifted with a less un
resting temper than Filelfo ; nor did he achieve the same
professorial success as Guarino. In his school at Ferrara
he enjoyed the calmer pleasures of a student's Ufe, ' devoted,'
as Filelfo phrased it, ' to the placid Muses.' 8
To give an account of aU the minor Courts, where human
ism flourished under the patronage of petty princes, would be
tedious and unprofitable. It is enough to notice that the
1 Timoteo Maffei, quoted by Tiraboschi, vol. vi. lib. iii. oap. 5, 8.
1 He carried on literary feuds with Niccolo de' Niccoli, Poggio, Filelfo,
and Georgios Trapezuntios.
3 ' Placidis Aurispa Camcenis Deditus,' Sat, dec. i. hec. 5. Valla,
Antid. im, Pogium, p. 7, describes him as ' virum suavissimum et ab
omni contentione remotissimum.'

CULTURE IN THE SMALLER COURTS 21»
universities, in this age of indefatigable energy, kept forming
scholars, eager to make then: way as secretaries and tutors,
while the nobles competed for the honour and the profit to ba
derived from the service of iUustrious wits and ready pens.
The seeds of classic culture were thus sown in every httle city
that could boast its castle. Carpi, for example, was preparing
the ground where Aldus and Musurus flourished. At ForU
the Ordelaffi, doomed to extinction at no distant period, gave
protection to Codrus Urceus.1 Mirandola was growing fit
to be the birthplace of the mighty Pico. Alessandro and
Costanzo Sforza were adorning their lordship of Pesaro with
a library that rivalled those of Eome and Florence.2 In the
fortress of Eimini, Sigismondo Pandolfo Malatesta conversed
with men of learning whenever his intrigues and his mUitary
duties gave him leisure. The desperate and godless tyrant,
whose passions bordered upon madness, and whose name was
a byeword for aU the vices that disgrace humanity, curbed
his temper before petty witlings Uke Porcellio, and carved a
record of his burning love for learning on the temple raised to
celebrate his fame in Eimini. To the same passion for scholar
ship in his brother, Malatesta Novello, the tiny burgh of
Cesena owed the foundation of a Ubrary, not only well supplied
with books, but endowed with a yearly income of 300 golden
florins for its maintenance. The money spent on scholarship
at these minor Courts was gained, for the most part, in
military service — the wealth of Florentine and Venetian
citizens, of Milanese despots, and ambitious Popes flowing
through the hands of professional war-captains into the pockets
of bookseUers and students. It consequently happened that
the impulse given at this time to learning in the lesser cities
was but temporary. With the faU of the Malatesti and the
1 Cf. Tiraboschi, vi. lib. iii. cap. 5, 58.
¦ Vespasiano, pp. 113-117, gives an interesting account of these
lettered and warlike princes.

220 RENAISSANCE IN ITALY
Sforza famUy, for instance, erudition died at Eimini and
Pesaro. This might have been the case at Urbino also, if the
House of Montefeltro had not succeeded, by wise conduct
and prudent marriages, in resisting the encroachments of
the Church, and transmitting its duchy to the DeUa Eovere
family. As it was, Urbino retained for three generations
the stamp of culture and refinement impressed upon it by
the good Duke Frederick. Of his famous library, Vespasiano,
who was employed in its formation, has given us minute
and interesting detaUs.1 During more than fourteen years
the Duke kept thirty or forty copyists continuaUy employed
in transcribing Greek and Latin MSS. Not only the classics
in both languages, but the ecclesiastical and mediaeval authors,
the Itahan poets, and the works of contemporary humanists
found a place in his coUection. The cost of the whole was
estimated at considerably over 30,000 ducats. Each volume
was bound in crimson, with sUver clasps ; the leaves were
of vellum, exquisitely adorned with miniatures ; nor could
you find a printed book in the whole Ubrary, for the Duke
would have been ashamed to own one. Vespasiano's ad
miration for these dehcately finished MSS. and the contempt
he expresses for the new art of printing are highly charac
teristic.2 Enough has been already said by me elsewhere
about Federigo da Montefeltro and his patronage of learning.3
The Queen's coUection at Windsor contains a curious picture,
attributed to Melozza da ForU, of which I may be aUowed
to speak in this place, since it possesses more than usual
interest for the student of humanism at the Italian Courts.
In a large rectangular hall, lighted from above by windows
in a dome, the Duke of Urbino is seated, wearing the robes
and badges of the Garter, and resting his left hand on a
1 See pp.. 94-99. « P. 99.
• Vol. I., Age of the Despots, pp. 136-142.

A PICTURE OF DUKE FREDERICK 221
foUo. His son Guidobaldo, a boy of about eleven years of
age, or Uttle more, stands at the Duke's knee, dressed in
yeUow damask trimmed with pearls. Behind them, on a
raised bench with a desk before it, sit three men, one attired
in the red suit of a prelate, the second in black ecclesiastical
attire, and the third in secular costume. At a door, opening
on a passage, stand servants and lesser courtiers. The whole
company are Ustening attentively to a grey-haired, black-
robed humanist, seated in a sort of pulpit opposite to the
Duke and his son. A large book, bound in crimson, with
sUver clasps is open on the desk before him ; and by the
movement of his mouth it is clear that he is reading aloud
passages from some classical or ecclesiastical author, and
explaining them for the benefit of his iUustrious audience.
To identify the scholar and the three men behind Federigo
would not be impossible, if the exact date of this curious
work could be ascertained; for they are clearly portraits.
I Uke to fancy that in the layman we may perhaps recognise
the exceUent Vespasiano. Such conjectures are, however,
hazardous; meanwhile the picture has intrinsic value as
the unique representation, so far as I know, of a scene of
frequent occurrence in the Courts of Italy, where listening
to lectures formed a part of every day's occupation.
This is the proper place to speak of Vespasiano da Bisticci,
on whose 'Lives of IUustrious Men' I have had occasion
to draw so copiously. Peculiar interest attaches to him as
the last of mediaeval scribes, and at the same time the first
of modern booksellers.1 Besides being the agent of Cosimo
de' Medici, Nicholas V., and Frederick of Urbino, Vespasiano
suppUed the foreign markets, sending MSS. by order to
Hungary, Portugal, Germany, and England. The extent
of his trade rendered him the largest employer of copyists
in Europe at the moment when this industry was about to
1 In the register of his death he is described as Vespasiano, Cartolaro.

222 RENAISSANCE IN ITALY
be superseded, and when scholars were already inquiring
for news about the art that saved expense and shortened the
labour of the student.1 Vespasiano, who was born in 1421
at Florence, lived untU 1498 ; so that after haviDg helped
to form the three greatest coUections of MSS. in Italy, he wit
nessed the triumph of printing, and might have even handled
the Musaeus issued from the Aldine Press in 1493. Vespa
siano was no mere tradesman. His knowledge of the books
he sold was accurate ; continual study enabled him to over
look the copyists, and to vouch for the exactitude of their
transcripts.2 At the same time his occupation brought him
into close intimacy with the chief scholars of the age, so
that the new culture reached him by conversation and
familiar correspondence. As a biographer Vespasiano pos
sessed rare merit. Personally acquainted with the men of
whom he wrote, he drew their characters with praiseworthy
succinctness and simplicity. There is no panegyrical em
phasis, no calumnious innuendo, in his sketches. It may
even be said that they suffer from reservation of opinion
and suppression of facts. Vespasiano's hatred of vice and
love of virtue were so genuine that, in his eagerness to
honour men of letters and their patrons, he softened down
harsh outlines and passed over all that is condemnable in
sUence. He was less anxious to paint character in the style
1 See Rosmini, Vita di Filelfo, vol. ii. p. 201. ' I have made up my
mind to buy some of those codices they are now making without any
trouble, and without the pen, but with certain so-called types, and which
seem to be the work of a skilled and exact scribe. Tell me, then, at
what price are sold the Natural History of Pliny, the three Decades of
Livy, and Aulus Gellius.' Letter to Nicodemo Tranchedino, sent from
Siena to Bome, dated July 25, 1470.
2 See this passage from a panegyric quoted by Angelo Mai : — ' Tu
profecto in hoc nostro deteriori sasculo hebraiose, grseesB atque latinss
linguarum, omnium voluminum dignorum memoratu notitiam, eo
rumque auotores memorias tradidisti.' — Vite di Uomini Illustri, preface,
p. xxiii.

THE. BOOKSELLER VESPASIANO 223
of Tacitus or Guicciardini, than to relate what he knew
about the progress of learning in his age. The ethical
intention in his work is obvious. The quaUties he loves to
celebrate are piety, chastity, generosity, devotion to the cause
of Uberal culture, and high-souled patriotism. Of the vices
that added a lurid lustre to the age in which he hved, of
the poUtical rancours that divided the cities into hostUe
parties, and of the imperfections in the characters of eminent
men, we hear nothing from Vespasiano. It is pleasant to
conclude this ohapter with an expression of gratitude to a
man so blameless in his life, so charitable in his judgments,
and so trustworthy in his record of contemporary history.

224 RENAISSANCE IN ITALY

CHAPTEE VI
THIRD PBEI0D OP HUMANISM
Improvement in Taste and Criticism — Coteries and Academies — Revival
of Italian Literature — Printing — Florenoe, the Capital of Learning-
Lorenzo de' Medici and his Circle —Public Policy of Lorenzo-
Literary Patronage— Variety of his Gifts — Meetings of the Platonic
Society — Marsilio Ficino — His Education for Platonic Studies-
Translations of Plato and the Neoplatonists — Harmony between
Plato and Christianity — Giovanni Pico — His First Appearance in
Florence — His Theses proposed at Borne — Censure of the Church —
His Study of the Cabbala— Large Conception of Learning — Occult
Science — Cristoforo Landino— Prof essor of Fine Literature — Virgilian
Studies — Camaldolese Disputations — Leo Battista Alberti — His
Versatility- Bartolommeo Scala — Obscure Origin — Chancellor of
Florence — Angelo Poliziano — Early Life— Translation of Homer—
The ' Homericus Juvenis ' — True Genius in Poliziano — Command of
Latin and Greek — Besuscitation of Antiquity in his own Person—
His Professorial Work — The ' Miscellanea ' — Belation to Medici —
Roman Scholarship in this Period — Pius II. — Pomponius Lastua
— His Academy and Mode of Life — Persecution under Paul II.—
Humanism at Naples — Pontanus — His Academy — His Writings-
Academies established in all Towns of Italy — Introduction of Print
ing — Sweynheim and Pannartz — The Early Venetian Press-
Florence — Cennini — Alopa's Homer — Change in Scholarship effected
by Printing — The Life of Aldo Manuzio — The Princely House of
Pio at Carpi — Greek Books before Aldo — The Aldine Press at Venice
— History of its Activity — Aldo and Erasmus — Aldo and the Greek
Refugees — Aldo's Death — His family and Successors — The Ne-
academia — The Salvation of Greek Literature.
In the four preceding chapters I have sketched the rise and
progress of ItaUan humanism with more minuteness than
need be now employed upon the history of its further develop
ment. By the scholars of the first and second period the
whole domain of ancient Uterature was reconquered; the

IMPROVEMENT OF TASTE 225
classics were restored in their integrity to the modern world.
Petrarch first inflamed the enthusiasm without which so great
a work could not have been accomplished, his immediate
successors mastered the Greek language, and explored every
province of antiquity. Much stUl remained, however, to be
achieved by a new generation of students : for as yet criticism
was but in its cradle ; the graces of style were but little
understood; indiscriminate erudition passed for scholarship,
and crude verbiage for eloquence. The humanists of the
third age, stiU burning with the zeal that animated Petrarch,
and profiting by the labours of their predecessors, ascended
to a higher level of culture. It is their glory to have purified
the coarse and tumid style of mediaeval Latinists, to have
introduced the methods of comparative and assthetic criticism,
and to have distinguished the characteristics of the authors
and the periods they studied.
The salient features of this third age of humanism may be
briefly stated. Having done their work by sowing the seeds
of culture broadcast, the vagrant professors of the second
period begin to disappear, and the repubUc of letters tends
to crystallise round men of eminence in coteries and learned
circles. This, therefore, is the age of the academies. Secondly,
it is noticeable that ItaUan Uterature, almost totally abandoned
in the first fervour of enthusiasm for antiquity, now receives
nearly as much attention as the classics. Since the reviv al
of Itahan in the golden age of the Eenaissance wiU form the
subject of my final volume, the names of Lorenzo de' Medici
and PoUziano at Florence, of Boiardo at Ferrara, and of San-
nazzaro at Naples may here suffice to indicate the points of
contact between scholarship and the national literature. A
century had been employed in the acquisition of humanistic
culture ; when acquired, it bore fruit, not only in more elegant
scholarship; but also in new forms of poetry and prose for tha
people. A third marked feature of the period is the estabhsh-
II Q

226 RENAISSANCE IN ITALY
ment of the printing press. The energy wherewith in Uttle
more than fifty years the texts of the classic authors were
rendered indestructible by accident or time, and placed within
the reach of students throughout Europe, demands particular
attention in this chapter.
Florence is stiU the capital of learning. The most bril
liant humanists, gathered round the person of Lorenzo de'
Medici, give laws to the rest of Italy, determining by their
tastes and studies the tone of inteUectual society. Lorenzo is
himself in so deep and true a sense the master spirit of this
circle, that to describe his position in the repubhc wUl hardly
be considered a digression.
Before his death in 1464 Cosimo de' Medici had succeeded
in rendering his family necessary to the State of Florence.
Though thwarted by ambitious rivals and hampered by the
intrigues of the party he had formed to rule the common
wealth, Cosimo contrived so to complicate the pubhc finances
with his own banking business, and so to bind the leading
burghers to himself by various obhgations, that, whUe he in
no way affected the style of a despot, Florence belonged to his
house more surely than Bologna to the BentivogU. For the
continuation of this authority, based on intrigue and cemented
by corruption, it was absolutely needful that the spirit of
Cosimo should survive in his successors. A single false move,
by unmasking the tyranny so carefuUy veUed, by offending
the republican vanities of the Florentines, or by employing
force where everything had hitherto been gained by craft,
would at this epoch have destroyed the prospects of the
Medicean family. So true it is that the history of this age in
Italy is not the history of commonwealths so much as the
history of individualities, of men. The principles reduced to
rule by Machiavelli in his essay on the Prince may be studied
in the lives of fifteenth-century adventurers, who, like Cesare
Borgia, discerned the necessity of using violence for special

THE MEDICI 22'
ends, or, hke the Medici, perceived that sovereignty could be
better grasped by a hand gloved with velvet than mailed in
steel. The Medici of both branches displayed through eight
successive generations, in then- general Une of policy, in the
disasters that attended their divergence from it, and in the
means they used to rehabUitate their influence, the action of
what Balzac calls I'homme politique, with striking clearness
to the philosophic student.
Both the son and grandson of Cosimo well understood the
part they had to play, and played it so ably that even the
errors of the younger Piero, the genius of Savonarola, and the
failure of the elder Medicean line were insufficient to check
the gradual subjugation of the commonwealth he had initiated.
Lorenzo's father, Piero, called by the Florentines II Gottoso,
suffered much from Ul-health, and was unable to take the
lead in pohtics.1 Yet the powers entrusted to his father were
confirmed for him. The elections remained in the hands of
the Medicean party, and the balia appointed in their favour
continued to control the State. The dangerous conspiracy
against Piero's Ufe, engaged in by Luca Pitti and Diotisalvi
Neroni, proved that his enemies regarded the chief of the
Medici as the leader of the repubUc. It was due to the prudent
action of the young Lorenzo that this conspiracy failed ; and
the Medici were even strengthened by the downfall of their
foes. From the tone of the congratulations addressed on this
1 It may be useful to add a, skeleton pedigree of the Medici in this
place : —
Cosimo, Pater Patrise
I
Piero, II Gottoso
Lorenzo Giuliano Giulio, Clement VII.

Piero, Giovanni,
tke exile Leo X.

o 2

228 RENAISSANCE IN ITALY
occasion by the ruling powers of Italy to Piero and Lorenzo,
we may conclude that they were already reckoned as princes
outside Florence, though they stUl maintained a burgherlike
simplicity of life within the city waUs.
In the marriage of his son Lorenzo to Clarice degli Orsini,
of the princely Eoman house, Piero gave signs of a departure
from the cautious poUcy of Cosimo. Foreign alliances were
regarded with suspicion by the Florentines, and Pandolfini's
advice to his sons, that they should avoid famiharity with
territorial magnates, exactly represented the spirit of the
republic.1 In like manner, the education of both Lorenzo
and Giuliano, their intercourse with royal guests, and the
prominent places assigned them on occasions of ceremony,
indicated an advance toward despotism. It was concordant
with the manners of the age that one family should play the
part of host for the republic. The discharge of this duty by
the Medici aroused no jealousy among the burghers ; yet it
enabled the ambitious house to place themselves in an unique
position, and, while seeming to remain mere citizens, to take
a step in the direction of sovereignty.
On the death of Piero, in 1469, the chief men of the Medi
cean party waited upon Lorenzo, and, after offering their
condolences, besought him to succeed his father in the presi
dency of the State. The feeling prevailed among the leaders
of the city that it was impossible, under the existing conditions
of Italian politics, to carry on the commonwealth without
a titular head. Lorenzo, then in his twenty-second year,
entered thus upon the poUtical career in the course of which
he not only maintained a balance of power in Italy, but also
remodelled the internal government of Florence in the interests
of his famUy, and further strengthened their position by esta
blishing connections with the Papal See. While bending all
the faculties of his powefrul and subtle inteUect to the one
See Vol. I., Age of tlie Despots, p. 190.

POSITION OF LORENZO 229
end of consolidating a tyranny, Lorenzo was far too wise to
assume the bearing of a despot. He conversed familiarly
with the citizens, encouraged artists and scholars to address
him on terms of equality, and was careful to adopt no titles.
His personal temperament made the task of being in effect a
sovereign, whUe he acted Uke a citizen, comparatively easy,
his chief difficulties arose from the necessity under which he
laboured, Uke his grandfather Cosimo, of governing through
a party composed of men distinguished by birth and abihty,
and powerful by wealth and connections. To keep this party
in good temper, to flatter its members with the show of
influence, and to gain their concurrence for the alterations he
introduced into the State machinery of Florence, was the
problem of his life. By creating a body of clients, bound to
himseU by diverse interests and obligations, he succeeded in
bridling the Medicean party and excluding from offices of
trust all dangerous and disaffected persons. The goodwiU of
the city at large was secured by the prosperity at home and
peace abroad which marked the last fourteen years of his
administration, whUe the splendour of his foreign alliances
contributed in no small measure to his popularity. The
Florentines were proud of a citizen who brought them into
the first rank of Italian Powers, and who refrained from
assuming the style of sovereign. Thus Lorenzo solved the
most difficult of poUtical problems— that of using a close
ohgarchy for the maintenance of despotism in a free and
jealous commonwealth. None of his rivals retained power
enough to withhold the sceptre from his sons when they
should seek to grasp it.
The roots of the Medici clung to no one part of Florence
in particular. They seemed superficial ; yet they crept
beneath the ground in aU directions. Intertwined as they
were with every interest both pubUc and private in the city,
to cut them out impUed the excision of some vital member,

230 RENAISSANCE IN ITALY
This was the secret of their power in the next generation,
when, banished and reduced to bastards, the Medici returned
from two exiles, survived the perils of the siege and Alessan
dro's murder, and finaUy assumed the Ducal crown in the
person of the last scion of their younger branch. The policy,
so persistently pursued for generations, so powerfuUy applied
by Lorenzo, might be compared to the attack of an octopus,
which fastens on its victim by a multitude of tiny tentacles,
and waits till he is drained of strength before it shoots its
beak into a vital spot.
In one point Lorenzo was inferior to his grandfather.
He had no commercial talent. After suffering the banking
business of the Medici to faU into disorder, he became vir
tually bankrupt, while his personal expenditure kept con
tinuaUy increasing. In order to retrieve his fortunes it was
necessary for him to gain complete disposal of the public
purse. This was the real object of the constitutional revo
lution of 1480, whereby his Privy Council assumed the active
functions of the State. Had Lorenzo been as great in finance
as in the management of men, the way might have been
smoothed for his son Piero in the disastrous year of 1494.
If Lorenzo neglected the pursuit of wealth, whereby
Cosimo had raised himself from insignificance to the dictator
ship of Florence, he surpassed his grandfather in the use he
made of Uterary patronage. It is not paradoxical to affirm
that in his pohcy we can trace the subordination of a genuine
love of arts and letters to statecraft. The new culture was
one of the instruments that helped to build his despotism.
Through his thorough and enthusiastic participation in the
intellectual interests of his age, he put himself into close
sympathy with the Florentines, who were glad to acknow
ledge for their leader by far the ablest of the men of parts
in Italy. According as we choose our point of view, we may
regard him either as a tyrant, involving his country in debt

TWO VIEWS OF LORENZO'S CHARACTER 231
and dangerous wars, corrupting the morals and enfeebling
the spirit of the people, and systematically enslaving the
Athens of the modern world for the sake of founding a petty
principality ; or else as the most Uberal-minded noble of his
epoch, born to play the first part in the Florentine republic,
and careful to use his wealth and influence for the advance
ment of his fellow-citizens in culture, learning, arts, amenities
of life. Savonarola and the Florentine historians adopt the
former of these two opinions. Sismondi, in his passion for
liberty, arrays against Lorenzo the political assassinations
he permitted, the enervation of Florence, the national debt
incurred by the republic, the exhausting wars with Sixtus
carried on in his defence. His panegyrists, on the contrary,
love to paint him as the pacificator of Italy, the restorer
of Florentine poetry, the profound critic, and the generous
patron. The truth Ues hi the combination of these two
apparently contradictory judgments. Lorenzo was the repre
sentative man of his nation at a moment when political
institutions were everywhere inclining to despotism, and
when the spiritual Ufe of the ItaUans found its noblest ex
pression in art and Uterature. The principality of Florence
was thrust upon him by the policy of Cosimo, by the vote of
the chief citizens, and by the example of the sister republics,
aU of whom, with the exception of Venice, submitted to the
sway of rulers. Had he wished, he might have found it
difficult to preserve the commonwealth in its integrity. Few
but doctrinaires beUeved in a governo misto ; only aristocrats
desired a governo stretto ; aU but democrats dreaded a
governo largo. And yet a new constitution must have been
framed after one of these types, and the Florentines must
have been educated to use it with discretion, before Lorenzo
could have resigned his office of dictator with any prospect
of freedom for the city in his charge. Such unselfish
patriotism, in the face of such overwhelming difficulties, and

2S2 RENAISSANCE IN ITALY
in antagonism to the whole tendency of the age, was not to
be expected from an oligarch of the Eenaissance, born in the
purple, and used from infancy to intrigue.
Lorenzo was a man of marvellous variety and range of
mental power. He possessed One of those rare natures, fitted
to comprehend aU knowledge and to sympathise with the
most diverse forms of Ufe. WhUe he never for one moment
relaxed his grasp on politics, among phUosophers he passed
for a sage, among men of letters for an original and graceful
poet, among scholars for a Grecian sensitive to every nicety
of Attic idiom, among artists for an amateur gifted with
refined discernment and consummate taste. Pleasure-seekers
knew in him the Ubertine, who jousted with the boldest,
danced and masqueraded with the merriest, sought adven
tures in the streets at night, and joined the people in their
May-day games and Carnival festivities. The pious extoUed
him as an author of devotional lauds and mystery plays,
a profound theologian, a critic of sermons. He was no less
famous for his jokes and repartees than for his pithy apo
phthegms and maxims, as good a judge of cattle as of statues,
as much at home in the bosom of his famUy as in the riot of
an orgy, as ready to discourse on Plato as to plan a campaign
or to plot the death of a dangerous citizen. An apologist
may always plead that Lorenzo was the epitome of his
nation's most distinguished qualities, that the versatility of
the Eenaissance found in him its fullest incarnation. It was
the duty of Italy in the fifteenth century not to establish
rehgious or constitutional liberty, but to resuscitate culture.
Before the disastrous wars of invasion had begun, it might
well have seemed even to patriots as though Florence needed
a Mascenas more than a Camillus. Therefore the prince who
in his own person combined all accompUshments, who knew
by sympathy and counsel how to stimulate the genius of men
superior to himself in special arts and sciences, who spent

LORENZO'S VERSATILITY 28S
his fortune lavishly on works of pubhc usefulness, whose
palace formed the raUying-point of wit and learning, whose
councU chamber was the school of statesmen, who expressed
his age in every word and every act, in his vices and his
virtues, his crimes and generous deeds, cannot be fairly
judged by an abstract standard of repubhcan morality. It
is nevertheless true that Lorenzo enfeebled and enslaved
Florence. At his death he left her sociaUy more dissolute,
politically weaker, intellectuaUy more Uke himself, than he
had found her. He had not the greatness to rise above the
spirit of his century, or to make himself the Pericles instead
of the Pisistratus of his republic. In other words, he was
adequate, not superior, to Eenaissance Italy.
This, then, was the man round whom the greatest
scholars of the third period assembled, at whose table sat
Angelo PoUziano, Cristoforo Landino, Marsilio Ficino, Gio
vanni Pico deUa Mirandola, Leo Battista Alberti, Michael
Angelo Buonarroti, Luigi Pulci. The mere enumeration of
these names suffices to awake a crowd of memories in the
mind of those to whom ItaUan art and poetry are dear.
Lorenzo's vUlas, where this briUiant circle met for grave dis
course or social converse, heightening the sober pleasures of
Itahan country life with aU that wit and learning could
produce of delicate and rare, have been so often sung by
poets and celebrated by historians that Careggi, Caffagiolo,
and Poggio a Cajano are no less familiar to us than the
studious shades of Academe. 'In a villa overhanging the
towers of Florence,' writes the austere HaUam, moved to
more than usual eloquence by the spirit-stirring beauty of
his theme, ' on the steep slope of that lofty hill crowned by
the mother city, the ancient Fiesole, in gardens which TuUy
might have envied, with Ficino, Landino, and Pohtian at
his side, he delighted his hours of leisure with the beautiful
visions of Platonic philosophy, for which the summer stUl-

234 EENAISSANCE <N ITALY
ness of an Italian sky appears the most congenial accompani
ment.' As we climb the steep slope of Fiesole, or linger
beneath the rose-trees that shed their petals from Careggi's
garden walls, once more in our imagination ' the world's
great age begins anew ; ' once more the blossoms of that
marvellous spring unclose. While the sun goes down
beneath the mountains of Carrara, and the Apennines grow
purple-golden, and Florence sleeps beside the silvery Arno,
and the large Italian stars come forth above, we remember
how those mighty master spirits watched the sphering of
new planets in the spiritual skies. Savonarola in his cell
below once more sits brooding over the servUity of Florence,
the corruption of a godless Church. Michael Angelo, seated
between Ficino and Poliziano, with the voices of the prophets
vibrating in his memory, and with the music of Plato sound
ing in his ears, rests chin on hand and elbow upon knee, like
his own Jeremiah, lost in contemplation, whereof the after-
fruit shaU be the Sistine Chapel and the Medicean tombs.
Then, when the strain of thought, ' unsphering Plato from
his skies,' begins to weary, Pulci breaks the silence with a
brand-new canto of Morgante, or a singing boy is bidden to
tune his mandohne to Messer Angelo's last-made ballata.
There is no difficulty in explaining Plato's power upon
the thinkers of the fifteenth century. Among philosophers
Plato shines hke a morning star — oW fern-epos ovre e<3os ovro
fJav/iaoTos — an auroral luminary, charming and compelling
the attention of the world when man is on the verge of new
discoveries. That he should have enslaved the finest intel
lects at a time when the sense of beauty was so keenly stimu
lated, and when the stirrings of fresh Ufe were so intense, is
nothing more than natural. To philosophise and humanise
the religious sentiments that had become the property of
monks and pardon- mongers ; to estabhsh a concordat between
the Paganism that entranced the world, and the Catholic

MARSILIO IICINO' 235
faith whereof the world was not yet weary ; to satisfy the
new-born sense of a divine and hitherto unapprehended
mystery in heaven and earth ; to dignify with a semblance
of truth the dreams of magic and astrology that passed for
science — aU this the men of the Eenaissance passionately
craved. Who could render better help than Plato and the
Neoplatonists, whose charm of style and high-flown mys
ticism suited the ambitious immaturity of undeveloped
thought? For the interpretation of Platonic doctrine a
hierophant was needed. MarsUio Ficino had been set apart
from earliest youth for this purpose — selected in the wisdom
of Cosimo de' Medici, prepared by special processes of study,
and consecrated to the service of the one phUosopher. •
When MarsiUo was a youth of eighteen, he entered the
Medicean household, and began to learn Greek, in order that
he might qualify himself for translating Plato into Latin.
His health was deUcate, his sensibiUties acute ; the temper
of his intellect, inclined to mysticism and theology, fitted
him for the arduous task of unifying religion with philosophy.
It would be unfair to class him with the paganising humanists,
who sought to justify their unbehef or want of morals by
the authority of the classics. Ficino remained throughout
his Ufe an earnest Christian. At the age of forty, not without
serious reflection and mature resolve, he took orders, and
faithfully performed the duties of his cure. Antiquity he
judged by the standard of the Christian creed. If he asserted
that Socrates and Plato witnessed, together with the evan
gelists, to the truth of revelation, or that the same spirit
inspired the laws of Moses and the Greek phUosopher — this,
as he conceived it, was in effect Uttle else than extending the
catena of authority backward from the Christian fathers to
the sages of the ancient world. The Church, by admitting
1 Marsilio Ficino, the son of Cosimo's physician, was born at Figline
in 1433.

235 RENAISSANCE IN ITALY
the sibyls into the company of the prophets, virtuaUy sanc
tioned the canonisation of Plato; while the comprehensive
survey of history as an uninterrupted whole, which since
the days of Petrarch had distinguished the nobler type of
humanism, rendered Ficino's philosophical religion not un
acceptable even to the orthodox. The speculative mystics of
the fifteenth century failed, however, to perceive that by
recognising inspiration in the classic authors, they were
silently denying the unique value of revelation ; and that
by seeking the religious tradition far and wide, they called
in question the peculiar divinity of Christ. Savonarola saw
this clearly ; therefore he denounced the Platonists as here
tics, who vainly babbled about things they did not under
stand. The permanent value of their speculations, crude and
uncritical as they may now appear, consists in the large
claim made for human reason as against bibholatry and
Church authority.
Ficino was forty-four years of age when he finished the
translation of Plato's works into Latin. Five more years
elapsed before the first edition was printed in 1482 at Filippo
Valori's expense. It may here be mentioned incidentally
that, by this help, the aristocracy of Florence materiaUy con
tributed to the diffusion of culture. A genuine philosopher
in his lack of ambition and his freedom from avarice, Ficino
was too poor to publish his own works ; and what is true of
him, apphes to many most distinguished authors of the age.
Great hterary undertakings involved in that century the
substantial assistance of wealthy men, whose liberaUty was
rewarded by a notice in the colophon or on the title-page.1
When, for instance, the first edition of Homer was issued from
the press by Lorenzo Alopa in 1488, two brothers of the
1 Thus Fioino's edition of Plotinus, printed at Lorenzo de' Medici's
expense, and published one month after his death, bears this notice :—
' Magnifici sumptu Laurentii patria; servatoris.'

TRANSLATION OF PLATO 237
Nerli family, Bernardo and Neri, defrayed the expense.' The
Plato was soon foUowed by a Life of the philosopher, and a
treatise on the ' Platonic Doctrine of Immortality.' The latter
work is interesting as a repertory of the theories discussed
by the Medicean circle at their festivals in honour of Plato's
birthday. It has, however, no intrinsic value for the critic
or phUosopher, being in effect nothing better than a jumble
of citations culled from antique mystics and combined with
cruder modern guesses. In 1486 the translation of Plotinus
was accomphshed, and in 1491 a voluminous commentary
had been added; both were pubUshed one month after
Lorenzo's death in 1492. A version of Dionysius the Areo
pagite, whose treatise on the ' Hierarchies,' though rejected by
Lorenzo VaUa, was accepted as genuine by Ficino, closed the
long list of his translations from the Greek. The importance
of Ficino's contributions to phUosophy consists in the im
pulse he communicated to Platonic studies. That he did
not comprehend Plato, or distinguish his phUosophy from
that of the Alexandrian mystics, is clear in every sentence
of his writings. The age was uncritical, nor had scholars
learned the necessity of understanding an author's relation
to the history of thought in general before they attempted
to explain him. Thus they were satisfied to read Plato by
the reflected Ught of Plotinus and Gemistos Plethon, and
to assimUate such portions only of his teaching as accorded
with their own theology. The doctrine of planetary in
fluences, and the myths invented to express the nature of
the soul — in other words, the consciously poetic thoughts of
Plato — seemed of more value to Ficino than the theory of
ideas, wherein the deepest problems are presented in a logical
shape to the understanding. The Middle Ages had plied
dialectic to satiety; the Eenaissance dwelt with passion
1 See, however, Didot's Aide Manuce, p. 4, where Giovanni Acciaiuoli
is credited with this generosity.

238 RENAISSANCE IN ITALY
upon vague and misty thoughts that gave a scope to its
imagination. No dreams of poet or of mystic could sur
pass reahty in the age of Lionardo da Vinci and Christopher
Columbus. If Plato has been studied more exactly of late years, he
has never been loved better or more devotedly worshipped
than by the Florentine Academy. Who buUds a shrine and
burns a lamp before his statue now ? Who crowns his bust
with laurels, or celebrates his birthday and his deathday
with solemn festivals and pompous panegyrics ? Who meet
at stated intervals to read his words, and probe his hidden
meaning, feeding his altar-flame with frankincense of their
most precious thoughts ? It was by outward signs hke these,
then f uU of fair significance, now puerile and void of import,
that the pageant-loving men of the Eenaissance testified their
debt of gratitude to Plato. Of one of these birthday feasts
Ficino has given a hvely picture in his letter to Jacopo
Bracciolini (' Prolegomena ad Platonis Symposium '). After
partaking of a banquet, the text of the ' Symposium ' was
delivered over to discussion. Giovanni Cavalcanti interpreted
the speeches of Phasdrus and Pausanias, Landino that
of Aristophanes; Carlo Marsuppini undertook the part of
Agathon, whUe Tommaso Benci explained the esoteric
meaning of Diotima. Was there anyone, we wonder, to act
Alcibiades ; or did Lorenzo, perhaps, sit drinking till day
flooded the meadows of Valdarno, passing round a two-
handled goblet, and raising subtle questions about comedy
and tragedy ?
Among the academicians who frequented Lorenzo's palace
at Florence there appeared, in 1484, a young man of princely
birth and fascinating beauty. 'Nature,' wrote Poliziano,
' seemed to have showered on this man, or hero, aU her gifts.
He was tall and finely moulded ; from his face a something
of divinity shone forth. Acute, and gifted with prodigious

GIOVANNI PICO7 239
memory, in his studies he was indefatigable, in his style
perspicuous and eloquent. You could not say whether his
talents or his moral quahties conferred on him the greater
lustre. FamUiar with aU branches of philosophy, and the
master of many languages, he stood on high above the reach
of praise.' This was Giovanni Pico deUa Mirandola, whose
portrait in the Uffizzi GaUery, with its long brown hair and
penetrating grey eyes, compels attention even from those who
know not whom it is supposed to figure. He was little more
than twenty when he came to Florence. His personal attrac
tions, noble manners, splendid style of Ufe, and varied
accomplishments made him the idol of Florentine society ;
and for a time he gave himself, in part at least, to love and
the amusements of his age.1 But Pico was not born for
pleasure. By no man was the sublime ideal of humanity,
superior to physical enjoyments and dignified by intellectual
energy, that triumph of the thought of the Eenaissance, more
completely reaUsed.2 There is even reason to regret that,
together with the foUies of youth, he put aside the collection
of his Latin poems, which Poliziano praised, and took no
pains to preserve those ItaUan verses, the loss whereof we
deplore no less than that of Lionardo's. While Pico con
tinued to Uve as became a Count of Mirandola, he personally
1 See Von Reumont, vol. ii. p. 108.
2 Fine expression was given to this conception of life by Aldus in ¦
the dedication to Alberto Pio of vols, ii., iii., iv. of Aristotle : — ' Es nam
tu mihi optimus testis an potiores Herculis aerumnas credam, ssevosque
labores, et Venere, et ocenis et plumis Sardanapali. Natus nam homo
est ad laborem et ad agendum semper aliquid viro dignum, non ad
voluptatem quae belluarum est et pecudum.' The last sentence is a
translation of Ulysses' speech in the Inferno —
' Considerate la vostra semenza,
Fatti non foste a viver come bruti,
Ma per seguir virtude e conoscenza.'
Cf. Aldus's preface to Lascaris' Grammar ; Renouard, vol. i. p. 7 ; ftnd
again Aide Manuee, p. 143, for similar passages.

240 RENAISSANCE IN ITALY
inchned each year to graver and more abstruse studies and to
greater austerity, until at last the prince was merged in the
phUosopher, the man of letters in the mystic.
Pico's abilities displayed themselves in earliest boyhood.
His mother, a niece of the great Boiardo, noticed his rare
aptitude for study, and sent him at the age of fourteen to
Bologna. There he mastered not only the humanities, but
also what was taught of mathematics, logic, phUosophy, and
Oriental languages. He afterwards continued his education
at Paris, the head-quarters of scholastic theology. Pico's
powerful memory must have served him in good stead : it is
recorded that a single reading fixed the language and the
matter of the texts he studied, on his mind for ever. Nor
was this faculty for retaining knowledge accompanied by any
sluggishness of mental power. To what extent he relied upon
his powers of debate as weU as on his vast stores of erudition,
was proved by the pubhcation of the famous nine hundred
theses at Eome in 1486. These questions seem to have been
constructed in defence of the Platonic mysticism, which
already had begun to absorb his attention. The plulosophers
and theologians who were chaUenged to contend with him in
argument had the whole Ust offered to their choice. Pico
was prepared to maintain each and all of his positions without
further preparation. Ecclesiastical prudence, however, pre
vented the champions of orthodoxy from descending into
the arena. They found it safer to prefer a charge of heresy
against Pico, whose theses were condemned in a brief of
Innocent VHL, dated August 5, 1486. It was not until
June 18, 1493, that he was finally purged from the ban of
heterodoxy by a brief of Alexander VI. During that long
interval he suffered much uneasiness of mind, for even his
robust inteUigence quailed before the thought of dying under
Papal interdiction. That a man so pure in his life and so
earnest in his piety should have been stigmatised as a heretic,

PICO'S IDEAL OF KNOWLEDGE 241
and then pardoned, by two such Popes, is one of the curioup
anomalies of that age.
To harmonise the Christian and classical tradition was
a problem which Manetti had crudely attempted. Pico ap
proached it in a more phUosophical spirit, and resolved to
devote his whole hfe to the task. The antagonism between
sacred and profane literature appeared more glaring to Ee
naissance scholars than to us, inasmuch as they attached
more serious value to the teaching of the latter as a rule of
Ufe. Yet Pico was not intent so much on merely reconciling
hostUe systems of thought, or on confuting the errors of the
Jews and GentUes. He had conceived the great idea of the
unity of knowledge ; and having acquired the omne scibile of
his century, he sought to seize the soul of truth that animates
aU systems. Not the classics nor the Scriptures alone, but
the writings of the schoolmen, the glosses of Arabic philo
sophers, and the more obscure products of Hebrew erudition
had for him their sohd value. Estimating authors at the
worth of their matter, and despising the trivial questions
raised by shaUow wits among style-mongering students, he
freed himseU from the worst fault of humanism, and con
ceived of learning in a Uberal spirit. The best proof of this
wide acceptance of aU Uterature conducive to sound thinking,
is given in a latter to Ermolao Barbaro.1 After courteously
adverting to the Ciceronian elegance of his correspondent's
style he continues, ' And that I meantime should have lost
in the studies of Thomas Aquinas, John Scotus, Albertus
Magnus, and Averrhoes the best years of my Ufe — those long,
laborious vigUs wherein I might perchance have made myself
of some avail in polite scholarship ! The thought occurred
to me, by way of consolation, if some of them could come to
1 Dated Florence, 1485 ; in the Aldine edition of Poliziano's Letters,
book is.
n B

¦Zii RENAISSANCE IN ITALY
Ufe again, whether men so powerful in argument might not
find sound pleas for their own cause ; whether one among
them, more eloquent than Paul, might not defend, in terms
as free as possible from barbarism, their barbarous style,
speaking perchance after this fashion : We have Uved illus
trious, friend Ermolao, and to posterity shaU Uve, not in the
schools of the grammarians and teaching-places of young
minds, but in the company of the phUosophers, conclaves of
sages, where the questions for debate are not concerning the
mother of Andromache or the sons of Niobe and such hght
trifles, but of things human and divine ; in the contemplation,
investigation, and analysis whereof we have been so subtle,
searching, and eager that we may sometimes have seemed to
be too scrupulous and captious, if indeed it be possible to be
too curious or fastidious in seeking after truth. Let him who
accuses us of dulness, prove by experience whether we bar
barians have not the god of eloquence in our hearts rather
than on our Ups ; whether, if the faculty of ornamented
speech be lacking, we have wanted wisdom : and to trick out
wisdom with ornaments may be more a crime than to show it
in uncultured rudeness.'
During the period of his Platonic studies at Florence
chance brought Pico into contact with a Jew who had a copy
of the Cabbala for sale. Into this jungle of abstruse learning
Pico plunged with aU the ardour of his powerful inteUect.
Asiatic fancies, Alexandrian myths, Christian doctrines,
Hebrew traditions, are so wonderfuUy blended in that laby
rinthine commentary that Pico believed he had discovered the
key to his great problem, the quintessence of aU truth. It
seemed to him that the science of the Greek and the faith of
the Christian could only be understood in the hght of the
Cabbala. He purchased the MS., devoted his whole atten
tion to its study, and projected a mighty work to prove the
harmony of philosophies in Christianity, and to explain the

THE CABBALA S43
Christian doctrine by the esoteric teaching of the Jews.'
Pico's view of the connection between philosophy, theology,
and rehgion is plainly stated in the following sentence from
a letter to Aldus Manutius (February 11, 1491) : — ' PhUo-
sophia veritatem quaerit, theologia invenit, rehgio possidet '
(' PhUosophy seeks truth, theology discovers it, religion hath
it '). Death overtook him before the book intended to demon
strate these positions, and by so doing to estabhsh the concord
of aU earnest and truth-seeking systems, could be written.
He died at the age of thirty-one, on the very day when
Charles vTH. made his entry into Florence.
WhUe accepting the Cabbala it was impossible for Pico to
reject magic. He showed his good sense, however, by an
energetic attack upon the so-caUed science of judicial astro
logy. Strictly speaking, the spirit of humanism was opposed
to this foUy. Petrarch had long ago condemned it, together
with the charlatans who used its jargon to impose upon the
world ; yet, in spite of humanism, the foUy not only persisted,
but seemed to increase with the spread of rational knowledge.
The universities founded Chairs of Astrology, Popes consulted
the stars on occasions of importance, nor did the Despots dare
to act without the advice of their soothsayers. These men
not unfrequently accompanied the greatest generals on their
campaigns. Their services were bought by the republics;
citizens employed them for the casting of horoscopes, the
bunding of houses, the position of shops, the fit moment for
journeys, the reception of guests into their famUies, and the
date of weddings. To take a serious step in Ufe without the
approval of an astrologer had come to be regarded as perUous.
Even Ficino believed in horoscopes and planetary influences :
so did Cardan at a later date. It may be remembered that
Catherine de' Medici aUowed the Florentine Euggieri to share
1 In the introduction to Pico's Apologia may be read the account
he gives of the codex of the pseudo-Esdras purchased by him.
b2

144 RENAISSANCE IN ITALY
her secret counsels during the reigns of three kings, and that
Paul III. always obtained the sanction of his star-gazer before
he held a consistory. In proportion as religion grew less real,
and the complex dangers of a corrupt society increased,
astrology gained in importance. It was not, therefore, a waste
of eloquence, as Poliziano complained, when Pico directed
his attack against this delusion, accusing it of debasing
the inteUect and opening the way for immorality of all
kinds.1 Since Pico's keen intellect discerned the shallowness of
astrological pretensions, it is the more to be deplored that he
feU a victim to the hybrid mysticism and magical nonsense of
the Cabbala. We have here another proof that criticism was
as yet in its infancy. It was easier for men of genius in the
Eenaissance to win lofty vantage-ground for contemplation,
to divine the unity of human achievements, and to compre
hend the greatness of the destiny of man, than to accept the
learning of the past at a simple historical valuation. What
fascinated their imagination passed with them too easily for
true and proved. Yet all they needed was time for the diges
tion and assimilation of the stores of knowledge they had
gained. If the Counter-Eeformation had not checked the
further growth of Italian science, the spirit that lived in Pico
would certainly have produced a school of philosophy second
to node that Europe has brought forth. Of this Pico's own
short treatise on the ' Dignity of Man,' as I have said already,
is sufficient warrant.
1 Poliziano's Greek epigram addressed to Pico on this matter may
be quoted from the Carmina Quinque Poetarum, p. 412 : —
Kal tout' a(TTpo\6yots ^rt/uejugio/iai 7)epo\4<rxal*,
Htti <ro<povs HIkov fioi tpdovsovtr' otlpovs.
Kal yap 6 ivdufczuis Toiircev rbv \ijpov 4\4yxtop
,uoiW|ei ev aypai drjpbv eKcts ir6\ea>s.
TIiics t£ aoi teal toutois ; oil <r' ^ire'owei' ayv/rrais
di'TapaL ttjv ffify evrvx^a ypo.tpiSa.

