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THE
RENAISSANCE IN ITALY
- - -
º º º º º --> - *
-
Lºmºn numen a tº ºmitu ºr ºº is Mºrlºn Place


A SEHORT HISTORY
OF THE *—
RENAISSANCE IN ITALY
TAKEN FROIſ THE WORK OF
JoHN ADDINGTON SYMONDS
BF
LIEUT.-COLONEL. ALFRED PEAR SON
LONDON
SMITH, ELDER, & CO., 15 WATERLOO PLACE
1893
[All rights reserved]
D 6
5:33
, S Q q
| 3 G 3
P R E FA C E
IT had been often represented to my husband that his
‘Renaissance in Italy’ in a shorter form would be
acceptable to many who are without the leisure or the
ânclination to take up the subject in the character of
students. But though, through stress of other work,
he was indisposed to return to the subject, he was
quite willing that our friend Colonel Pearson, who
has been associated with us for some years at
Davos, and who is well acquainted with Italy, should
carry out his own views as to what might be interesting
and useful to those who would be satisfied with the
subject in a more popular form. It will be seen,
therefore, that in the choice of his materials Colonel
Pearson's object has been to select and arrange for
those who know Italy, or hope in the future to do so,
whatever may sustain or promote an interest in its
history, its art, and its literature. With regard to the
vi AREFA CE
success with which this may have been done, it was my
husband's thought to record here the opinion he
frequently eaſpressed—that the intention of his large
work had been thoroughly appreciated by Colonel
Pearson, and its essence reproduced without any im-
portant omission. To have seen this reflection of it,
in a form which he agreed might attract a larger
public than he had appealed to, was, it may be well to
add, a source of great pleasure to him during the last
winter of his life.
J. C. SYMONDS.
A M HOF, DA VOS PLATZ :
August 11, 1893.
i/\!/ I.
II.
v/ III.
IV.
VI.
N_VII.
VIII.
IX.
X.
O O N T E N T S
THE SPIRIT OF THE RENAISSANCE
THE RISE OF THE COMMUNEs.
THE RULE OF THE DESPOTs
THE Popes of THE RENAissance
SAVONAROLA : SCOURGE AND SEER
THE RAID OF Charles VIII. .
THE Revival OF LEARNING .
THE FLORENTINE HISTORIANs .
LITERARY SoCIETY AT FLORENCE,
MEN OF LETTERS AT ROME AND NAPLES
MILAN, MANTUA, AND FERRARA
xi.
ºxiI.
XIII.
XIV.
THE FINE ARTS o tº o
THE REVIVAL OF VERNACULAR LITERATURE
THE CATHOLIC REACTION”
INDEX
PAG. F.
1 *-*
A SHORT HISTORY
OF THE
RENAISSANCE IN ITALY
—e-->e—
I
THE SPIRIT OF THE RENAISSANCE
#º HE word Renaissance has of late years
§§ received a more extended significance than
that which is implied in our English
* \ *
equivalent—the Revival,of Learning. We "
use it to denote the whole transition from the Middle .
Ages to the Modern World; and though it is possible to
assign certain limits to the period during which this
transition took place, we cannot fix on any dates so
positively as to say—between this year and that the
movement was accomplished.
In like manner we cannot refer the whole phenomena Various
* definitions
of the Renaissance to any one cause or circumstance, or % the
€720,7 S-
limit them within the field of any one department of sance.
!
i
|
|
human knowledge. If we ask the students of art what
they mean by the Renaissance, they will reply that it
was the revolution effected in architecture, painting, and |
!
B

2 THE SA’/R/7" OA. THE REAVA/SSAAVCE
Sculpture by the recovery of antique monuments.
Students of literature, philosophy, and theology see in
the Renaissance that discovery of manuscripts, that
passion for antiquity, that progress in philology and
criticism which led to a correct knowledge of the classics,
to a fresh taste in poetry, to new systems of thought, to
more accurate analysis, and, finally, to the Lutheran
Schism and the emancipation of the conscience. Men
of science will discourse about the discovery of the solar
system by Copernicus and Galileo, the anatomy of
Vesalius, and Harvey’s theory of the circulation of the
blood. The origination of a truly scientific method is
the point which interests them most in the Renaissance.
The political historian, again, has his own answer to
the question. The extinction of feudalism, the develop-
ment of the great nationalities of Europe, the growth of
monarchy, the limitation of ecclesiastical authority and
the erection of the Papacy into an Italian kingdom, and,
in the last place, the gradual emergence of that Sense of
popular freedom which exploded in the Revolution : these
are the aspects of the movement which engross his
attention. Jurists will describe the dissolution of legal ;
fictions based upon the false decretals, the acquisition of
a true text of the Roman Code, and the attempt to
introduce a rational method into the theory of modern
jurisprudenee, as well as to commence the study of inter-
national law. Men whose attention has been turned to .
the history of discoveries and inventions will relate the
~ of America and the East, or will point to the
wº-
7THE SP/R/7" OA' THE REAVA/SSAAVCE 3
benefits conferred upon the world by the arts of printing
and engraving, by the compass and the telescope, by paper
and by gunpowder; and will insist that at the moment
of the Renaissance all these instances of mechanical
utility started into existence to aid the dissolution of
what was rotten and must perish, to strengthen and
perpetuate the new and useful and life-giving.