CRISTOFORO LANDINO 248
As Pico was the youngest so was Cristoforo Landino
the oldest member of the Medicean circle. He was born at
Florence in 1424, nine years before Ficino, with whom he
shared the duties of instructing Lorenzo in his boyhood.
Landino obtained the Chair of Ehetoric and Poetry in 1457,
and continued tUl his death in 1504 to profess Latin literature
at Florence. WhUe Ficino and Pico represented the study of
phUosophy, he devoted himself exclusively to scholarship,
annotating Horace and VirgU, and translating PUny's ' Natural
Histories.' A marked feature in Landino's professorial
labours was the attention he paid to the Italian poets. In
1460 he began to lecture on Petrarch, and in 1481 he pub
hshed an edition of Dante with voluminous commentaries.
The copy of this work, printed upon parchment, splendidly
bound, and fastened with niello clasps, which Landino pre
sented with a set oration to the Signory of Florence, may
stiU be seen in the MagUabecchian Ubrary. The author was
rewarded with a house in Borgo aUa CoUina, the ancient
residence of his famUy.
Though the name of Cristoforo Landino is now best known
in connection with his Dantesque studies, one of his Latin
works, the ' Camaldolese Discussions,' ' wUl always retain
pecuUar interest for the student of Florentine humanism.
This treatise is composed in imitation of the Ciceronian rather
than the Platonic dialogues ; the ' Tusculans ' may be said to
have furnished Landino with his model. He begins by telUng
how he left his vUla in the Casentino, accompanied by his
brother, to pay a visit to the hUl-set sanctuary of S. Eom-
ualdo.2 There he met with Lorenzo and Giuliano de' Medici,
attended by noble youths of Florence — Piero and Donato
1 Disputationum Camaldulensium lib. iv., dedicated to Frederick
of Urbino. 2 The legend of the foundation of this Order is well known through
Soochi's picture in the Vatican.

246 RENAISSANCE IN ITALY
Acciaiuoli, Alamanno Einuccini, Marco Parenti, and Antonio
Canigiani — all of whom had quitted Florence to enjoy the
rest of summer coolness among the firs and chestnuts of
the Apennines. The party thus formed was completed by the
arrival of Leo Battista Alberti and MarsUio Ficino. The
conversation maintained from day to day by these close friends
and ardent scholars forms the substance of the dialogue.
Seated on the turf beside a fountain, near the spot where
Romualdo was bidden in his trance to exchange the black
robes of the Benedictine Order for the snow-white Uvery of
angels, they not unnaturaUy began to compare the active life
that they had left at Florence with the contemplative Ufe of
plnlosophers and saints. Alberti led the conversation by a
panegyric of the /3tos 6za>prfru<6s, maintaining the Platonic
thesis with a wealth of illustration and a charm of eloquence
peculiar to himself. Lorenzo took up the argument in favour
of the /?ibs irpaxriKos. If Alberti proved that solitude and
meditation are the nurses of great spirits, that man by com
muning with nature enters into full possession of his mental
kingdom, Lorenzo pointed out that this completion of seU-
culture only finds its use and value in the commerce of the
world. The philosopher must descend from his altitude and
mix with men, in order to exercise the faculties matured by
contemplation. Thus far the artist and the statesman are
supposed to hold debate on Goethe's celebrated distich —
Es bildet ein Talent sich in der Stille,
Sich ein Charakter in dem Strom der Welt.
The audience decided, in the spirit of the German poet, that
a fuUy-formed man, the possessor of both character and talent,
must submit himself to each method of training. Thus ended
the first day's discussion. During the three following days
Alberti led the conversation to Virgil's poetry, demonstrat
ing its allegorical significance, and connecting its hidden

LEO EATTISTA ALBERTI 247
phUosophy with that of Plato. It is clear that in this part of
his work Landino was presenting the substance of his own
Virgihan studies. The whole book, Uke CastigUone's ' Courtier,'
suppUes a fair sample of the topics on which social conversa
tion turned among refined and cultivated men. The tincture
of Platonism is speciaUy characteristic of the Medicean
circle. The distinguished place aUotted in this dialogue to Leo
Battista Alberti proves the singular regard in which this most
remarkable man was held at Florence, where, however, he but
seldom resided. His name will always be coupled with that of
Lionardo da Vinci ; for though Lionardo, arriving at a happier
moment, has eclipsed Alberti's fame, yet both of them were
cast in the same mould. Alberti, indeed, might serve as the
very type of those many-sided, precocious, and comprehensive
men of genius who only existed in the age of the Eenaissance.
Physical strength and dexterity were given to him at birth in
measure equal to his mental faculties. It is recorded that
he could jump standing over an upright man, pierce the
strongest armour with his arrows, and so deftly fling a coin
that it touched the highest point of a church or palace roof.
The wUdest horses are said to have trembled under him, as
though brutes felt, like men, the magnetism of his personality.
His insight into every branch of knowledge seemed intuitive,
and his command of the arts was innate. At the age of
twenty he composed the comedy of ' PhUodoxius,' which passed
for an antique, and was pubUshed by the Aldi as the work
of Lepidus Comicus in 1588. Of music, though he had not
made it a special study, he was a thorough master, composing
melodies that gave deUght to scientific judges. He painted
pictures, and wrote three books on painting ; practised archi
tecture and compUed ten books on building. Of his books,
chiefly portraits, nothing remains ; but the Church of S.
Andrea at Mantua, the Palazzo EuceUai at Florence, and the

248 RENAISSANCE IN ITALY
remodelled Church of S. Francesco at Eimini attest his
greatness as an architect. The fagade of the latter building
is more thoroughly classical than any other monument of the
earher Eenaissance. As a transcript from Eoman antiquity
it ranks with the Palazzo della Eagione of PaUadio at Vicenza.
While stiU a young man, Alberti, overtaxed, in aU probability,
by the prodigious activity of his mental and bodUy forces,
suffered from an Ulness that resulted in a partial loss of
memory. The humanistic and legal studies on which he was
engaged had to be abandoned ; yet, nothing daunted, he now
turned his plastic genius to phUosophy and mathematics,
rightly judging that they make less demand upon the passive
than the active vigour of the mind. It is believed that he
anticipated some modern discoveries in optics, and he certainly
advanced the science of perspective. Like his compeer
Lionardo, he devoted attention to mechanics, and devised
machinery for raising sunken ships. Like Lionardo, again,
he was never tired of interrogating nature, conducting curious
experiments, and watching her more secret operations. As a
physiognomist and diviner, he acquired a reputation bordering
on wizardry. It was as though his exquisite sensibilities and
keenness of attention had gifted him with second sight. The
depth of his sympathy with the outer world is proved by an
assertion of his anonymous biographer that, when he saw the
cornfields and vineyards of autumn, tears gathered to his eyes.
All living creatures that had beauty won his love, and even in
old persons he discovered a charm appropriate to old age.
Foreigners, travellers, and workmen skilled in various crafts
formed his favourite company, for in the acquisition of varied
knowledge he was indefatigable. In general society his wisdom
and his wit, the eloquence of his discourse and the brilliance
of his improvisation, rendered him most fascinating. Collec
tions of maxims culled from his table talk were made, whereof
the anonymous biography contains a fair selection. At the

ALBERTI'S VERSATILITY 249
same time we are told that, in the midst of sparkling sallies
or olose arguments, he would suddenly subside into reverie,
and sit at table lost in silent contemplation. Alberti was one
of the earliest writers of pure Italian prose at the period of its
revival ; but this part of his intellectual aotivity belongs to
the history of Italian literature, and need not be touched on
here. It is enough to have glanced thus briefly at one of the
most attractive, sympathy-compelling figures of the fifteenth
century. In order to complete the picture of the Florentine circle,
we have in the last place to notice two men raised by the
Medici from the ranks of the people. ' I came to the repubUc,
bare of all things, a mere beggar, of the lowest birth, without
money, rank, connections, or kindred. Cosimo, the father of
his country, raised me up, by receiving me into his family.'
So wrote Bartolommeo Scala,1 the miller's son, who hved to
be the ChanceUor of Florence. The splendour of that office
had been considerably diminished since the days when Bruni,
Marsuppini, and Poggio held it ; nor could Scala, as a student,
bear comparison with those men. His Latin history of the
first crusade was rather a large than a great work, of which
no notice would be taken if Tasso had not used it in the
composition of his epic. Honours and riches, however, were
accumulated on the Chancellor in such profusion that he
grew arrogant, and taunted the great Poliziano with inferiority.
The feud between these men was not confined to hterature.
Scala's daughter, a far better scholar than himself, attracted
Poliziano' s notice, and Greek epigrams were exchanged be
tween them. The dictator of Italian letters now sought the
hand of the fair Alessandra, who was rich not only in learning
but in world's gear also. When she gave herself to Michael
MaruUus Tarcagnota, a Greek, his anger knew no bounds ;
instead of penning amatory he now composed satiric epigrams,
> Rorn at Colle in 1430.

250 RENAISSANCE IN ITALY
abusing Marullus in Latin no less than he had praised
Alessandra in Greek.1
Angelo Poliziano was born in 1454. His name, so famous
in Italian Uterature, is a Latinised version of his birthplace,
Montepulciano. His father, Benedetto Ambrogini, was a man
of some consequence, but of small means, who feU a victim to
the enmity of private foes among his feUow-citizens, leaving
his widow and five young chUdren almost whoUy unprovided
for.2 This accounts for the obscurity that long enveloped the
history of PoUziano's childhood, and also for the doubts ex
pressed about the surname of his famUy. At the age of ten
he came to study in the University of Florence, where he
profited by the teaching of Landino, Argyropoulos, Andronicos
KaUistos, and Ficino. The precocity of his genius displayed
itseU in Latin poems and Greek epigrams composed while he
was yet a boy. At thirteen years of age he published Latin
letters ; at seventeen he distributed Greek poems among the
learned men of Florence ; at eighteen he edited Catullus,
with the boast that he had shown more zeal than any other
student hi the correction and illustration of the ancients.
1 The following verses on Alessandra are so curious a specimen
of Poliziano's Greek style that I transcribe them here (Carmina
Quinque Iilustri/um Poetarum, p. 304) : —
Efy"?x' tVpyx' V OeAox, V itfiTeov aUl,
V #tow rbv tpcoff, tjv Kal 6vztpoTr6\ovv
TrapSfviK^v ?js K&Wos aKJiparov, ys 876 ICliafiOS
ovk efij r*xV7ls &AA' tuptAovs tpiiffeas '
irapStviK^v y\4mrioai ett' atupo-ripriin Kopwtrav,
H'X0" ^VTe X°f""s %£oxov fi/re Kipa ¦ ;
§s wepl aauppooivri t' elfij xapWeo-ai 6' a/iiWm,
TJi Kal Tp Tairrtv avTi/ieBefMOfiipais.
tSpij/c' oiS' StpeKos, Kal yap fi6\is eh iviavrbv !
o'urrpovvrt ipKoyepas iffriv Siro{ iSe'tu/.
The satires on Mabilius (so he called Marullus) are too .filthy to be
quoted. They may be read in the collection cited above, pp. 275-280.
2 See Carducci, preface to Le Stanze, Florence, 1863, and Isidoro
del Lungo in Arch. Stor. series iii. vol. ii.

ANGELO POLIZIANO^ 251
As early as the year 1470 he had not only conceived the am
bitious determination to translate Homer into Latin verse,
but had aheady begun upon the second Iliad. The first book
was known to scholars in Marsuppini's Latin version. Poli
ziano carried his own translation as far as the end of the
fifth book, gaining for himseK the proud title of Homericus
juvenis ; further than this, for reasons unexplained, he never
advanced, so that the last wish of Nicholas V., the chief desire
of fifteenth-century scholarship — a Latin Iliad in hexameters
— remained still unaccompUshed.
The fame of this great undertaking attracted universal
attention to PoUziano. It is probable that Ficino first intro
duced him to Lorenzo de' Medici, who received the young
student into his own household, and made himself responsible
for his future fortunes. ' The liberaUty of Lorenzo de' Medici,
that great and wise man,' wrote Poliziano in after years,
1 raised me from the obscure and humble station where my
birth had placed me, to that degree of dignity and distinction
I now enjoy, with no other recommendation than my literary
abilities.' Before he had reached the age of thirty, Poliziano
professed the Greek and Latin literatures in the University
of Florence, and received the care of Lorenzo's children. If
Lorenzo represents the statecraft of his age, PoUziano is no
less emphatically the representative of its highest achieve
ments in scholarship. He was the first Italian to combine
perfect mastery over Latin and a correct sense of Greek with
a splendid genius for his native Uterature. FUeUo boasted
that he could write both classic languages with equal ease,
and exercised his prosy muse in terza rima. But Filelfo had
no fire of poetry, no sense of style. Poliziano, on the contrary,
was a bprn poet, a sacer vates in the truest sense of the word.
I shall have to speak elsewhere of his ItaUan verses : those
who have studied them know that the ' Orfeo,' the ' Stanze,'
p.nd the ' Eime ' justify Poliziano's claim to the middle place

252 RENAISSANCE IN ITALY
of honour between Petrarch and Ariosto. ItaUan poetry took
a new direction from his genius, and everything he penned
was fruitful of results for the succeeding generation. Of his
Latin poetry, in like manner, I propose to treat at greater
length in the following chapter.
The spirit of Eoman literature Uved again in PoUziano.
If he cannot be compared with the Augustan authors, he will
pass muster at least with the poets of the sUver age. Neither
Statius nor Ausonius produced more musical hexameters, or
expressed their feeling for natural beauty in phrases marked
with more spontaneous grace. Of his Greek elegiacs only a
few specimens survive. These, in spite of certain licenses
not justified by pure Greek prosody, might claim a place in
the 'Anthology,' among the epigrams of Agathias and Paulus
Silentiarius.1 The Doric couplets on two beautiful boys, and
the love sonnet to the youth Chrysocomus, read like extracts
from the Movo-a muSno?.2 What is remarkable about the
Greek and Latin poetry of PoUziano is that the flavour
of the author's Italian style transpires in them. They are
no mere imitations of the classics. The 'roseate fluency' of
the 'Eime' reappears in these prolusiones, making it mani
fest that the three languages were used with equal facihty,
and that on each of them the poet set the seal of his own
genius. What has been said about his verse, apphes with no less
1 Julius Caesar Scaliger wrote thus about them in the Hypercri-
ticus : — ' Grsecis vero, quse puerum se conscripsisse dici$, setatem
minus prudenter apposuit suam ; tam enim bona sunt ut ne virum
quidem Latina seque bene scripsisse putem.' i
2 Quinque Hlustrium Poetarum Carmina, pp. 299, 301. These epi
grams, as well as two on pp. 303, 307, are significant in their illus
tration of the poet's morality. Giovio's account of Poliziano's death
was certainly accepted by contemporaries : — ' Ferunt eum i/ngewm
adolescentis insano amore percitum facile in letalem morbumjinddisse.'
The whole Elogium, however, is a covert libel, like many of Giovio's
sketches.

POLIZIANO'S PROSE 253
force to his prose composition. Poliziano wrote Latin, as
though it were a living language, not culling phrases from
Cicero or reproducing the periods of Livy, but trusting to
his instinct and his ear, with the facility of conscious power.
The humanism of the first and second periods attained to the
freedom of fine art in Poliziano. Through him, as through a
lens, the rays of previous culture were transmitted in a column
of pure light. He reaUsed what the ItaUans had been striving
after— the new birth of antiquity in a Uving man of the
modern world. By way of modifying this high panegyric, it
may be conceded that Poliziano had the defects of his qualities.
Using Latin with the freedom of a master, he was not careful
to purge his style of obsolete words and far-fetched phrases,
or to maintain the diction of one period in each composition.
His fluency betrayed him into verbiage, and his descriptions
are often more diffuse than vigorous. Nor will he bear com
parison with some more modern scholars on the point cf
accuracy. The merit, however, remains to him of having
been the most copious and least slavish interpreter of the
ancient to the modern world. His very imperfections, when
judged by the standard of Bembo, place him above the purists,
inasmuch as he possessed the power and courage to express
himself in his own idiom, instead of treading cautiously in
none but Ciceronian or VirgUian footprints.
As a professor, none of the humanists achieved more
briUiant successes than Poliziano. Among his pupils could
be numbered the chief students of Europe. Not to mention
Italians, it wiU suffice to record the names of Eeuchlin,
Grocm, Linacre, and the Portuguese Tessiras, who carried
each to his own country the culture they had gained in
Florence. The first appearance of Poliziano in the lecture-
room was not calculated to win admiration. IU-formed, with
eyes that had something of a squint in them, and a nose
of disproportionate size, he seemed more fit to be a solitary

254 RENAISSANCE IN ITALY
scholar than the Orpheus of the classic literature.1 Yet no
sooner had he opened his lips and begun to speak, with the
exquisite and varied intonations of a singularly beautiful voice,
than his listeners were chained to their seats. The ungain-
liness of the teacher was forgotten ; charmed through their
ears and their intellect, they eagerly drank in his eloquence,
applauding the improvisations wherewith he Ulustrated the
spirit and intention of his authors, and sUently absorbing the
vast and well-ordered stores of knowledge he so prodigally
scattered. It would not be profitable to narrate here at any
length what is known about the topics of these lectures.
Poliziano not only covered the whole ground of classic
Uterature during the years of his professorship, but also pub
lished the notes of courses upon Ovid, Suetonius, Statius, the
younger PUny, the writers of Augustan histories, and Quin
tilian. Some of his best Latin poems were written by way
of preface to the authors he explained in public. Virgil was
celebrated in the 'Manto,' andHomerin the ' Ambra;' the 'Eus-
ticus' served as prelude to the ' Georgics,' while the 'Nutricia '
formed an introduction to the study of ancient and modern
poetry. Nor did he confine his attention to fine Uterature.
The curious preelection in prose called 'Lamia' was intended
as a prelude to the prior ' Analytics ' of Aristotle. Among his
translations must be mentioned Epictetus, Herodian, Hippo
crates, Galen, Plutarch's ' Eroticus,' and the ' Charmides ' of
Plato. His greatest achievement, however, was the edition of
the ' Pandects ' of Justinian from the famous MS. of, which
Florence had robbed Pisa, as the Pisans had previously, taken
it from Amalfi. It must not be forgotten that aU these
1 'Erat distortis saspe moribus, uti faoie nequaquam ingenua et
liberali ab enormi praasertim naso, subluscoque oculo perabsurda.'
Giovio, Elogia. Cf. Poliziano's own verses to Mabilius, beginning :—
Quod nasum mihi, quod reflexa colla
Demens objieis. Carmina Quinque Poetarum, p. 277.

POLIZIANO'S LITERARY WOKK 265
undertakings involved severe labours of correction and criti
cism. MSS. had to be compared and texts settled, when as yet
the apparatus for this higher form of scholarship was miser
ably scanty. Though students before PoUziano had under
stood the necessity of coUating codices, determining their
relative ages, and tracing them, if possible, to their authori
tative sources, he was the first to do this systematicaUy and
with judgment. To emendation he only had recourse when
the text seemed hopeless. His work upon the ' Pandects ' alone
imphes the expenditure of enormous toU.
The results of PoUziano's more fugitive studies, and some
notes of conversations on literary topics with Lorenzo, were
pubUshed in 1489 under the title of ' Miscellanea.' ' The form
was borrowed from the ' Noctes Atticaa ' of Aulus GeUius ; in
matter this coUection anticipated the genial criticisms of
Erasmus. The excitement caused by its appearance is vividly
depicted in the foUowing letter of Jacopus Antiquarius,
secretary to the Duke of Milan : 2 — ' Going lately, according
to my custom, into one of the pubhc offices, I found a number
of the young clerks neglecting their prince's business, and lost
in the study of a book which had been distributed in sheets
among them. When I asked what new book had appeared,
they answered, PoUtian's " Miscellanies." I mounted their desk,
sat down among them, and began to read with equal eagerness.
But, as I could not spend much time there, I sent at once to
the bookseller's stall for a copy of the work.' By this time
PoUziano's fame had eclipsed that of all his contemporaries.
He corresponded famUiarly with native and foreign princes,
and held a kind of court at Florence among men of learnmg
who came from aU parts of Italy to converse with him. This
1 The first words of the dedication run as follows: — 'Cum tibi
superioribus diebus Laurenti Medices, nostra haec Miscellanea inter
equitandum recitaremus.'
2 Angeli PoUUani Epistola, lib. iii. ed. Aid. 1498. The letter is
dated Nov. 1488.

256 RENAISSANCE IN ITALY
popularity grew even burdensome, or at any rate he affected
to find it so. ' Does a man want a motto for his sword's hilt
or a posy for a ring,' he writes,1 ' an inscription for his bed
room or a device for his plate, or even for his pots and pans,
he runs like all the world to Pohtian. There is hardly a wall
I have not besmeared, like a snaU, with the effusions of my
brain. One teazes me for catches and drinking-songs, another
for a grave discourse, a third for a serenade, a fourth for a
Carnival ballad.' In executing these commissions he is said
to have shown great courtesy ; nor did they probably cost
him much trouble, for in aU his work he was no less rapid
than elegant. He boasted that he had dictated the trans
lation of Herodian whUe walking up and down his room,
within the space of a day or two ; and the chief fault of his
verses is their fluency.
It stiU remains to speak of Poliziano's personal relations
to the Medicean family. When he first entered the household
of Lorenzo, he undertook the tuition of his patron's sons, and
continued to superintend their education until their mother
Clarice saw reason to mistrust his personal influence. There
were, no doubt, many points in the great scholar's character
that justified her thinking him unfit to be the constant com
panion of young men. Whatever may be the truth about the
cause of his last iUness, enough remains of his Greek and
Italian verses to prove that his moraUty was lax, and his
conception of Ufe rather Pagan than Christian.2 Clarice con
trived that he should not remain under the same roof with
her children; and though his friendly intercourse with tjie
Medicean famUy continued uninterrupted, it would seem thai
after 1480 he only gave lessons in the classics to his formerl
pupils. *
1 In a letter to Hieronymus Donatus, dated Florence, 3Iay ii80, l
AngeU Politiani Epistolm, lib. ii.
2 The well-known scandal about Poliziano's death is traceable to
the Elogia of Paulus Jovius — very suspicious authority. See above,
p. 252, note 2.

POLIZIANO'S DEATH 257
PoUziano, proud as he was of his attainments, lacked the
nobler quahty of self-respect. He condescended to flatter
Lorenzo, and to beg for presents, in phrases that remind us of
FUeUo's prosiest epigrams.1 That a scholar shoidd vaunt his
own achievements 2 and extol his patron to the skies, that
he should ask for money and set off his panegyrics against
payment, seemed not derogatory to a man of genius in the
fifteenth century. Yet these habits of Uterary mendicancy
and toad-eating proved a most pernicious influence. Italian
Uterature never lost the superlatives and exaggerations im
ported by the humanists, and Pietro Aretino may be called
the lineal descendant of FUelfo and Poliziano.
It must be aUowed that to overpraise Lorenzo from a
scholar's point of view would have been difficult, whUe the
affection that bound the student to his patron was genuine.
Poliziano, who watched Lorenzo in his last moments, de
scribed the scene of his death in a letter marked by touching
Borrow which he addressed to Antiquari, and proved by the
Latin monody which he composed and left unfinished, that
grief for his dead master could inspire his muse with loftier
strains than any expectation of future favours whUe he Uved
had done.
Two years after Lorenzo's death Poliziano died himself,
dishonoured and suspected by the Piagnoni. Savonarola
had swept the Carnival chariots and masks and gimcracks
of Lorenzo's hoUday reign into the dust-heap. Instead of
rispetti and ballate, the refrain of Misereres fiUed the city,
and the Dominican's prophecy of blood and ruin drowned
with its thundrous reverberations the scholarUke disquisitions
1 The most curious of these elegiac poems are given in Carmma
Quinque Ilhistrium Poetarum, p. 234.' It is possible that their lan
guage ought not to be taken literally, and that they concealed a joke
now lost.
2 Poliziano's letter to Matthias Corvinus is a good example of his
self-laudation.
U 3

26S RENAISSANCE IN ITALY
of Greek professors. PoUziano's lament for Lorenzo was
therefore, as it were, a prophecy of his own fate :
Quis dabit capiti meo
Aquam ? quis ooulis meis
Fontem lachrymarum dabit ?
TJt nocte fleam,
Ut luce fleam.
Sic turtur viduus solet,
Sic cygnus moriens solet,
Sic luscinia conqueri.
• Oh that my head were waters and mine eyes a fountain of
tears, that I might weep day and night! So mourns the
widowed turtle dove ; so mourns the dying swan ; so mourns
the nightingale.' Into these passionate words of waning,
unique in the Uterature of humanism by their form alike and
feeling, breaks the threnody of the abandoned scholar. " Ah,
woe I Ah, woe is me ! 0 grief I 0 grief ! Lightning hath
struck our laurel tree, our laurel dear to aU the Muses and
the dances of the Nymphs, beneath whose spreading boughs
the God of Song himself more sweetly harped and sang.
Now aU around is dumb ; now aU is mute, and there is none
to hear. Oh that my head were waters, and mine eyes a
fountain of tears ! '
This at least of grace the gods aUowed PoUziano, that he
should die in the same year as his friend Pico deUa Mirandola,
a few weeks before the deluge prophesied by Savonarola burst
over Italy. Upon his tomb in S. Marco a burlesque epitaph
was inscribed- Politianus
in hoc tumulo jacet
Angelus unum
qui caput et linguas
res nova tres habuit.
Obiit an. mcccclxxxxiv
Sep. xxrv. iEtatis
XL.1
! ' Poliziano lies in this grave, the angel who had one head and, what
is new, three tongues. He died September 24, 1494, aged 40.'

SCHOLARSHIP IN ROME 256
Bembo, who succeeded him in the dictatorship of Italian
letters, composed a not unworthy elegy upon the man whom
he justly apostrophised as ' PoUziano, master of the Ausonian
lyre.' The fortunes of Eoman scholarship kept varying with tho
personal tastes of each successive Pope. Calixtus III. differed
whoUy from his predecessor, Nicholas V. Learned in theo
logy and mediaeval science, he was dead to the interests of
humanistic literature. Vespasiano assures us that, when he
entered the Vatican Ubrary and saw its Greek and Latin
authors in their red and silver bindings, instead of praising
the munificence of Nicholas, he exclaimed, ' Vedi in che egh'
ha consumato la robba deUa Chiesa di Dio ! ' ' iEneas Sylvius
Piccolomini ranked high among the humanists. As an orator,
courtier, state secretary, and man of letters, he shared the
general quaUties of the class to which he belonged. While a
feUow-student of BeccadelU at Siena, he freely enjoyed the
pleasures of youth, and thought it no harm to compose novels
in the style of Longus and Achilles Tatius. These stories,
together with his famihar letters, histories, cosmographical
treatises, rhetorical disquisitions, apophthegms, and com
mentaries, written in a fluent and picturesque Latin style,
distinguished him for wit and talent from the merely laborious
students of his age.2 A change, however, came over him
when he assumed the title of Pius II. with the tiara.3 Learn
ing in Italy owed but Uttle to his patronage, and though he
1 ' Behold whereon he spent the substance of the Church of God 1 '
Vespasiano adds that he gave away several hundred volumes to one of
the cardinals, whose servants sold them for an old song. Vesp. p. 216.
Assemani, the historian of the Vatican Library, on the contrary, asserts
that Calixtus spent 40,000 ducats on books. It is not likely, however,
that Vespasiano was wholly in error about a matter he understood so
(veil, and had so much at heart.
2 See the Basle edition of his collected works, 1571.
' See Vol. I., Age of the Despots, p. 299. 82

260 RENAISSANCE IN ITALY
strengthened the position of the humanists at Eome by
founding the CoUege of Abbreviators, he was more eager to
defend Christendom against the Turk than to make his See
the capita] of culture. For this it would be narrow-minded
to blame Pius. The experience of European politics had
extended his view beyond the narrower circle of ItaUan
interests ; and there is something noble as well as piteous in *>
his attempt to lead the forlorn hope of a cosmopoUtan cause.
Paul II. was chiefly famous for his persecution of the Eoman
Platonists ; l and Sixtus IV., though he deserves to be remem
bered as the Pontiff who opened the Vatican Ubrary to the
public, plays no prominent part in the history of scholarship.
Tiraboschi may be consulted for his refusal to pay the pro
fessors of the Eoman Sapienza. Of Innocent VIII. nothing
need be said ; nor will any student of history expect to find it
recorded that Alexander VI. wasted money on the patronage
of learning. To the Borgia, indeed, the world owes that
curse of Catholicism, that continued crime of high treason
against truth and Uberal culture, the subjection of the press
to ecclesiastical control.
Under these Popes humanism had to flourish, as it best
could, in the society of private individuals. Accordingly, we
find the Eoman scholars forming among themselves academies
and learned circles. Of these the most eminent took its
name from its founder, Julius Pomponius Laatus. He was i.
bastard of the princely House of the Sanseverini, to whom,
when he became famous and they were anxious for his friend
ship, he perjned the celebrated spistle : ' Pomponius Lmtus
cognatis et propinquis suis salutem. Quod petitis fieri non
•potest. Valete.' 2 Pomponius derived his scholarship from
Valla, and devoted all his energies to Latin Uterature, refus-
1 Vol. I., Age of the Despots, pp. 302-303.
' 'P. L. to his kinsmen and relatives, greeting. What you ask
cannot be. Farewell.'

POMPONIUS LJETUS JM
ing, it is even said, to learn Greek, lest it should distract him
from his favourite studies. He made it the object of his most
serious endeavours not only to restore a knowledge of the
ancients, but also to assimilate his Ufe and manners to their
standard. Men praised in him a second Cato for sobriety of
conduct, frugal diet, and rural industry. He tilled his own
ground after the methods of Varro and Columella, went
a-fishing and a-fowling on holidays, and ate his sparing meal
hke a Eoman Stoic beneath the spreading branches of an oak
on the Campagna. The grand mansions of the prelates had
no attractions for him. He preferred his own modest house
upon the Esquiline, his garden on the Quirinal. It was here
that his favourite scholars conversed with him at leisure;
and to these retreats of the phUosopher came strangers of
importance, eager to behold a Eoman Uving in all points like
an antique sage. The high school of Eome owed much to his
indefatigable industry. Through a long series of years he
lectured upon the chief Latin authors, examining their text
with critical accuracy, and preparing new editions of their
works. Before daybreak he would Ught his lantern, take his
staff, and wend his way from the EsquUine to the lecture -
room, where, however early the hour and however inclement
the season, he was sure to find an overflowing audience. Yet
it was not as a professor that Pomponius Laatus acquired his
great celebrity, and left a lasting impress on the society of
Eome. This he did by forming an academy for the avowed
purpose of prosecuting the study of Latin antiquities and
promoting the adoption of antique customs into modern life.
The members assumed classical names, exchanging their
Italian patronymics for fancy titles Uke Callimachus Ex-
periens, Asclepiades, Glaucus, Volscus, and Petrejus. They
yearly kept the birthday feast of Eome, celebrating the PaliUa
with Pagan solemnities, playing comedies of Plautus, and
striving to revive the humours of the old AteUan farces. Of

262 RENAISSANCE IN ITALY
this circle Pontanus and Sannazzaro, Platina, SabelUcus and
Molza, Janus Parrhasius, and the future Paul III. were proud
to call themselves the members. It is only from the language
in which such men refer to Laetus that we gain a due notion
of his influence ; for he left but Uttle behind him as an author,
and used himself to boast that, hke Socrates and Christ, he
hoped to be remembered through his pupils. In the year
1468 this Eoman academy acquired fresh celebrity by the
persecution of Paul IL, who partly suspected a political object
in its meetings, and partly resented the open heathenism of
its leaders. I need not here repeat the tale of his crusade
against the scholars. It is enough to mention that Laetus
was imprisoned for a short while, and that in prison he wrote
an apology for his life, defending himself against a charge of
misplaced passion for a young Venetian pupil, and professing
the sincerity of his belief in Christianity. After his release
from the Castle of S. Angelo he was obliged to discontinue
the meetings of his academy, which were not resumed until
the reign of Sixtus. Pomponius Laetus Uved on into the
Papacy of Alexander, and died in 1498 at the age of seventy.
His corpse was crowned with a laurel wreath in the Church of
Araceli. Forty bishops, together with the foreign ambassadors
in Eome and the representatives of the Borgia, who were
speciaUy deputed for that purpose, witnessed the ceremony
and listened to the funeral oration. Laatus had desired that
his body should be placed in a sarcophagus upon the Appian
Way. This wish was not complied with. He was conveyed
from Araceli to S. Salvatore in Lauro, and there buried Uke a
Christian. WhUe the academy of Pomponius Laetus flourished at
Eome, that of Naples was no less active under the presidency
of Jovianus Pontanus. It appears to have originated in social
gatherings assembled by BeccadelU, and to have held its
meetings in a building called after its founder the Porticus

JOVIANUS PONTANUS 263
Antonianus. When death had broken up the brUliant circle
surrounding Alfonso the Magnanimous, Pontanus assumed
the leadership of learned men in Naples, and gave the formality
of a club to what had previously been a mere reunion of
cultivated scholars. The members Latinised their names ;
many of them became better known by their assumed titles
than by their Italian cognomens. Sannazzaro, for instance,
acquired a wide celebrity as Accius Syncerus. Pontanus was
himseU a native of Cereto in the Spoletano. Born in 1426,
he settled in his early manhood at Naples, where BeccadelU
introduced him to his royal patrons. During the reigns of
Ferdinand I., AUonso H., and Ferdinand H. Pontanus held
the post of secretary, tutor, and ambassador, accompanying
his masters on their military expeditions and negotiating their
affairs at the Papal Court. When Charles VIH. entered
Naples as a conqueror, Pontanus greeted him with a pane
gyrical oration, proving himseU more courtly and self-seeking
than loyal to the princes he had served so long. Guicciardini
observes that this act of ingratitude stained the fair fame of
Pontanus. Yet it may be pleaded in his defence that no
moralist of the period had more boldly denounced the crimes
and vices of ItaUan princes ; and it is possible that Pontanus
reaUy hoped Charles might inaugurate a better age for
Naples. He was distinguished among the scholars of his time for
the purity of his Latin style ; to him belongs the merit of
having written verse that might compete with good models
of antiquity. His hexameters on stars and meteors, called
' Urania,' won the enthusiastic praise of his own generation,
and subsequently served as model to Fracastoro for his own
didactic poem. His amatory elegiacs have an exuberance of
colouring and sensuous force of phrase that seem peculiarly
appropriate to the Bay of Naples, where they were inspired.
As a prose-writer it is particularly by his moral treatises that

264 RENAISSANCE IN ITALY
Pontanus deserves to be remembered. Unlike the mass of
contemporary dialogues on ethical subjects, they abound in
iUustrations drawn from recent history, so that even now
they may be advantageously consulted by students anxious
to gather characteristic details and to form a just opinion of
Eenaissance moraUty. Throughout his writings Pontanus
shows himself to have been an original and vigorous thinker,
a complete master of Latin scholarship, unwiUing to abide
contented with bare imitation, and bent upon expressing the
facts of modern life, the actualities of personal emotion, in a
style of accurate Latinity. When he died in 1503, he left at
Naples one of the most flourishing schools of neopagan poets
to be found in Italy ; Lilius Gyraldus employs the old meta
phor of the Trojan horse to describe the number and the
vigour of the scholars who issued from it.
In the Church of Monte Oliveto at Naples there may be
seen a group in terra cotta painted to imitate Ufe. Alfonso H.,
Pontanus, and Sannazzaro are kneeling in adoration before
the body of the dead Christ. Pontanus, who represents
Nicodemus, is a stern, hard-featured, long-faced man, of
powerful bone and fibrous sinews, buUt for serious labour in
the study or the field. Sannazzaro, who stands for Joseph of
Arimathea, is bald, fat-faced, with bushy eyebrows and a
heavy cast of countenance. The physical characteristics of
these men and their act of faith are in curious contradiction
with the conception we form of them after reading the
' Elegies ' and the ' Arcadia.'
The Eoman Academy of Pomponius Laetus and the Nea
politan Academy of Pontanus continued to exist after the
death of their founders, while similar institutions sprang up
in every town of Italy. To speak of these in detail would be
quite impossible. With the commencement of the sixteenth
century they lost their classical character, and assumed fan
tastic Italian titles. Thus the Soman coterie of wits and

NEAPOLITAN ACADEMY 285
scholars called it°elf I VignaiuoU. The members, among
whom were Berni, La Casa, Firenzuola, Mauro, Molza,
assumed titles Uke L'Agreste, II Mosto, II Gotogno, and so
forth. The Cardinal Ippolito de' Medici founded a club in
Eome for the study of Vitruvius. It met twice in the week,
and was known as Le Virtu. At Bologna the Viridario
devoted its energies to the correction of printed texts ; the
Sitibondi studied law, the Desti cultivated extinct chivalry.
Besides these, the one town of Bologna produced Sonnacchiosi,
Oziosi, Desiosi, Storditi, Gonfusi, Politici, InstabiU, Gelati,
Umorosi. As the century advanced, academies multipUed in
Italy, and their titles became more absurd. Eavenna had its
Informi, Faenza its Smarriti, Macerata its Gatenati, Fabriano
its Disuniti, Perugia its Insensati, Urbino its Assorditi, Naples
its Sereni, Ardenti, and Incogniti — and so on ad infinitum.
At Florence the Platonic Academy continued to flourish under
the auspices of the Eucellai family, in whose gardens assembled
the company described by FiUppo de' NerU,1 until the year
1522, when it was suppressed on the occasion of the con
spiracy against GiuUo de' Medici. Duke Cosimo revived it
under the name of the Florentine Academy in 1540, when its
labours were whoUy devoted to Petrarch and the Italian
language. In 1572 appeared the famous academy called
Della Grusca, the only one among these later societies which
acquired an European reputation.
Those who are curious to foUow the history of the aca
demies, may be referred to the comprehensive notices of
Tiraboschi. From the date of their Itahanisation they cease
to belong to the history of humanism ; what justifies the
mention of them here is the fact that they owed their first
existence to the scholars of the third period. The worst
faults of ItaUan erudition — pedantry and styUstic affecta
tions — were perpetuated by coteries worshipping Petrarch and
1 See Vol. I., Age of the Despots, p. 220, note.

266 RENAISSANCE IN ITALY
peddhng with the idlest of all Uterary problems, where so
great a writer as Annibale Caro thought it in good taste to
write a dissertation on the nose of a president, and where the
industry of sensible men was absorbed in the concoction of
sonnets by the myriad and childish puns on their own titles.
During the foUowing age of poUtical stagnation and eccle
siastical oppression the academies were the playthings of a
nation fast degenerating into inteUectual hebetude. Not
without amazement do we read the eulogies pronounced by
MUton on the ' learned and affable meeting of frequent aca
demies, and the procurement of wise and artful recitations,
sweetened with eloquent and graceful incitements to the love
and practice of justice, temperance, and fortitude.' What he
had observed with admiration in Italy, he would fain have
seen imitated in England, undeterred apparently by the
impotence and sterility of academic dissertations.1
It remains to speak of the establishment of printing In
Italy, an event no less important for the preservation and
diffusion of classical learnmg than the previous discovery of
MSS. had been indispensable for its revival. What has to
be said about the erudite society of Venice may appropriately
be introduced in this connection ; whUe the final honours of
the third period will be seen to belong of right to one of Italy's
most noble-minded scholars, Aldus Manutius.
In 1462 Adolph of Nassau pillaged Maintz and dispersed
its printers over Europe. Three years later two Germans, by
name Sweynheim and Pannartz, who had worked under Fust,
set up a press in Subbiaeo, a little village of the Sabine
mountains. Here, in October 1465, the first edition of
Lactantius saw the Ught. The German printers soon after
wards removed from Subbiaeo, and settled, under the protec
tion of the Massimi, in Eome, where they continued to issue
1 See the Reason of Church Government urged against Prelaty,
%nd the Ready and Easy Way to Establish a Free Commonwealth.

ORIGIN OF PRINTING IN ITALY 267
Latin authors from their press.1 In 1646 John of Spires
estabhshed himself at Venice. He was soon afterwards joined
by his brother Vindelino (so the ItaUans write the name) and
by Nicholas Jenson, the Frenchman. Florence had no press
tiU 1471, when Bernardo Cennini printed the commentary of
Servius on Virgil's ' BucoUos.' The ' Georgics' and ' iEneid '
appeared in the following year. To Cennini, however, belongs
the honour of having been the first Italian to cast his own
type. Like many other illustrious artificers, he was by trade
a goldsmith ; in his address to the reader he styles himself
aurifex omnium judicio prastantissimus, adding, with refe
rence to the typography, expressis ante calide caracteribus ac
deinde fusis Uteris volumen hoc primum impresserunt. The
last sentence of the address should also be quoted : Floren
tines mgeniis nil ardui est. Other printers opened workshops
in Florence within the course of a few years — John of Maintz
in 1472, Nicholas of Breslau in 1477, Antonio Miscomini in
1481, and Lorenzo Alopa of Venice, who gave Homer with
Greek type to the world in 1488. StUl, Florence had been
anticipated by many other cities ; for when once the new art
took root in Italy, it spread like wUd fire. Omitting smaller
places from the calculation, it has been reckoned that, before
the year 1500, 4,987 books were printed in Italy, of which 298
are claimed by Bologna, 300 by Florence, 629 by Milan, 929 by
Eome, and 2,835 by Venice. The disproportion between the
activity of Florence and of Venice in the book trade deserves
to be noticed, though how it should be explained I hardly
know. Fifty towns and numbers of insignificant burghs —
Pinerolo, Savona, Pieve di Sacco, Cividale, Soncino, Chivasso,
1 From a memorial presented by these printers to Sixtus IV. in
1472 we ascertain some facts about their industry. They had at that
date printed in all 12,495 volumes. It was their custom to issue 265
oopies in each edition ; the double of that number for Virgil, Cicero's
separate works, and theological books in request. Cantu, Lett. It.
p. 112. See Cantu, p. 110, for details of the earliest Latin books.

268 RENAISSANCE IN ITALY
Scandiano, for example — could boast of local presses. Ambu.
lant printers estabhshed their machinery for half a year or so
in a remote viUage, printed what came to hand there, and
moved on.
While scholars rejoiced in the art that, to quote the words
of one of them, ' had saved the labour of their aching joints,'
the copyists complained that their occupation would be taken
from them. The whistle of the locomotive at the beginning
of this century was not more afflicting to stage-coachmen than
the creaking of the wooden printing press to those poor scribes.
Yet, however quickly a labour-saving invention may spread,
there is generaUy time for the superseded industry to die an
easy death, and for artisans to find employment in the new
trade. Vespasiano, who during twenty-six years survived the
first book printed in Florence, could even afford to despise the
press.1 The great nobles, on whose patronage he depended,
did not suddenly transfer their custom from the scribe to the
compositor ; nor was it to be expected that so essentiaUy a
democratic art as printing should find immediate favour with
the aristocracy. A prince with a Ubrary of MSS. worth
40,000 ducats hated the machine that put an equal number
of more readable volumes within the reach of moderate com
petency. Moreover, a certain suspicion of subversiveness
and license clung about the press. This was to some extent
justified by fact, since the press was destined to be the most
formidable engine of the modern reason. Ecclesiastics, again,
questioned whether the promiscuous multiphcation of books
were pious; and Alexander VI. stretched his hand out to
coerce the printer's devil. To check the spread of printing
would, however, have overtaxed the powers of any human
tyranny. AU that, the Church could do was to place its pro
ductions under episcopal control.
Though the copyists of MSS. were thrown out of work
• See above, p. 220.

PRINTERS AND COPYISTS 269
by the printing press, it gave important stimulus to other
industries in Italy. The paper mills of Fabriano and of
Colle in the Val d' Elsa became valuable properties ; ¦ com
positors and readers began to form a separate class of artisans,
while needy scholars found a market for their talents in the
houses of the pubhshers. When we consider the amount of
Uterary work that had to be performed before Greek, Latin,
and Hebrew texts could be prepared for the press, the difficulty
of procuring correct copies of authoritative codices, and the
scrupulous attention expended upon proof sheets, we are able
to understand that men who hved by learnmg found the new
art profitable.
Instead of having previous editions to work upon, the
pubhshers were obhged, in the first instance, to collect MSS.
For this purpose they either traveUed themselves from city
to city, or employed competent amanuenses. Next, it was
necessary to study the philosophers, poets, historians, mathe
maticians, and mystics, whose works they intended to print,
in order that no mistake in the sense of the words should be
made. Orthography and punctuation had to be fixed ; and
between many readings only one could be adopted. Giving a
first edition to the world involved far more anxiety on these
points than the reproduction of a book already often printed.
No one man could accompUsh such tasks alone. Therefore
we find that scores of learned men were associated together
for the purpose, Uving under the same roof, revising the copy
for the compositor, overlooking the men at work, reading the
text aloud, and correcting the proofs with a vigilance that is
but httle needed nowadays. AU this labour, moreover, was
1 It is supposed that the earliest paper factory established in Italy
was at Fabriano. Colle, a little town near Volterra, made paper from a
remote period ; by a deed, dated March 6, 1377, now preserved in the
Florentine Archivio Diplomatico, one Colo da Colle rented a fall of
water there et gualcheriam ad faciendas cartas for twenty years. Both
places are still celebrated for their paper mills.

270 RENAISSANCE IN ITALY
accomphshed without the aid of grammars, lexicons, and
other aids. Truly we may say without exaggeration that the
Aldi of Venice and the Stephani of Paris are more worthy of
commemoration for services rendered through scholarship to
humanity than those modern castigators of ancient texts, the
Porsons and the Lachmanns, whose names are on every lip.
The enthusiasm of discovery, and the rich field for original
industry offered to those early editors, may be reckoned as
compensation for their otherwise overwhelming toU.
Teobaldo Mannucci, better known as Aldo Manuzio, was
born in 1450 at Sermoneta, near VeUetri. After residing as
a cUent in the princely house of Carpi, he added the name
Pio to his patronymic, and signed his pubUcations with the
fuU description, Aldus Pius Manutius Romanus et Philhellen,
'AA.8os 6 Mavounos 'FiofLaios Kal &i.\£Wi)v. He studied Latin
at Eome under Gasparino da Verona, and Greek at Ferrara
under Guarino da Verona, to whom he dedicated his Theo
critus in 1495. Having qualified himseU for undertaking the
work of tutor or professor, according to the custom of the
century, and having made friends with many of the principal
ItaUan scholars, he went in 1482 to reside at Mirandola with
his old friend and fellow- student, Giovanni Pico. There he
stayed two years, enjoying the society of the Phoenix of
his age, and continuing his Greek studies in concert with
Emmanuel Adramyttenos, a learned Cretan. Before Pico
removed to Florence he procured for Aldo the post of tutor to
his nephews Alberto and LioneUo Pio. Carpi had owned the
family of Pio for its masters since the thirteenth century,
when they rose to power, like many of the Lombard nobles,
by adroit use of Imperial privUeges.1 This Uttle city, placed
midway between Correggio, Mirandola, and Modena, is so
1 Sansovino, in his Famiglie Rlustri, after giving a fabulous pedi
gree of the Pio family, dates their signorial importance from the reign
of Frederick IL

ALBERTO PIO 271
insignificant that its name has been omitted from the index
to Murray's handbook ; nor is there indeed much but the
memory of Aldo and Alberto Pio, and a church buUt by
Baldassare Peruzzi, to recommend it to the notice of a tra
veUer. Under the tuition of Aldo the two young princes
became exceUent scholars. Alberto in particular proved, by
his aptitude for phUosophieal studies, that he had inherited
from his mother, the sister of Giovanni Pico, something of
the spirit of Mirandola. When Aldus published his great
edition of Aristotle, he inscribed it to his former pupil with
a Greek dedication, in which he styled him tu tS>v ovrmv
epaoTjj. There can be no doubt that Alberto's knowledge of
Greek language and phUosophy was far more thorough than
that of many more belauded princes of the age. Yet he had
but Uttle opportunity for the quiet prosecution of classical
studies, or for the patronage of learned men at Carpi. Driven
from his patrimony by the Imperialists, he died at Paris in
1530, after a Ufe spent in foreign service and diplomatic
offices of trust. The bronze monument for his tomb may
stiU be seen1 in the GaUery of the Louvre. The princely
scholar, clad in rich Eenaissance armour, is reclining with
his head supported by his right hand ; the left holds an open
book. The attitude of melancholy meditation, the ornamental
but useless cuirass, and the volume open while the scabbard
of the sword is shut, add to the portrait of this prince in exile
the value of an allegory. Such symbols suited the genius of
Italy during the age of foreign invaders.
To Alberto Pio the world owes a debt of gratitude, inas
much as he supplied Aldo with the funds necessary for
starting his printing press, and gave him lands at Carpi, where
his famUy were educated. When Aldo conceived the ambitious
project of printing the whole literature of Greece, four ItaUan
towns could already claim the honours of Greek publications.
1 Executed for the Church of the Cordeliers by Paulus Pontius.

272 RENAISSANCE IN ITALY
MUan takes the lead. In 1476 the Grammar of Lascaris was
printed there by Dionysius Paravisini, with the aid of
Demetrius of Crete.1 In 1480 Esop and Theocritus appeared,
with no publisher's name. In 1486 two Cretans, Alexander
and Laonicenus, edited a Greek psalter. In 1493 Isocrates,
prepared by Demetrius Chalcondylas, was issued by Henry the
German and Sebastian of Pontremolo. Next comes Venice,
where, as early as 1484, the ' Erotemata ' of Chrysoloras had
been produced by a certain Peregrinus Bononiensis. Vicenza
followed in 1488 with a reprint of Lascaris's Grammar due to
Leonard Achates of Basle, and in 1490 with a reprint of the
' Erotemata.' Florence, as we have already seen, gave Homer
to the world in 1488. Demetrius Chalcondylas revised the
text ; Demetrius the Cretan supplied the models for the
types ; Alopa of Venice was the pubUsher. It wiU be remarked
that, with the exception of Homer and Theocritus, no true
classic of the first magnitude had appeared before the founda
tion of the Aldine Press. I may also add that the Milanese
Isocrates was reaUy contemporaneous with the Musaaus,
Galeomyomachia, and Psalter issued by Aldo as precursors
of his Greek hbrary — Up68po(i.oi rrjs 'EAAijvuoJs /Ji/JAtoe'if/ajs.
This fact makes his thirty-three first editions of aU the
greatest and most voluminous Greek authors between 1494
and 1515 aU the more remarkable.
It was at Carpi in 1490 that Aldo finaUy matured his
1 Poliziano's epigram addressed to these earliest Greek printers
may be quoted here :
Qui colis Aonidas, Grajos quoque volve libellos ;
Namque illas genuit Grsecia, non Latium.
En Paravisinus quanta hos Dionysius arte
Imprimit, en quanto cernitis ingenio !
Te quoque, Demetri, ponto oircumsona Crete
Tanti operis nobis edidit artificem.
Turce, quid insultas ? tu Grseoa volumina perdis ;
Hi pariunt : hydrse nunc age colla seca 1

ALDUS MANUTIUS 273
project of estabUshing a Greek press. His patrons desired
him to found it in their castle of Novi; but Aldo judged
rightly that at Venice he would be more secure from the dis
turbances of warfare, as weU as more conveniently situated
for engaging the assistance of Greek scholars and compositors.
Accordingly, he took a house, and settled near S. Agostino.
This house speedUy became a Greek colony. It may be
inferred from Aldo's directions to the printers that his trade
was carried on almost entirely by Greeks, and that Greek
was the language of his household. The instructions to the
binders as to the order of the sheets and mode of stitching
were given hi Greek; and many curious Greek phrases
appear to have sprung up to meet the exigencies of the new
industry. Thus we find Iva cAAryno-rl o-wSeOigo-eTai for ' Greek
stitching,' and Kamrepivy x«P' for ' the type ; ' whUe Aldo •
himseU is described as i^evpir-g tovtwv ypap,p.a.TUXV xapaKT^pos
«!is e'pip-oi. The prefaces, almost always composed in Greek,
prove that this language was read currently in Italy, since
Aldo rehed on numerous purchasers of his large and costly
issues. The Greek type, for the casting of which he provided
machinery in his own house, was formed upon the model
supphed by Marcus Musurus, a Cretan, who had taken Latin
orders and settled at Carpi, and from whom Aldo received
important assistance in the preparation of editions for the"
press. The compositors, in like manner, were mostly Cretans.'
We hear of one of them, by name Aristoboulos Apostolios,
while John Gregoropoulos, another Cretan, the brother-in-law
of Musurus, performed the part of reader. The ink used by
Aldo was made in his own house, where he had, besides, a
subordinate estabUshment for binding. The paper, excelled
by none that has been since produced, came from the mills of
Fabriano. It may easily be imagined that this beehive of
Greek industry often numbered over thirty persons, not in
cluding the craftsmen employed in lesser offices by the day.
II T

274 RENAISSANCE IN ITALY
The superintendence of this large establishment, added to
the anxieties attending the production of so many books as
yet not edited, sorely taxed the health and powers of Aldo.
For years together he seems to have had no minute he could
caU his own. Continual demands were made by visitors and
strangers upon his hours of leisure ; and in order to secure
time for the conduct of his business, he was forced to placard
his door with a prohibitory notice.1 Besides the more ordinary
interruptions, to which every man of eminence is subjected, he
had to struggle with peculiar difficulties due to the novelty of
his undertaking. The prefaces to many of his publications
contain aUusions to strikes among his workmen,2 to the
piracies of rival booksellers,3 to the difficulty of procuring
authentic MSS.,4 and to the interruptions caused by war.
Twice was the work of printing suspended, first in 1506, and
then again in 1510. For two whole years at the latter period
the industries of Venice were paralysed by the allied forces
of the League of Cambray. The dedication of the first edition
of Plato, 1513, to Leo X. concludes with a prayer, splendidin
the earnestness and simpUcity of its eloquence, wherein Aldo
compares the miseries of warfare and the woes of Italy with
1 See Didot's Aide Manuce, p. 417, the passage beginning ' Vix
credas.' In the Latin preface to the Thesaurus Cornucopias et Horti
Adonidis, 1495, Aldo complains that he has not been able to rest for
one hour during seven years.
2 ' Tot illico oborta sunt impedimenta malorumque invidia et
domesticorum Kal -rats twv Karapdruv Kal hpairerevdvTtav Sov\tov em-
$oi\ais.' Prefaoe to the Poeta Christiani Veteres, 1501. Again in
the ' monitum ' of the same, ' quater jam in aedibus nostris ab operariis
et stipendiariis in me conspiratum et duce malorum omnium matre
avaritia quos Deo adjuvante sic fregi ut valde omnes poeniteat sua
perfidies.' 3 The Frenoh publishers of Lyons, the Giunti of Rome, and Sonoino
of Fano, were particularly troublesome. Didot has extracted some
curious information about their tricks as well as Aldo's exposure ol
them. Pp. 167, 482-486.
1 See especially the preface to Aristotle, vol. i. 1495 j vol. v. 1498.

THE INDUSTRY OF ALDO 275
the subUme and peaceful objects of the student. All the
terrible experiences of that wasteful campaign, from the
effects of which the EepubUc of Venice never whoUy recovered,
seem to find expression in the passionate but reverent,
address of the great printer to the scholar Pope. For two
years previously the press of Aldo had been idle, while the
French were deluging Brescia with blood, and the plains of
Eavenna were heaped with dead Italians, Spaniards, Gauls,
and Germans, met in passionate but fruitless conflict by the
Eonco. Now, from the midst of her desolated palaces and
sUenced lagoons, Venice stretched forth to Europe the peace-
gUt of Plato. The student who had toiled to make it perfect,
appealed before Christ and His vicar, from the arms that
brutaUse to the arts that humanise the nations.
In the midst of these occupations, disappointments, and
distractions, Aldo, sustained by the enthusiasm of his great
undertaking, never flagged. Some of his prefaces, after
setting forth the impediments he had to combat, burst into
a cry of triumph. What joy, he exclaims, it is to see these
volumes of the ancients rescued from book-buriers (Jli/3\ioTa<poi)
and given freely to the world ! ' No man could have been
more generously anxious than he was to serve the cause of
scholarship by the widest possible diffusion of books at a
moderate price. No artist was ever more scrupulously bent
on giving the best possible form, the utmost accuracy, to every
detaU of his work. When we consider the beauty of the
Aldine volumes, and the critical excellence of their texts, we
may fairly be astonished at their prices. The Musaeus was
sold for something under one shining of our money, the
Theocritus for something under two shillings. The five
1 See Preface to Thesaurus Cornucopias, quoted by Didot, p. 80;
and cf. pp. 210, 221, 521, for further hints about selfish bibliomaniacs,
who tried to hoard their treasures from the public and refused them
to the press. Aldo, as a genuine lover of free learning, and also as a
publisher, detests this class of men.
t2

276 RENAISSANCE IN ITALY
volumes which contained the whole of Aristotle, might be
purchased for a sum not certainly exceeding 81. Each volume
of the pocket series, headed in 1501 by the 8vo. Virgil, and
comprising Greek, Latin, and Italian authors, fetched about
two shiUings. For this library the celebrated Italic type,
known as Aldine, was adapted from the handwriting of
Petrarch, and cut by Francesco da Bologna. ' It appears that,
as his trade increased, Aldo formed a company, who shared
the risks and profits of the business.2 Yet the expenses of
publishing were so heavy, the insecurity of the book market
so great, and the privileges of copyright granted by the Pope
or the Venetian Senate so imperfect,3 that Aldo, after giving
his life to this work, and bequeathing to the world Greek
Uterature, died comparatively poor. Erasmus, always some
what snarling, accused him of avarice ; yet it was his hberality
to his coUaborators, his openhandedness in buying the ex
pensive apparatus for critical editions, that forced him to be
economical. The first editions of Greek books published by Aldo
deserve to be separately noticed. In 1493, or earher, ap
peared the ' Hero and Leander ' of Musaaus, a poem that
passed, in that uncritical age, for the work of Homer's
mythical predecessor.4 In 1495 the first volume of Aristotle
saw the light, accompanied by numerous Greek epigrams and
1 See Pannizzi's tract on 'Francesco da Bologna,' published by
Pickering, 1873. He was probably Francia the painter.
2 In a letter to Marcello Virgilio Adriani, the teacher of Machia
velli, he mentions some books ' Cum aliis quibusdam communes,' as
distinguished from others which were his private property. Didot,
p. 233. ! On the subject of patents, privileges, and monopolies see Didot,
pp. 79, 166, 189, 371, 479-481.
4 Moturoioj' Tbv -iraAaidTaror itoi7)tV %9e\ri<ra irpooi/udfeiv t$ t«
'Apio-TOTe\ei Kal t&v troipwv ro?s tTepois avTiKa Si' ifiov ivTvinjtrofxfVOis.
This irp6$pt>fios, or precursor, appeared without a date; but it must
have come out earlier than 1494.

ALDO'S FIRST GREEK BOOKS 277
a Greek letter of Scipione Fortiguerra, who deplores in it the
deaths of Pico, Poliziano, and Ermolao Barbaro. The remain
ing four volumes foUowed in 1497 and 1498. In the latter of
these years Aldo, aided by his friend Musurus, produced nine
comedies of Aristophanes ; the MSS. of the 'Lysistrata ' and
' Thesmophoriazusaa ' were afterwards discovered at Urbino, and
pubhshed by Giunta in 1515. In 1502, Thucydides, Sophocles,
and Herodotus appeared, foUowed in 1503 by Xenophon's
'HeUenics' and Euripides,1 and in 1504 by Demosthenes.
After this occurs a luU, occasioned in part by the disturbances
ensuing on the League of Blois. In 1508 the Ust is recon-
tinued with the Greek orators ; whUe 1509 has to show the
minor works of Plutarch. Then follows another stoppage due
to war. In 1513 Plato was pubUshed, and in 1514 Pindar,
Hesychius, and Athenaaus.
From the preceding account I have omitted the notice of
minor editions as weU as reprints. In order to complete the
history of the Aldine issue of Greek books, it should be men
tioned that Aldo's successors continued his work by giving
Pausanias, Strabo, JEschylus, Galen, Hippocrates, and
Longinus to the world ; so that when the Estiennes of Paris
came to glean in the field of the Italian publishers, they only
found Anacreon, Maximus Tyrius, and Diodorus Siculus as
yet unedited.
We must not forget that, while the Greek authors were
being printed thus assiduously by Aldo, he continued to send
forth Latin and ItaUan pubUcations from his press. Thus we
find that the ' Etna ' and the ' Asolani ' of Bembo, the collected
writings of Poliziano, the ' Hypnerotomachia PoUphiU,' the
* Divine Comedy,' the ' Cose Volgari ' of Petrarch, the ' Poetaa
1 John Lascaris had edited four plays of Euripides for Alopa in
1496. This Aldine edition contained eighteen, one of which, the
Hercules Furens, turned up while vol. ii. was in the press. The
Electra, not discovered till later on, was printed at Rome, 1545.

278 RENAISSANCE IN ITALY
Christiani Veteres,' including Prudentius, the poems of
Pontanus, the letters of the younger Pliny, the ' Arcadia ' of
Sannazzaro, QuintUian, Valerius Maximus, and the ' Adagia '
of Erasmus were printed, either in first editions or with a
beauty of type and paper never reached before, between the
years 1495 and 1514.
The great Dutch scholar who made an epoch in the history
of learning, and transferred the sovereignty of letters to the
north of Europe, paid a visit in 1508 to the house of Aldo,
where he personally superintended the re-impression of his
' Proverbs.' l We have a Uvely picture of the printing of this
celebrated book in Aldo's workshop. ' Together we attacked
the work,' says Erasmus, ' I writing, whUe Aldo gave my copy
to the press.' In one corner of the room sat the scholar at his
desk, with the thin keen face so weU portrayed by Holbein,
improvising new paragraphs, and making additions to his
previous collections hi the briUiant Latin style that no one
else could write. Aldo took the MS. from his hand, and
passed it on to the compositors, revising the proofs as they
came fresh from the press, or conferring with his reader Sera-
phinus.2 Erasmus had already gained the reputation of a
dangerous freethinker and opponent to the Church. As years
advanced, and the Eeformation spread in Northern Europe, he
became more and more odious to ecclesiastical authority. The
spirit of revolt was incarnate in this Voltaire of the sixteenth
century, nor could the clergy raise other arms than those of
persecution against so radiant a champion of pure reason. AU
reprints of the 'Adagia ' were therefore forbidden by the bishops.
Paulus Manutius had to quote it on his catalogues as the work

1 The Adagia were first printed in 1500 at Paris by John Philippi.
After the Aldine edition eleven were issued between 1509 and 1520 by
Matthew Schiirer, ten by Froben between 1513 and 1539, while seven
or eight others appeared in various parts of Germany,
2 See the passage quoted by Didot, pp. 297-299.

ALDO'S COLLABORATORS 279
of Batavus quidam homo. To such an extent were Uberal
studies now gagged and downtrodden by the tyrants of tha
Counter-Eeformation in that Italy which for two previous
centuries had been the champion of free culture for Europe.
Before concluding the biography of Aldo Manuzio it may
be well to give some account of the more illustrious assistants
and coUaborators whom he gathered around him in his
academy at Venice.1 The New Academy, or Aldine Academy
of HeUenists, was founded in 1500 for the special purpose of
promoting Greek studies and furthering the publication of
Greek authors. Its rules were written in Greek ; the members
were obhged to speak Greek ; their official titles were Greek ;
and their names were Grecised. Thus Scipione Fortiguerra
of Pistoja, who prepared the text of Demosthenes for Aldo,
styled himseU Carteromachos : and Alessandro Bondini, the
Venetian physician who worked upon the edition of Aristotle,
bore the name of Agathemeros.2 The most distinguished
Greeks at that time resident in Italy could be counted among
the Neacademicians. John Lascaris, of Imperial blood, the
teacher of HeUenism in France under three kings, was an
honorary member. To this great scholar Aldo dedicated his
first edition of Sophocles. Marcus Musurus occupied a post
of more practical importance.3 We have seen that his hand
writing formed the model of Aldo's Greek type. To his
scholarship the editions of Aristophanes, Plato, Pindar,
Hesychius, Athenaeus, and Pausanias owed their critical
accuracy ; while, in concert with Nicolaos Blastos and
1 Didot, pp. 147-151, 436-470, gives ample details concerning the
foundation, constitution, and members of the Aldine Academy.
1 We may compare the name of Melanchthon.
3 A native of Rotino, in Crete (b. 1470, d. at Eome 1517). He
acquired Latin so thoroughly that Erasmus wrote of him: 'LatinsB
linguaB usque ad miraculum doctus, quod vix ulli Grseco contigit prseter
Theodorum Gazam et Joannem Lascarem.' John Lascaris was his
master.

280 RENAISSANCE IN ITALY
Zacharias Calliergi, two Cretan printers settled in Venice, he
published the first Latin and Greek lexicon.1 It wiU be
observed that the Cretans play a prominent part in this
Venetian revival of Greek learning. Aristoboulos ApostoUos,
Joannes Gregoropoulos, Joannes Ehosos, and Demetrius
Doucas, aU of them natives of Crete, were members of the
Neacademy. The first as a compositor, the second as a
reader, the third as a scribe, the fourth as editor of the
Greek Orators, rendered Aldo effective assistance. Among
Italians, Pietro Bembo, Aleander, and Alberto Pio occupied
positions of honorary distinction rather than of active industry.
Those who worked in earnest for the Aldine press were
chiefly Venetians. Girolamo Avanzi, professor of philosophy
at Padua, revised the texts of CatuUus, Seneca, and Ausonius.
Andrea Navagero, the noble Venetian poet, corrected Lucretius,
Ovid, Terence, Quintilian, Horace, and Virgil. Giambattista
Egnazio performed the same service for Valerius Maximus,
the Letters of Pliny, Lactantius, TertuUian, Aulus GeUius,
and other Latin authors. To mention aU the eminent
Venetians who played their part in this Academy would be
tedious ; yet the two names of Marino Sanudo, the famous
diarist, and of Marco Antonio Coccio, called SabelUcus, the
historian of the Eepubhc, cannot be omitted. Of northern
foreigners the most iUustrious was Erasmus ; to EngUshmen
the most interesting is Thomas Linacre. Born in 1460 at
Canterbury, he travelled into Italy, and studied at Florence
under Poliziano and Chalcondylas. On his return to England
he founded the Greek Chair at Oxford, and died in London in
the year 1524. His translation into Latin of the ' Sphere '
of Proclus was published by Aldus in 1499. To him and to
1 Etymologicon Magnum, 1499. Didot, pp. 544-578, may be con
sulted for information about this Greek press. Musurus boasts in his
encomiastic verses that the work was accomplished entirely by Cretans.
&va\<ifia<Ti B\o<tto5 ir6vtp Kal Se^6T7)Ti KaWiipyov in the colophon.

ALDO'S SUCCESSORS 281
Grocm belongs the credit of having sought to plant the
culture of Italy in the universities of England.
During a severe iUness in the year 1498 Aldo vowed to
take holy orders if he should recover. From this obligation
he subsequently obtained release by a brief of Alexander VI.,
and in the following year he married Maria, daughter of
Andrea Torresano, of Asola. Andrea, some years earher, had
bought the press estabhshed by Nicholas Jenson in Venice, so
that Aldo's marriage to his daughter combined the interests
of two important firms. Henceforth the names of Aldus and
of Asolanus were associated on the title-pages of the Aldine
publications. Whe^Aldo died in 1514 (1515 new style), he
left -three sons— Manutio, in orders at Asola ; Antonio, a
bookseller at Bologna ; l and Paolo Manuzio. The last of
these sons, born at Venice in 1512, was educated by his grand
father Andrea tiU the year of the old man's death (1529).
He carried on the press at Venice and at Eome, separating
in the year 1540 from his uncles the Asolani, and bequeathing
his business to his son named Aldo. This grandson of Aldo
Manuzio, called by Scaliger a ' wretched and slow wit, the
mimic of his father,' began his career by printing, at the age
of eleven, a treatise on the ' Eleganze deUa Lingua Toscana
e Latina.' He married Francesca Lucrezia Giunta, of the
famous house of printers, and died, without surviving issue,
at Eome in 1597. Thus the industry of Aldo was continued
through two generations tiU the close of the sixteenth century.
The device of the dolphin and the anchor, intended to
symboUse quickness of execution combined with firmness of
deliberation, and the motto Festina lente, which Sir Thomas
Browne has rendered by ' Celerity contempered with cuncta-
tion,' though changed to suit varieties of taste from time to

1 There is some discrepancy about this Antonio between Renouard
and Didot.

282 RENAISSANCE IN ITALY
time, were never altogether abandoned by the Aldines.1 As
years went on, however, their pubUcations became of less
importance, and the beauty of their books degenerated.
In tracing the history of Aldo's enterprise, I have been
carried beyond the limits of the period included in this chapter.
Yet I knew not how to describe the activity of the press
in Italy better than by concentrating attention upon the
greatest pubhsher who ever Uved. Aldo Manuzio was no
mere bookseller or printer. His learnmg won the hearty
praises of ripe scholars, nor did any student of the age express
more nobly and with fuller conviction his deep sense of the
dignity conferred by learnmg on the soul of man.2 That he
was amiable in private hfe is proved by the intimate relations
he maintained with humanists, than whom even poets are not
a more irritable race of men.3 To his feUow- workers he was
uniformly generous in pecuniary matters, free from jealousy,
and prodigal of praise. Seeking even less than his due share
of credit, he desired that the great work of his Ufe should
pass for the common achievement of himself and his learned
associates. Therefore he called his Greek library the fruits of
the Neacademia, though no man could have known better
than he did that his own genius was the Ufe and spirit of
the undertaking. His stores of MSS. were as open to the
1 * Sum ipse mihi optimus testis me semper habere comites, ut
oportere aiunt, delphinum et anchoram ; nam et dedimus multa cunc-
tando, et damns assidue.' Preface to the Astronomici, dedicated to
Duke Guidobaldo of Urbino, 1499. The observations of Erasmus on
the motto deserve to be read with attention. See Didot, p. 299.
2 See the passages from his letters and prefaces quoted and referred
to on p. 239, above, note 2.
3 The prospect of his visit to Milan in 1509 called forth these pretty
April verses from Antiquari : —
Aldus venit en, Aldus ecce venit I
Nunc, 0 nunc, juvenes, ubique in urbe
Flores spargite. Vere namque primo
Aldus venit en, Aldus ecce venit.

ALDO'S CHARACTER 283
instruction of scholars as his printed books were given liberally
to the pubhc.1 ' Aldo,' writes Erasmus, ' had nothing in his
treasury but what he readily communicated.' Those who
read the estimate of his services to learning made by eminent
contemporaries, wiU find the language of Nicholas Leonicenus,
Erasmus, and Anton Francesco Doni not exaggerated.2 But,
in order to comprehend their true value, we must bear in mind
that until the year 1516, when Froben printed the Greek
Testament at Basle, none but insignificant Greek reprints had
appeared in Northern Europe.3 Finally, what makes the
place of Aldus in the history of Italian humanism all-im
portant is the fact that, after about 1520, Greek studies began
to decline in Italy all together. As though exhausted by
the enormous energy wherewith Florence had acquired and
Venice had disseminated Greek culture, the Italians relapsed
into apathy. Posterity may be thankful that their pupils,
Grocin and Linacre, EeuchUn and Erasmus, the Stephani and
Budaaus, had by this time transplanted erudition beyond the
Alps, while Aldo had secured the literature of ancient Greece
against the possibility of destruction.
1 See above, p. 275, for his hatred of the frifl\u>r&<poi. He was the
very opposite of Henri Estienne the younger, who closed his library
against his son-in-law Casaubon.
2 Didot, pp. 89, 299, 423.
* Priscian, at Erfurt, 1501 ; Alphabet, Batrachomyomachia, Musseus,
Theocritus, Grammar of Chrysoloras, Hesiod's Works and Days, Paris,
1507 ; Aristotle on Divination by Dreams, Cracow, 1529 ; Lucian, vepl
tity&Suv, Oxford, 1521, are among the earliest Greek books printed out of
Italy. The grammars of the Greek humanists were frequently reprinted
in the first quarter of the sixteenth century in Germany.

284 RENAISSANCE IN ITALY

CHAPTEE VII
FOURTH PEEIOD OP HUMANISM
Pall of the Humanists — Scholarship permeates Society — A New Ideal
of Life and Manners — Latinisation of Names — Classical Periphrases
— Latin Epics on Christian Themes — Paganism — The Court of
Leo X. — Honours of the Church given to Scholars — Ecclesiastical
Men of the World — Mtecenases at Rome— Papal and Imperial Eome
— Moral Corruption — Social Eefinement — The Eoman Academy —
Pietro Bembo — His Life at Ferrara — At Urbino — Comes to Rome
— Employed by Leo — Retirement to Padua — His Dictatorship of
Letters — Jacopo Sadoleto — A Graver Genius than Bembo — Paulus
Jovius — Latin Stylist — His Histories — Baldassare Castiglione — Life
at Urbino and Rome — The Courtly Scholar— His Diplomatic Missions
— Alberto Pio — Gian Francesco Pico della Mirandola — The Vicissi
tudes of his Life — Jerome Aleander — Oriental Studies — The Library
of the Vatican — His Mission to Germany — Inghirami, Beroaldo,
and Acciaiuoli — The Roman University — John Lascaris — Study of
Antiquities— Origin of the ' Corpus Inscriptionum ' — Topographical
Studies - Formation of the Vatican Sculpture Gallery— Discovery of
the Laocoon— Feeling for Statues in Renaissance Italy — Venetian
Envoys in the Belvedere — Raphael's Plan for excavating Ancient
Rome — His Letter to Leo — Effect of Antiquarian Researches on the
Arts— Intellectual Supremacy of Rome in this Period — The Fall —
Adrian VI. — The Sack of Rome — Valeriano's Description of the
Sufferings of Scholars.
What is known as the Eevival of Learning was accom
plished before the close of the fifteenth century, and about
this time humanism began to lose credit. The professional
scholars who had domineered in Italy during the last hundred
years, were now regarded with suspicion as pretentious sophists,
or as empty-pated pedants. Their place was taken by men of
the world, refined courtiers, and poUte stylists who piqued

DIFFUSION OF LEARNING 288
themselves on general culture. This revolution in pubUo
opinion was the result of various causes which I shall attempt
to set forth in another chapter. It is enough for my present
purpose to observe that the learning possessed at first by
a few teachers, acquired with effort, and communicated with
condescension, had now become the common property of
cultivated men. In proportion as a knowledge of the classic
authors diffused itself over a wider area, the mere reputation
of sound scholarship eeased to form a valid title to celebrity.
It was necessary that the man of letters, educated by antiquity,
should give proof of his genius by some originality of mind.
The age of acquisition had ended ; the age of application had
begun. To this result the revived interest in Italian Uterature
powerfully contributed. Writers were no longer, Uke Bruni
and Poggio, ashamed of their cose volgari.- On the contrary,
the most splendid productions of the first half of the sixteenth
century, the Histories of Guicciardini and MachiaveUi, the
Epic of Ariosto, the ' Cortegiano ' of Castiglione, and the bur
lesque poems of Berni were penned in powerful and delicate
ItaUan. To what extent the influence of Lorenzo de' Medici,
who was always more partial to vernacular hterature than
to scholarship, determined the change in question, is a
matter for opinion. That Florence led the way by her great
writers of Italian poetry and prose admits of no doubt.
At the same time the erudition of the fifteenth century
had steeped the whole ItaUan nation. Humanism penetrated
every sphere of inteUectual activity, and gave a colour to
aU social customs. The arts of painting and of sculpture felt
its influence. A new style of architecture, formed upon the
model of Eoman monuments, sprang up. Science took a
special bias from the classics, and philosophy was so strongly
permeated by antique doctrines that the Eevival of Learning
may be justly said to have checked the spontaneity of the
ItaUan inteUect. There was not enough time for students

286 RENAISSANCE IN ITALY
to absorb antiquity and pass beyond it, before the mortmain
of the Church and the Spaniard was laid upon the fairest
provinces of thought. To trace the course of ItaUan phUo
sophy, is, however, no part of my scheme in this volume.
The AristoteUan and Platonic controversies on the nature of
the soul, the materialism of Pietro Pomponazzo, the gradual
emergence of powerful thinkers Uke Bruno and CampaneUa,
the theological rationalism of Aonio Paleario, and the final
suppression of free thought by the Church, belong to the history
of the Counter-Eeformation. To the same sad chapter of
Italian history must be relegated the labours of the earliest
mathematicians, astronomers, and cosmographers, who, por
ing over the texts of Ptolemy and Euclid, anticipated Coper
nicus, impelled Columbus to his enterprise, and led the way
for Galileo. The infamy of having rendered science and philo
sophy abortive in Italy, when its early show of blossom was
so promising, faUs upon the Popes and princes of the last half
of the sixteenth century. The narrative of their emergence
from the studies of the humanists must form the prelude to a
future work treating of Farnesi and Caraffas, Inquisitors and
Jesuits. Only by showing the growth which might have been,
can we demonstrate the atrophy that was.
It remains in this chapter to describe the fourth period
of humanism, when Italy, stUl permeated with the spirit of
the classical revival, laid down laws of social breeding for
the nations of the North. Few things are more difficult
than to set forth without exaggeration, and yet with sufficient
force, the so-caUed Paganism of Eenaissance Italy. At first
sight, and from certain points of view, it seems as though
the exclusive study of the classics had wrought a thorough
metamorphosis of moraUty and manners. When, on reflec
tion, this appearance is seen to be iUusory, we incline,
perhaps, to the contrary conclusion that scholarship only set
a kind of fashion without taking deep hold even on the

FOURTH PERIOD OF HUMANISM 287
Imagination of the people. A more complete acquaintance with
the period makes it clear that the imitation of the ancients in
thought, sentiment, and language was no mere affectation, and
that, however partial its influences may have been, they were
not superficial. In the first volume of this work I tried to
show to what extent the patriotism of tyrannicides and the
profligacy of courtiers were alike related to the prevailing
study of the ancient world. It was no smaU matter that the
vices and the virtues, the worldliness and the enthusiasm, of
that many-featured age, together with its supreme achieve
ments in art, its ripest productions in Uterature, should have
graduaUy assumed a classic form. The standards of moral
and assthetic taste were paganised, though the nation at
large remained unchanged in Catholicity. It was precisely
this discord between the professed religion of the people and
the heathenism of its ideal that inspired Savonarola with his
prophecy. Classical style being the requirement of the age, it foUowed
that every thing was sacrificed to this. In christening their
children the great famihes abandoned the saints of the
calendar and chose names from mythology. Ettorre, Achille,
Atalanta, PentesUea, Lucrezia, Porzia, Alessandro, Annibale,
Laomedonte, Fedro, IppoUto, and many other antique titles
became fashionable. Those who were able to do so turned
their baptismal names into Latin or Greek equivalents. Janus
or Jovianus passed for Giovanni, Pierius for Pietro, Aonius
for Antonio, Lucius Grassus for Luea Grasso ; the German
prelate John Goritz was known as Corycius,1 and the Eoman
professor Gianpaolo Parisio as Janus Parrhasius. Writers
who undertook to treat of modern or rehgious themes, were
driven by their zeal for purism to the strangest expedients of
1 Namque sub (Ebalife memini me turribus altis
Qua niger humeetat flaventia culta Galesus
Corycium vidisse senem. — Virg. Georg. lib. iv. 125.

288 RENAISSANCE IN ITALY
language. God, in the Latin of the sixteenth century, is
Jupiter Optimus Maximus ; Providence becomes Fatum ;
the saints are Divi, and their statues simulacra sancta
Deorum. Our Lady of Loreto is changed into Dea Lauretana,
Peter and Paul into DU tutelages Roma, the souls of the
just into Manes pii, and the Pope's excommunication into
Dirce. The Holy Father himself takes the style of Pontifex
Maximus ; his tiara, by a wUd confusion of ideas, is de
scribed as infula Romulea. Nuns are Vestals, and cardinals
Augurs. For the festivals of the Church periphrases were
found, whereof the foUowing may be cited as a fair specimen : •
' Verum occidit ut eo ipso die, quo domum ejus accesseram,
ipse pice rei caussd septem sacrosancta Divum pul/oinaria
supplicaturus inviserit ; erant enim lustrici dies, quos uno-
quoque anno quadragenos purificatione consecravit nostra

It need hardly be added that, when the obligations of
Latinity had reached this point, to read Cicero was of far
more importance than to study the Fathers of the Church.
Bembo, it is well known, advised Sadoleto to • avoid the
Epistles of S. Paul, lest his barbarous style should spoil your
taste : Omitte has nugas, non enim decent gravem virum tales
ineptice.' The extent, however, to which formal purism in
Latinity was carried, may be best observed in the ' Christiad '
of Vida, and the poem ' De Partu Virginis ' of Sannazzaro.*
Sannazzaro not only invokes the muses of Hehcon to sing
the birth of Christ, but he also makes Proteus prophesy his
advent to the river-god of Jordan. The archangel discovers
Mary — described by the poet as spes fi4a Deorum — intent on
1 From the exordium to Valeriano's treatise De Infelicitate Litera-
torum. 2 Lilius Gyraldus, in his dialogue ' De Poetis Nostri Temporis,' Opp.
vol. ii. p. 384, mentions a critic who was so stupid as to desiderare
in Ponta/no et si deis placet in Sanazario Christianam elocutionem, hoi
est barbaram I

LATIN EPICS ON CHRISTIAN THEMES 286
reading nothing less humanistic than the Sibyls ; and after
she has received his message, the spirits of the patriarchs are
said to shout because they will escape from Tartarus and,
Acheron and the hideous baying of the triple- throated hound.
It might be reasonably urged against Milton that in the
' Paradise Eegained ' he somewhat impairs the religious
grandeur of his subject by investing it with the forms of
the classical epic. If he has erred in this direction, it is as
nothing compared with the pseudo-Pagan travesty of Vida.
God the Father in the ' Christiad ' is spoken of as Superum
Pater nimbipotens and Regnator Olympi — titles which had their
real significance in Latin mythology, being transferred with
frigid formaUsm to a Deity whose essence is spiritual, and
whose cult has no admixture of nature worship. Jesus is
invariably described as Heros ; this absurdity reaches its
climax in the following phrase about the bad thief on the
cross : — Ipse etiam verbis morientem heroa superbis
Stringebat.
The machinery whereby the Jews are brought to wiU the
death of Christ is no less ridiculous. Instead of attempting
to set rehgious or ethical motives into play, Vida introduces
a gang of Gorgons, Harpies, Centaurs, Hydras, and the like.
The bread of the Last Supper appears under the disguise of
sinceram Gererem. The wine mingled with gall, offered to
our Lord upon the cross, is corrupti pocula Bacchi. The
only excuse for these grotesque compromises between the
BibUcal subject-matter and its mythological expression is,
that in any other way it would have been impossible to give
the form of pure Latinity to the verse. The poet failed to
comprehend that he was producing a masterpiece of barocco
mannerism, spoiling at once the style he sought to use and
the theme he undertook to Ulustrate. It was enough for him
to fit the Eoman toga to his saints and Pharisees, and to
n u

290 RENAISSANCE IN ITALY
tickle the taste of a learned audience by aUusions that re
minded them of Virgil. The same bathos was reached
by Bembo when he invented the paraphrase of 'heavenly
zephyr' for the Holy Ghost, and described the Venetian
CouncU bidding a Pope uti fidat diis immortalibus, quorum
vices in terrd gerit. It is not the profanity of these phrases
so much as their aesthetic emptiness, the discord between the
meaning intended to be conveyed and the literary form, that
strikes a modern critic.
When the same poets break out into honest Paganism, in
the frank verses written by Bembo for Priapus, in BeccadeUi's
epigrams, or in the elegies of Aeon and Iolas, we feel that
they are more artistically justified. The following lines, for
instance, from Vida's ' Poetics,' have a true ring and beauty
of their own. He is addressing VirgU as a saint : —
Te colimus, tibi serta damns, tibi thura, tibi aras,
Et tibi rite sacrum semper dicemus honorem.
Or again' - Nos aspice praesens,
Pectoribusque tuos castis infunde calores
Adveniens pater, atque animis te te insere nostris.
There is no confusion here between the feeUng and the
language chosen to express it. The sentiment, if somewhat
artificial and unreal, is at least adequate to the form.
I have entered at some length into the iUustration of
puristic Latinisms, because they seem to represent the cul
minating point of classic studies, in so far as these affected
taste in general, and also because they are specially charac
teristic of the period of which I have now to treat. It was
at Eome, among the great ecclesiastics, that these Pagan
fashions principaUy flourished. Eminence of all kinds found
a home with Leo X., assuming the purple of the prelate and
the scarlet of the cardinal at his indulgent hands. The
genius of the Eenaissance seemed to have followed this first

THE ROME OF LEO 291
Medicean Pope from Florenoe. Though Leo was a man of
merely pleasure-loving and receptive temperament, who left
no lasting impress on his age, he knew at least how to
appreciate abUity, and found the height of his enjoyment in
the arts and letters he enthusiastically patronised. This
sybarite of intellectual and sensual luxury gave his name to
what is caUed the gclden age of Italian literature, chiefly
because he attracted the best wits to Eome and received the
flatteries of men whose work survived them.
History presents few spectacles more striking than that
of Eome in the pontificate of Leo. While the Papacy has
become a secular sovereignty, learning and arts have as
sumed the sacerdotal habit, and the boldest immoralities of
a society comparable to that of the ancient Empire flourish
in the petty Courts of ecclesiastical princes. The capital of
Christendom is full of priests ; but the priests are men of
pleasure and the world —elegant Latinists and florid rhetori
cians, raised to posts of eminence by reason of their brilliant
gUts. We have seen already how the humanists made their
way into the Eoman Curia as writers and abbreviators, and
how UberaUy Nicholas V. rewarded learning. Yet, however
indispensable the scholars of the fifteenth century became,
they rarely rose above the rank of Apostolic secretaries ;
while few of the professional humanists cared to take orders
in the Church. They were satisfied with official emoluments
and semi-secular benefices. AU this was now altered. The
most distinguished men of letters made the Church their
profession. Sadoleto, Bembo, and Aleander, who began
their career under Leo, received the hats of cardinals from
Paul HI. Paulus Jovius was consecrated Bishop of Nocera
by Clement VH., and retired to Como in disgust because he
failed to get the scarlet in 1549. Marcus Musurus, created
Bishop of Malvasia, is said to have died of disappointment
when he saw the same dignity beyond his reach. Vida, the
D 2

292 RENAISSANCE IN ITALY
Latin poet, obtained the see of Alba in Piedmont, and
Giberti, the accomplished styUst, that of Verona, from
Clement VII. AU these men had made their mark at Leo's
Court, who set the example, followed by his Medicean suc
cessor, of rewarding mundane talents and accomplishments
with ecclesiastical distinctions. The question, seriously
entertained, of admitting Eaphael to the Sacred College
proves to what extent the highest honours of the Church
had come to be esteemed as prizes, and justifies to some
extent Pietro Aretino's arrogant offer to sell his services to
the Papacy in exchange for a cardinal's hat.
The biographies of these favourites of fortune offer strong
points of similarity. Whether born of noble famUies, like
Bembo, or raised from comparative obscurity, like Bibbiena,
they early in life attached themselves to some distinguished
prince,1 or entered the service of a great ecclesiastic. Their
literary talents, social accomplishments, successes with
women, and diplomatic service at the centres of Italian
politics brought them still further into notice. Thus Sado-
leto's Latin poem on the Laocoon, Bibbiena's ' Calandra,'
Inghirami's acting of the part of Phasdra in Seneca's
' Hippolytus,' and Bembo's friendship with Lucrezia Borgia
might be cited as turning-points in the early history of these
illustrious prelates. Having thus acquired position by their
personal gifts, they travelled to Eome in the suite of their
respective patrons, and obtained office at the hands of Leo.
Sadoleto and Bembo became his secretaries. Inghirami
superintended the Vatican Library.2 Bibbiena's versatUe
abilities were divided between the duties of State minister
and master of the revels. As they had built their fortunes
by the help of eminent protectors, they now in their turn
took the rank of patrons. In addition to the Vatican, Eome
1 See Vol. I., Age of the Despots, p. 145.
2 He held this post under Julius II.

ECCLESIASTICAL COURTIERS 293
displayed a multitude of petty Courts and minor circles.
Bach cardinal and each ambassador held a jurisdiction in
dependent of the Pope, and not unfrequently in opposition
to the ruling power. To found academies, to gather clever
men around them, and to play the part of Maecenas was
the ambition of these subordinate princes. During the
pontificate of Leo the Cardinals Eiario, Giulio de' Medici,
Bibbiena, Petrucci, Farnese, Alidosi, and Gonzaga, not to
mention others, entertained their own following of flatterers
and poets, who danced attendance at their levees, accom
panied them in pubhc, and earned a meagre pittance by
compliments and dedications. Some of these priestly patrons
affected the arts, others the sciences ; others again, and these
the majority, bestowed their favours upon literature. Ippo-
Uto de' Medici is said to have maintained a retinue of three
hundred poets, among whom are mentioned the elegant Molza
and the learned Valeriano. The fashion thus set by Leo
and the Sacred College was foUowed by aU the eminent men
in Eome. The banker Agostino Chigi made himself a name
not only by his patronage of painters, but also by the private
Greek press founded in his house.1 Baldassare Turini
devoted himself to the arts of building and of decoration.
Baldassare Castiglione, as ambassador from Mantua and
Ferrara, and Alberto Pio, as prince of Carpi and ambassador
from France, dispensed the hospitality of their palaces to
scholars, among whom they held no inconsiderable rank on
their own merits.
Libraries, collections of statues and of pictures, frescoes
painted from mythological subjects, garden-houses planned
upon the antique model, Latin inscriptions, busts of the
1 The first Greek book printed in Rome, an edition of Pindar by
Cornelius Benignius, 1515, issued from Chigi's press under the super
intendence of Zacharias Kalliergos of Crete. Concerning this printer
see Didot, Aide Manuce, pp. 544-578.

294 RENAISSANCE IN ITALY
emperors, baths and banquet chambers decorated in the
manner of the Eoman ruins — on such objects the wealth
of the Church was being prodigally spent. Posterity has
reason to deplore the non-appearance of a satirist in this
Papal society, so curiously simUar to that of Imperial Eome.
Horace would, indeed, have found ample materials for
humorous delineation, whether he had chosen to deride the
needy clients leaving their lodgings before daybreak to crowd
a prelate's antechamber, or the parasites on whom coarse
practical jokes were played in the Pope's presence, or the
flatterers who praised their master's mock virtues in hour-long
declamations. Fouler vices than vanity, hypocrisy, and
serviUty supplied fit subjects for invectives no less fiery than
the second and the sixth of Juvenal. At Eome virtuous
women had no place ; but Phryne lived again in the person
of Imperia, and dignitaries of the Church thought it no
shame to parade their preference for Giton.1 In the absence
of a Horace or a Juvenal, we have to content ourselves with
Bandello and other novelists, and with one precious epistle
of Ariosto describing the difficulty of conducting business at
the Papal Court except by way of backstairs influence and
antechamber intrigue.
To over-estimate the moral corruption of Eome at the
beginning of the sixteenth century is almost impossible.
To over-rate the real value of a Uterature that culminated
in the subtleties of rhetoric and style is easy. Nor is it
difficult to mistake, as many critics have done, the sunset
of the fine arts for their meridian splendour. Yet, whUe
we recognise the enervation of society in worse than heathen

1 The epitaph of Bella Imperia proves that the title of HetsBra was
thought honourable : ' Imperia, Cortisana Romana, qute digna tanto
nomine, rarse inter homines formse specimen dedit. Vixit a. xxvi. d. xii.
Obiit mdxi., die xv. Aug.' Berni's Capitolo sopra un Garzone may be
referred to for the second half of the sentence.

ROMAN SOCIETY 23a
vices, and justly regard Eome as the hostelry of alien arts
and letters rather than the mother city of great men, we
cannot blind our eyes to the varied lights and colours of
that Court, unique in modern history. The culture toward
which Itahan society had long been tending, was here com
pleted. The stamp of universality had been given to the
fine arts and to Uterature by the only potentate who at that
moment claimed allegiance from united Christendom. As
the eloquent historian of the town of Eome observes, ' the
richest intellectual Ufe here blossomed in a swamp of vices.'
It was not the Ufe of great poetry : that had perished long
ago with Dante. It was not the life of genuine science :
that was destined to be born with GalUeo. It was not the
life of comprehensive scholarship : that slept in the grave
of PoUziano. It was not even the Ufe of progressive art ;
for Eaphael died in this age, and though Michael Angelo
survived it, his genius had no successors. But it was the
hfe of culture, rendering the rudest and most vicious sensi
tive to softening influences, and preparing for more power
ful nations the possibilities of great achievements.
Amid poUtical debility and moral corruption an ideal
of refinement, adopted from antiquity, and assimilated to
modern modes of Uving, had been formed. This was the
most perfect bloom of the Eenaissance, destined to survive
the decay of humanism, and to be for subsequent civilisation
what chivalry was for the Middle Ages. Through the con
tinued effort of patricians and of scholars to acquire the tone
of classic culture, something Uke antique urbanity had
reappeared at Florence and in Eome ; while several general
tions devoted to poUte studies had produced a race distin
guished above all things for its intellectual delicacy. The
effect of this aesthetic atmosphere upon visitors from the
North was singularly varied. Luther, who came to see the
City of the Saints, found in Eome the sink of all abominations,

296 RENAISSANCE IN ITALY
the very lair of Antichrist. The comitas and the facetia oi
the prelates were to him the object of unmitigated loathing.
Erasmus, on the contrary, wrote from London that nothing
but Lethe could efface his memory of that radiant city—
its freedom of discourse, its light, its libraries, its honeyed
converse of most learned scholars, its large style of hfe, and
all those works of art that made of Eome the theatre of
nations. The Italians themselves, lessoned by the tragedy
of 1527, looked back with no less mingled feelings upon
Leo's Eome. La Casa mentions the nimia humanitatis
suavitas — the excess of sweetness in aU that makes society
humane— as a characteristic of the past age. That excessive
sweetness of civility, the final product of the arts and
scholarship of Italy, when diffused through Europe and
tempered to the taste of sterner nationaUties, became the
politeness of France under Louis XIV., the bel air of Queen
Anne's courtiers.
The Eoman Academy still continued to be active, meeting
at the palaces of more than one great prelate. The gardens
of Angelo Colocci, Leo's secretary, a friend of John Lascaris,
and himself no inconsiderable stylist, formed its head
quarters. Sometimes the poet Blosius Palladius received
the associates in his villa by the Tiber; sometimes they
enjoyed the hospitality of Egidius Canisius, General of the
Augustine Order ; at one time they sought the house of
Sadoleto on the Quirinal ; at another they feasted in the
vineyard of John Goritz, the Corycius Senex. The festivals
of this learned society, to judge by the descriptions of its
members, were distinguished by antique simplicity and good
taste, contrasting powerfuUy with the banquets of mere
mundane prelates.1 When Agostino Chigi entertained the
Academicians in the Villa Farnesina, he chastened his
magnificence to suit the spirit of their founder, Laetus, and
1 See Tiraboschi, vii. 1, lib. i. o. 2.

PIETRO BEMBO 297
omitted those displays of vulgar pomp that marked his
wedding banquet.1
The muster-roU of the Academy brings the most eminent
wits of Eome before us. First and foremost stands Pietro
Bembo, the man of letters, who, like Petrarch, Poggio, and
PoUziano, may be chosen as the fuUest representative of his
own age of culture. His father, Bernardo Bembo, was a
Venetian of noble birth and education. To his generous
enthusiasm for Italian literature Eavenna owes the tomb
of Dante. Pietro was born at Florence in 1470, and received
his early education in that city. Therefore the Tuscans
claim his much-praised purity of diction for their gift. He
afterwards studied Greek at Messina under Constantine
Lascaris, and learned phUosophy from Pomponazzo at Padua.
When his master's treatise on the ' ImmortaUty of the Soul '
was condemned by the Lateran Council, Bembo used his
influence successfully in his behalf. Though he denied the
demonstrabUity of the doctrine, and maintained that Aristotle
gave it no support, Pomponazzo was only censured, instead
of being burned Uke Bruno. This good fortune was due,
however, less to his pupil's advocacy than to the nonchalance
of Leo. Having completed his academical studies in 1498,
Bembo joined his father at the brilhant Court of the Estensi.
When Lucrezia Borgia entered Ferrara in 1502 she was stiU
in the zenith of her beauty. Her father, Alexander, grew
daily more powerful in Eome ; while her brother held the
central States of Italy within his grasp. The greatness of
the Borgias reflected honour on the bride of Alfonso d' Este ;
and though the princes of Ferrara at first received her with
reluctance, they were soon won over by her grace. Between
the princess and the courtly scholar a friendship speedily
sprang up, which strengthened with years and was main
tained by correspondence at a distance. To Lucrezia Bembo
1 See Vol. I., Age of the Despots, p. 342.

298 RENAISSANCE IN ITALY
dedicated ' Gli Asolani,' a dialogue in the Italian tongue upon
Platonic love,1 by far the freest and most genial of his
writings. The collection of his Latin poems contains an
epigram upon a golden serpent clasped above her wrist, and
an elegy in which he praises her singing, dancing, playing,
and recitation : —
Quicquid agis, quicquid loqueris, delectat : et omnes
Prsecedunt Charites, subsequiturque decor.
This Uaison, famous in the annals of Italian literature, gave
Bembo a distinguished place in the great world. A touching
memento of it — Lucrezia's letters and a tress of her long
yellow hair — is stiU preserved at MUan in the Ambrosian
Library. From Ferrara Bembo passed to Urbino in 1506, where
Guidobaldo da Montefeltre had gathered round him the
brUliant group described in the ' Cortegiano.' The chmax
of that treatise, our most precious source of information on
Court life in Italy, makes it clear that Bembo played the first
part in a circle distinguished above aU others at that time
for refinement and wit. Many cities might boast of a larger
and more splendid concourse of noble visitors ; but none
competed with Urbino for the polish of its manners and the
breeding of its courtiers. In his dialogue in praise of Guido
baldo, Bembo paid a magnificent tribute to the prince from
whose society he learned so much, and in whose service he
remained tiU the Duke's death.2 Giuhano de' Medici, with
whom he lived on terms of intimacy at Urbino, took him to
Eome in 1512. The reign of Leo was about to shed new
lustre on the Medicean exiles. His victorious exclamation
to his brother, ' Godiamoci il Papato poichi Dio ce V ha dato,'
had a ring of promise in it for their numerous friends and
' Written 1504. First printed by Aldo, 1505.
2 ' De Guido Ubaldo Feretrio deque Elisabetha Gonzaga Urbini
Ducibus.'

BEMBO IN ROME 299
chents. Even without the recommendation of Giuliano, it
is not likely that Leo would have overlooked a man so
whoUy after his own heart as Bembo. The qualities he most
admired — smooth manners, a handsome person, wit in con
versation, and thorough mastery of Latin style, without
pretension to deep learning or much earnestness of purpose —
were incarnate in the courtly Venetian. Bembo was precisely
the man to make Leo's life agreeable by flattering his super
ficial tastes and subordinating the faculties of a highly culti
vated mind to frivolous, if inteUectual, amusements. The
churchman who warned Sadoleto against spoiling his style
by study of the Bible, the prosaist who passed his compo
sitions through sixteen portfolios, revising them at each
remove, the versifier who penned a hymn to S. Stephen and
a monologue for Priapus with equal elegance, was cast in the
same mould as the pleasure-loving Pontiff. For eight years
he hved at Eome, honoured by the Medici and loved by all
who knew him. His duties as secretary to Leo, shared by
his old friend and fellow-student Sadoleto, were not onerous ;
While the society of the capital afforded opportunity for the
display of his most briUiant gUts. In 1520, wearied by nearly
thirty years of continual Court life, and broken down in health
by severe sickness, Bembo retired to Padua. The collection
of a Ubrary and museum, horticulture, correspondence, and
the cultivation of his studied Ciceronian style now occupied
his leisure through nineteen most disastrous years for Italy.
The learned courtiers of that age Uked thus to play the
Eoman in their villas, quoting Horace and VirgU on the
charms of rustic Ufe, and fancying they caught the spirit of
Cincinnatus whUe they stroUed about the farm. Bembo's
Paduan retreat became the rendezvous of all the ablest
men in Italy, the centre of a fluctuating society of highest
culture. Paul III. recalled him to Eome, and made him
cardinal in 1539. When he died in 1547 he was buried not

300 RENAISSANCE IN ITALY
far from Leo in the Church of the Minerva. A fair slab of
marble marks his grave.
Bembo succeeded Poliziano in the dictatorship of Italian
letters. Like Poliziano, he was both a scholar and a writer
of Italian ; but he was far from possessing the comprehensive
understanding or the genius of his predecessor. Of aU the
' apes of Cicero ' scoffed at by Erasmus, he stood first and
foremost. His exclusive devotion to one favourite author
made his Latin stiff and mannered. Tuscan critics again
have complained that his Italian style lacks nerve and idiom.
He wrote Uke an alien, not one to the manner born. In his
dread of not writing correctly, he ended by expressing tame
thoughts with frigid formaUty. Even a foreigner can see that
he used Italian, as he used Latin, without yielding to natural
impulse, and with the constant effort to attain a fixed ideal.
The mark of the file may be observed on every period.
Eaciness and spontaneity are words that have no meaning
when applied to him. The decadence of Italian prose com
position into laboured mannerism and meticulous propriety
should be traced in a great measure to his influence. Yet
Bembo deserves credit for having braved the opinion of the
learned by his cultivation of the vulgar tongue ; and on this
point some verses from a Latin poem to Ercole Strozzi de
serve quotation in a note.1
1 Nam poi qua proavusque avusque lingua
Sunt olim meus et tuus loquuti,
NostrsB quaque loquuntur et sorores
Et matertera nunc et ipsa mater,
Nos nescire loqui magis pudendum est,
Qui Graise damus et damus Latins
Studi tempora duplicemque curam,
Quam Graia simul et simul Latina.
Hac uti ut valeas tibi videndum est,
Ne dum marmoreas remota in ora
Sumtu construis et labore villas,
Domi te calamo tegas palustri.
Carmina Quinque Ulustrium Poetarum, p. 25

JACOPO SALOLETO SOI
Jacopo Sadoleto's career was not dissimilar to that of
his friend Bembo, though the two men offer many points of
difference in character and turn of mind. Born at Modena in
1477, he studied Latin at Ferrara, and Greek at Eome, where
he settled in the reign of Alexander VI. His copy of hexa
meters on the newly- discovered statue of Laocoon made him
famouB. Frigid and laboured as these verses may appear to
us, who read them Uke a prize exercise, they had the merit
of originality when first produced. Leo made the poet his
secretary and Bishop of Carpentras. Sadoleto passed a good
portion of his Ufe in the duties of his see, composing moral
treatises, annotating the Psalms, and pubhshing a 'Com
mentary on the Epistle to the Eomans.'1 Though strongly
tinctured with Ciceronian purism, his taste was more austere
than Bembo's. Nature had given him an intellect adapted
to grave studies, sincerity of purpose, and true piety. Living
in the dawn of the Eeformation, Sadoleto was deeply con
scious of the perUs of the Church; nor did he escape the
suspicion of sharing the new heresy.2 His celebrated letter
to Clement VII., after the sack of Eome in 1527, shows that
he viewed this disaster as a punishment inflicted on the
godless capital of Christendom. In 1536 Paul III. recalled
him to Eome, and made him cardinal. He died in 1547, and
was buried in S. Pietro in VincoU. Sadoleto's correspondence
may be reckoned among the most valuable materials for the
Uterary annals of this period.
Next to Sadoleto a place must be found for the grave and
studious' Egidio Canisio. He was born at Viterbo in 1470,
and was therefore an exact contemporary of Bembo. His
powers of Latin oratory gained him the fame of a great
speaker, and the address with which he opened the Lateran
1 His most famous essays bore these titles : De Liberis Inslituend.it
ind De Laudibus Philosophies.
2 His Commentary on the Romans was placed upon the Index.

302 RENAISSANCE IN ITALY
CouncU in 1512 was committed to the press in that year.
Egidius was already General of the Augustine Order. Five
years later he received the red hat of a cardinal, and in 1518
he represented the Holy See as Legate at the Court of Spain.
He died in 1532, leaving a vast mass of misceUaneous works
on theology, phUosophy, Biblical criticism, and universal
history. Few of these have been printed. It is said that,
besides Greek and Latin, he was a master of Hebrew and
Chaldee, Turkish, Persian, and Arabic.
A more brUliant figure is presented by the witty but un
scrupulous historian Paulus Jovius. He was born at Como
in 1488, and came at the age of thirty-three to Eome, with
the beginning of his comprehensive History already written.1
Leo, who delighted in listening to recitations of new Uterary
works, declared that nothing had been penned more perfect
since the days of Livy. This high praise induced Jovius to
fix his residence at Eome, where Clement VII. made him
Bishop of Nocera in 1528. After spending twenty-one years
in the expectation, continually frustrated, of being received
in the Sacred College, he retired to Como, and died at Flo
rence in 1552. Jovius was the cleverest of aU the Latinists
produced by the ItaUans. His style is fluent, sparkling with
anecdote, highly picturesque in its descriptive passages, and
adorned by characteristic details. In addition to the histories,
he produced a series of biographies of great and varied value,
some of which are Ubels, others panegyrics, whUe aU are
marked by acute observation and mastery of the matter in
hand. He was wont to say that he could use a golden or a
sUver pen at wUl : the golden was exercised upon the Life
of Leo ; the sUver, dipped in ironic gall, upon the Life of
1 Like the History of Guicciardini , it opens with the year 1494. It
is oarried down to 1547. A portion of the first decade was lost in the
sack of Rome, and never rewritten by the author. Printed at Florence,
1550.

BALDASSARE CASTIGLIONE 303
Hadrian. The sketches of eminent men: known by the name
of ' Elogia,' were composed in illustration of a picture gallery
of portraits coUected in his villa. They include not only
Itahans, but Greeks, Germans, French and English worthies,
dead and Uving notabUities of every kind.1 If Brant6me had
chosen Latin instead of French, he would have made a book
not altogether unlike this of Jovius. The versatiUty of the
author was further Ulustrated by a Latin treatise on Eoman
fishes, and by an Italian essay on mottoes and devices.2
Among the celebrities of the Eoman Academy a place
apart must be reserved for Baldassare Castiglione ; for
though his biography belongs to the poUtical even more than
to the literary annals of the period, few men represent the
age of Leo in its culture with more dignity and grace com
bined. He was born in 1478 at Casatico, in the Duchy of
Mantua ; his father's family held the county of Castiglione,
and his mother was a Gonzaga. In his youth he received an
education framed upon the system set in vogue by Vittorino
and Guarino, and became the living Ulustration of those varied
accomplishments which he described in the ' Cortegiano.' His
scholarship was sound and elegant ; as a writer of Latin verse
he distinguished himself among the best men of his genera
tion. Sensitive to the beauty of the arts, he proved an excel
lent critic of modern painting and of antique sculpture, and
assisted Baphael in the composition of his famous letter to
Leo on the exploration of old Eome. At the same time he
did not neglect the athletic exercises which formed an indis
pensable branch of an ItaUan nobleman's training. Cultivated
at aU points, he early devoted his abUities to the service of

1 Elogia Virorum Uteris Mustriwm, quotquot vel nostrd, vel avorum
memorid vixere, and Elogia Virorum bellied virtute illustrium, Basel,
1557. 2 De Piscibus Romanis, Rome, 1524. Ragionamento sopra i Motti
« Disegni d' Arme e d' Amore.

304 RENAISSANCE IN ITALY
princes ; for at this period in Italy there was no sphere for
such a character outside the Courts. After spending some
time at Milan and Naples, Castiglione removed to Eome,
where Julius II. discerned the use that might be made of him
in furthering the interests of his nephew Francesco Maria
della Eovere. Federigo da Montefeltre, Duke of Urbino, had
died in 1482, leaving his son Guidobaldo in possession of his
fiefs and titles ; but it was known that this prince could have
no heirs. In him the male Une of the Montefeltri ended.
His sister Giovanna had been married to Giovanni della
Eovere, a brother of the Pope, and Juhus hoped that their
son Francesco Maria might be declared successor to the
Duchy of Urbino. Castiglione therefore attached himself to
the person of Guidobaldo, with the special purpose of making
himself necessary to the princes of Urbino and furthering
the claims of Francesco, then a boy of about fifteen. Of his
residence at Urbino, and of the polished splendour of Guido-
baldo's Court, he has left an ever-memorable record in his
' Cortegiano,' that mirror of gentle breeding for the sixteenth
century in Europe. Guidobaldo received the Count of Casti
glione with marked favour, made him captain of fifty men at
arms, and employed him in several offices of trust. Not the
least important of these was the mission to England, under
taken in 1506 by Castiglione as Guidobaldo's proxy for re
ceiving from Henry VII. the investiture of the Garter. After
the death of Guidobaldo, Francesco Maria della Eovere was
proclaimed Duke of Urbino, and Castiglione continued to
enjoy his confidence until the year 1517, when Leo succeeded
in placing his nephew Lorenzo de' Medici upon the Ducal
throne. Castiglione was now deprived of what had become the
necessity of his life, a post of honour in the Court of a reign
ing sovereign. He therefore transferred his allegiance to his
natural lord, the Marquis of Mantua, who appointed him

DIPLOMATIC SERVICE 30a
ambassador at Eome. The first and most brilliant period
of the courtier's life was passed at Urbino ; the second,
less fruitful in hterary achievements, embraced his residence
among the wits of Leo's circle. At Eome CastigUone adapted
himseU to the customs of the papal society, penning Latin
elegiacs, consorting with artists, and exercising the pleasant
patronage of a refined Maecenas. His friendship with Eaphael
is not the least interesting episode in this chapter of his bio
graphy. Substantial records of it stiU remain in the epitaph
composed by the courtly scholar on the painter, and in Casti-
gUone's portrait now preserved in the Louvre collection. That
picture represents the very model of an ItaUan nobleman as
culture and Court Ufe had made him — tranquil, with grave
open eyes, and a mouth as weU suited for urbane discourse as
gentle merriment. The owner of this face was not born to
lead armies or to control unruly multitudes, but to pass his
time in the loggia of princes — self-contained and qualified to
win favour without the sacrifice of personal dignity. It forms
a strong contrast to earlier and later portraits — to that of
Sigismondo Pandolfo Malatesta, for example, and to the
Spanish grandees of the next century. Castiglione was still
in Eome during the pontificate of Clement VII., who, recog
nizing his great abUity as a diplomatist, sent him to Charles V.
At Madrid the Pope's nuncio was unable to avert the disaster
of 1527, and Castiglione had the bitter mortification of hear
ing at a distance how the Eome he knew and loved so well,
had been ravaged by the brigands of Germany and Spain.
It is clear, however, from the diplomatic correspondence of
that memorable moment, and from the letter addressed by
Clement to Castiglione's mother in 1529, that he never lost
the confidence of his master ; in spite of his failure to nego
tiate between them, he was respected alike by the Pope and
the Emperor. He died at Toledo two years after the sack of
Borne, worn out, it is said, by disappointment and regret.

SOf RENAISSANCE IN ITALY
Not only in his book of the ' Courtier,' but also in his life,
Castiglione illustrated the best qualities of an ItaUan gentle
man, moulded by the political and social conditions of the
sixteenth century into a refined scholar and a courtly diplo
matist. Of Alberto Pio, whose Ufe in some respects may be com
pared with Castiglione's, I have had occasion to speak in the
last chapter. His first cousin, Gian Francesco Pico della
Mirandola, demands more than passing notice. By no prince
of that troubled period were the cruel vicissitudes of Italian
politics more painfully experienced. Few of the scholars
could boast of wider learning and a nobler spirit. He was
born in 1470, and succeeded his father, Galeotto, in the lord
ship of Mirandola. In 1502 his brother Lodovico expeUed
him from his capital. JuUus II. restored him. After being
dispossessed a second time by Trivulzi, general of the French
forces, he was once more reinstated, but only for a brief period.
His nephew, Galeazzo, murdered him in 1533 before the
crucifix, together with his heir, Alberto. In the intervals of
his unquiet and unhappy Ufe, Gian Francesco Pico devoted
himseU to studies not unlike those of his more famous uncle.'
Early in his youth he had conceived the strongest admiration
for Savonarola ; and the work by which he is best known to
posterity is a Life of his great master. Savonarola's prin
ciples continued to rule his thought and conduct through hfe.
During the pontificate of Leo he composed a long address to
the Lateran CouncU upon the reformation of the Church,'
and dared to entertain the friendship of EeuchUn and WUlibad
Pirkheimer. His residence hi Eome, and the dedication of
1 The titles of his philosophical works — De Studio divines et
humancB philosophic, De amore Divino, Examen vanitatis doctrina
gentium et veritatis Christiana disciplines, De rerum prawotione — show
how closely he followed in the footsteps of Giovanni Pico.
2 Joannis Francisci Pici Mirandolcs et Concordice Comitis Oratio
ad Leon X. et Concilium Lateranense de reformandis Ecclesia; moribus.

JEROME ALEANDER S07
his treatise on ' Divine Love ' to Leo, justify our ranking him
with the Eoman scholars.
If Gian Francesco Pico and Sadoleto bring us close upon
the threshold of the German Eeformation, we cross it in the
company of Aleander. Jerome Aleander was born at Motta,
in the Marches of Treviso, in the year 1480. His studies,
more comprehensive than those of the stylists, included
theology, phUosophy, and science, together with the Oriental
languages, in addition to the indispensable Greek and Latin
culture. Before he reached the age of thirty he traveUed to
Paris, and professed Hebrew and the humanities at the Uni
versity. French scholarship may be said to date from the
impulse given to these subjects by Aleander, who rose to such
fame that he was made Eector of the University. After
leaving Paris, he spent some time in Germany, and came first
to Eome in 1516 in the train of Erard van der Mark, Bishop
of Luttich. Here Leo appointed him librarian of the Vatican.
The rest of Aleander's Ufe was spent in the service of the
Church. Despatched as nuntius to Germany by Leo in 1520,
he vainly attempted, as aU students of the Eeformation know,
to quench the fire of Luther's kindling. When he returned
to Italy, Clement VII. gave him the archbishopric of Brindisi,
and Paul HI. raised him to the scarlet in 1538. He died in
1542, leaving in France the memory of his unrivalled learning,
in Germany the fame of an intolerant persecutor, in Italy the
reputation of a stanch though unsuccessful champion of the
Church. Aleander's three predecessors in the Vatican Library —
Tommaso Inghirami of Siena, FiUppo Beroaldo of Bologna,
and Zanobio AcciaiuoU of Florence — made their mark in
Eoman society by erudition rather than by authorship.1
1 Inghirami, made librarian 1510, died 1516. Beroaldo held the
office two years, and died 1518. Acciaiuoli held it only for a few months.
Aleander succeeded him in 1519. x 2

308 RENAISSANCE IN ITALY
Inghirami's eloquence won the admiration of contemporaries,
who called him the second Cicero ; as a writer he had no
celebrity.1 A fortunate find of MSS. at Bobbio earned for
him the post of Vatican librarian. Leo, like all the members
of the Medicean family, was bent upon the rediscovery of
buried classics. But the world had been already ransacked,
and, though he employed agents for this purpose in the East
as weU as Europe, only one great treasure came to light.
Gian Angelo Arcimboldi disinterred the first five books of
Tacitus's ' Annals ' at Corvey, and sold them to the Pope for
500 golden florins. FUippo Beroaldo, who was entrusted with
the task of editing this precious codex, received the Ubrarian-
ship as his reward. Leo's privilege granted to the printers
of Beroaldo's edition expresses in truly noble language the
highest ideal of humanism, and reflects real credit on his
patronage of letters.2 Of Acciaiuoli there is not much to say.
His knowledge of Hebrew and the classic languages gained
for him a reputation for singular learning. In his capacity
as librarian he began to catalogue the documents of the
' Secreta Bibliotheca,' founded by Sixtus IV. It is worthy of
notice that Acciaiuoli is the only Florentine whom we have
had occasion to mention among the learned courtiers of Leo.
Florence, always foremost in the van of culture, had shaken
off at this period the traditions of strict humanism. Her
greatest writers, Guicciardini, Machiavelli, Varchi, Segni, and
Giannotti, exchanged the Latin language for their mother
speech, and sought for honour in fields removed from verbal
scholarship or Ciceronian niceties of phrase.
The Eoman Sapienza never held the same rank as the
Universities of Padua or Bologna ; nor could it compete as
1 ' Lingud verius quam calamo celebrem . . . dictus sui seculi
Cicero,' says Erasmus. ' Affluentissimum eloquential flumen ' is Vale-
riano's phrase.
2 See Burckhardt, p. 174. Roscoe's Life of Leo X. vol. i. p. 357.

JOHN LASCARIS 309
an academy of culture with the High Schools of Florence
and Ferrara. The Popes of the Eenaissance, occupied with
nepotism and political aggrandisement, had but smaU care for
the interests of education. Nor did Eome, always overcrowded
by foreigners, require the students who brought custom and
prestige to minor cities.1 Leo X. resolved, as far as he was
able, to raise the studies of his capital from the decadence
into which they had fallen. In 1513 he reformed the statutes
of the University, increased the appointments of the professors,
and founded several new chairs. Yet, though scholars no
less respectable than Janus Parrhasius of Cosenza, Tommaso
Inghirami, and FUippo Beroaldo were numbered among the
teachers, the Sapienza failed to take firm root in Eome :- the
most flourishing school of humanism at this period was
Ferrara, governed by Leoniceno, Celio Calcagnini, and Lilius
Gyraldus. To Hellenistic studies, just now upon the point
of decadence in Italy, Leo gave encouragement by the esta
blishment of a Greek press, and by the foundation of the
Gymnasium Caballini Montis, where Joannes Lascaris and
Marcus Musurus lectured. Musurus we have already learned
to know as the inmate of Alberto Pio's palace at Carpi, and
as Aldo's most efficient helper. Soon after his elevation to
the Papacy, Leo invited the venerable Lascaris to Eome ; but
he did not long retain the services of so illustrious a Hellenist,
Lascaris, who had taught Greek in Paris during the reign of
Charles VIIL, and who had long served Louis XII. as am
bassador at Venice, was induced by Francis I. to superintend
the Ubrary at Fontainebleau in 1518. He once more visited
Eome during the pontificate of Clement, and died there at
the age of ninety — the last of the Greek exUes who trans
planted Hellas into Latium. Between the visit of Manuel
Chrysoloras in 1398 and the death of John Lascaris in 1535
inure than a century had elapsed, in the course of which
1 See above, p. 86.

310 RENAISSANCE IN ITALY
Italy,1 after acquiring Greek literature and committing its
chief treasures to the press, had seen her learning pass
beyond the Alps and flourish with new vigour on a northern
soil. The epitaph composed by Lascaris for his own tomb in
Santa Agata touchingly expresses the grief of an exile for his
country's servitude, together with the gratitude of One who
found a new home in an alien land : —
Ado-Kapis aXhodang yalj) iviKarBero, yairjv
ovtl Xtiji/ £clvriv S £e'ye p,ep.<p6p.tvos.
evpeTO fifiktxir]v, aXX' axBerai einep 'A^aiolt
ov8' en xpvv x*v*1 irdrpis iKevBepwv.
Any account of erudite society in Eome would be incom
plete without some notice of its antiquaries. WhUe the
Pope and his cardinals were bent on collecting statues, coins,
vases, and inscriptions, it was natural that the scholars should
devote themselves to their illustration. Much of this industry
was carried on by the academicians, who discussed difficult
readings and exchanged opinions at their meetings. Treatises
on Eoman antiquities, topographical essays, and commentaries
on Vitruvius and Frontinus abounded. Amid a multitude of
minor works it wiU be enough to mention the cyclopaedias of
Andrea Fulvio and Bartolommeo Marliano, the comprehensive
coUection of inscriptions by Mazochi, and Valeriano's dis
sertation on the hieroglyphics of the Eoman obeUsks.2 The
greater number of these compositions were pubUshed by
Jacopo Mazochi, bookseller to the Eoman Academy, and him
self no mean scholar. Together with his coadjutor, Fran
cesco Albertini, he undertook what he describes as ' the Her
culean labour ' of saving inscribed tablets from the Ume-Mln
1 Cf. Giovio, close of the Elogia.
2 Andreas FuVoius Sabinus Antiquarvus, Antiquitates Urbis Roma,
1527. Bartholomccus Marlianus, Eques D. Petri, Urbis Romce Topo-
graphia, 1534. Jacobus Mazochius, Epigrammata antiqua; urbis Romce,
1521. Johannis Pierii Valeriani Hieroglyphica seu de Sacris MgyptAo-
rum, &a., in his collected works. Ven. 1604.

¦CORPUS INSCRIPTIONUM ' 311
and the mason's hammer. Built into the walls of houses,
embedded in church pavements, mingled with the rubbish of
the Forum, unearthed by the mattock or the plough in vine
yard and cornfield, these records of old history encumbered
Eome. To decipher them as best he. could, arrange them by
the regions where they had been found, and incorporate his
own readings with the previous coUections of Ciriaco and Fra
Giocondo,1 was the object of Mazochi. His work formed the
nucleus of the ponderous collection known as the Corpus
Inscriptionum. This is the proper occasion for resuming what has to be
said about the Eoman ruins, and the feeling for them shown
in the Eenaissance period. We have already listened to
Poggio's lamentations over their gradual decay through
wanton injury and lapse of time.2 Pius H., who had a strong
taste for topographical studies, endeavoured to protect the
Eoman monuments from depredation by a BuU hi 1462. But
his successors were less scrupulous. Even the scholarly
Nicholas V. had shown more zeal for building modern Eome
afresh than true regard for the imperial city. He leveUed
large portions of the wall of Servius Tullius, and quarried
the Temple of Peace for his own edifices. In his days Blon-
dus wrote that his Ufe was embittered by the wholesale waste
of ancient reUques. That Paul II. should have used the
stone wall of the Coliseum for the Palace of S. Marco ; that
Sixtus IV. should have pulled down the circular Temple of
Hercules, and destroyed the oldest bridge across the Tiber to
make cannon balls ; that Innocent VIII. should have em
powered his architects to take what antique masonry they
pleased — excites in us no wonder ; these Popes were acting
according to the spirit that was in them. Nor can it be
1 The architect of Verona who first edited Vitruvius, and was em
ployed by Lorenzo de' Medici in collecting inscriptions for him at Rome.
2 See above, p. 111.

312 RENAISSANCE IN ITALY
denied that for some of their acts of Vandalism the excuse of
utility or even of necessity might have been pleaded. It is,
however, singular that no steps were taken to preserve in
Eome the basreUefs and sculptures of the monuments thus
overthrown. Everyone who chose laid hands upon them.
Poggio scraped together what he could; Pomponius Laatus
formed a museum ; Lorenzo de' Medici and the Eucellai em
ployed agents to select and ship to Florence choicer fragments.
At last the impulse to collect possessed the Popes themselves.
The Capitol Museum dates from 1471. The pretty statue of
the boy pulling a thorn from his foot, the group of the lion
clinging to a horse, the urn of Agrippina, and the bronze
Hercules from the Forum Boarium formed the nucleus of this
collection. Soon afterwards the equestrian statue of Marcus
Aurelius was unearthed and placed where it now stands. The
Vatican Museum was founded in 1523, when Julius II. erected
the Apollo on a marble basis near the entrance to the gardens
of the Belvedere. It had been discovered some years earlier
at Porto d'Anzo, and was bought by Giuhano della Eovere
before he was made Pope. The Laocoon came to Ught in
1506 among the ruins of the Baths of Titus in the vineyard
of. Felix de Fredis. How Giuliano di San Gallo and Michael
Angelo heard of it, and walked abroad to see it disinterred,
may stUl be read in the letter of Francesco, nephew of the
former. Julius bought this group for six hundred golden
crowns, and placed it in the Vatican. He also purchased the
statue of the sleeping Ariadne, which then passed for Cleo
patra,1 together with the torso of Hercules, found near the
Palazzo Pio, and the statue of Commodus dug up in the
Campo Fiore. Leo X. further enriched the collection by the
reclining statues of the NUe and Tiber, found among the
ruins of the Iseum near S. Stefano in Caco, and the so-called
Antinous discovered in the Baths of Trajan.
1 See Castiglione's versns.

FEELING FOR SCULPTURE 313
The feeUng of professed scholars for these masterpieces
of classic art appears in Sadoleto's and CastigUone's poems,
whUe a passage of Ghiberti's Commentary expresses the
enthusiasm of technical sculptors. After describing an Her
maphrodite he saw in Eome, the Florentine sculptor adds :
' To express the perfection of learning, mastery, and art dis
played in it is beyond the power of language. Its more ex
quisite beauties could not be discovered by the sight, but only
by the touch of the hand passed over it.' Of another classic
marble at Padua he says : ' This statue, when the Christian
faith triumphed, was hidden in that place by some gentle
soul, who, seeing it so perfect, fashioned with art so wonder
ful, and with such power of genius, and being moved to
reverent pity, caused a sepulchre of bricks to be buUt, and
there within buried the statue, and covered it with a broad
slab of stone, that it might not in any way be injured. It
has very many sweet beauties, which the eyes alone can com
prehend not, either by strong or tempered hght ; only the
hand by touching finds them out.' 1 MeanwhUe a genuine
sentiment for the truth and beauty of antique art passed
downwards from the educated classes to the people. Like all
powerful emotions that affect the popular imagination at
epochs of imperfect knowledge and high sensibility, it took
the form of fable. The beautiful myth of Julia's Corpse is
our most precious witness to this moment in the history of
the Eevival.2 At the same time the real intention of classic
statuary was better understood. DonateUo had not worked
in vain for a pubUc, finely tempered to receive aesthetic
influences, and cultivated by two centuries of native art.
The horsemen of Monte CavaUo ceased to be phUosophers.
Menander and Poseidippus were no longer reckoned among
1 Terzo Commentario del Ghiberti, Frammenti Incditi, in Le Mon
nier's Vasari, vol. i. pp. xi.-xiii. I have paraphrased rather than
translated the original, which is touching by reason of its naivete.
- See Vol. I., Age of the Despots, p. 17.

314 RENAISSANCE IN ITALY
the saints. In the age of Leo, Carlo Malatesta could not
have thrown VirgU's statue into the Mincio ; 1 nor would the
repubUc of Siena have buried their antique Venus by stealth
in the Florentine territory, hoping thereby to transfer to their
foes the curse of heathenism.2 The effect produced on less
impressionable natures by the Belvedere statues transpires
in a curious document penned by a Venetian ambassador to
Eome in 1523.3 It is so valuable for illustrating the average
culture of the Italians at that epoch, that I may aUow myself
the pleasure of rendering a full account of it.
Adrian VI., soon after his accession, had walled up eleven
of the twelve doors, leading to the Belvedere. The Venetian
envoys, however, received permission to visit this portion of
the Vatican palace, and the single entrance was unlocked
for them. After describing the beauty of the gardens, their
cypresses and orangeries, the greenness of their lawns and
the stately order of their paved avenues, the writer of the
report arrives at the statues. 'In the midst of the garden
are two very large men of marble, facing one another, twice
the size of lUe, who he in the attitude of sleep. One of
these is the Tiber, the other the Nile, figures of vast anti
quity ; and from beneath them issue two fair fountains. On
the first entrance into the garden, on the left hand, there is a
kind of Uttle chapel let into the wall, where, on a pedestal of
marble, stands the ApoUo, famous throughout the world, a
statue of incomparable beauty and dignity, of Ufe size and
of finest marble. Somewhat farther on, in a similar alcove
and raised on a Uke pedestal to the height of an altar from
the ground, opposite a weU of most perfect fashion, is the
Laocoon, celebrated throughout the world, a statue of the
highest excellence, of size Uke a natural man, with hairy
1 See Rosmini's Vittorino da Feltre, p. 63, note.
2 See Ghiberti's Commentario, in Le Monnier's Vasari, vol. i. p. riv
' Alberi, Relazioni Venete, serie ii. vol. iii. p. 114, &c.

VENETIANS IN THE BELVEDERE 315
beard, aU naked. The sinews, veins, and proper muscles in
each part are seen as weU as hi a Uving body ; breath alone
is wanting. He is in a posture between sitting and standing,
with his two sons, one on either hand, both, together with
himself, twined by the serpents, as VirgU says. And herein
is seen so great merit of the artist, that better could not be ;
the languishing and dying are manifest to sight, and one of
the boys on the right side is most tightly ehpped by the
snake twice girdled round him ; one of the coUs crossing his
breasts and squeezing his heart, so that he is on the point of
dying. The other boy on the left side is also girdled round
by another serpent. While he seeks to drag the raging worm
from his leg with his Uttle arm, and cannot help himself at
all, he raises his face, all tearful, crying to his father, and
holding him with his other hand by the left arm. And seeing
his unhappy father more deadly struck than he is, the double
grief of this child is clear to view, the one for his own coming
death, the other for his father's helplessness ; and he so faints
withal, that nothing remains for him but to breathe his last.
It is impossible that human art can arrive at producing so
great and so natural a masterpiece. Every part is perfect,
except that Laocoon's right arm is wanting. He seems about
forty years of age, and resembles Messer Girolamo MarceUo
of S. Tommaso; the two boys look eight and nine respec
tively. Not far distant, and similarly placed, is a very beau
tiful Venus of natural size, naked, with a little drapery on
her shoulder, that covers a portion of the waist ; as very fair
a figure as can be imagined by the mind ; but the excellence
of the Laocoon makes one forget this and the Apollo, who
before was so famous.'
A systematic plan for exploring the monuments of old
Eome, excavating its ruins, and bringing its buried treasures
of statuary to light was furnished by Eaphael in 1518. Leo
had made him master of the works at S. Peter's and general

316 RENAISSANCE IN ITALY
superintendent of antiquities.1 For some time previously he
had been studying Vitruvius in the Italian translation pre
pared for his use by Fabio Calvi of Eavenna. How en
thusiastically he followed in the traces of the ancients, the
arabesques of the Loggie, imitated from the frescoes of the
Baths of Titus, amply prove. He now, not long before his
death, laid down a ground-plan of the city, divided into
fourteen regions, and set forth his project in a memorable
letter to the Pope. This epistle, written in choice old Italian,
has more than once been printed : it will be found in Passa-
vant's Life of the painter. Eaphael begins by describing the
abandonment and desolation of the city, and by characterising
its several styles of architecture — classical, Lombard, Gothic,
and modern.2 Some phrases that occur in this exordium
deserve to be cited for the light they cast upon the passion
which inspired those early excavators. ' Considerando la
divinitate di quelU animi antichi .... vedendo quasi il
cadavere di quest' alma nobile cittate, che e stata regia del
mondo, cosl miseramente lacerato .... quanti pontefici
hanno permesso le ruine et disfacimenti deUi tempU antichi,
delle statue, delli archi et altri edificU, gloria deUi lor fonda-
tori ! Quanti hanno comportato che solamente per pigliare
terra pozzolana si siano scavati i fondamenti ! Onde in poco
tempo U edificU sono venuti a terra. Quanta calcina si e fatta
di statue e d' altri ornamenti antichi I che ardirei dire che
tutta questa nova Eoma, che hor si vede, quanto grande
ch'eUa vi sia, quanto bella, quanto ornata di paUazzi, di chiese
et di altri edificU, sia fabricata di calcina fatta di marmi an
tichi.' 3 He then observes that during his twelve years' resi-
1 By a brief dated Aug. 27, 1515.
8 It may be observed that he calls the round-arched buildings of the
Middle Ages Gothic ; the pointed style German.
3 ' When we reflect upon the divinity of those intellects of the old
world . . . when we see the corpse of this noble city, mother and
queen of the world, so piteously mangled . . . how many Pontiffs havs

RAPHAEL'S PLAN OF EXCAVATION 317
dence in Eome the Meta in the Via Alexandrina, the arches
at the entrance to the Baths of Diocletian and the Temple of
Ceres in the Via Sacra, part of the Foro Transitorio, and the
larger portion of the BasiUca del Foro have been destroyed.
Therefore he prays Leo to arrest this work of the new Van
dals, and, by pursuing a well-considered scheme of operations,
to lay bare and to protect what stiU remains of antique
monuments in the Eternal City.
Eaphael's own death followed close upon the execution
of the first part of a Eoman map designed by him. Great
interest had been excited in the world of letters by his under
taking ; and its failure through his untimely end aroused the
keenest disappointment. The epigrams quoted below in a
footnote express these feelings with more depth of emotion
than scholarly elegance.1 How Eaphael's design would have
allowed the ruin and defacement of ancient temples, statues, arches,
and other buildings, the glory of their founders ! How many have
suffered their foundations to be undermined for the mere sake of
quarrying pozzolana, whereby in a short time the buildings themselves
have fallen to earth 1 How much lime has been made of statues and
other antique decorations ! I should not hesitate to say that the whole
of this new Rome which now meets the eye, great as it is, and fair,
and beautified with palaces and churches and other buildings, has been
oemented with lime made from antique marbles.'
1 Tot proceres Romam, tam longa struxerat astas,
Totque hostes et tot sseeula diruerant ;
Nunc Romam in Roma quserit reperitque Raphael ;
Quserere magni hominis, sed reperire Dei est.
Celio Calcagnini,
Quod lacerum corpus medica sanaverit arte,
Hippolytum Stygiis et revocarit aquis,
Ad Stygias ipse est raptus Epidaurius undas ;
Sic pretium vitse mors fuit artifici.
Tu quoque dum toto laniatam corpore Romam
Componis miro, Raphael, ingenio,
Atque urbis lacerum ferro, igne, armisque cadava
Ad vitam antiquum jam revocasque decus,
Movisti Superum invidiam ; indignataque mors est
Te dudum extinctis reddere posse animam,

318 RENAISSANCE IN ITALY
been carried out it is impossible to guess. Archseologicai
zeal is impotent to stay the march of time, except by sacrifice
of much that neglect alone makes venerable ; and it may
fairly be questioned whether it is wise to lay the hand of tha
restorer on these relics of the past. We at least, who during
the last few years have seen the Coliseum and the Baths of
CaracaUa stripped of their romantic vegetation, the Palatine
ruins fortified with modern masonry, and the dubious guesses
of antiquaries placarded upon sign-posts for the instruction
of Sunday visitors, may feel, perhaps, that a worse fate than
slow decay or ruthless mutilation was stUl in store for the
majestic corpse of ancient Eome. Nothing, in truth, is less
sublime or more pitiful than a dismantled brick wall, robbed
of its marbles and mosaics, naked of the covering of herbs
that nature gave it, patched with plaster, propped with stone
work, bound by girders, and smeared over with the traU of
worse than snails or blindworms — pedants bent on restora
tion. The immediate and most important consequence of these
antiquarian pursuits was the adoption of classic forms by
architects and artists. Fresco-painters imitated the newly-
discovered grotteschi in their arabesques.1 Sculptors aban
doned Christian subjects for antique mythology, or gave the
attributes of heroes to the saints of the Catholic Church.
The principles of Vitruvius were applied as strictly as pos
sible to modern buildings, and the free decoration of the
earlier Eenaissance yielded to what passed for purely classic
ornaments. It would be incorrect to maintain that this
reproduction of antiquity in art only dated from the age of
Et quod longa dies paullatim aboleverat, hoc te
Mortali spreta lege parare iterum.
Sio miser heu prima cadis intercepte juvenlS :
Debere et morti nostraque nosque mones.
Baldassare Castiglione.
1 See Benvenuto Cellini, i. 31.

THE ASCENDENCY OF ROME 319
Leo. Alberti and BruneUeschi, Bramante and Michellozzo,
had, each in his own way, striven to assimilate to modern use
the style of Eoman architecture. DonateUo and Michael
Angelo at Florence had carved statues in the classic manner ;
nor are the arabesques of Signorelli at Orvieto, of Perugino
at Perugia, less fancUul than those of Eaphael hi the Loggie.
What reaUy happened was that the imitation of the ancients
grew more puristic and precise through the formation of a
common taste that imposed itself with the weight of authority
on artists. GiuUo Eomano's Palazzo del Te at Mantua may
be cited as the most perfect production of this epoch, com
bining, as it does, aU forms of antique decoration and con
struction with the vivid individuality of genius. Giulio
Eomano comprehended the antique, and foUowed it with the
enthusiasm of a neophyte. But his very defects prevented
him from falUng into the frigid formalism of Palladio.
The causes of Eoman pre-eminence in this last age of
humanism are not far to seek. By the poUcy of Alexander
and JuUus the Papal See had become the chief power in
Italy. Venice never pubUcly encouraged literature, nor was
the ambition of her nobles fixed on anything so much as the
aggrandisement of the Eepublic. In the beginning of the
sixteenth century their energy was needed no longer for the
extension of Venetian rule, but for its preservation under
the attack of Europe leagued agamst the city of the sea.
Florence, divided between the parties of the Piagnoni and
the Ottimati, reserved her failing vigour for the great struggle
of 1529. The Medici, after absorbing what remained of
mental force into then: own circle, had transferred the
Florentine traditions of culture with Giovanni and Giulio to
Eome. At Naples the Aragonese dynasty had been akeady
shaken to its foundation by the conspiracy of the Barons
and by the conquest of Charles VIII. Ferdinand the
Catholic and Louis XII. were now intent upon dividing the

320 RENAISSANCE IN ITALY
southern provinces of Italy between them. Little oppor
tunity was left, if inclination had remained, for patronising
men of letters at a Court suspicious of its aristocracy and
terrified by foreign interference. Milan, first among the
towns of Lombardy, was doomed to bear the brunt of French,
and Swiss, and German armies. To maintain the semblance
of their dukedom taxed the weakness of the Sforzas to the
utmost, while the people groaned beneath the fiendish cruelty
of Spanish governors. The smaller principalities had been
destroyed by Cesare Borgia and JuUus. Ferrara, Mantua,
and Urbino, at the beginning of the century, alone continued
the traditions of the previous age. Eome, meanwhile, how
ever insecure the Papal rule might be, still ranked among the
Powers of Europe, pursuing a policy on equal terms with
France and Spain. In Eome money abounded ; nor had the
sacred city of Christendom felt as yet the scourge of war,
that broke the spirit of the Northern capitals. It was but
natural, therefore, that the political and intellectual energies
of the Italians should find their centre here.
Sad times, however, were in store for Eome. When Leo's
successor read the Latin letters of the ApostoUc secretaries,
he cried, ' Sunt littera unius poetce ; ' and after walking
through the Belvedere Gallery, he gave vent to his feehngs
in the famous exclamation, ' Sunt idola antiquorum.' The
humanists had nothing to expect from such a master. The
election of Giulio de' Medici restored the hope that Eome
might once more be as it had been beneath the sway of Leo.
Yet for Clement VII. was reserved the final bitterness of
utter ruin. In the fourth year 6f his papacy happened the
catastrophe that closed one period of Italian history, and
opened a new era for Eome and for the nation. The tale of
the sack has been already told.1 A fitting conclusion for this
chapter may be found in Valeriano's discourse upon its con-
"- Vol. I., Age of Despots, App. V.

VALERIANO ON THE SACK OF ROME 321
sequences to the literary society assembled by the Medici at
the Papal Court.
Valeriano's dialogue ' De Literatorum InfeUcitate ' opens
with a description of Eome in the pontificate of Leo.1 Never
since the downfall of the Empire, he says, had letters
flourished so freely or had men of learning found more
generous patronage. Of that brilliant company Valeriano
was himself an ornament. The friend of Egidius and the
favourite of Leo, he spent his time in the composition of
Latin poems, panegyrical and satiric, and in the exploration
of antiquities. Afterwards he became the protonotary of
Clement, and supervised the education of the Medicean
bastards Alessandro and Ippolito. His good fortune carried
him to Piacenza in the fatal year of 1527. On his return to
Eome after the siege, he looked in vain for his old comrades
and associates. ' Good God ! ' he exclaims in the dialogue
before us, ' when first I began to inquire for the philosophers,
orators, poets, and professors of Greek and Latin literature,
whose names were written on my tablets, how great, how
horrible a tragedy was offered to me! Of aU those
lettered men whom I had hoped to see, how many had
perished miserably, carried off by the most cruel of all fates,
overwhelmed by undeserved calamities : some dead of plague,
some brought to a slow end by penury in exile, others
slaughtered by a foeman's sword, others worn out by daily
tortures ; some, again, and these of all the most unhappy,
driven by anguish to self-murder.' John Goritz, captured by
his countrymen, had ransomed himself with the sacrifice of
aU his wealth, and now was dying of despair at Verona.
Colocci had seen his house, with its museums and MSS.,
burned before his eyes. Angelo Cesi, maltreated by the
Spanish soldiers on a sick bed, died of his injuries before
the year was out. Marone, the brilliant improvisatore,
¦ Printed at Venice, 1620.
II Y

322 RENAISSANCE IN ITALY
stripped of everything and deprived of his poems, the accu
mulated compositions of years spent in Leo's service, breathed
his last in a miserable tavern. Marco Fabio Calvi, Eaphael's
friend and teacher, succumbed to sickness in a hospital.
Julianus Camers, maddened by the sight of the torments in
flicted on his servants, had thrown himseU from a window
in his house, and was killed. Baldus, the professor, after
watching his commentary upon PUny used to Ught the camp
fires of the soldiery, had died himself of hunger. Casanova,
the poet, fell a victim to the plague. Paolo Bombasi, another
poet, was murdered in the streets of Eome. Cristoforo Mar
cello had been tortured by the Spaniards. Exposed naked
on a tree, his nails were daily drawn from his fingers by these
human fiends ; he only escaped their clutches to die of his
injuries at Gaeta. Laomedon Tardolus and John Bonifacius
Victor suffered similar indignities and torments. Francesco
Fortunio and John Valdes slew themselves. To enumerate
aU the scholars who succumbed to fear, plague, famine, tor
ture, and imprisonment in this fatal year ; to relate how
numbers left Eome, robbed of everything, to wander over
Italy, and die of hunger by the wayside, or of fever in low
hovels ; to describe the losses of their MSS., their madness,
beggary, mysterious disappearances, and deaths by hands
of servants or of brigands on the high roads, would occupy
more space than I have left at my command. The ghastly
muster roU is told with terrible concision by Valeriano, who
adds divers examples, unconnected with the sack, of early
deaths by over-study, lingering illnesses, murders by poison
or the knife, and accidents of every kind, attributable more
or less directly to the shifting career of students at that time
in Italy. Though the wars in Lombardy proved scarcely less fatal
to men of letters than the siege of Eome, those disasters
fell singly and at intervals. The ever-memorable stage of the

DOWNFALL OF HUMANISM 323
Eternal City was reserved for the crowning tragedy of arts
and letters. Whatever vicious seeds had been sown in Italy
by the humanists had blossomed and borne fruit in Eome ;
and there the Nemesis of pride and insolence, and godless
ness of evU Uving, feU upon them like a bolt from heaven.
In essays, epistles, and funeral orations they amply recognised
the justice of their punishment. A phrase of Hieronymus
Niger's in a letter to Sadoleto — ' Eome, that is the sink of
aU things shameful and abominable ' — might serve as the
epitome of then? conscience-stricken Jeremiads.1 AU Italy
re-echoed with these lamentations ; and though Clement VII.
and Paul HI. did their best to repiece the ruins of Leo's
golden house of fame, the note of despair and anguish uttered
by the scholars in 1527 was never destined to be drowned by
chorus hymeneal or triumphal chant again. What remained
of humanism among the Italians assumed a different form,
adapted to the new rule of the Spaniards and the new atti
tude of the Church. To the age of the Humanists succeeded
the age of the Inquisitors and Jesuits.
1 ' Quod Romse, hoc est in sentina omnium rerum atrocium et puden.
darum deprehensi fuerimus.' Quoted by Gregorovius, Stadt Rom, vol.
viii. p. 598, note 3.

r 2

324 RENAISSANCE IN ITALY

CHAPTEE VHI
LATIN P0ETBT
Special Causes for the Practice of Latin Versification in Italy— The
Want of an Italian Language — Multitudes of Poetasters — Becoadelli
— Alberti's ' Philodoxus ' — Poliziano — The ' Sylvse ' — ' Nutricia,'
' Rusticus,' ' Manto,' ' Ambra ' — Minor Poems — Pontano — Sannaz
zaro — Elegies and Epigrams — Christian Epics — Vida's 'Christiad'
—Vida's ' Poetica ' — Fracastoro — The ' Syphilis ' — Barocco Flat
teries — Bembo — Immoral Elegies — Imitations of Ovid and Tibullus
— The 'Benacus '—Epitaphs — Navagero— Epigrams and Eclogues—
Molsa — Poem on his own Death — Castiglione — • Alcon ' and ' Lyei
das' — Verses of Society — The Apotheosis of the Popes — Poem on
the Ariadne of the Vatican — Sadoleto's VerseB on the Laocoon —
Flaminio — His Life — Love of the Country — Learned Friends —
Soholar-Poets of Lombardy — Extinction of Learning in Florence
— Decay of Italian Erudition.
The history of this last period of the Eevival would be in
complete without a survey of its Latin poetry. I shaU have
faUed to convey a right notion of the tendencies of humanism,
if I have not shown that the Italians were seeking not merely
to acquire a knowledge of ancient literature, but also to effect
a resuscitation of antiquity in their own writings. Eegarding
themselves as the heirs of Eome, separated from the briUiant
period of Latin civilisation by ten centuries of ignorance,
they strove with all their might to seize the thread of culture
at the very point where the poets of the Silver Age had
dropped it. In the opinion of Northern races it might seem
unnatural or unpatriotic to woo the Muses in a dead lan
guage ; but for Itahans the Camoense had not died ; on the
hills of Latium, where they fell asleep, they might awake

LATIN AND ITALIAN 326
again. Every famiUar sight and sound recaUed 'the rich
Virgilian rustic measure ' of the ' Georgios ' and ' Bucolics.'
Nature had not changed, nor did the poets feel the influence
of Christianity so deeply as to find no meaning in the mythic
phraseology of Fauns and Nymphs.
Latin, again, was far less a language of the past for the
ItaUans than for other European nations. What risk the
Tuscan dialect ran, when Dante wrote the first lines of the
' Divine Comedy ' in Latin, and when Petrarch assumed
the laurel crown by right of his ' Africa,' is known to every
student. The serious efforts of the greatest writers were for
centuries devoted to Latin composition, because they believed
that the nation, in the modern as in. the ancient world, might
freely use the speech of Cicero and VirgU. Their volgari
cose they despised as trifles, not having calculated the im
potence of scholars or of kings to turn the streams of lan
guage from their natural courses. Nor was this blindness so
inexplicable as it seems to us at first sight. Italy possessed
no common dialect; Dante's 'Italiano Hlustre,' or 'Corte-
giano,' was even less native to the race at large, less universal
in its use, than Latin.1 Fashioned from the Tuscan for lite
rary purposes, selected from the vocabulary of cultivated
persons, stripped of vernacular idioms, and studied in the
works of a few standard authors, it was itself, upon the soil
that gave it birth, a product of high art and conscious
culture. The necessity felt soon after Dante's death for
translating the ' Divine Comedy ' into Latin, sufficiently
proves that a Latin poem gained a larger audience than the
masterpiece of Italian literature. WhUe the singer of a
dialect, however noble, appealed to his own fellow-citizens,
the Lathi poet gave his verses urbi et orbi. If another proof
1 Cf . Filelfo, quoted in a note to the next chapter, who says, ' Tuscan
is hardly known to all Italians, while Latin is spread far and wide
throughout the whole world.'

826 RENAISSANCE IN ITALY
of the artificiality of ItaUan were needed, we should find it
in the fact that the phrases of Petrarch are not less obsolete
now than in the fourteenth century. The English require a
glossary for Chaucer, and even Elizabethan usages are out of
date; in other words, the language of the people has out
grown the style of its first poets. But ItaUan has undergone
no process of transformation and regeneration according
to the laws of organic growth, since it first started. The
different districts still use different dialects, while writers in
all parts of the peninsula have conformed their style as far
as possible to early Tuscan models. It may be questioned
whether united Italy, having for the first time gained the
necessary conditions of national concentration, is not now
at last about to enter on a new phase of growth in Uterature,
which, after many years, will make the style of the first
authors more archaic than it seems at present.
The foregoing observations were requisite in order to ex
plain why the cultivation of Latin poetry was no mere play-
work to Italian scholars. The pecuUar direction given by
Petrarch to classical studies at the outset must also be taken
into account. We have seen that he regarded rhetoric and
poetry as the two chief aims of humanism. To be either a
poet or an orator was the object of aU students who had
slaked their thirst at the CastaUan springs of ancient learnmg.
PhUology and poetry, accordingly, went hand in hand through
the periods of the Eevival ; and to this first impulse we are
perhaps justified in tracing back the prominence assigned to
Latin verse in our own school studies.
Poetry being thus regarded as a necessary branch of
scholarship, it followed that few men distinguished for their
learning abstained from versification. Pedants who could
do no more than make prosaic elegiacs scan, and scholars
respectable for their acquirements, but destitute of inspiration,
were reckoned among the sacri vates. It would be a weari-

MULTITUDES 01' PERSIFIERB 327
ful — nay, hopeless — task to pass aU the Latin versifiers of the
Renaissance hi review. Their name is legion ; even to count
them would be the same as to number the stars — ad una ad
una annoverar le s telle. It may be considered fortunate that.
perhaps the larger masses of their productions stUl remain
in manuscript, partly because they preceded the age of print
ing, and partly, no doubt, because the good sense of the age
rejected them. What has been printed, however, exceeds in
bulk the 'Corpus Poetarum Latinorum,' and presents so
many varieties that to deal with more than a selection is im
possible.1 The poetasters of the first two periods need not be taken
into account. StruggUng with a language imperfectly assimi
lated, and with the rules of a prosody as yet but Uttle under
stood, it was as much as they could do to express themselves
at aU in metre. Elegance of composition was out of the
question when a writer could neither set forth modern
thoughts with ease nor imitate the classic style with accuracy.
What he lost in force by the use of a dead language, he did
not gain in poUsh ; nor was the taste of the age schooled to
appreciate the niceties of antique diction. BeccadelU alone,
by a certain limpid fluency, attained to a degree of moderate
exceUence ; and how much he owed to his choice of subject
may be questioned. The obscenity of his themes, and the
impudence required for their expression, may have acted as a
stimulus to his not otherwise distinguished genius. There is,
moreover, no stern conflict to be fought with phrases when
the author's topic is mere animalism. The rest of his con
temporaries, FUelfo included, did no more than smooth the
way for their successors by practising the technicaUties of
1 I purpose in this chapter to use the DeUtim Poetarum Italorum,
two parts divided into 4 vols., 1608; Carmina Quinque IWustrium
Poetarum, Bergomi, 1753; Poemata Selecta Italorum, Oxonii, 1808 j
and Selecta Poemata Italorum, accurante A. Pope, Londini, 1740.

328 RENAISSANCE IN ITALY
verse and exciting emulation. To surpass their rude achieve
ments was not difficult, while the fame they enjoyed aroused
the ambition of younger rivals. Exception to this sweeping
verdict may be made in favour of Alberti, whose Latin play,
called ' Philodoxus,' was a briUiant piece of Uterary workman
ship.1 Not only did it impose on contemporaries as a genuine
classic, but, even when judged by modern standards, it shows
real familiarity with the language of Latin comedy and rare
skill in its employment.
PoUziano is the first Latin poet who compels attention in
the fifteenth century ; nor was he surpassed, in fertUity of
conception and mastery of metre, by any of his numerous
successors. With aU his faults of style and crudities of dic
tion, Pohziano, in my opinion, deserves the chief place among
original poets of revived Latin Uterature. Bembo wrote more
elegantly, Navagero more classically, Amalteo with a grace
more winning. Yet these versifiers owe their celebrity to
exceUence of imitation. Poliziano possessed a manner of
his own, and made a dead language utter thoughts famUiar
to the age in which he Uved. He did not merely traverse the
old ground of the elegy, the epigram, the satire, and the
idyll. Striking out a new path for himself, and aiming at
instruction, he poured forth torrents of hexameters, rough
perhaps and over-fluent, yet marked by intellectual energy
and copious fancy, in illustration of a modern student's
learning. This freedom of handUng is shown to best advan
tage in his ' Sylvae.' 2
The 'Nutricia' forms an introduction to the history of
poetry in general, and carries on its vigorous stream the
weight of universal erudition. From it we learn how the
' Bonucci's edition of Alberti's works, vol. i. Alberti's own preface,
In the form of a dedicatory letter to LioneUo d' Este, describes how he
came to write this comedy, and how it was passed off upon contem
poraries as an original play by Lepidus Comicus. Ib. pp. cxxi.-cxxiii.
2 See above, p. 254, for the purpose fulfilled by the Sylvce.

ORIGINALITY OF POLIZIANO 329
most accomphshed scholar of his century judged and distin
guished the whole body of fine literature possessed by his
contemporaries. On the emergence of humanity from bar
barism, writes PoUziano, poetry was given to men as a con
solation for the miseries of life and as an instrument of
culture ; then: first nurse hi the cradle of civilisation was the
Muse : — Musa quies hominum, divomque seterna voluptas.1
After characterising the Pagan oracles, the mythical bards
of HeUas, and the poet-prophets of the Jewish race, with
brief but teUing touches, PoUziano addresses himseU in the
foUowing lines to the delineation of the two chief epic-
singers : — .... etenim ut stellas fugere undique cselo,
Aurea cum radios Hyperionis exeruit fax,
Cernirnus, et tenuem velut evanescere lunam;
Sic veterum illustres flagranti obscurat honores
Lampade Mseonides : unum quem dia canentem
Facta virum, et ssevas ssquantem pectine pugnas,
Obstupuit, prorsusque parem confessus Apollo est.
Proximus huic autem, vel ni veneranda senectus
Obstiterit, fortasse prior, canit anna virumque
Vergilius, cui rure sacro, cui gramme pastor
Ascrseus, Siculusque simul cessere volentes.2
Then foUows the enumeration of lesser Greek and Eoman
epopoeists. After them the lyrists and elegiac poets, among
1 'Of men the solace, and of gods the everlasting joy.'
2 ' As from the heavens we see the stars on all sides fleeing, when the
golden torch of the sun-god rises, and the diminished moon appears to
fade ; so with his burning lamp Mseonides obscures the honours of the
earlier bards. Him alone, while he sang the divine deeds of heroes,
and with his lyre arrayed fierce wars, Apollo, wonder-struck, confessed
his equal. Close at his side, or higher even, but for the veneration due
to age, Vergil entones the song of arms and the hero — Vergil, to whom
from holy tilth and pasture land both Ascra's and Sicilia's shepherds
yield their sway with willing homage.'— Quinque Illustrium Poetarum
Carmina, p. 167.

330 RENAISSANCE IN ITALY
whom Pindar is celebrated in the foUowing magnUoquenl
paragraph : —
Aerios procul in tractus, et nubila supra
Pindarus it Dircaeus olor, cui nectare blandae
Os tenerum libastis apes, dum fessa levaret
Membra quiete puer mollem spirantia somnum ;
Sed Tanagrsea suo mox jure poetria risit,
Irrita qui toto sereret figmenta canistro ;
Tum certare auso palmam intercepit opimam
Mollis prrelata modis atque illice forma.
IUe Agathoclea subnisus voce coronas
Dixit Olympiacas, et qua victoribus Isthmos
Fronde comam, Delphique tegant, Nemessaque tesqua
Lunigenam mentita feram; tum numina divum
Virtutesque, virosque undanti pectore torrens
Provexit, sparsitque pios ad funera questus.
Frugibus hunc libisque virum Cirrhseus ab ara
Phoebus, et accubitu mense dignatus honoro est :
Panaque pastores solis videre sub antris
Pindarico tacitas mulcentem carmine sUvas.
Inde senem pueri gremio cervice reposta
Infusum, et dulci laxantem corda sopore,
Protinus ad manes, et odoro gramme pictum
Elysium tacita rapuit Proserpina dextra.
Quin etiam hostiles longo post tempore flammte,
Qu83 septemgeminas populabant undique Thebas,
Expavere domum tanti tamen urere vatis,
Et sua posteritas medios quoque tuta per enses
Sensit inexhausta cinerem juvenescere fama.1
Sappho is described in the foUowing Unes : —
lyricis jam nona poetis
^Eolis accedit Sappho, quae flumina propter
Pierias legit ungue rosas, unde implicet audax
Serta Cupido sibi, niveam quee pectine blando
Cyrinnem, Megaramque simul, cumque Atthide pulchram

1 ' Far off into the tracts of air and high above the clouds soars
Pindar, the Dircsean swan, whose tender mouth ye gentle bees with
nectar fed, while the boy gave rest to weary limbs that breathed soft
slumber. But him the maid of Tanagra derided, what time she told

THE 'NUTRICIA' 831
Cantat Anaotorien, et crinigeram Telesippen ;
Et te conspicuum recidivo flore juventse
Miratur revocatque, Phaon, seu munera vectse
Puppe tua Veneris, seu sic facit herba potentem :
Sed tandem Ambracias temeraria saltat in undas.1
Having disposed of the lyrists, PoUziano proceeds to the
dramatic poets. His brief notice of the three Attic tragedians is
worthy of quotation, if only because it proves what we should
suspect from other indications, that the best scholars of the
earher Eenaissance paid them little attention. The facts
mentioned in the following lines seem to be derived from the
gossip of Athenseus : —
him that he sowed his myths from the whole sack to waste ; and when
he dared contend with her in song, she bore away the victor's palm,
triumphant by iEolian moods, and by her seductive beauty too. He
with his mighty voice, trained in the school of Agathocles, sang the
crowns of Olympia and the garlands wherewith the Isthmus and Delphi,
and the Nemean wastes that falsely claimed the moon-born monster,
shade the athlete's brows. Then, like a torrent, with sweUing soul, he
passed to celebrate the powers and virtues of the gods and heroes, and
poured forth pious lamentations for the dead. Him Phoebus, lord of
Cirrha, honoured with food and drink from his altar, and made him
guest-fellow at his own board : shepherds too saw Pan in lonely caverns
charming the woods with a Pindaric song. At last, when he was old,
and lay with his neck reclined upon the bosom of the boy he loved,
soothing his soul in sleep, Proserpina with still right hand approached
and took him straight to join the shades and pace Elysium's fragrant
meads. Nay, more : long afterwards, the foeman's flames, which laid
seven-gated Thebes in ruins far and wide, these flames dared not to
burn so great a poet's house ; and his descendants, safe 'mid a thousand
swords, learned that his ashes still were young through fame that lives
for aye.' — Carmina, &c. p. 173.
1 ' Ninth among lyric bards, iEolian Sappho joins the crew ; she
who by flowing water plucks Pieria's rose for venturous Love to twine
in wreaths for his own brow; who with her dulcet lyre sings fair
Cyrinna's charms, and Megara, and Atthis and sweet Anactoria, and
Telesippa of the flowing hair. And thee, too, Phaon, beautiful in youth's
rathe flower, on thee she gazes, thee she calls again ; suoh power to
thee gave Venus for her freightage in thy skiff, or else the herb of love.
Vet at the last, not wisely bold, she leaps into the Ambracian waves.'
Ib. *c. p. 175.

J32 RENAISSANCE IN ITALY
/Eschylus aerias casu testudinis ictus,
Quemque senem meritse rapuerunt gaudia palmas,
Quemque tegit rabidis lacerum pia Pella molossis.1
Nor are his observations on the comic dramatists less
meagre.2 The Eoman poets having been passed in the same
rapid review, PoUziano salutes the founders of Italian Utera
ture in the following fine passage : —
Nee tamen aligerum fraudarim hoc munere Dantem,
Per Styga, per Stellas, mediique per ardua montis
Pulchra Beatricis sub virginis ora volantem :
Quique Cupidineum repetit Petrarcha triumphum :
Et qui bis quinis centum argumenta diebus
Pingit, et obscuri qui semina monstrat amoris :
Unde tibi immensse veniunt praBconia laudis,
Ingeniis opibusque potens Florentia mater.3
The transition to Lorenzo at this point is natural. A
solemn peroration in praise of the Medicean prince, himself
a poet, whose studies formed the recreation of severer labours,
ends the composition. This is written in PoUziano's best
style, and, though it is too long to quote, six lines may be
selected as indicating the theme of the argument : —
Quodque alii studiumque vocant durumque laborem,
Hic tibi ludus erit ; fessus civilibus actis
Hue is emoritas acuens ad carmina vires :

1 ' iEschylus, smitten by a tortoise falling from the air above his
head, and he whose triumph, justly won in old age, killed him with
excess of joy, and he whose body, torn by raging hounds, the reverent
earth of Pella hides.'— Carmina, &a. p. 176.
« Ib. p. 177.
J ' Nor yet of this meed of honour would I cheat wing-bearing Dante,
who flew through hell, through the starry heavens, and o'er the inter
mediate hill of purgatory beneath the beauteous brows of Beatrice;
and Petraroh too, who tells again the tale of Cupid's triumph ; or him
who in ten days portrays a hundred stories, and lays bare the seeds
of hidden love : from whom unmeasured fame and name are thine,
by wit and wealth twice potent, Florence, mother of great sons I ' — Ib.
p, 178.

THE ' NUTRICIA ' 333
Felix ingenio, felix cui peotore tantas
Instaurare vices, cui fas tam magna capaci
Alternare animo, et varias ita nectere ouras.1
We possess the whole of Poliziano in the ' Nutricia.' It
displays the energy of inteUect that carried him on bounding
verse through the intricacies of a subject difficult by reason
of its scope and magnitude. AU his haste is here, his in
ability to poUsh or select, his lava-stream of language hurry
ing the dross of prose and scorias of erudition along a burning
tide of song. His memory held, as it were, in solution aU
the matter of antique Uterature ; and when he wrote, he
poured detaUs forth in torrents, combining them with critical
remarks, for the double purpose of instruction and panegyric.
Taken at the lowest valuation by students to whom his
copious stores of knowledge are famUiar, the vivid and
continuous melody of his leaping hexameters places the
' Nutricia ' above the lucubrations of more fastidious Latinists.
We must also remember that, when it was recited from the
professorial Chan* of Ehetoric at Florence, the magnetism
of Pohziano's voice and manner supplied just that touch of
charm the poem lacks for modern readers ; nor was the
matter so hackneyed at the end of the fifteenth century as it
is now. LUius Gyraldus, subjecting the ' Sylvae ' to criticism
at a time when Latin poetry had been artistically polished
by the best wits of the age of Leo, passed upon them a judg
ment which may even now be quoted as final.3 ' Poliziano's
learning was marveUous, his genius fervent and well-trained,
his reading extensive and uninterrupted; yet he appears to
1 ' What other men call study and hard toil, that for thee shall be
pastime ; wearied with deeds of state, to this thou hast recourse, and
dost address the vigour of thy well-worn powers to song : blest in thy
mental gifts, blest to be able thus to play so many parts, to vary thus
the great cares of thy all-embracing mind, and weave so many divers
duties into one.' — Carmina, &c. p. 179.
2 'Dialogus de Poetis nostri Temporis.' Opp. vol. ii. p. 388. Edition
of Basle, 1580.

884 RENAISSANCE IS ITALY
have composed his verses with more heat than art, using too
little judgment both in the selection of his materials and in
the correction of his style. When, however, you read his
' SylvaB,' the impression left upon your mind wiU be such that
for the moment you wiU lack nothing.'
The second poem of the ' Sylvse,' entitled ' Eusticus,'
forms an induction to the study of bucoUc poets, principaUy
Hesiod and Virgil. It is distinguished by more originahty
and play of fancy than the ' Nutricia ; ' some of its delinea
tions of landscape and sketches of country life compete not
unfavourably with similar passages in the author's ' Stanze.'
To dwell upon these beauties in detail, and to compare
Poliziano, the Latin poet, with Poliziano, the Italian, would
be a pleasant task. Yet I must confine myseU to quoting
the last, and in some respects the least imaginative, lines, for
the sake of their historical interest. Careggi and Florence,
Lorenzo and his circle of literary friends, rise before us in
these verses : —
Tafia Fesuleo lentus meditabar in antro,
Rure suburbano Medicum, qua mons sacer urbem
Mseoniam, longique volumina despicit Ami :
Qua bonus hospitium felix placidamque quietem
Indulget Laurens, Laurens haud ultima Phcebi
Gloria, jactatis Laurens fida anchora Musis;
Qui si certa magis permiserit otia nobis,
Afflabor majore Deo, nee jam ardua tantum
Silva meas voces, montanaque saxa loquentur,
Sed tu, si qua fides, tu nostrum forsitan olim,
0 mea blanda altrix, non aspernabere carmen,
Quamvis magnorum genitrix Florentia vatum,
Doctaque me triplici recinet facundia lingua.1
The third canto of the ' Sylvaa ' is caUed ' Manto.' It
relates the birth of Virgil, to whom the Muses gave their
1 ' On themes like these I spent my hours of leisure in the grottoes
of Fiesole, at the Medicean villa, where the holy hiU looks down upon
the Meonian city, and surveys the windings of the distant Arno..

THE 'MANTO' 33S
several gifts, whUe the Sibyl of Mantua foretold his future
course of Ufe and aU the glories he should gain by song.
The poem concludes with a rhetorical eulogy of Eome's chief
bard, so characteristic of Eenaissance enthusiasm for VirgU
that to omit a portion of it from these pages would be to
sacrifice one of the most striking examples of Italian taste in
scholarship : —
At manet aeternum, et seros excurrit in annos
Vatis opus, dumque in tacito vaga sidera mundo
Fulgebunt, dum sol nigris orietur ab Indis,
Praevia luciferis aderit dum curribus Eos,
Dum ver tristis hiems, autumnum proferet aestas,
Dumque fluet spirans refluetque reciproca Tethys,
Dum mixta alternas capient elementa figuras,
Semper erit magni decus immortale Maronis,
Semper inexhaustis ibunt haec flumina venis,
Semper ab his docti ducentur fontibus haustus,
Semper odoratos fundent haec gramina flores,
Unde piae Ubetis apes, unde inclyta nectat
Serta comis triplici juvenaUs Gratia dextrA.1
Not less ingenious than the poem itself is the elegiac
introduction. Poliziano feigns that when the Minyae came to
There good Lorenzo gives his friends a happy home and rest from
cares ; Lorenzo, not the last of Phoebus' glorious band ; Lorenzo, the
firm anchor of the Muses tempest-tost. If only he but grant me greater
ease, the inspiration of a mightier god will raise my soul ; nor shall
the lofty woods alone and mountain rocks resound my words ; but
thou— such faith have I — thou too shalt sometime hear, kind nurse of
mine, nor haply scorn my song, thou, Florence, mother of imperial
bards, and learned eloquence in three great tongues shall give me fame.'
Carmina, &c. p. 196.
1 ' Nay, but for everlasting lives our poet's work, abides, and goes
forth toward the ages late in time. So long as in the silent firmament
the stars shall shine ; so long as day shall rise from sun-burned Ind ; so
long as Phosphor runs before the wheels of light ; so long as gloomy
winter leads to spring, and summer to autumn ; while breathing ocean
ebbs and flows by turns, and the mixed elements put on their changing
shapes— so long, for ever, shall endure great Maro's fame, for ever shall
flow these rivers from his unexhausted fount, for ever shall draughts
of learning be drawn from these rills, for ever shall these meadows yield

336 RENAISSANCE IN ITALY
Cheiron's cave on PeUon, and supped with him, Orpheus sang
a divine melody, and then the young Achilles took the lyre,
and with rude fingers praised the poet's song. The Minyaa
smiled, but Orpheus was touched by the boy-hero's praises.
Even so wUl Maro haply take delight in mine : —
Finis erat dapibus ; citharam pius excitat Orpheus,
Et movet ad doctas verba canora manus.
Conticuere viri, tenuere silentia venti,
Vosque retro cursum mox tenuistis aquae.
Jam volucres fessis pendere sub sethera pennis,
Jamque truces videas ora tenere feras.
Decurrunt scopuUs auritae ad carmina querous,
Nudaque Peliacus culrnina motat apex.
Et jam materno permulserat omnia cantu,
Cum tacuit, querulam deposuitque fidem.
Occupat hanc audax, digitosque affringit Achilles,
Indoctumque rudi personat ore puer.
Materiam quaeris 1 laudabat carmina blandi
Hospitis, et tantae murmura magna lyrse.
Riserunt MinyaB : sed enim tibi dicitur, Orpheu,
Hsec pueri pietas grata fuisse nimis.
Me quoque nunc magni nomen celebrare Maronis,
Si qua fides vero est, gaudet et ipse Maro.1
The fourth poem, bearing the name of 'Ambra,' forms
a similar induction to the study of Homer. The youth of
their perfumed flowers, to pasture holy bees, and give the youthful
Graces garlands for their hair.' — Carmina, &c. p. 207.
1 ' Supper was over ; Orpheus awakes the lyre, and sings a melody
to suit the tune he plays. The men were silent ; the winds hushed ;
the rivers held their waters back to hear ; the birds hung motionless
in air ; and the wild beasts grew calm. From the cliffs the oaks run
down with listening ears, and the top of Pelion nods his barren head.
And now the bard had soothed the whole world with his mother's song ;
when he ceased from singing and put down the thrilling lyre. This
bold Achilles seizes ; he runs his fingers o'er the strings, and chaunts
an untaught lay, the simple boy. What was his theme ? you ask. He
praised the singing of the gentle guest, the mighty murmurs of that
lyre divine. The Minyse laughed ; but yet, so runs the tale, even all
too sweet, Orpheus, to thee wa3 the boy's homage. Just so my praiss
of mighty Maro's name, if faith be not a dream, gives joy to Maro's
self.'— Carmina, 4c. p. 197.

THE 'AMBRA' 83}
Homer is narrated, and how Achilles appeared to him, blind
ing him with the vision of his heroic beauty, and giving him
the wand of Teiresias. Then follow descriptions of both
' Biad ' and ' Odyssey,' and a passage of high-flown panegyric ;
the whole ending with these lines on Lorenzo's vUla of
Cajano : —
Et nos ergo illi grata pietate dicamus
Hanc de Pierio contextam flore coronam,
Quam mihi Cajanas inter pulcherrima nymphaa
Ambra dedit patriae lectam de gramine ripae ;
Ambra mei Laurentis amor, quem corniger Umbro,
Umbro senex genuit domino gratissimus Arno,
Umbro suo tandem non erepturus ab alveo.1
Taking into consideration the purpose fulfilled by PoU
ziano's ' Sylvae ' in his professorial career, it is impossible to
deny their merit. The erudition is borne with ease ; it does
not clog or overload the poet's impulse. The flattery of
Lorenzo is neither fulsome nor unmerited. The verse flows
strongly and majestically, though more variety of cadence in
the hexameter may be desired. The language, in spite of
repetitions and Ul-chosen archaisms, is rich and varied; it
has at least the charm of being the poet's own, not culled
with scrupulous anxiety from one or two illustrious sources.
Some of the pictures are deUcately sketched, while the whole
style produces the effect of eloquent and fervid improvisation.
For fulness and rapidity of utterance, copious fancy, and
wealth of Ulustration, these four poems will bear comparison
with Eoman work of the SUver Age. The Florentines who
crowded PoUziano's lecture-room must have felt as in the
1 ' We also, therefore, with glad homage dedicate to him this garland
twined of Pieria's flowers, which Ambra, loveliest of Cajano's nymphs,
gave to me, culled from meadows on her father's shores ; Ambra, the
love of my Lorenzo, whom Umbrone, the horned stream, begat —
Umbrone, dearest to his master Arno, Umbrone, who now benoefortb
will never break his banks again.' — Carmina, &a. p. 224.
II z

338 RENAISSANCE IN ITALY
days of the Empire, when Statius declaimed his periods to a
Eoman audience, and the patrician critics clapped applause.1
Among Poliziano's minor poems it is enough to mention
the elegiac couplets on some violets sent him by his mistress,
the verses descriptive of a beautiful girl, and the lamentation
for the wife of Sismondo della Stufa.2 They illustrate the
delicacy of his style and the freedom of his fancy in the
treatment of occasional themes, and are far superior to his
epigrams and epitaphs.8 The numerous eucomiastic elegies
addressed to Lorenzo de' Medici and other patrons are wholly
without value. Poliziano was a genuine poet. He needed
the inspiration of true feeling or of lively fancy ; on a tame
occasion he degenerated into frigid baldness. Yet the satires
on MabUius, where spite and jealousy have stirred his genius,
are striking for their volubility and pungency. A Eoman
imitator of CatuUus in his brutal mood could not have pro
duced abuse more flexible and nauseous. Taken altogether,
Poliziano's Latin compositions display the qualities of fluency
and abundance that characterise his ItaUan verses, though
they have not the exquisite polish of the ' Giostra.' Their final
merit consists in their spontaneity. No styUst of the age of
Leo knew how to use the language of classic Eome with so
much ease.
Jovianus Pontanus deserves a high place among the writers
of Latin verse, whether we regard his didactic poems on
astronomy and the cultivation of the orange, his epigrams, or
the amorous elegies that, for their grace, may be compared
almost with Ovid.4 Even during his lifetime Pontanus
became a classic, and after his death he was imitated by the
1 CI. Juvenal, Satire, i. 9-14; vii. 81-87. Persius.Sa^nj.i. 79-82. And
cf. Petronius Arbiter for a detailed picture of these Roman recitations.
2 Carmina Quinque, &c. pp. 250, 272, 276.
* The epitaphs on Giotto, Lippo Lippi, the fair Simonetta, and others,
are only valuable for their historic interest, such as that is.
' I shall quote from his Collected Poems, Aldus, 1513.

MINOR POEMS 338
most ambitious versifiers of the late Eenaissance.1 The
beauty of South ItaUan landscape — Sorrento's orange gardens
and Baiae's waters — passed into the fancy of the Neapolitan
poets, and gave colour to their language. Nor was Pontanus,
in spite of his severe studies and gravely-tempered mind, dead
to the seductions of this siren. What we admire in San-
nazzaro's ' Arcadia ' assumes the form of pure Latinity in his
love poems.2 Their style is penetrated with the feeling for
physical beauty, Pagan and untempered by an afterthought
of Christianity. Their vigorous and glowing sensuaUty finds
no just analogue except in some Venetian paintings. It was
not, however, byhisUghter verses so much as by the five books
caUed ' De SteUis ' or ' Urania ' that Pontanus won the admira
tion of ItaUan scholars. In this long series of hexameters he
contrived to set forth the whole astronomical science of his
age, touching upon the mythology of the celestial signs, de
scribing the zodiac, discussing the motion of the heavens,
raising the question of planetary influences, and characteris
ing the different regions of the globe by their relation to the
sun's path across the sky. He seems to have taken the
' Metamorphoses ' of Ovid for his model of versification ; and
though we miss the variety of Ovid's treatment, great
ingenuity is displayed in adorning so difficult a subject with
poetical episodes.3 Personal interest is added to the con-
elusion of ' Urania ' by the lamentation poured forth for his
daughter Lucia by the poet : —
Ornabam tibi serta domi ; Syriumque liquorem
Ad thalamos gemmae, geminae, tua cura, sorores

1 See the Elegy of Sannazzaro on the writings of Pontanus, Poemata
Selecta, pp. 1-4, and Fracastoro's Syphilis, ib. p. 72.
2 Delitim Poetarum Italorum, pt. ii. pp. 668-712. Specimens may
also be read in the Poemata Selecta Italorum, pp. 1-24.
¦ See, for instance, the tale of Hylas, lib. v. p. 103 ; the tale of Cola
Pesce, lib. iv. p. 79 ; the council of the gods, lib. i. p. 18 ; the planet
Venus, lib. i. p. 5.
22

840 EENAISSANCE IN ITALY
Fundebant. Quid pro sertis Syrioque liquore
Liquisti ? Sine sole dies, sine sidere noctes,
Insomnes noctes.1
Lucia died before her marriage-day, and her grey-headed
father went mourning for her, fooled by memory, vainly
seeking the joy that could not come again. Had she become,
he asks, a star in heaven, and did the blessed gods and
heroines enjoy her splendour? No voice replied when he
called into the darkness, nor did new consteUations beam on
him with brightness from his daughter's eyes. AU through
the wakeful night he mourned, but when dawn went forth he
marked a novel lustre on the sea and in the sky. Lucia had
been added to the nymphs of morning. She smUed upon her
father as she fled before the wheels of day ; and now the sun
himself arose, and in his light her hght was swaUowed :
Hyperion scaled the heights of heaven with more than his
own glory. With this apotheosis of his daughter, so curiously
Pagan in feeling, and yet so far from classical in taste, the
poem might have ended, had not Pontano reserved its final
honours for himself. To Lucia, now made a goddess, he
addresses his prayers that she should keep his name and
fame alive on earth when he is dead :—
Fama ipsa assistens tumulo cum vestibus aureis,
Ore ingens, ac voce ingens, ingentibus alis,
Per populos late ingenti mea nomina plausu
Vulgabit, titulosque feret per ssacula nostros ;
Plaudentesque meis resonabunt laudibus anrse,
Vivet et extento celeber Jovianus in sbvo.2

1 Lib. v. pp. 105-108. ' For thee I hung the house with wreaths ;
and thy twin sisters poured forth Syrian perfumes at the marriage
chamber. What for our garlands and our perfumes hast thou left?
Days without light, nights without a star, long sleepless nights.'
2 ' Fame herself, seated by my tomb with golden raiment, mighty-
mouthed, mighty-voiced, with mighty wings, shall spread abroad among
the people my names with mighty sound of praise, and carry through
the centuries my titles, and with my glory shall resound applauding
airs of heaven ; renowned through everlasting ages Jovian shall live.'

SANNAZZARO'S EPIGRAMS 341
Sannazzaro's own elegies on the joys of love and oountrj
life, the descriptions of his boyhood at Salerno, the praises of
his ViUa Mergillina, and his meditations among the ruins of
Cumae, are marked by the same characteristics. Nothing
quite so fuU of sensual enjoyment, so soft, and so voluptuous
can be found in the poems of the Florentine and Eoman
scholars. They deserve study, if only as illustrating the
luxurious tone of literature at Naples. It was not by these
lighter effusions, however, that Sannazzaro won his fame.
The epic on the birth of Christ cost him twenty years of
labour ; and when it was finished, the learned world of Italy
welcomed it as a model of correct and poUshed writing. At
the same time the critics seem to have felt, what cannot fail
to strike a modern reader, that the difficulties of treating such
a 'theme in the Virgilian manner, and the patience of the
styUst, had rendered it a masterpiece of ingenuity rather
than a work of genius.1 Sannazzaro's epigrams, composed
in the spirit of bitterest hostility towards the Borgia family,
were not less famous than his epic. Alfonso of Aragon took
the poet with him during his campaign against the Papal
force in the Abruzzi ; and these satires, hastily written in
the tent and by the camp-fire, formed the amusement of his
officers. From the soldiers of Alfonso they speedily passed, on
the lips of courtiers and scholars, through all the cities of Italy ;
nor is it easy to say how much of Lucrezia Borgia's legend
may not be traceable to their brief but envenomed couplets.
What had been the scandal of the camp acquired consistency
in lines too pungent to be forgotten and too witty to remain
1 ' Lilius Gyraldus,' loc. cit. p. 384, writes about this epic, ' in quibus,
ut sic dicam, statarius poeta videri potest. Non enim verborum volu-
bilitate fertur, sed limatius quoddam soribendi genus consectatnr, et
lima indies atterit, ut de illo non ineleganter dictum illud Apellis de
Protogene Pontanus usurpare solitus esset, eum manum de tabula tollere
nescire.'

342 RENAISSANCE IN ITALY
unquoted.1 As a specimen of Sannazzaro's style, the epigram
on Venice may here be cited : —
Viderat Hadriacis Venetam Neptunus in undis
Stare urbem, et toto ponere jura mari :
Nunc mihi Tarpeias quantumvis, Jupiter, arces
Objice, et ilia tui mcenia Martis, ait :
Si Pelago Tybrim praefers, urbem aspice utramque ;
Illam homines dices, hanc posuisse deos.3
I have already touched upon the VirgUianism of San
nazzaro's ' Partus Virginis.'3 What the cold churches of
PaUadio are to Christian architecture, this frigid epic is to
Christian poetry. Leo X. delighted to recognise the Gospel
narrative beneath a fancy dress of mythological inventions,
and to witness the triumph of classical scholarship in the
holy places of the mediasval faith. To fuse the traditions of
BibUcal and secular antiquity was, as I have often said, the
dream of the Eenaissance. What Pico and Ficino attempted
in philosophical treatises, the poets sought to effect by form.
EeUgion, attiring herself in classic drapery, threw off the
cobwebs of the Catacombs, and acquired the right of petites
entries at the Vatican. It did not signify that she had sacrificed
her majesty to fashion, or that her tunic d la mode antique
was badly made. Her rouge and spangles enchanted the
scholarly Pontiff, who forthwith ordered Vida to compose the
' Christiad,' and gave him a benefice at Frascati in order that
he might enjoy a poet's ease. Vida's epic, like Sannazzaro's,
1 See Delitice Poetarum Italorum, second part, pp. 713-761. The
following couplet on the death of Cesare Borgia is celebrated : —
Aut nihil aut CsBsar vult dici Borgia ; quidni ?
Cum simul et Csesar possit et esse nihil.
2 'When Neptune beheld Venice stationed in the Adriatio waters,
and giving laws to all the ocean, "Now taunt me, Jupiter, with the
Tarpeian rock and those walls of thy son Mars ! " he cried. " If thou
pref errest Tiber to the sea, look on both cities ; thou wilt say the one
was built by men, the other by gods." '
• See above, p. 288.

VIDA'S DIDACTIC POEMS 343
was not finished during the lifetime of Leo. Both the
' Christiad ' and the ' Partus Virginis ' reflected lustre on the
age of Clement.
Vida won his first laurels in the field of didactic poetry.
Virgilian exercises on the breeding of silkworms and the game
of chess displayed his faculty for investing famihar subjects
with the graces of a polished style.1 Such poems, whether
written in Latin, or, like the * Api ' of Eucellai, in ItaUan,
gratified the taste of the Eenaissance, always appreciative of
form independent of the matter it invested. For a modern
student Vida's metrical treatise in three books on the ' Art of
Poetry' has greater interest; since it illustrates the final
outcome of classic studies in the age of Leo. The ' Poetica '
is addressed to Francis, Dauphin of France, in his Spanish
prison : 2 —
Primus ades, Franoisce ; sacras ne despice Musas,
Regia progenies, cui regum debita sceptra
GaJlorum, cum firma annis accesserit aetas.
Haec tibi parva ferunt jam nunc solatia dulces ;
Dum procul a patria raptum, amplexuque tuorum,
Ah dolor ! Hispanis sors impia detinet oris,
Henrico cum fratre ; patris sic fata tulerunt
Magnanimi, dum fortuna luctatur iniqua.
Parce tamen, puer, o lacrymis ; fata aspera forsan
Mitescent, aderitque dies laetissima tandem
Post triste exilium patriis cum redditus oris
Laetitiam ingentem populorum, omnesque per urbes
Accipies plausus, et laetas undique voces ;
Votaque pro reditu persolvent debita matres.
Interea te Pierides comitentur ; in altos
Jam te Parnassi mecum aude attollere lucos.3

1 Bombycum ; Libri duo. Scacchia, Ludus ; Liber unus. Pope's
Poemata Italorum, vol. i. pp. 103-130 ; pp. 190-210. The former poem
is addressed to Isabella Gonzaga, nee D'Este.
2 Poemata Selecta, pp. 207-266. It will be remembered that
Francis I., after Pavia, gave his two sons as hostages to Charles V.
3 ' Thou, Francis, art the first to answer to my call. Scorn not the
sacred Muses, scion of a royal line, to whom the sceptre of the kings
of Gallia in due season of maturity will pass. Their sweetness even

344 RENAISSANCE IN ITALY
After this dedication Vida describes the solace to be found
in poetry, and adds some precepts on the preparation of the
student's mind.1 A rapid review of the history of poetry —
the decline of Greek inspiration after Homer, and of Latin
after Virgil ; the qualities of the SUver Age, and the Eevival
of letters under the Medici at Florence — serves to show how
narrow the standard of ItaUan culture had become between
the period of Poliziano, who embraced so much in his sketch
of literature, and that of Vida, who confined himself to so
little. The criticism is not unjust ; but it proves that the
refinement of taste by scholarship had resulted in restricting
students to one or two models, whom they followed with
servility.2 Having thus established his general view of the
now shall yield thee some slight solace, exiled from home and father
land by fate impiteous on the Spanish shore, thee and thy brother
Henry. So the fortunes of thy mighty-hearted father willed, condemned
to strive against unequal doom. Yet spare thy tears : perchance hard
fate will soften, and a day of supreme joy will come at last, when, after
thy sad exile, onoe more given to thy nation, thou shalt behold thy
country's gladness, and hear the shouts of all her cities and the ringing
songs of happiness, and mothers shall perform their vows for thy return.
Meanwhile let the maidens of Pieria attend thee ; and, with me for
guide, ascend into the groves of high Parnassus.'
1 tibi digna supellex
Verborum rerumque paranda est, proque videnda
Instant multa prius, quorum vatum indiget usus.
Poemata Selecta, p. 209.
» After mentioning the glories of Virgil, Vida adds : —
Sperare nef as sit vatibus ultra.
Nulla mora, ex illo in pejus ruere omnia visa,
Degenerare animi, atque retro res lapsa referri.
Hic namque ingenio confisus posthabet artem ;
Hie f urit Btrepitu, tenditque square tubarum
Voce sonos, versusque tonat sine more per omnes ;
Dant alii cantus vacuos, et inania verba
Incassum, sola capti dulcedine vocis.
Poemata Selecta, p. 213. Cf. the advice (p. 214) to follow none but
Virgil:— Ergo ipsum ante alios animo venerare Maronem,
Atque unum sequere, utque potes. vestigia serva.

ART OF POETRY US
poetic art, Vida proceeds to sketch a plan of education. The
quaUties and duties of a tutor are described ; and here we
may notice how far Vittorino's and Guarino's methods had
created an ideal of training for Italy. The preceptor must
above aU things avoid violence, and aim at winning the
affections of his pupU ; it would be weU for him to associate
several youths in the same course of study, so as to arouse
their emulation. He must not neglect their games, and must
always be careful to suit his method to the different talents of
his charges. When the special studies to be followed are dis
cussed, Vida points out that Cicero is the best school of Latin
style. He recommends the early practice of bucolic verse,
and inculcates the necessity of treating youthful essays with
indulgence. These topics are touched with more or less
felicity of phrase and illustration; and though the subject-
matter is sufficiently trite, the good sense and kindly feeling
of the writer win respect. The first book concludes with a
peroration on the dignity and sanctity of poets, a theme the
humanists were never weary of embroidering.1 The second
describes the quaUties of a good poem, as these were con
ceived by the refined but formal taste of the sixteenth century.
It should begin quietly, and manage to excite without satis
fying the curiosity of the reader. Vain displays of learning
are to be avoided. Episodes and simUes must occur at proper
intervals ; and a frugal seasoning of humour wiU be found
agreeable. AU repetitions should be shunned, and great care
should be taken to vary the narrative with picturesque de
scriptions. Ehetoric, again, is not unworthy of attention, when
the poet seeks to place convenient and specious arguments in
the mouths of his personages.
1 Dona deum Museb : vulgus procul este profanum.
Poemata Selecta, p. 224 ; and again, ib. p. 226 :—
Tu Jovis ambrosiis das nos accumbere mensis ;
Tu nos diis ssquas superis, &c.

346 RENAISSANCE IN ITALY
It is difficult in a summary to do justice to this portion of
Vida's poem. His description of the ideal epic is indeed
nothing more or less than a refined analysis of the ' iEneid ; '
and students desirous of learning what the ItaUans of the
sixteenth century admired in Virgil wiU do weU to study its
acute and sober criticism. A panegyric of Leo closes the
second book. From this peroration some lines upon the woes
of Italy may be read with profit, as proving that the nation,
conscious of its own decline, was contented to accept the
primacy of culture in exchange for independence . —
Dii Romas indigetes, Trojae tuque auotor, ApoUo
Unde genus nostrum cceli se tollit ad astra,
Hanc saltern auferri laudem prohibete Latinis :
Artibus emineat semper, studiisque Minervae,
Itaha, et gentes doceat pulcherrima Roma ;
Quandoquidem armorum penitus fortuna recessit,
Tanta Italos inter crevit diseordia reges ;
Ipsi nos inter sacros distringimus enses,
Nee patriam pudet externis aperire tyrannis.1
The third book treats of style and diction. To be clear
and varied, to command metaphor and allusion, to choose
phrases coloured by mythology and fancy, to suit the language
to the subject, to vary the metrical cadence with the thought
and feeling, and to be assiduous hi the use of the file are
mentioned as indispensable to excellence. A peroration on
Virgil, sonorous and impassioned, closes the whole poem,
which, rightly understood, is a monument erected to the
fame of the Eoman bard by the piety of his Italian pupil.
The final lines are justly famous : —
1 ' Ye native gods of Eome 1 and thou, Apollo, Troy's founder ! by
whom our race is raised to heaven 1 let not at least this glory be with
drawn from Latium's ohildren : may Italy for ever hold the heights of
art and learning, and most beauteous Borne instruct the nations ; albeit
aU success in arms be lost, so great hath grown the discord of Italia's
princes. Yea, one against the other, we draw bloody swords, nor feel
we any shame in calling foreign tyrants into our own land.' — Poemaia
Selecta, p. 245.

PANEGYRIC OF VIRGDL 847
0 decus Italiae ! lux o clarissima vatum 1
Te colimus, tibi serta damus, tibi thura, tibi araa ;
Et tibi rite sacrum semper dioemus honorem
Camiinibus memores. Salve, sanctissime vates 1
Laudibus augeri tua gloria nil potis ultra,
Et nostrae nil vocis eget ; nos aspice praesens,
Pectoribusque tuos castis infunde calores
Adveniens, pater, atque animis te te insere nostris.1
Vida's own inteUect was clear, and his style perspicuous ;
but his genius was mediocre. His power lay hi the dis
position of materials and- in illustration. A precise taste,
formed on Cicero and Virgil, and exercised with judgment in
a narrow sphere, satisfied his critical requirements. Virgil
with him was first and last, and midst and without end. In
a word, he shows what a scholar of sound parts and rhetorical
aptitude could achieve by the study and imitation of a single
author. Since I have begun to speak of didactic poems, I may
take this opportunity of noticing Fracastoro, who seems to
have chosen Pontanus for his model, and, while emulating
both Lucretius and VirgU, to have fallen short of Vida's
elegance. His work is less remarkable for purity of diction
than for massiveness of inteUect, gravity of matter, and
constructive abiUty. Jeronimo Fracastoro was born hi 1483
at Verona, where he spent the greater portion of his life,
enjoying high reputation as a physician, philosopher,
astronomer, and poet. During his youth he studied under
Pomponazzo at Padua. The strong tincture of materialistic
science he there received, continued through life to colour his
1 ' Hail, light of Italy, thou brightest of the bards I Thee we
worship, thee we adore with wreaths, with frankincense, with altars;
to thee, as duty bids, for everlasting will we chaunt our holy hymns.
Hail, consecrated bard I No increase to thy glory flows from praise,
cor needs it voice of ours. Be near, and look upon thy votaries ; come,
father, and infuse thy fervour into our chaste hearts, and plant thyself
within our souls.' — Poemata Selecta, p. 266.

348 RENAISSANCE IN ITALY
thought. Among modern Pagans none is more completely
bare of Christianity than Fracastoro. As is well known, he
chose the new and terrible disease of the Eenaissance for his
theme, and gave a name to it that stUl is current. To speak
of Fracastoro's ' Syphilis,' dedicated to Bembo, haUed with
acclamation by aU Italy, preferred by Sannazzaro to his own
epic, and praised by Julius Caesar Scaliger as a ' divine poem,'
is not easy now. The plague it celebrates appeared at Naples
in 1495, and spread like wildfire over Europe, assuming at
first the form of an epidemic sparing neither Pope nor king,
and stirring less disgust than dread among its victims.1
Whether the laws of its propagation were rightly understood
in the sixteenth century is a question for physicians to decide.
No one appears to have suspected that it differed in specific
character from other. pestUent disorders ; and it is clear, both
from contemporary chronicles and from Fracastoro's poem,
that the mal franzese, as it was popularly caUed, suggested
to the people of that age associations different from those
that have since gathered round it. At the same time more
formidable and less loathsome, it was a not more unworthy
subject for verse than the plague at Athens described by
Lucretius. Treating the disease, therefore, as a curse common
to his generation, the scientific poet dared to set forth its
symptoms, to prescribe remedies, to discuss the question of
its origin, and to use it as an Ulustration of antagonistic
forces, pernicious and beneficent, in the economy of nature.
To philosophise his repulsive subject-matter was the author's
ambition. His contemporaries admired the poetic graces with
which he had contrived to adorn it.
The exordium of the first book states the problem.
Whence came this new scourge of humanity ? Not, surely,
from America, though it is there indigenous. Its diffusion
after the disasters of 1494 was too rapid to admit of this
1 See Vol. L, Age of the Despots, p. 433, note.

THE POEM ' SYPHILIS ' 349
hypothesis.1 To the corruption of the atmosphere must be
referred the general invasion of the plague.2 The theory of
infected and putrescent air is stated in a long Lucretian
passage, foUowed by a scientific account of the symptoms of
syphiUs. At this point the poet diversifies his argument by
an episode, narrating the sad death of a young man born on
the banks of the OgUo, and leading by gradual transitions to
a peroration on the wars and woes of Italy.3 Over all the
poets of this age the miseries of their country hung like a
cloud, and, touch the lyre as they may at the beginning of
their song, it is certain ere the ending to give forth a dolorous
groan. In the second book Fracastoro enters on the subject
of remedies. He lays stress on choice of air, abundant
exercise, avoidance of wine and heating diet, blood-letting,
abstinence from sensual pleasures, fomentations, herbs, and
divers minute rules of health. By attention to these matters
the disease may be, if not shunned, at least mitigated. The
sovereign remedy of quicksUver demanded fuller illustration ;
therefore the poet introduces the legendary episode of the
shepherd Dceus, conducted by the nymph Lipare to the
sulphur founts and lakes of mercury beneath Mount Etna.
Ilceus bathed, and was renewed in health. The rigorously
didactic intention of Fracastoro is proved by the recipe for a
mercurial ointment and the description of saUvation that
wind up this book.4 The third opens with an allusion to the
1 quoniam in primis ostendere multos
Possumus, attaetu qui nullius hanc tamen ipsam
Sponte sua sensere luem, primique tulere.
Poemata Selecta, p. 67.
- Quumque animadvertas, tam vastse semina labia
Esse nee in terrse gremio, nee in sequore posse,
Haud dubie tecum statuas reputesque necesse est,
Principium sedemque mali consistere in ipso
Aere, qui terras circum diffunditur omnes. Ibid. p. 69.
' Ibid. pp. 79, 80. 4 Ibid. pp. 95, 96.

350 RENAISSANCE IN ITALY
discovery of America, and a celebration of the tree Hyacus
(Guaiacum). It is noticeable that, with such an opportunity
for singing the praises of Columbus, Fracastoro passed him
by, nor cared to claim for Italy a share in the greatest
achievement of the century. Mingling myth with history, he
next proceeds to tell how the Spaniards arrived in the West
Indies, and shot birds sacred to the Sun,1 one of which spoke
with human voice, predicting the evils that would fall upon
the crew for their impiety. Not the least of these was to be
a strange and terrible disease. The natives of the islands
flocked to meet the strangers, and some of them were fettered
with a ghastly eruption. This leads to the episodical legend
of the shepherd Syphilus, who dared to deride the Sun-god,
and of the king Alcithous, who accepted divine honours in
his stead. The Sun, to requite the insolence of SyphUus,
afflicted him with a dreadful sickness. It yielded to no cure
until the nymph Ammerice initiated him in the proper
lustral rites, and led him to the tree Hyacus. The poem ends
with a panegyric of Guaiacum.
I have sketched the subject of the ' Syphilis ' in outline
because of its importance not only for the neo-Latin literature
of the Eenaissance, but also for the history of medical opinion.
As a didactic poem, it is constructed with considerable art ;
the style, though prosaic, is forcible, and the meaning is
always precise. Falling short of classic elegance, Fracastoro
may still be said to have fulfilled the requirements of Vida,
and to have added something male and vigorous peculiar to
himself. His adulatory verses to Alessandro Farnese, Paul III.,
and Juhus III. might be quoted as curious examples of ful
some flattery conveyed in a barocco style. They combine
1 These phrases he finds for a fowling-piece : —
Cava terrificis horrentia bombis
A era, et flammiferum tormenta imitantia fulmen.
Poemata Selecta, p. 101.

BEMBO'S ELEGIACS 351
Papal cant with Pagan mannerism, Virgilian and Biblical
phraseology, masculine gravity of diction and far-fetched con
ceits, in a strange amalgam, as awkward as it is ridiculous.1
Another group of Latin versifiers, with Bembo at their
head, cultivated the elegy, the idyll, and the ode. The authors
of their predilection were Catullus, Propertius, and Tibullus.
Abandoning the attempt to mould Christian or modern material
into classic form, they frankly selected Pagan motives, and
adhered in spirit as well as style to their models. Two elegiac
poems of Bembo's, the ' Priapus ' and the ' Faunus ad Nym-
peum Flumen,' may be cited as flagrant specimens of six
teenth-century Ucentiousness.2 Polished language and almost
faultless versification are wasted upon themes of rank obscenity.
The ' Priapus,' translated and amplified in Italian ottava
rima, gained a popular celebrity beyond the learned circles for
whom it was originally written. We may trace its influence
in many infamous Capitoli of the burlesque poets. Bembo
exceUed hi elegiac verse. In a poem entitled ' De Arnica a
Viro Servati,' he treated a characteristically ItaUan subject
with something of Ovid's graceful humour.3 A lover com
plains of Uving near his mistress, closely watched by her
jealous husband. Here, as elsewhere, the morality is less to
be admired than the versification ; and that the latter, in spite
of Bembo's scrupulous attention to metre, is not perfect, may
be gathered from this line : —
Tunc quos nunc habeo et quos sum olim habiturus amicos.
After reading hexameters so constructed we are tempted
to shut the book with a groan, wondering how it was that a
1 Cf. the passage about Alessandro Famese's journeys —
Matre dea comitante et iter monstrante nepoti —
and the reformation in Germany. Poemata Selecta, p. 125. The whole
idyll addressed to Julius HI., ib. pp. 130-135, is inconceivably uncouth.
* Carmina Quinqus Iilustrium Poetarum, pp. 4 and 9-11.
« Ib. pp. 18-28.

352 RENAISSANCE IN ITALY
Pope's secretary and a prince of the Church should have
thought it worth his while to compose a poem so injurious to
his reputation as a moralist, or to preserve in it a verse so
Uttle favourable to his fame as a Latinist. More beautiful,
because more true to classic inspiration, is the elegy of
' Galatea.' 1 The idyUic incidents suggest a series of pretty
pictures for basreliefs or decorative frescoes in the manner of
Albano. Bembo's masterpiece, however, in the elegiac metre,
is a poem with ' De Galeso et Maximo ' for its title.2 It was
composed, as the epigraph informs us, at the command of a
great man at Eome ; but whether that great man was also
the greatest in Eome, and whether Maximus was another
name for Leo, is matter of conjecture. The boy Galesus had
wronged Maximus, his master. When reproved, he offered no
excuses, called no witnesses, uttered no prayers to Heaven,
indulged in no asseverations of innocence, shed no tears : —
Nil horum aggreditur ; sed tantum ingrata loquentis
Implicitus collo dulce pependit onus.
Nee mora, cunctanti roseis tot pressa labellis
Oscula coehtibus invidiosa dedit,
Arida quot levibus fiorescit messis aristis,
Excita quot vernis floribus halat humus.
Maxime, quid dubitas ? Si te piget, ipse tuo me
Pone loco : hseo dubitem non ego ferre mala.*
Bembo's talent lay in compositions of this kind. His
verses, to quote the phrase of Gyraldus, were umformly
' sweet, soft, and deUcate.' When he attempted work involv-
1 Carmina Quinque UVustrium Poetarum, p. 7. 2 Ib. p. 23.
' None of these things he tried ; but only ran,
And clasped with his sweet arms the angry man ;
Hung on his neck, rained kisses forth that Heaven
Envied from those red lips to mortals given ;
In number like ripe ears of ruddy corn,
Or flowers beneath the breath of April born.
Still doubting, Maximus ? Change place with me :
Gladly I'd bear such infidelity.

THRENODY FOR POLIZIANO 3S3
ing more sustained effort of the inteUeot and greater variety
of treatment, he was not so successful. His hexameter poem
' Benacus,' a description of the Lago di Garda, dedicated to
Gian Matteo Giberti, reads like an imitation of Catullus
without the Eoman poet's grace of style or wealth of fancy.1
Among Bembo's most perfect compositions may be reckoned
his epitaphs on celebrated contemporaries. The following,
written for Poliziano, deserves quotation.2 Not only is the
death of the scholar, foUowing close upon that of his patron,
happily touched, but the last line pays a proper tribute to
Poliziano as an Italian poet : —
Duceret extincto cum mors Laurente triumphum,
Lsetaque pullatis inveheretur equis,
Respicit insano ferientem poUice chordas,
Viscera singultu concutiente, virum.
Mirata est, tenuitque jugum ; furit ipse, pioque
Laurentem cunctos flagitat ore Deos :
Miscebat precibus lacrymas, lacrymisque dolorem ;
Verba ministrabat liberiora dolor.
Risit, et antiquae non immemor flla querelas,
Orphei Tartareae cum patuere visa,
Hic etiam infernas tentat rescindere leges,
Fertque suas, dixit, in mea jura manus.
Protinus et flentem percussit dura poetajn,
Rupit et in medio pectora docta sono.
Heu sic tu raptus, sic te mala fata tulerunt,
Arbiter Ausonise, Politiane, lyrse.3

1 Carmina Quinque Hkistrium Poetarum, pp. 26-34. • 76. p. 38.
• ' When Lorenzo was dead, and Death went by in triumph, drawn
by her black horses, her eyes fell on one who madly struck the chords,
while sighs convulsed his breast. She turned, and stayed the car ; he
storms and calls on all the gods for Lorenzo, mixing tears with prayers,
and sorrow with his tears, while sorrow suggests words of wilder free
dom. Death laughed; remembering her old grudge, when Orpheus
made his way to hell, she cried, " Lo, he too seeks to abrogate our laws,
and lays his hand upon my rights 1 " Nor more delay ; she struck the
poet while he wept, and broke his heart-strings in the middle of his
3ighs. Alas 1 thus wast thou taken from us, ravished by harsh fate,
Politian, master of the Italian lyre I :
n * *

364 KEMAiSSAMUK iM ITALY
More richly endowed for poetry than Bembo was his
fellow-countryman Andrea Navagero. Few Latin versifiers
of the Eenaissance combined so much true feehng and fancy
with a style more pure and natural. Some of his little com
positions, half elegy, half idyU, have the grace and freedom
of the Greek Anthology.1 There is a simple- beauty in their
motives, while the workmanship reminds us of chiselling in
smooth waxy marble ; unlike the Eoman epigrammatists,
Navagero avoided pointed terminations.2 The picture of
Narcissus dead and transformed to a flower, in the elegy of
' Aeon,' might be quoted as a fair specimen of his manner : —
Magna Parens, quae cuncta leves producis in auras,
Totaque diverso germine picta nites ;
Quae passim arboribus, passim surgentibus herbis,
Sufficis omnifero larga alimenta sinu ;
Excipe languentem puerum, moribundaque membra,
iEternumque tua fac, Dea, vivat ope.
Vivet, et iUe vetus Zephyro redeunte quotarmis
In niveo candor flore perennis erit.3
The warnings addressed to his mistress in her country
rambles, to beware of rustic gods, and the whole eclogue of
' Iolas,' are written in a rich and facile style, that makes us
wonder whether some poet of the Graeco-Eoman period did
not Uve again in Navagero.4 Only here and there, as in the
' Notice especially ' Thyrsidis vota Veneri,' ' Invitatio ad amcenum
fontem,' ' Leucippem amicam spe prasmiorum invitat,' ' Vota Veneri ut
am'antibus faveai,' and ' In Almonem.'— Carmina, &c. pp. 52, 53, 54, 56.
2 Paolo Giovio noticed this; in his Elogia he writes, 'Epigram
mata nonfalsis aculeatisque finibus, sed tenerd Hid et prcedulci prised
suavitate claudebat.'
3 ' Mighty mother, thou who bringest all things forth to breathe the
liquid air, who shinest in thy painted robe of diverse budding hves, thou
who from thy teeming bosom givest nourishment to trees and sprouting
herbs in every region of the earth, take to thyself the fainting boy,
cherish his dying limbs, and make him live for ever by thy aid. Yes,
he shall live ; and that white loveliness of his, each year as spring re
turns, shall blossom in a snowy flower.'— Carmina, &o. p. 57.
4 ' Ad Gelliam rusticantem,' Carmina, <fcc. pp. 64-66. 'Iolas,' ib.
pp. 66-68.

ANDREA HAVAGERO 355
case of all this neo-Latin writing, an awkward word or a
defective cadence breaks the speU, and reminds us that it
was an artificial thing. A few lines forming the exordium to
an unfinished poem on Italy may be inserted here for their
intrinsic interest : —
Salve, cura Deum, mundi felicior ora,
FormossB Veneris dulces salvete recessus :
Ut vos post tantos animi mentisque labores
Aspicio, lustroque libens ! ut munere vestro
Solhcitas toto depeUo e pectore curas 1 1
Navagero, we are told, composed these verses on his return
from a legation to Spain. Born in 1483, he spent his youth
and early manhood in assiduous study. Excessive application
undermined his health, and Giovio relates that he began to
suffer from atra bilis, or the melancholy of scholars. The
Venetian Senate had engaged him to compose the history of
the EepubUc in Latin; this work was already begun when
iUness forced him to abandon it. He was afterwards employed
in an unsuccessful mission to Charles V. and in diplomatic
business at the Court of France. He died at Blois of fever,
contracted in one of his hurried journeys. He was only forty-
rax when he perished, bequeathing to immediate posterity the
fame of a poet at least equal to the ancients. In that age of
affectation and effort the natural flow of Navagero's verse,
sensuous without coarseness and highly coloured without
abuse of epithets, raised a chorus of applause that may strike
the modern student as excessive. The memorial poems written
on his death praise the purity of sentiment and taste which
made him burn a copy of Martial yearly to the chaste Muses.2
1 ' Hail, darling of the gods, thou happiest spot of earth I hail
chosen haunt of beauty's queen I What joy I feel to see you thus again,
and tread your shores after so many toils endured in mind and soul I
How from my heart by your free gift I cast all anxious cares 1 ' — Car
mina, &c. p. 84.
2 See the Hendecasyllabies oi Johannes Matthseus, Carmina, &0.
p. 86. *A2

856 RENAISSANCE IN ITALY
One friend caUs upon the Nereids to build his tomb by the
silent waters of the lagoons, and bids the Faun of Italy lament
with broken reeds.1 Another prophesies that his golden poems
wiU last as many years as there are flowers in spring, or
grapes in autumn, or storms upon the sea, or stars in heaven,
or kisses in Catullus, or atoms in the universe of Lucretius.2
A place very close to Navagero might be claimed for
Francesco Maria Molsa, a nobleman of Modena, who enjoyed
great fame at Eome for his Lathi and ItaUan poetry. After
a wild life of pleasure he died at the age of forty-one, worn
out with love and smitten by the plague of the Eenaissance.
The sweetest of his elegies celebrate the charms of Faustina
Mancini, his favourite mistress. In spite of what ItaUans
would call their morbidezza, it is impossible not to feel some
contempt for the polished fluency, the sensual relaxation, of
these soulless verses. A poem addressed to his friends upon
his sick bed, within sight of certain death, combines the
author's melody of cadence with a certain sobriety of thought
and tender dignity of feeling.3 It is, perhaps, of aU his
compositions the worthiest to live. The following couplets
describe the place which he would choose for his sepulchre : —
Non operosa peto titulos mihi marmora ponant,
Nostra sed accipiat fictilis ossa cadus ;
Exceptet gremio quae mox placidissima tellus,
Immites possint ne nocuisse ferae.
Rivulus haec circum dissectus obambulet, undo
Clivoso qualis tramite ducta sonat ;
Exiguis stet csesa notis super ossa sepulta,
Nomen et his servet parva tabeUa meum :
Uic jacet ante annos crudeli tabe peremptus
Molsa ; ter injecto pulvere, pastor, abi.

1 Basilius Zanchius, Carmina, &o. p. 85.
* M. Antonius Flaminius, ib. p. 85.
* Poemata Selecta, pp. 203-206. An elegy written by Janus Etruscus,
Pope's Poemata Italorum, vol. ii. p. 25, on a similar theme, though very
inferior to Molsa's, may be compared with it.

FRANCESCO MARIA MOLSA »«7
Forsitan in putrem longo post tempore glebam
Vertar, et haeo flores induet urna novos ;
Populus aut potius abruptis artubus alba
Formosa exsurgam conspicienda coma.
Scilicet hue diti peooris comitata magistro
Conveniet festo pulchra pueUa die ;
Quas moUes ductet choreas, et veste recincta
Ad certos norit membra movere modos.1
The Paganism of the Eenaissance, exchanging Christian
rites for old mythologies, and classic in the very tomb, has
rarely found sweeter expression than in this death song.
We trace in it besides a note of modern feeling, the romantic
sense of community with nature in the immortality of trees
and flowers.2
CastigUone cannot claim comparison with Navagero for
sensuous charm and easy flow of verse. Nor has he those
touches of genuine poetry which raise Molsa above the level
of a fluent versifier. His Latin exercises, however, offer
much that is interesting to a student of Eenaissance litera
ture ; whUe the depth of feeling and the earnestness of
thought in his clear and powerful hexameters surpass the
best efforts of Bembo's artificial muse. When we read the
1 ' I ask for no monument of wrought marble to proclaim my titles :
let a vase of baked clay receive these bones. Let earth, quietest of
resting-places, take them to herself, and save them from the injury of
ravening wolves. And let a running stream divide its waters round my
grave, drawn with the sound of music from a mountain-flank. A little
tablet carved with simple letters will be enough to mark the spot, and
to preserve my name : " Here lies Molsa, slain before his day by wast
ing sickness : cast dust upon him thrice, and go thy way, gentle shep
herd." It may be that after many years I shall turn to yielding clay,
and my tomb shall deck herself with flowers ; or, better, from my limbs
shall spring a white poplar, and in its beauteous foliage I shall rise
into the light of heaven. To this place will come, I hope, some lovely
maid attended by the master of the flock ; and she shall dance above
my bones and move her feet to rhythmic music'
* For the picture of the girl dancing on the lover's grave,, cf. Omar
Khayyam. Cf . too Walt Whitman's metaphor for grass—' the beautiful
uncut hair of graves.'

858 RENAISSANCE IN ITALY
idyll entitled • Alcon,' a lamentation for the friend whom
he had loved in youth —
Alcon dehciae Musarum et Apollinis, Alcon
Pars animae, cordis pars Alcon maxima nostri — '
we are impeUed to question how far Milton owed the form
of ' Lyeidas ' to these ItaUan imitations of the Graeco-Eoman
style. What seemed false in tone to Johnson, what still
renders that elegy the stumbling-block of taste to immature
and unsympathetic students, is the highly artificial form
given to natural feeling. Grief clothes herseU in metaphors,
and, abstainmg from the direct expression of poignant
emotion, dweUs on thoughts and images that have a beauty
of their own for solace. Nor is it in this quality of art alone
that ' Lyeidas ' reminds us of Eenaissance Latin verse. The
curious blending of allusions to Church and State with
pastoral images is no less characteristic of the Italian manner.
As in ' Lyeidas,' so also in these lines from CastigUone's
' Alcon,' the truth of sorrow transpires through a thin veil of
bucoUc romance : —
Heu miserande puer, fatis surrepte malignis I
Non ego te posthac, pastorum adstante corona,
Victorem aspiciam volucri certare sagitta ;
Aut jaculo, aut dura socios superare palaestra.
Non tecum posthac molli resupinus in umbra
Effugiam longos sestivo tempore soles :
Non tua vicinos mulcebit fistula montes,
Docta nee umbrosae resonabunt carmina valles :
Non tua corticibus toties inscripta Lycoris,
Atque ignis Galatea meus nos jam simul ambos
Audierint ambas nostros cantare furores.
Nos etenim a teneris simul usque hue viximus annis,
Frigora pertulimusque aestus noctesque diesque,
Communique simul sunt parta armenta labore.

' ' Alcon, the darling of Phoebus and the Muses ; Alcon, a part of
my own soul ; Alcon, the greatest part of my own heart.' — Carmina
Quinque Poetarum, p. 89.

STIGLIONE'S ELEGIACS 369
Rura mea haec tecum communia ; viximus una :
Te moriente igitur curnam mihi vita relicta est ?
Heu male- me ira Deum patriis abduxit ab oris,
Ne manibus premerem morientia lumina amicis.1
CastigUone's most poUshed exercises are written on ficti
tious subjects in elegiac metre. Thus he feigns a letter from
his wUe, in the style of the 'Heroidum Epistolae,' praying
him to beware of Eome's temptations, and to keep his heart
for her.2 Again he warns his mistress to avoid the perils of
the sea-beach, where the Tritons roam : —
Os informs illis, rictus, oculique minaces,
Asperaque anguineo cortice membra rigent :
Barba impexa, ingens, alga, limoque virenti
Oblita, oletque gravi lurida odore coma.3
In these couplets we seem to read a transcript from some
fresco of Mantegna or Julio Eomano. Two long elegies are
devoted to the theme of marine monsters, and the tale of
Hippolytus is introduced to clinch the poet's argument.
Among CastigUone's poems of compUment, forming a pleasant
1 ' Alas I poor youth, withdrawn from us by fate malign. Never
again shall I behold thee, while the shepherds stand around, win
prizes with thy flying shafts or spear, or wrestle for the crown ; never
again with thee reclining in the shade shall I all through a summer's
day avoid the sun. No more shall thy pipe soothe the neighbouring
hills, the vales repeat thy artful songs. No more shall thy Lycoris,
whose name inscribed by thee the woods remember, and my Galatea
hear us both together chaunt our loves. For we like brothers lived
our lives till now from infancy: heat and cold, days and nights, we
bore ; our herds were reared with toil and care together. These fields
of mine were also thine : we lived one common life. Why, then, when
tbou must die, am I still left to Uve ? Alas ! in evil hour the wrath
of Heaven withdrew me from my native land, nor suffered me to close
thy lids with a friend's hands 1 ' — Carmina, &o. p. 91.
* Ib. p. 100.
¦ ' Hideous is their face, their grinning mouth, their threatening
eyes, and their rough limbs are stiff with snaky scales; their beard
hangs long and wide, uncombed, tangled with sea-weed and green ooze,
and their dusky hair smells rank of brine.' — Ib. p. 103.

360 RENAISSANCE IN ITALY
illustration to his book of the ' Courtier,' may be mentioned
the lines on ' Elisabetta Gonzaga singing.' ' Nor can I omit
the most original of his elegies, written, or at least conceived,
in the camp of JuUus before Mirandola.2 Walking by night
in the trenches under the beleaguered waUs, Castiglione
meets the ghost of Lodovico Pico, who utters a lamentation
over the wrongs inflicted on his city and his race. The
roar of cannon cuts short this monologue, and the spectre
vanishes into darkness with a groan. During his long
threnody the prince of Mirandola apostrophises the warhke
Pope hi these couplets : —
O Pater, 0 Pastor populorum, 0 maxime mundi
Arbiter, humanum qui genus omne regis ;
Justitiae pacisque dator placidaeque quietis,
Credita cui soli est vita salusque hominum ;
Quem Deus ipse Erebi fecit Coslique potentem,
Ut nutu pateant utraque regna tuo 1 3
When the spiritual authority of the Popes came thus
to be expressed in Latin verse, it was impossible not to treat
them as deities. The temptation to apply to them the lan
guage of Eoman rehgion was too great ; the double oppor
tunity of flattering their vanity as Pontiffs, and their ears
as scholars, was too attractive to be missed. In another
place Castiglione used the following phrases about Leo : —
Nee culpanda tua est mora, nam praecepta Deorum
Non fas, nee tatum est spernere velle homini:
Esse tamen fertur dementia tanta Leonis
Ut facili humanas audiat ore preces*

1 * De Elisabetta Gonzaga canente,' Carmina, &c. p. 97. Cf. Bembo's
1 id Lucretiam Borgiam,' ib. p. 14, on a similar theme.
2 Ib. p. 95.
' ' 0 father, 0 shepherd of the nations, O great master of the world
who rulest all the human race, giver of justice, peace, and tranquil ease ;
thou to whom alone is committed the life and salvation of men, whom
God Himself made lord of hell and heaven, that either realm might
open at thy nod.'
41 1 do not blame thee for delaying thy return, since neither is it

FLATTERY OF THE POPES 361
Navagero called JuUus H. novus ex alto demissus Olympo
Deus (a new God sent down from heaven to earth), and
declared that the people of Italy, in thanksgiving for his
liberation of their country from the barbarians, would pay
him yearly honours with prayer and praise : —
Ergo omnes, veluti et Phcebo Panique, quotannis
Pastores certis statuent tibi sacra diebus,
Magne Pater ; nostrisque diu cantabere silvis.
Te rapes, te saxa, cavas te, Maxime Jvdi,
Convalles, nemorumque frequens iterabit imago.
At vero nostris qusecumque in saltibus usquam
Quercus erit, ut quaeque suos dant tempora flores,
Semper erit variis ramos innexa coronis ;
Inscriptumque geret felici nomine truncum.
Tum quoties pastum expellet, pastasve reducet
Nostram aliquis pecudes ; toties id mente revolvens
Ut liceat, factum esse tuo, Pater optime, ductu ;
Nullus erit, qui non libet tibi lacte recenti,
Nullus erit qui non teneros tibi nutriat agnos.
Quin audire preces nisi dedignabere agrestes,
Tu nostra ante Deos in vota vocaberis omnes.
Ipse ego bina tibi solenni altaria ritu,
Et geminos sacra e querou lauroque virenti
Vicino lucos Nanceli in litore ponam.1
It will be remembered that the oak was the ensign of
the DeUa Eovere famUy, so that when the poets exalted
safe nor right for man to set at naught a God's command ; and yet so
great is Leo's kindness said to be that he inclines a ready ear to human
prayerB.' — Ib. p. 102.
' ' Therefore shall all our shepherds pay thee divine honours, as
to Pan or Phosbus, on fixed days, great Father ; and long shalt thou
be celebrated in our forests. Thy praise, Julius the Great, the cliffs,
the rocks, the hollow valleys, and the woodland echoes shall repeat.
Wherever in our groves an oak tree stands, as spring and summer
bring the flowers, its branches shall be hung with wreaths, its trunk
shall be inscribed with thy auspicious name. As often as our shep
herds drive the flocks afield, or bring them pastured home, each one,
remembering that he does this under thy protection, shall pour liba
tions of new milk forth to thee, and rear thee tender lambs for sacrifice.
Nay, if thou spurn not rustic prayers, before all gods shall we invoke

S62 RENAISSANCE IN ITALY
JuUus to Olympus, they were not in want of a tree sacred
to the new deity. To trace this Pagan flattery of the Popes
through all its forms would be a tedious business. It wiU be
enough to quote Poliziano's ' Sapphics ' to Innocent VIII. : —
Roma cui paret dominusque Tibris,
Qui vicem summi geris hic Tonantis,
Qui potes magnum reserare et idem
Claudere coelum.1
A more quaint confusion of Latin mythology and mediaeval
superstition, more ghbly and trippingly conveyed in flimsy
verse, can hardly be imagined ; and yet even this, I think,
is beaten by the ponderous conceits of Fracastoro, who,
through the mouth of the goat-footed Pan, saluted JuUus III.
as the mountain of salvation, playing on his name Del
Monte : — Hoc in Monte Dei pecudes pascentur et agni,
Graminis aeterni pingues et velleris aurei';
Exsilient et aquas vivae, quibus ubera caprae
Grandia distendant, distendant ubera vaccse.8
The mountain soon becomes a shepherd, and the shepherd
not only rules the people, and feeds the sheep of God, but
chains the monsters of the Eeformation to a rock in Caucasus,
and gives peace and plenty to Italy : —
^Eternis ilium mimeris ad sidera toUent,
Heroemque, deumque, salutiferumque vocabunt.3

thee in our supplications. I myself will build and dedicate to thee two
altars, and will plant twin groves of sacred oak and laurel evergreen
for thee.' — Carmina, <fec. pp. 58, 59.
1 ' Thou whom Eome obeys, and royal Tiber, who wieldest upon
earth the Thunderer's power, whose it is to lock and open the gates of
heaven.' — Po. p. 260.
2 ' In this mountain of the Lord shall flocks and herds feed, fat
with eternal pastures and golden-fleeced. Living waters too shall leap
forth, wherewith the goats shall swell their udders, and the kine like
wise.' — Poemata Selecta, p. 132.
3 ' Him with immortal verse the poets shall exalt to heaven, and
oall him hero, god, and saviour.' — Ib. p. 133

SADOLETO'S LAOCOON 863
Eetttrning to CastigUone : I have already spoken of his
epitaph on Eaphael and his description of the newly-
discovered ' Ariadne.' ' The latter exercise in rhetoric com
petes with Sadoleto's laboured hexameters on the Laocoon.
These verses, frigid as a prize poem in our estimation,
moved Bembo to enthusiasm. When they appeared he
wrote to Sadoleto, 'I have read your poem on Laocoon a
hundred times. 0 wonder-working bard 1 Not only have
you made for us, as it were, a second statue to match that
masterpiece ; but you have engraved upon my mind the
very statue itself.' This panegyric stirs a smile when we
compare it with Sadoleto's own prolusion, the fruit of a
grave inteUect and cultivated taste rather than of genius
and inspiration.2
Time would faU to teU of aU the later Latin poets — of
La Casa's poUshed lyrics in the style of Horace, of Amalteo's
waxen eclogues, of Aonio Paleario's fantastic hexameters
upon the ' ImmortaUty of the Soul,' 3 of Strozzi's elegies, of
Ariosto's epigrams, and Calcagnini's learned muse. When I
repeat that every educated man wrote Latin verses in that
century, and that aU who could committed their productions
to the press, enough has been said to prove the impossibUity
of dealing more than superficiaUy with so vast a mass of
meritorious mediocrity.
One name remains to be rescued from the decent obscurity
• See above, pp. 312, 317.
* See Carmina Quinque Poetarum, pp. 318-336.
* A didactic poem in three books ; Pope's Poemata Italorum, vol. i.
pp. 211-270. The description of the Resurrection, the Last Judgment,
and the entrance of the blessed into Paradise, forming the conclusion
of the last book, is an excellent specimen of barocco style and bathos.
Virgil had written, ' Ite domumpasti, si quispudor, itejuvenci t ' Paleario
makes the Judge address the damned souls thus : ' Ite domum in
tristem, si quis pudor, ite ruentes,' &o. How close Milton's path lay
to the worst faults in poetry, and how wonderfully he escaped, may
well be calculated by the study of such verse aa this.

364 RENAISSANCE IN ITALY
of the ' Delitias Poetarum Italorum.' Marcantonio Flaminio
was born at Seravalle in 1498. He came, while yet a young
man, to the Court of Leo armed with Latin poetry for his
credentials. No better claim on patronage from Pope or
cardinal could be preferred in that age of twanging lyres.
At Eome Flaminio Uved in the service of Alessandro Farnese,
whose hospitality he afterwards repaid with verses honourable
alike to poet and patron by their freedom from vulgar flattery.
The atmosphere of a Court, however, was uncongenial to
Flaminio. Fond of country Ufe, addicted to serious studies,
sober in his tastes, and cheerful in his spirits, pious, and
unaffectedly unambitious, he avoided the stream of the great
world and Uved retired. Community of interests brought him
into close connection with the Cardinals Pole and Contarini,
from whom he caught so much of the Eeformation spirit as a
philosophical ItaUan could assimilate ; but it was not in his
modest and quiet nature to raise the cry of revolt against
authority.1 The most distinguished wits and scholars of the
age were among his intimate friends. Both his poems and
his correspondence reflect an agreeable light upon the literary
society of the late Eenaissance. The Latin verses, with
which we are at present occupied, breathe genuine piety,
healthful simpUcity, and moral purity, in strong contrast
with the neopaganism of the Eoman circle. These qualities
suit the robust style, clear, terse, and nervous, he knew how
to use. It is pleasant to close the series of Italian Latinists
with one who combined the best art of his century with the
temper of a repubUcan and the spirit of a Christian.
The most prominent quality of Flaminio as a poet is love
1 This epigram on Savonarola shows Flaminio's sympathy with the
preachers of pure doctrine : —
Dum fera flamma tuos, Hieronyme, pasoitur artus,
Relligio, sacras dilaniata comas,
Flevit, et o, dixit, crudeles parcite flammse,
Farcite, sunt isto viscera nostra rogo.

FLAMINICS BIOGRAPHY 366
of the country. Three Uttle compositions describing his own
farm are animated with the enthusiasm of genuine affection.1
We feel that no mere reminiscence of CatuUus makes him
writer — Jam vos revisam, jam juvabit arbores
Manu paterna consitas
Videre, jam libebit in cubiculo
Molles inire somnulos.2
Nor is it an idle prayer he addresses to the Muses in these
lines : — At vos, o Hehconiae puellse,
Queis fontes et amosna rura cordi,
Si cara mihi luce cariores
Estis, jam miserescite obsecrantis,
Meque, urbis strepitu tumultuosas
Ereptum, in placido locate agello.'
He is never tired of contrasting the pleasures of the
country with the noise and weariness of Eome : —
Ipse miser tumultuosa
Urbe detinear ; tibi benignus
Dedit Jupiter in remoto ageUo
Latentem placida frui quiete,
Inter Socraticos libros, et inter
Nymphas et Satyros, nihil profanl
Curantem popuh leves honores.4
Flaminio's thought of the country is always connected
1 ' Ad Agellum suum.' — Poemata Selecta, pp. 155, 156, 177.
1 'Now shall I see you once again; now shall I have the joy of
gazing on the trees my father planted, and falling into gentle slumber
in his little room.'
' 'Maidens of Helicon, who love the fountains and the pleasant
fields, as you are dearer to me than the dear light, have pity now upon
your supphant, take me from the tumult of the noisy town, and place
me in my tranquil farm.'
4 'I, poor wretch, am prisoned in the noisy town. Kind Jupiter
allows you, secluded in your distant farm, to take the joys of peace
among Socratic books, among the nymphs and satyrs, unheeding the
light honours of the vulgar orowd.'— ' Ad Honoratum FaBcitellum,'
Poemata Selecta, p. 178.

366 RENAISSANCE IN ITALY
with the thought of study. The picture of a tranquU scholar's
life among the fields, diversified by sport and simple pleasures
of the rustic folk, 'gives freshness to his hendecasyUables,
whether addressed to his patron Alessandro Farnese, or to his
friends Galeazzo Florimonte and Francesco Torriani : ' —
Inde ocellos
Ut primum sopor incubans gravabit,
Jucundissime amice, te sub antrum
Ducam, quod croceis tegunt corymbis
Serpentes hederae, imminensque laurus
Suaviter foliis susurrat : at tu
Ne febrim metuas gravedinemve ;
Est enim locus innocens : ubi ergo
Hic satis requieveris, legentur
Lusus Virgilii, et Syracusani
Vatis, quo nihil est magis venustum,
Nihfi dulcius, ut mihi videtur.
Cum se fregerit aestus, in virenti
ConvaUe spatiabimur ; sequetur
Brevis coena ; redibis inde ad urbem."
One of Flaminio 's best poems is written from his friend
Stefano Sauli's vUla near Genoa.3 It describes how he
spends his time between the philosophy of Aristotle and the
verses of CatuUus, while SauU at his side devotes himseU to
Cicero. The faU of evening lures them from their study to
the sea-beach : perched upon a water-girded rock, they angle
with long reeds for fishes, or watch the white sails on the
purple waves. The same theme is repeated in a copy of
1 Poemata Selecta, pp. 153, 169, 173.
* ' Then, when sleep descends upon your eyes, best friend of mine,
I'll lead you to a oave o'erourtained by the wandering ivy's yellow
bunches, whereby the sheltering laurel murmurs with her gently waving
leaves. Fear no fever or dull headache. The place is safe. So when
you are rested, we will read the rustic songs of Virgil or Theocritus ;
sweet and more charming' verse I know not ; and after the day's heat is
past, we will stroll in some green valley. A light supper follows, and
then you shall return to town.' — Ib. p. 174.
s ' Ad Christophorum Longolium,' Ib.

COUNTRY LIFE AND STUDY 367
hexameters addressed to Sauli.1 Flaminio had faUen iU of
fever at Eome. To quit the city was his cure : —
Scilicet ut Romae corruptas fugimus auras,
Et riguos patriae montes saltusque salubres
Venimus, effoetos ven/t quoque robur in artus :
Diffugit macies, diffugit corpore pallor ;
Et somnus vigiles irrepsit blandus ocellos,
Quem neque desiliens crepitanti rivulus unda,
Nee Lethea mihi duxere papavera quondam.2
Sauli, for his part, is congratulated on having exchanged
the cares of Church and State for Ciceronian studies among
his laurel groves and gleaming orange gardens.
Flaminio's intimate relations with the ablest men of the
century, those especially who were engaged in grave and
Christian studies, add extrinsic interest to his fugitive pieces.
In one poem he aUudes to the weak health of Cardinal Pole ; 3
in another he compares Plato's description of the ideal
republic with Contarini's work upon the magistrates and
commonwealth of Venice : —
Deseripsit ille maximus quondam Plato
Longis suorum ambagibus voluminum,
Quis civitatis optimus foret status :
Sed hunc ab ipsa saeculorum origine
Nee uUa vidit, nee videbit civitas.
At Contarenus optimam rempublicam
Pajrvi libelli disputationibus
Illam probavit esse, plus miUesima
Quam cernit aestas Adriatico in mari
Florere pace, litteris, pecunia.4
1 Poemata Selecta, p. 163.
- ' No sooner had I left Rome's tainted air for the clear streams
and healthful forests of my native land, than strength returned into my
wasted limbs ; my body lost the pallor and emaciation of disease, and
sweet sleep crept upon my wakeful eyes, such as no waterB falling with
a tinkling sound or Lethe's poppies had induced before.'
' Poemata Selecta, p. 162.
1 ' Plato, the greatest of sages, once described in his long volumes
the best form of a State ; but this from the beginning of the world till

368 RENAISSANCE IN ITALY
When Vittoria Colonna died, Flaminio wrote a lamenta
tion on the loss he had sustained, and on the extinction of so
great a hght for Italy. These verses are remarkable for their
sobriety and strength : —
Cui mens Candida, candidique mores,
Virtus vivida, comitasque sancta,
Coeleste ingenium, eruditioque
Rara, neotare dulciora verba,
Summa nobilitas, decora vultus
Majestas, opulenta sed bonorum
Et res et domus usque aperta ad usus.1
The same firm and dehcate touch in the delineation of
character gives value to the lines written on his father's
death :— Vixisti, genitor, bene ac beate,
Nee pauper, neque dives, eruditus
Satis, et satis eloquens, valente
Semper corpore, mente sana, amicis
Jucundus, pietate singulari.
Nunc lustris bene sexdecim peractis
Ad divum proficisceris beatas
Oras ; i, genitor, tuumque natum
Olympi cito siste tecum in arce.2
At the risk of extending this notice of Flaminio's poetry
beyond due limits, I must quote from a copy of verses sent to
now hath never yet been seen, nor will it afterwards be seen in any
city. Contarini in his little book has proved that the best common
wealth is that which now for more than a thousand years has flourished
in the Adriatic with peace, letters, and wealth.' — Poemata Selecta, p. 162.
1 ' Ad Hieronymum Turrianum,' ib. p. 168. ' Her mind was
pure, her manners pure; her virtue lively, her courtesy without a
taint of earth ; her intellect was heavenly, her learning rare ; her words
sweeter than nectar ; her nobility the highest ; her features beautiful
in their majesty ; her wealth liberally open to the use of good men.'
2 ' Well and happily hast thou lived, my father; neither poor nor
rich ; learned enough and eloquent enough ; of vigorous body and of
healthy mind ; pleasant to thy friends, and in thy piety unrivalled.
Now, after sixteen lustres finished, thou goest to the regions of the
blest. Go, father, and soon greet thy son, to stay with thee in heaven's
high seat.' — ' Ad Patrem morientem,' Poemata Selecta, p. 157.

LITERARY IDEAL 369
Alessandro Farnese, together with a volume containing the,
Latin prohtsiones of the North ItaUan scholars :—
Hos tibi lepidissimos poetas
Dono, tempora quos tulere nostra,
Fortunata nimis, nimis beata
Nostra tempora, quae suos Catullos,
TibuUos, et Horatios, suosque
Marones genuere. Quis putasset,
Post tot saecula tam tenebricosa,
Et tot Ausonise graves ruinas,
Tanta lnmina tempore uno in unfc
Tam brevi regione Transpadana
Oriri potuisse ? qusB vel ipsa
Sola barbaric queant fugata
Suum reddere Utteris Latinis
Splendorem, veteremque dignitatem.1
There is the whole of humanism in this passage — ;the
behef in the unity of Italian civilisation, the conviction that
the Middle Ages were but an interruption of historic con
tinuity, the confidence in the restoration of classic literature,
and the firm hope that Latin would never cease to be the
language of culture. Flaminio says nothing, unless paren-
theticaUy, about the real woes of his country. The tyranny
of the Spaniard and the violence of the German are reckoned
with the old wrongs of the Goth and the Vandal in one
phrase — 'tot graves ruinas.' He does not touch upon the
1 Poemata Selecta, p. 166. ' These most graceful poets I give you, the
offspring of our too, too happy times, which have produced their Catullus
and their Horace, their Tibullus and their Maro. Who could have
thought, after so many ages of such darkness, and all the ruin that has
weighed on Italy, that so many lights could have arisen at one epoch
in one httle region of the land above the Po ? They alone are enough
to put to flight the gloom of barbarism, and to restore its antique gloi'y
and own splendour to Latin literature.' After this he goes on to add
that these poets will confer eternal lustre on Italy.' Not only the
northern nations of Europe, but America also has begun to study Latin ;
and races in another hemisphere will take their culture from these
pages. The Cardinalis finally reminded that immortality otfame awaita
him in their praises.
11 BB

370 RENAISSANCE IN ITALY
dismemberment of Italy into mutuaUy jealous and suspicious
States : for him the Italian nation, even in a dream, has no
existence. He is satisfied with a literary ideal. Too fortunate,
too blessed, are these days of ours, in spite of Florence ex
tinguished, Eome sacked, Milan devastated, Venice curbed,
because, forsooth, Bembo and Fracastoro have made a pinch
beck age of poetry. Here lay the incurable weakness of the
humanistic movement. The vanity of the scholar, determined
to seek the present in the past, building the walls of Troy
anew with borrowed music, and singing in falsetto whUe
Eome was burning — this blindness to the actual situation of
Italy was scarcely less pernicious, scarcely less a sign of
incapacity for civil Ufe than the selfishness of the Despots
or the egotism of the Papacy. Italy was foredoomed to lose
her place among the nations at the very moment when she
was recovering culture for the modern world ; and when that
culture was recovered through her industry and genius, not
she, but the races of the North, began to profit by the acqui
sition — not her imitations of the Latin Muse, but the new
languages of Europe were destined to prevaU and lead the age.
Another point for observation is that the centre of
humanistic studies has shifted.1 Florence, disillusioned,
drained of strength, and sucked dry by the tyrants, holds
her tongue. The schools of Naples and of Eome are silent.
Lombardy is now the mother of poets, who draw their
inspiration no longer from Valdarno or the myrtle groves of
Posilippo, but from the blue waves of Garda.2 The university
where science still flourishes is Padua. The best professors
of the classics, CeUo Calcagnini and LUius Gyraldus, teach
at Ferrara. Bembo, the dictator of letters for his century,
Navagero, the sweetest versifier, Contarini, the most sober
1 ' Tam brevi regione Transpadana.'
5 Cf. Bembo's Benacus, Bonfadio's Gazani Vici Descriptio, Fra:
castoio's Ad Franciscum Turrianum Veronensem, &o.

SCHOLARSHIP IN LOMBARDY 371
student, are Venetians. Stefano SauU, the author of a
Ciceronian treatise on the Christian hero, is a patrician of
Genoa. Sadoleto and Molsa are Modenese. Verona claims
Fracastoro and the Torriani. Imola is the mother city of
Flaminio. CastigUone and CapUupo are natives of Mantua ;
Amalteo and Vida of ForU and Cremona; Bonfadio and
Archio of Lake Garda. If we seek the causes of this change,
we find them partly in the circumstance that Venice at this
period was free, while Ferrara still retained her indepen
dence under native princes ; partly also in the fact that
Florence had already overtaxed her intellectual energies.
Like a creeping paralysis, the extinction of hberty and
spiritual force was graduaUy invading aU the members of the
Itahan community. The Eevival of Learning came to an
end, as far as Italy was concerned, in these Transpadane poets.
To trace the history of philosophic thought, set in motion
by the Eenaissance and stamped out by the Counter-Refor
mation, and to describe the aftergrowth of art and literature
encouraged by the CathoUc reaction, must form the subject
of a separate inquiry.
I hope, if I have time and strength, after the completion of
my work on the Eenaissance, to trace this sequel in a volume
on 'Italy and the CouncU of Trent.' To this chapter of
ItaUan history will also belong the philosophy of the six
teenth century, the poetry of Tasso, the painting of the
Bolognese masters, and the new music of Palestrina.

BBS

372 RENAISSANCE IN ITALY

CHAPTEE IX
CONCLUSION
General Survey — The Part played in the Eevival by the Chief Cities
— Preoccupation with Scholarship in spite of War and Conquest —
Place of the Humanists in Society— Distributors of Praise and
Blame — Flattery and Libels — Comparison with the Sophists — The
Form preferred to the Matter of Literature — Ideal of Culture as
an end in itself— Suspicion of Zealous Churchmen — Intrusion of
Humanism into the Church — Irreligion of the Humanists— Gyraldi's
' Progymnasma '— Ariosto — Bohemian Life — Personal Immorality
— Want of Fixed Principles — Professional Vanity — Literary Pride —
Estimate of Humanistic Literature— Study of Style — Influence of
Cicero— Valla's ' Elegantire '—Stylistic Puerilities — Value attached to
Ehetoric — ' Oratore ' — Moral Essays — Epistolography — Histories —
Critical and Antiquarian Studies — Large Appreciation of Antiquity
— Liberal Spirit — Poggio and Jerome of Prague — Humanistic Type
of Education — Its Diffusion through Europe —Future Prospects —
Decay of Learning in Italy.
In tracing the history of the Eevival, we have seen how the
impulse, first communicated by Petrarch, was continued by
Boccaccio and his immediate successors. We have watched
the enthusiasm for antiquity strike root in Florence, spread
to Eome, and penetrate the Courts of Italy. One city after
another receives the light and hands it on, until the whole
cycle of study has been traversed and the vigour of the
nation is exhausted. Florence discovers manuscripts, founds
Ubraries, learns Greek, and leads the movement of the fif
teenth century. Naples criticises ; Eome translates ; Mantua
and Ferrara form a system of education ; Venice commits
the literature of the classics to the press. By the combined

REVIEW OF THE REVIVAL 37»
and successive activity of the chief ItaUan centres, not only
is the culture of antiquity regained ; it is also appropriated
in aU its various branches, discussed and iUustrated, placed
beyond the reach of accident, and deUvered over in its in
tegrity to Europe. The work thus performed by the Italians
was begun in peace ; but it had to be continued under the
pressure of wars and national disasters unparalleled in the
history of any other modern people. Not for a single
moment did the students relax their energy. In the midst
of foreign armies, deafened by the roar of cannon and the
tumult of sacked towns, exiled from their homes, robbed of
their books, deprived of then: subsistence, they advanced to
their end with the irresistible obstinacy of insects. The
drums and tramplings of successive conquests and invasions
by four warlike nations — Frenchmen, Spaniards, Germans,
Swiss— could not disturb them. Drop by drop, Italy was
being drained of blood ; from the first the only question was
Which of her assailants should possess the beauty of her
corpse. Yet the student, intent upon his manuscripts, paid
but Uttle heed. So non-existent was the sense of nation
ality in Italy that the Italians did not know they were being
slowly murdered. When the agony was over, and the ruin
was accompUshed, they congratulated themselves on being
stiU the depositaries of pohte Uterature. Nations that are
nations, seek to inspire fear, or at least respect. The Italians
were contented with admiration, and looked confidently to
the world for gratitude. The task of two toilsome, glorious
centuries had been accompUshed. The chasm between
Borne and the Eenaissance was bridged over, and a plain
way was buUt for the progressive human spirit. Italy,
downtrodden in the mire of blood and ruins, should stUl
lead the van and teach the peoples. It was a subhme delu
sion the last phase of an impulse so powerful in its origin
that to prophesy an ending was impossible. Yet how

374 RENAISSANCE IN ITALY
delusive was the expectation is proved by the immediate
history of Italy, enslaved and decadent, outstripped by the
nations she had taught, and scorned by the world that
owed her veneration.
The humanists, who were the organ of this intellectual
movement, formed, as we have seen, a literary commonwealth,
diffused through all the Courts and cities of Italy. As the
secretaries of Popes and princes, as the chanceUors of re
publics, as orators on all occasions of public and private
ceremony, they occupied important posts of influence, and
had the opportunity of leavening society with their opinions.
Furthermore, we have learned to know them in their
capacity of professors at the universities, of house-tutors
in the service of noblemen, and of authors. Closely con
nected among themselves by their feuds no less than by
their friendships, and working to one common end of scholar
ship, it was inevitable that these men, after the enthusiasm
for antiquity had once become the fashion, should take the
lead and mould the genius of the nation. Their epistles,
invectives, treatises, and panegyrics, formed the study of
an audience that embraced all cultivated minds in Italy.
Thus the current Uterature of humanism played the same
part in the fifteenth century as journalism in the nineteenth,
and the humanists had the same kind of coherence in rela
tion to the public as the quatrieme Mat of modern times.
The respect they inspired as the arbiters of praise and blame,
was only equalled by their vast pretensions. Eugenius IV.,
Uving at the period of their highest influence, is reported to
have said that they were as much to be feared for their
malice as to be loved for their learning. While they claimed
the power of conferring an immortaUty of honour or dis
honour, no one dared to caU their credit with posterity in
question. Nothing seemed more dreadful than the fate
reserved for Paul II. in the pages of Platina ; and even so

THE HUMANISTS AS A CLASS 875
robust a ruler as Francesco Sforza sought to buy the praises
of FUelfo. Flattery in all its branches, fulsome and deUcate,
wholesale and aUusive, was developed by them as an art
whereby to gain their living. The official history of this
period is rendered almost worthless by its sustained note
of panegyrical laudation. Our ears are deafened with the
eulogies of petty patrons transformed into Maacenases, of
carpet knights compared to Leonidas, of tyrants eguaUed
with Augustus, and of generals who never looked on blood"
shed tricked out as Hannibals or Scipios. As a pendant to
panegyric, the art of abuse reached its cUmax in the invec
tives whereby the scholars sought to hand their comrades
down to aU time 'immortally immerded,' or to vilify the
pubhc enemies of their employers. As in the case of praise,
so also in the case of blame, it is impossible to attach im
portance to the writings of the humanists. Their vaulting
ambition to depreciate each other overleaped itself. AU
their Uterature of defamation serves now only to throw Ught
on the general impurity of an age in which such monstrous
charges carried weight. Unlucldly, this double vice of
humanism struck deep roots into ItaUan Uterature. Without
the scholars of the fifteenth century, it is hardly possible
that such a brigand as Pietro Aretino, who levied black mail
from princes at the point of his venomous quiU, or such an
unprincipled biographer as Paolo Giovio, who boasted that
he wrote with a golden or a sUver pen, as pleased him best,
could have existed. Bullying and fawning tainted the very
source of history, and a false ideal of the writer's function
was estabhshed by the practice of men like Poggio.
It is obvious and easy to compare the humanists of
the Eenaissance with the sophists of antiquity. Whether we
think of the rivals of Socrates at Athens, or of the Greek
rhetoricians of the Eoman period,1 the parallel is tolerably
> ' Grseculi esurientes.' Lives written by Philostratus.

376 RENAISSANCE IN ITALY
close. FrOm certain points of view the Italian scholars re
mind ii^ ^f the former class ; from others, again, they recaU
the latter. The essence of sophism is the substitution of
semblance for reaUty, indifference to truth provided a fair
show be made, combined with verbal ingenuity and practice
in the art of exposition. The sophist feels no need of forming
opinions on a sound basis, or of adhering to principles. Ee-
garding thought as the subject-matter of Uterary treatment,
he is chiefly concerned with giving it a fair and plausible in
vestiture in language. Instead of recognising that he must
live up to the standard he professes, he takes delight in
expressing with force the contrary of what he acts. The dis
cord between his philosophy and his conduct awakes no shame
in him, because it is the highest triumph of his art to persuade
by eloquenceJ and to dazzle by rhetoric. Phrases and sen
tences supply the place of feelings and convictions. Sonorous
eadences and harmonies of language are always ready to
conceal the want of substance in his matter or the flimsinoss
of his argument. At the same time the sophist's enthusiasm
for a certain form of culture, and his belief in the sophistic
method, may be genuine.
The literature of the Eevival is fuU of such sophism.
Men who lived loose lives, were never tired of repeating the
commonplaces of the Ciceronian ethics, praising simplicity
and self-control with the pen they used for reproducing the
scandals of Martial, mingling impudent demands for money
and flatteries of debauched despots with panegyrics of Paetus
Thrasea and eulogies of Cincinnatus. Conversely, students of
eminent sobriety, Uke Guarino da Verona, thought it no harm
to welcome BeccadeUi's ' Hermaphroditus ' with admiration ;
while the excellent Nicholas V. spent nine days in perusing
the filthy satires of FileUo. It was enough that the form
was elegant, according to their standards of taste, the Latinity
copious and sound : — the subject-matter raised no scruples.

FORM VERSUS MATTER 377
This vice of regarding only the exterior of Uterature pro
duced a fatal weakness in the dissertations of the age. If a
humanist wanted to moralise the mutabUity of fortune or the
disadvantages of matrimony, he did not take the trouble to
think, or the pains to borrow iUustrations from his own
experience. He strung together quotations and classical
instances, expending his labour on the polish of the style, and
fancying he had proved something by piquancy displayed
in handling old material. When he undertook history, the
same fault was apparent. Instead of seeking to set forth the
real conditions of his native city, to describe its political
vicissitudes and constitutional development, or to paint th6
characters of its great men, he prepared imaginary speeches
and avoided topics incapable of expression in pure Latin. The
result was that whole libraries of ethical disquisitions and
historical treatises, bequeathed with proud confidence by their
authors to the admiration of posterity, are now reposing in
unhonoured dust, ransacked at rare intervals by weary students
with restless fingers in search of such meagre scraps of infor
mation as even a humanist could not succeed in excluding.
The humanists resembled the sophists again in their pro
fession to teach wisdom for pay. What philosophy was for
the early Greeks, classic culture was for Italy in the Eenais
sance ; and this the scholars sold. Antiquity lay before them
like an open book. From their seat among the learned they
doled out the new lore of Ufe to eager pupils. And as the
more sober-minded of the Athenians regarded the educational
practice of the sophists with suspicion, so the humanists came
to be dreaded as the corrupters of youth. The pecuhar tum
they gave to mental training, by diverting attention from
patriotic duties to Uterary pleasures, by denationalising the
interests of students, and by distracting serious thought from
affairs of the present to interests of the past, tended to
confirm the political debility of the Italians ; nor can it be

S7S RENAISSANCE IN ITALY
doubted that the substitution of Pagan for Christian ideals
intensified the demoralisation of the age. Many arguments
used by Aristophanes and Xenophon might be repeated
against these sophists of the Eenaissance.1
On this point it is worth observing that, though humanism
took the Papal Court by storm and installed itself in pomp
and pride within the Vatican, the lower clergy and the
leaders of rehgious revivals, in no mere spirit of blind pre
judice, but with solid force of argument, denounced it. S.
Bernardino and Savonarola were only two among many who
preached against the humanists from the pulpit. And yet,
while we admit that the influences of the Eevival injured
morality, and gave a cosmopolitan direction to energies that
ought to have been concentrated on the preservation of
national existence, we are unable to join with these eccle
siastical antagonists in their crusade. Humanism was a
necessary moment in the evolution of the modern world ; and
whatever were its errors, however weakening it may have
been to Italy, this phase had to be passed through, this
nation had to suffer for the general good.
The intrusion of the humanists into the Papal Curia was
a victory of the purely secular spirit. It is remarkable how
very few scholars took orders except with a view of holding
minor benefices. They remained virtual laymen, drawing
the emoluments of their cures at a distance. If FUelfo,
after the death of his second wife, proposed to enter the
Church, he did so because in his enormous vanity he hoped
to gain the scarlet hat, and thought this worth the sacrifice
of independence. The only great monastic litteratus was
Ambrogio, General of the Camaldolese Order. Maffeo Vegio
is the single instance I can remember of a poet-phUologer
who assumed the cowl. These statements, it will be understood,
1 Aristoph., Clouds, Speeches of Dikaios Logos ; Xen., On Hunting.
chap. xiii.

HUMANISM AND THE CHURCH 379
refer chiefly to the second or aggressive period of the Eevival.
Classic erudition was so common in the fourth that to be
without a humanistic tincture was, even among churchmen,
the exception rather than the rule. In the age of Leo, more
over, the humanists as a class had ceased to exist, merged in
the general culture of the nation. Their successors were for
the most part cardinals and bishops, elevated to high rank for
hterary merit. This change, however, really indicated the
complete triumph of an ideal that for a moment had suc
ceeded in paganising the Papacy, and substituting its own
standard of exceUence for ecclesiastical tradition.
This external separation between the humanists and the
Church corresponded to their deep internal irreligiousness. If
contemporary testimony be needed to support this assertion, I
may quote freely from LUius Gyraldus, Battista Mantovano,
and Ariosto, not to mention the invectives that record so vast
a mass of almost incredible Ucentiousness. A rhetorical
treatise, addressed to Gian Francesco Pico by Lilius Gyraldus,
himseU an eminent professor at Ferrara, acquaints us with
the opinion formed in Italy, after a century's experience, of
the vices and discordant Uves of scholars.1 ' I call God and
men to witness,' he writes, ' whether it be possible to find
men more affected by immoderate disturbances of soul, by
such emotions as the Greeks called ira&r), or by such desires as
they named op/uu, more easUy influenced, driven about, and
drawn in aU directions. No class of human beings are more
subject to anger, more puffed up with vanity, more arrogant,
more insolent, more proud, conceited, idle-minded, incon
sequent, opinionated, changeable, obstinate; some of them
ready to beUeve the most incredible nonsense, others sceptical
about notorious truths, some full of doubt and suspicion,
others void of reasonable circumspection. None are of a less
free spirit, and that for the very reason I have touched before,
1 Progymnasma adversus Literatos. Op. Omn., Basle, 1582, vol. ii-

380 RENAISSANCE IN ITALY
because they think themselves so far more powerful. They
all of them, indeed, pretend to omniscience, fancy themselves
superior to everything, and rate themselves as gods, whUe we
unlearned Uttle men are made of clay and mud, as they
maintain.' Having for some space discoursed concerning their
mad ways of Ufe, Gyraldus proceeds to arraign the humanists
in detail for vicious passions, want of economy, impiety,
gluttony, intemperance, sloth, and incontinence.1 This
invective reads like a paradoxical thesis supported for the sake
of novelty by a clever rhetorician ; and, indeed, it might pass
for such were it not for the confirmation it receives in Ariosto's
seventh satire addressed to Pietro Bembo.2 The poet, anxious
to find a tutor for his son, dares not commit the young man
to the care of a humanist. His picture of their personal
immorality, impiety, pride, and gluttony acquires weight
from the weU-known tolerance of the satirist, and from his
genial parsimony of expression. To cite further testimony
from the personal confessions of Pacificus Maximus would
hardly strengthen the argument, though students may be
referred to his poems for detaUs.*
The alternations of fortune to which the humanists
were exposed — living at one time in the lap of luxury,
caressed and petted; then cast forth to wander in almost
total indigence, neglected and derided — encouraged a
Bohemian recklessness injurious to good manners. Their
frequent change of place told upon their character in the
same way, by exposing them to fresh temptations and with
drawing them from censure. They had no country but the
dreamland of antiquity, no laws beyond the law of taste and
1 'Pudet me, Pice, pigetque id de literatis afferre quod omnium
tamen est in ore, nullos esse cum omnium vitiorum etiam nefandissi-
morum genere inquinatos magis, tum iis pracipue, quae prseter naturam
diriuntur,' &c. — Progymnasma adversus Literatos, p. 431.
-' Lines 22-129.
* Quinque Ulustrium Poetarum Lusus in Venerem, Parisiis, 1791,
p. 107.

VANITY OF THE HUMANISTS 381
inclination. They acknowledged no authority superior to
their own exalted judgment ; they bowed to no tribunal but
that of posterity and the past. Thus they Uved within their
own conceits, outside of custom and opinion ; nor was the
world, at any rate before the period of their downfall, scru
pulous to count their errors or correct their vices.
Far more important, however, than these circumstances
was their passion for a Pagan ideal. The study of the
classics and the effort to assimilate the spirit of the ancients,
undermined their Christianity without substituting the
rehgion or the ethics of the old world. They ceased to fear
God; but they did not acquire either the self-restraint of
the Greek or the patriotic virtues of the Eoman. Thus
exposed without defence or safeguard, they adopted the
perUous attitude of men whose regulative principle
was Uterary taste, who had left the ground of faith and
popular convention for the shoals and shallows of an
irrecoverable past. On this sea they wandered, with no
guidance but the promptings of undisciplined self. It is not,
therefore, a marvel that, while professing Stoicism, they
waUowed in sensuaUty, openly affected the worst habits of
Pagan society, and devoted their ingenuity to the explanation
of foulness that might have been passed by in silence.
Licentiousness became a special branch of humanistic
literature. Under the thin mask of humane refinement
leered the untamed savage; and an age that boasted not
unreasonably of its mental progress, was at the same time
notorious for the vices that disgrace mankind. These dis
orders of the scholars, hidden for a time beneath a learned
language, ended by contaminating the genius of the nation.
The vernacular Gapitoli of Florence say plainly what
BeccadelU, Poggio, and Bembo piqued themselves on veiling.
Another notable defect of the humanists, equally
inseparable from the position they assumed in Italy, was

332 RENAISSANCE IN ITALY
their personal and professional vanity. Battista Mantovano,
writing on the calamities of the age hi which he Uved,
reckons them among the most eminent examples of pride
in his catalogue of the deadly sins. Eegarding themselves
as resuscitators of a glorious past and founders of a new
civUity, they were not satisfied with asserting their real
merits in the sphere of scholarship. They went further,
and claimed to rank as sages, poUtical phUosophers, writers
of deathless histories, and singers of immortal verse. The
most miserable poetasters got crowned with laurels. The
most trivial thinkers passed verdict upon statecraft. Mis
taking mere cultivation for genius, they believed that,
because they had perused the authors of antiquity and could
imitate Ovid at a respectful distance, their fame would endure
for aU ages. On the strength of this confidence they gave
themselves inconceivable airs, looking down from the height
of their attainment on the profane crowd. To understand
that, after aU, antiquity was a school wherein to train the
modern intellect for genuine production, was not given to
this epoch of discovery. Posterity has sadly belied their
expectations. Of all their treatises and commentaries, poems
and translations, how few are now remembered ; how rarely
are their names upon the hps of even professed students !
The debt of gratitude we owe them is indeed great, and
should be amply paid by our respectful memory of all they
wrought for us with labour in the field of learning. Yet
Filelfo would turn with passionate disappointment in his
grave, if he could know that men of wider scope and
sounder erudition appreciate his writings solely as shed
leaves that fertihsed the soU of literature.
Before turning, as is natural at this point, to form an
estimate of the humanists in their capacity of authors, it
will be right briefly to qualify the condemnation passed upon
their characters. Taken as a class, they deserve the hardest

EXCEPTIONS TO THE RULE 383
vords that have been said of them. Yet it must not be
forgotten that they numbered in their ranks such men as
Ambrogio Traversari, Tommaso da Sarzana, Guarino, Jacopo
Antiquari, Vittorino da Feltre, Pomponius Lastus, Ficino,
Pico, Fabio Calvi, and Aldus Manutius. The bare enumera
tion of these names wiU suffice for those who have read the
preceding chapters. Piety, sobriety of morals, seU-devotion
to pubhc interests, the purest Uterary enthusiasm, the most
lofty aspirations, fairness of judgment, and generosity of
feehng distinguish these men, and some others who might
be mentioned, from the majority of their fellows. Nor,
again, is it fair to charge the humanists alone with vices
common to their age. The picture I ventured to draw of
Papal and despotic manners in a previous volume, shows
that a too strict standard cannot be applied to scholars,
holding less responsible positions than their patrons, and
professing a far looser code of conduct. Much, too, of their
inordinate vanity may be ascribed to the infatuation of the
people. Such scenes as the reception of the supposed author
of ' Hermaphroditus ' in Vicenza were enough to turn the
heads of even stronger men.1
It is difficult to appraise humanistic literature at a just
value, seeing that by far the larger mass of it, after serving
a purpose of temporary utility, is now forgotten. Not itself,
but its effect, is what we have to estimate ; and the ultimate
product of the whole movement was the creation of a new
capacity for cultivation. To have restored to Europe the
knowledge of the classics, and to have recovered the style of
the ancients, so as to use Latin prose and verse with freedom
at a time when Latin formed an universal medium of culture,
is the first real merit of the humanists. Nothing can rob
them of this glory ; however much we may be forced to feel
bhat their critical labours have been superseded, that their
1 See above, p. 185, note 4.

384 RENAISSANCE IN ITALY
dissertations are duU, that their poems at the worst fall fa!
below the level of an Oxford prize exercise, and at the best
supply a decent appendix to the ' Corpus Poetarum.' Nor can
we defraud them of the fame of having striven to realise
Petrarch's ideal.1 That ideal, only partially attained at any
single point, developed in one direction by MUton, in another
by Goethe, still guides, and wiU long guide, the efforts of the
modern intellect.
The most salient characteristic of this literature was
study of style. The beginners of the humanistic movement
were conscious that what separated them more than any
thing else from their Eoman ancestors, was want of elegance
in diction. They used the same language ; but they used it
clumsily. They could think the same thoughts, but they
had lost the art of expressing them with propriety. To
restore style was therefore a prime object. Exaggerating its
importance, they neglected the matter for the form, and
ended by producing a Uterature of imitation. The ideal they
proposed in composition included Umpidity of language,
simplicity in the structure of sentences however lengthy,
choiceness of phrase, and a copious vocabulary. To be
intelligible was the first requisite ; to be attractive the
second. Having mastered elementary difficulties, they pro
ceeded to fix the rules for decorative writing. Cicero had
said that nothing was so ugly or so common but that
rhetoric could lend it charm. This unfortunate dictum,
implying that style, as separate from matter, is valuable
in and for itself, led the ItaUans astray. To form common
place books of phrases cuUed from the ' Tusculans ' and the
' Orations,' to choose some trivial theme for treatment, and
to make it the occasion for verbal display, became their
business. In the coteries of Eome and Florence scholars
measured one another by their ingenuity — in other words,
' See above, Chapter II.

LITERARY PUERILITIES 885
by their aptness for producing Ciceronian and Virgilian
centos. Few indeed, Uke Pico, raised their voices against such
trifling, or protested that what a man thought and felt was at
least as important as his power of clothing it in rhetoric.
The appearance of Valla's ' Elegantiae ' marked an epoch
in the evolution of this styUstic art. It reached its climax
in the work of Bembo. What the humanists intended, they
achieved. Purity and perspicuity of language were made
conditions of aU literature that claimed attention ; nor is it,
perhaps, too much to say that Eacine, Pascal, and Voltaire
owe something of their magic to the training of these worn-
out pedagogues. Yet the immediate effect in Italy, when
MachiaveUi's vigour had passed out of the nation, and the
styhstic tradition survived, was deplorable. Nothing strikes
a northern student of the post-Eenaissance authors more
than the empty smoothness of their writing, their faculty of
saying nothing with a vast expenditure of phrase, their dread
of homely detaUs, and the triviality of the subjects they
chose for Ulustration. When a man of wit hke Annibale
Caro could rise to praise the nose of the president before a
learned academy in periods of this ineptitude — ' Naso
perfetto, naso principale, naso divino, naso che benedetto sia
fra tutti i nasi ; e benedetta sia queUa mamma che vi fece
cosi nasuto, e benedette tutte queUe cose che voi annusate ! ' *
— we trace no more than a burlesque of humanistic seeking
after style. It must, however, be admitted that it is not
easy for a less artistic nation to do the ItaUans justice in this
respect. They derived an aesthetic pleasure from refinements
of speech and subtle flavours of expression, whUe they
remained no less conscious than we are that the workman-
1 ' Perfect nose, imperial nose, divine nose, nose to be blessed among
all noses; and blessed be the breasts that made you with a nose so
lordly, and blessed be all those things you put your nose to 1 ' The
above is quoted from Cantu's Storia della Letteratura Italiana. I
have not seen the actual address.
II 0 0

386 RENAISSANCE IN ITALY.
ship surpassed the matter. The proper analogue to their
rhetoric may be found in the exquisite but too unmeaning
arabesques in marble and in wood, which belong to Cinque
Cento architecture. Viewed as the playthings of skilled
artists, these are not without their value ; and we are apt,
perhaps, unduly to depreciate them, becaase we lack the
sense for their particular form of beauty.
If the most marked feature of humanistic literature was
the creation of a Latin' style, the supreme dictators were
Cicero in prose and Virgil hi verse. That Cicero should have
fascinated the ItaUans in an age when art was dominant,
when richness of decoration, rhetorical fluency, and pomp
of phrase appealed to the UveUest instincts of a splendour-
loving, sensitive, declamatory race, is natural. The Eenais
sance found exactly what it wanted in the manner of the
most obviously eloquent of Latin authors, himself a rhe
torician among phUosophers, an orator among statesmen,
the weakness of whose character was akin to that which lay
at the root of fifteenth-century society. To be the 'apes
of Cicero,' in aU the branches of Uterature he had cultivated,
was regarded by the humanists as a reUgious duty.1 Though
they had no place in the senate, the pulpit, or the law court,
they were fain to imitate his oratory. Therefore pubhc
addresses to ambassadors, to magistrates on assuming office,
and to Popes on their election; epithalamial and funeral
discourses ; panegyrics and congratulations — sounded far
and wide through Italy. The fifteenth century was the
golden age of speechification. A man was measured by the
amount of fluent Latinity he could pour forth ; copiousness
of quotations secured applause ; and readiness to answer on
the spur of the moment in smooth Ciceronian phrases, was
reckoned among the qualities that led to posts of trust in
1 The phrase is eulogistically used by F. ViUani in his Life of
Coluccio Salutato.

CICERONIANISM 387
Church and State. On the other hand, a failure of words
on any ceremonial occasion passed for one of the great
calamities of Ufe. The common name for an envoy, oratore,
sufficiently indicates the public importance attached to
rhetoric. It formed a necessary part of the parade which
the Eenaissance loved, and, more than that, a part of its
diplomatic machinery. To compose orations that could never
be recited was a fashionable exercise ; and since the ' Verrines '
and the ' Philippics ' existed, no occasion was lost for repro
ducing something of their spirit in the invectives whereof
bo much has been already said. The emptiness of aU this
oratory, separated from the solid concerns of Ufe, and void
of actual value, tended to increase the sophistic character
of Uterature. Eloquence, which ought to owe its force to
passionate emotion or to gravity of meaning, degenerated
into a mere play of words ; and to such an extent was verbal
cleverness over-estimated, that a scholar could ascribe the
fame of JuUus Caesar to his ' Commentaries ' rather than his
victories.1 It does not seem to have occurred to him that
Pompey would have been. glad if Caesar had always wielded
his pen, and that Brutus would hardly have stabbed a
friendly man of letters. When we read a genuine humanistic
speech, we find that it is principaUy composed of trite tales
and citations. To play upon the texts of antiquity, as a
pianist upon the keys of his instrument, was no small part oi
eloquence ; and the music sounded pleasant in ears greedy of
the very titles of old writings. Vespasiano mentions that
Carlo Aretino owed his early fame at Florence to one lecture,
introducing references to all the classic authors.
The style affected for moral dissertation was in Uke manner
Ciceronian. The dialogue in particular became fashionable ;
and since it was dangerous to introduce matter unsuited to
Tully's phrases, these disquisitions are usuaUy devoid of local
1 See Muratori, vol. xx. 442, 453. C o 2

888 RENAISSANCE IN ITALY
colouring and contemporary interest. Few have such value
as attaches to the opening of Poggio's essay on Fortune, to
Valeriano's treatise on the misfortunes of the learned, or to
Giraldi's attack upon the humanists.
Another important branch of literature, modelled upon
Ciceronian masterpieces, was letter-writing. The epistolo
graphy of the humanists might form a separate branch of
study, if we cared to trace its history through several stages,
and to sift the stores at our disposal. Petrarch, after discover
ing the familiar letters of the Eoman orator, first gave an
impulse to this kind of composition. In his old age he tells
how he was laughed at in his youth for assuming the Latin
style of thou together with the Eoman form of superscription.1
I have already touched upon the currency it gained through
the practice of Coluccio Salutato and the teaching of Gasparino
da Barzizza.2 In course of time books of formulas and polite
letter-writers were compiled, enabUng novices to adopt the
Ciceronian mannerism with safety.3 The Papal Curia sanc
tioned a set of precedents for the guidance of its secretaries,
while the epistles of eminent chanceUors served as models
for the despatches of republican governments.
The private letters of scholars were useful in keeping up
communication between the several centres of culture in
Italy. From these sources too we now derive much interesting
information respecting the social Ufe of the humanists. They
seem to have avoided political, theological, and practical
topics, cultivating a style of urbane compliment, exchanging
opinions about books, asking small favours, acknowledging
1 Epist. Rer. Senil. xv. 1. ' Styli hujus per Italiam non auctor
quidem, sed instaurator ipse mihi videor, quo cum uti inciperem, ado-
lescens a cosetaneis irridebar, qui in hoo ipso certatim me postea sunt
secuti.' - See above, pp. 76-78.
3 Gian Maria Filelfo, son of the celebrated professor, published an
Epistolarium of this kind.

LETTER-WRITING 389
obhgations, recommending friends to favourable notice, occa-
sionaUy describing their mode of life, discussing the qualities
of their patrons with cautious reserve, but seeking above all
things to display grace of diction and elegant humour rather
than erudition. The fact that these Latin epistles were in
variably intended for circulation and ultimate pubUcation,
renders it useless to seek for insight from them into strictly
private matters.1 For the historian the most valuable collec
tions of Eenaissance letters are composed hi ItaUan, and are
not usuaUy the work of scholars, but of agents, spies, and
envoys. Compared with the reports of the Venetian ambas
sadors, the correspondence of the humanists is unimportant.
In addition to famiUar letters, it not unfrequently happened,
however, that epistles upon topics of pubhc interest were
indited by students. Intended by their diffusion to affect
opinion, and addressed to influential friends or patrons, these
compositions assumed the form of pamphlets. Of this kind
were the letters on the Eastern question sent by FileUo to
Charles VII. of France, to the Emperor, to Matthias Corvinus,
to the Dukes of Burgundy and Urbino, and to the Doge of
Venice. The immortality expected by the humanists from
their epistles, has hardly fallen to their lot ; though much of
Pohziano's, Pico's, Antiquari's, and Piccolomini's correspond
ence is stUl deUghtful and instructive reading. The masses
extant in MS. exceed what has been printed; whUe the
printed volumes, with some rare exceptions, among which
1 Francesco Filelfo, quoted in Rosmini's Life, vol. ii. pp. 304, 282,
448, writes, 'Le cose che non voglio sieno copiate, le sorivo sempre
alia grossolana.' 'Hoc autem scribendi more utimur iis in rebus
quarum memoriam nolumus transferre ad posteros. Et ethrusca
quidem lingua vix toti Italise nota est, at latina oratio longe ac late
per universum orbem est diffusa.' ('Matters I do not wish to have
oopied I always write off in the vulgar. This style I use for such
things as I do not care to transmit to posterity. Tuscan, to be sure, is
hardly known to all Itahans, while Latin is spread far and wide through
the whole world.')

390 RENAISSANCE IN ITALY
may be mentioned PoUziano's letter to Antiquari on the death
of Lorenzo, are only used by students."
Since Cicero had left no specimen of history, the humanists
were driven to follow other masters in this branch of literature.
Livy was the author of their predilection. Cassar suppUed
them with a model for the composition of commentaries, and
Sallust for concise monographs. Suetonius was foUowed in
such minute studies of character as Decembrio's 'Life of
FUippo Maria Visconti.' I do not find that Tacitus had any
thoroughgoing imitators ; the magniloquence of rhetoric,
rather than the pungency of sarcasm, suited the taste of the
age. The faults of the humanistic histories have been already
pointed out.2
The services of the humanists, as commentators, trans
lators, critics of texts, compilers of grammars and dictionaries
of aU kinds, collectors of misceUaneous information, and
writers on antiquities, stiU remain to be remembered. Their
industry in this field was quite different from the labour they
devoted to the perfecting of style. Whatever we may think
of them as men of letters, we are bound to give their erudition
almost unqualified praise. Not, indeed, that their learning
any more than then: literature was final. It too has been
superseded ; but it formed the basis of a sounder method, and
rendered the attainment of more certain knowledge possible.
It is not too much to say that modern culture, so far as it is
derived from antiquity, owes everything to the indefatigable
energy of the humanists. Before the age of printing, scholars
had to store their memories with encyclopaadic information,
while the very want of a critical method, by preventing them
from exactly discerning the good and the bad, enabled them
to take a broader and more comprehensive view of classical
1 See Voigt, pp. 421, 422, for an acoount of Filelfo's, Traversari's.
Barbara's, and Brum's letters.
2 See Vol. I., Age of the Despots, pp. 216, 217, and above, p. 377.

LIBERALITY AND LARGENESS 391
literature than is now at any rate common. Antiquity as a
whole — not the authors merely of the Attic age or the
Augustan — claimed their admiration; and though they de
voted special study to Cicero and Virgil for the purposes of
style, they eagerly accepted every Greek or Latin composition
from the earhest to the latest. To this omnivorous appetite
of the elder scholars we are perhaps indebted for the preserva
tion of many fragments which a more delicate taste would
have rejected. Certainly we owe to them the conception of
the classics in their totahty, as forming the proper source of
culture for the human race. The purism of Vida and Bembo,
though it sprang from more refined perceptions, was in
some respects a retrogression from the wide and Uberal eru
dition of their predecessors. Discipleship under Virgil may
make a versifier ; but he who would fain comprehend the
Latin genius must know the poets of Eome from Ennius to
Claudian. Finally we have to render the tribute due to the humanists
for their diffusion of a liberal spirit. Sustained by the en
thusiasm of antiquity, they first ventured to take a standpoint
outside cathoUcity; and though they made but bad use of
this spiritual freedom, inclining to levity and godlessness in
stead of fighting the battle of the reason, yet their large and
human survey of the world was in itself invigorating. Poggic
at the CouncU of Constance regarded Jerome of Prague not
as a heretic, not as a fanatic, but as a Stoic. In other words,
he was capable of divesting his mind of temporary associa
tions and conventional prejudices, and of discerning the true
character of the man who suffered heroicaUy for his opinions.
This instance Ulustrates the general tone and temper of the
humanists. Their study of antiquity freed them from the
scholastic pedantries of theologians, and from the professional
conceits of jurists and physicians. There is nothing great
and noble in human nature that might not, we fancy, have

392 RENAISSANCE IN ITALY
grown and thriven under their direction, if the circumstances
of Italy had been more favourable to high aspirations. As it
was, the hght was early quenched and clouded by base vapours
of a sensual, enslaved, and priest-corrupted society. The
vital force of the Eevival passed into the Eeformation ; the
humanists, degraded and demorahsed, were superseded. StiU
it was they who created the new atmosphere of culture,
wherein whatever is luminous in art, Uterature, science,
criticism, and religion has since flourished. Though we may
perceive that they obeyed a false authority — that of the classics,
and worshipped a false idol — style, yet modern liberty must
render them the meed of thanks for this. When we consider
that before the sixteenth century had closed, they had imbued
the whole ItaUan nation with their views, forming a new
literature, directing every kind of mental activity, and pro
ducing a new social tone, and furthermore that Italy hi the
sixteenth century impressed her spirit on the rest of Europe,
we have a right to hail the humanists as the schoolmasters of
modern civilisation.
As schoolmasters in a stricter sense of the term, it is not
easy to exaggerate the influence exercised by Itahan students.
They first conceived and framed the education that has now
prevailed through Europe for four centuries, moulding the
youth of divers nations by one common discipline, and esta
blishing an intellectual concord for aU peoples. In spite of
changes in government and creed, in spite of differences caused
by race and language, we have maintained an uniformity of
culture through the simultaneous prosecution of classic studies
on the lines laid down for teachers by the scholars of the
fifteenth century. The system of our universities and pubUc
schools is in truth no other than that devised by Vittorino
and Guarino. Thus humanism in modern Europe has con
tinued the work performed during the Middle Ages by the
Church, uniting in one confederation of spiritual activity

EDUCATIONAL SYSTEM 363
nations widely separated by all that tends to keep the human
famUies apart.
UntU quite recently in England, the Utterte humaniores
were accepted as the soundest training for careers in Church
and State, for the learned professions, and for the private
duties of gentlemen. If the old ideal is yielding at last to
theories of a wider education based on science and on modern
languages, that is due partly to the extension of useful know
ledge, and partly to the absorption of classic literature into
the modern consciousness. The sum of what a cultivated
man should know, in order to maintain a place among the
pioneers of progress, is so vast, that learners, distracted by a
variety of subjects, resent the expenditure of precious time
on Greek and Latin. Teachers, on the other hand, through
long famiUarity with humane studies, have fallen into, the
languor of routine. Besides, as knowledge hi each new
department increases, the necessity of specialising with a
view to adopting a professional career, makes itself con
tinuaUy felt with greater urgency. It may therefore be
plausibly argued that we have outgrown the conditions of
humanism, and that a new stage in the history of education
has been reached. Have not the ancients done as much for
us as they can do ? Are not our minds permeated with their
thoughts ? Do not the masterpieces of modern literature
hold in solution the best that can be got from them for future
uses? These questions can perhaps be met by the counter-ques
tion whether the arts and letters of the Greeks and Eomans
will not always hold their own, not only hi the formation of
pure taste, but also in the discipline of character and the
training of the intelligence. Just as weU might we cease to
study the sacred books of the Jews, because we have incor
porated their ethics into our conscience, and possess their
religion in our Uturgy. No transmission of a spirit at second

394 EENAISSANCE IN ITALY
or third hand can be the same as its immediate contact ; nor
can we afford, however fuU our mental life may be, to lose
the vivid sense of what men were and what they wrought in
ages far removed from us, especiaUy when those men were
our superiors in certain spheres. Again, it may be doubted
whether we should understand the masterpieces of modern
literature, when we came to be separated from the sources of
their inspiration. H Olympus connoted less than Asgard, or
Hercules were no more familiar to our minds than Eustem,
or the horses of the Sun stood at the same distance from us
as the cows of Indra — if, in fact, we abandoned Greek as
much as we have abandoned Scandinavian, Persian, and
Sanskrit mythology, would not some of the most brilliant
images of our own poets fade into leaden greyness, Uke clouds
that have lost the flush of living light upon them ?
It is therefore not improbable that for many years to come
the higher culture of the race wUl stiU be grounded upon
humanism : true though it be that the first enthusiasm for
antiquity shaU never be restored, nor the classics yield
that vital nourishment they offered in the spring-time of
the modern era. For average students, who have no special
vocation for literature and no assthetie tastes, it may weU
happen that new methods of teaching the classics wiU have
to be invented. Why should they not be read in English
versions, and the time expended upon Greek and Latin
grammar be thus saved ? The practice of Greek and Latin
versification has been virtuaUy doomed already ; nor is there
any reason why Latin prose should form a necessary part of
education in an age that has ceased to publish its thoughts
in a now completely dead language. Our actual relation to
the ancients, again, justifies some change. We know far
more about them now than in the period of the Eenaissance ;
but they are no longer aU in aU for civUised humanity, eager
to reconstitute the reahn of thought, and find its nobler self

DECAY OF STUDIES IN ITALY 385
anew in the image of a glorious past, reconquered and inahen-
able. The very culture created by the study of antiquity
through the last four centuries stands between them and our
apprehension, so that they seem at the same moment more
distinct from us and more a part of our familiar selves.
When we seek the causes which produced the decay of
learning in Italy about the middle of the sixteenth century,
we are first led to observe that the type of scholarship in
augurated by Petrarch had been fuUy developed. Nothing
new remained to be worked out upon the Unes laid down by
him. MeanwhUe the forces of the nation, both creative and
receptive, were exhausted in the old fields of humanism.
The reading pubhc had been glutted with epistles, invectives,
poems, orations, histories of antiquities, and disquisitions of
aU kinds. The matter of the ancient Uteratures had been
absorbed, if superficially, at least entirely, and their forms
had been reproduced with wearisome reiteration. The
Paganism that had so long ruled as a fashion, was now
passing out of vogue, because of its inadequacy to meet the
deeper wants and satisfy the aspirations of the modern world.
The humanists, moreover, as a class, had fallen into disrepute
through faults and vices whereof enough has been already said.
Nothing short of the new impulse which a new genius, equal
at least in power to Petrarch, might have communicated,
could have given a fresh direction to the declining enthusiasm
for antiquity. But for this display of energy the Italians
were not prepared. As in the ascent of some high peak, the
traveller, after surmounting pine woods and Alpine pastures,
comes upon bare grassy slopes that form an intermediate
region between the basements of the mountain and the snow-
fields overhead, so the humanists had accomplished the first
stage of learning. But it requires a fresh start and the
employment of other faculties to scale the final heights ; and
for tins the force was wanting. Erasmus, at the opening of

396 RENAISSANCE IN ITALY
the century, had, indeed, initiated a second age of scholar
ship. The more exact methods of criticism and comparison
were already about to be instituted by the French, the Ger
mans, and the Dutch. It was too much, however, to expect
that the Italians, who had expended their vigour in recovering
the classics and reviving a passion for knowledge, should
compete upon the ground of modern erudition with these
fresh and untried races.
What they might have done, if circumstances had been
less unfavourable, and if the way of progress had been free
before them, cannot be conjectured. As it was, aU things
contributed to the decline of inteUectual energy in Italy.
The distracting wars of half a century told more heavUy
upon the Uterati, who depended for their very existence upon
the UberaUty of patrons, than on any other section of the
people. What miseries they endured in Lombardy may be
gathered from the prefaces and epistles of Aldus Manutius ;
while the blow inflicted on them by the sack of Eome is
vividly described by Valeriano.1 When comparative peace
was restored, Uberty had been extinguished. Florence, the
stronghold of Uberal learnmg, was enslaved. Scholarship no
less than art suffered from the loss of pohtical independence.
Eome, terror-stricken by the Eeformation, turned with rage
against the very studies she had helped to stimulate. The
engines of the Inquisition, wielded with aU the mercUess-
ness of panic by men who had the sombre cruelty of Spain
to back them up, destroyed the germs of life in science and
philosophy. To some extent, again, the ItaUan scholars had prepared
their own suicide by tending more and more to subtleties of
taste and affectations of refinement. The purism of the six
teenth century was itself a sort of etiolation, and the puerilities
1 See above, p. 821.

THE LITERATI AND THE PEOPLE 397
of the academies distracted even able men from serious
studies. It was one of the inevitable drawbacks of humanism
that the new culture separated men of letters from the nation.
Dante and the wool-carders of the fourteenth century under
stood each other ; there was then no thick veU of erudition
between the teacher and the taught. But neither Bembo
nor Pomponazzi had anything to say that could be compre
hended by the common folk. Therefore scholarship was left
in mournful isolation ; suspected, when it passed from trifles
to grave speculations, by the Church ; viewed with indifference
by the people ; unsustained by any sympathy, and, what was
worse, without a programme or a watchword. The thinkers,
whose biography belongs to the history of the Counter-
Eeformation in Italy, were aU solitary men, voices crying in
the wUderness with none to listen, bound together by no
common bond, unnoticed by the nation, extinguished singly
on the scaffold by an ever- watchful league of tyrants spiritual
and pohtical.
Before the end of the sixteenth century Greek had almost
ceased to be studied in Italy. This was the sign of intellec
tual death. AU that was virile in humanism fled beyond the
Alps. This transference of inteUectual supremacy from Italy
to Germany was speedily accomplished. ' When I was a boy,'
said Erasmus,1 ' sound letters had begun to revive among the
Itahans ; but by reason of the printer's art being as yet un
discovered or known to few, no books had reached us, and in
the deep tranquUlity of dulness there reigned a set of men
who taught in aU our towns the most illiterate learning.
Eodolph Agricola was the first to bring to us from Italy some
breath of a superior culture.' Again, he says of Italy, ' In
that land, where even the very walls are both more learned
and more eloquent than men with us ; so that what here
1 See the passages quoted by Tirabosehi, vol. vi. lib. iii. cap. v. 71.

398 RENAISSANCE IN ITALY
seems beautifully said, and elegant and full of charm, cannot
be held for aught but clumsy, stupid, and uncultivated there.'
Less than half a century after Erasmus had gained the right
to hold the balance thus between the nations of the North
and South — that is, in 1540 or thereabouts — Paolo Giovio,
at the close of his ' Elogia Literaria,' whUe speaking of the
Germans, felt obUged to confess that ' not only Latin letters,
to our disgrace, but Greek and Hebrew also have passed into
their territory by a fatal simultaneous migration.'
Thus Italy, after receiving the lamp of learning from the
dying hands of Hellas, in the days of her own freedom, now,
in the time of her adversity and ruin, gave it to the nations
of the North. Her work was ended. Three centuries of
increasing decrepitude, within our recent memory at length
most happily surmounted, were before her. Can history, we
wonder, furnish a spectacle more pathetic than that of the
protagonist of spiritual liberty faUing uneasUy asleep beneath
the footstool of the Spaniard and the churchman, while the
races who had trampled her to death went on rejoicing in the
light and culture she had won by centuries of toU ? This is
the tragic aspect of the subject which has occupied us through
the present volume. At the conclusion of the whole matter
it is, however, more profitable to remember, not the intellec
tual death of Italy, but what she wrought in that bright
period of her vigour. She was the divinely appointed birth
place of the modern spirit, the workshop of knowledge for
all Europe, our mistress in the arts and sciences, the Alma
Mater of our student years, the weU-spring of mental freedom
and activity after ages of stagnation. If greater philosophers
have since been produced by Germany and France and Eng
land, greater scholars, greater men of science, greater poets
even, and greater pioneers of progress in the lands divined
by Christopher Columbus beyond the seas — this must not
blind us to the truth that at the verv outset of the era in

THE TORCH-RACE OF THE NATIONS 399
which we Uve and play our parts, Italy embraced all philo
sophy, aU scholarship, aU science, aU art, aU discovery, alone.
Such is the Lampadephoria, or torch-race, of the nations.
Greece stretches forth her hand to Italy ; Italy consigns the
sacred fire to Northern Europe ; the people of the North pass
on the flame to America, to India, and the Australasian
isles.

PRINTED BV
SPOTTISWOODE AND CO. LTD., COLCHESTER
LONDON AND ETON