Yet neither any one of these answers taken sepa-
rately, nor, indeed, all of them together, will offer a
solution of the problem. By the term Renaissance, or
new birth, is indicated a natural movement, not to be
explained by this or that characteristic, but to be
accepted as an effort of humanity for which at length
the time had come, and in the onward progress of which
we still participate. The history of the Renaissance is
not the history of arts, or of Sciences, or of literature,
or even of nations. It is the history of the attainment
of self-conscious freedom to the human spirit manifested
in the European races. It is no mere political mutation,
no new fashion of art, no restoration of classical standards
of taste. The arts and the inventions, the knowledge
and the books, which suddenly became vital at the time of
the Renaissance, had long lain neglected on the shores of
the Dead Sea, which we call the Middle Ages. It was not
their discovery which caused the Renaissance ; but it was
the intellectual energy, the spontaneous outburst of intelli-
gence, which enabled mankind at that moment to make
use of them. The force then generated still continues,
vital and expansive, in the Spirit of the modern world.
*º-
It was a
"mental
evolution
vſ
R 2
4 THE SPIRIT OF 7"HE REAVA/SSA NCAE
*s-
Certain
conditions
2007'0
required
for it.
There
were Sigms
of its ad-
(went.
How was it, then, that at a certain period, about four-
teen centuries after Christ, to speak roughly, the intellect
of the Western races awoke as it were from slumber and
began once more to be active 2 That is a question which
We can but imperfectly answer. Bht a glance at the
history of the preceding centuries shows that, after the
dissolution of the fabric of the Roman Empire, there was
no immediate possibility of any intellectual revival.
The barbarous races which had deluged Europe had to
absorb their barbarism; the fragments of Roman civi-
lisation had either to be destroyed or assimilated; the
Germanic nations had to receive culture and religion
from the people they had superseded; the Church had to
be created, and a new form given to the old idea of the
Empire. It was further necessary that the modern
nationalities should be defined, that the modern languages
should be formed, that peace should be secured to some
extent and wealth accumulated, before the indispensable
conditions for a resurrection of the free spirit of humanity
could exist. The first nation which fulfilled these condi-
, tions was the first to inaugurate the new era. The
reason why Italy took the lead in the Renaissance was
that Italy possessed a languáge, a favourable climate,
political freedom, and commercial proſperity, at a time
| when other nations were still semi-barbarous.
At the same time it must not be supposed that the
Renaissance burst suddenly upon the world in the
fifteenth century without premonitory symptoms, Within
the middle age, over and over again, the reason strove
THE SP/R/T OF THE REAVA/SSA NCAE 5
to break loose from its fetters. The ideas projected thus
early were immature and abortive, and the nations were
not ready for them. Franciscans imprisoning Roger
Bacon for venturing to examine what God had meant to
keep secret ; Dominicans preaching Crusades against the
cultivated nobles of Toulouse ; Popes stamping out the
seed of enlightened Frederick; Benedictines erasing the
masterpieces of classical literature to make way for their
litanies, or selling pieces of parchment for charms; a
laity given up to superstition; a clergy sunk in sensual
sloth, or fevered with demoniac zeal : these still ruled
the intellectual condition of Europe. It was, therefore,
only at the beginning of the fourteenth century, when
Italy had lost indeed the heroic spirit which we admire
in her Communes of the thirteenth, but had gained
instead ease, wealth, magnificence, and that repose which
springs from long prosperity, that the new age at last
began.
During the Middle Ages man had lived enveloped in
a cowl. He had not seen the beauty of the world, or
had seen it only to cross himself and turn aside, to tell
his beads and pray. Like St. Bernard travelling along
the shores of Lake Leman, and noticing neither the azure
of the waters, nor the luxuriance of the vines, nor the
radiance of the mountains with their robe of sun and
snow, but bending a thought-burdened forehead over
the neck of his mule; even like this monk, humanity
had passed, a careful pilgrim, intent on the terrors of
sin, death, and jº along the highways of the
The view
of life in
the
Middle
Ages.
25°
6 THE SP/R/T OF 7 HE RE/WAYSSA MCE
world, and had scarcely known that they were sight-
worthy, or that life is a blessing. Beauty is a Snare,
pleasure a sin, the World a fleeting show, man fallen and
lost, death the only certainty; ignorance is acceptable
to God as a proof of faith and submission; abstinence
and mortification are the only safe rules of life: these
were the fixed ideas of the ascetic mediaeval Church.
| The Renaissance questioned and shattered them, rending
the thick veil which they had drawn between the mind
of man and the outer world, and flashing the light of
reason upon the darkened places of his own nature.
For the mystic teaching of the Church was substituted
culture in the classical humanities; a new ideal was
established, whereby man strove to make himself the
monarch of the globe on which it is his privilege as well
as destiny to live. The Renaissance was the liberation
of the reason from a dungeon, the double discovery of
the outer and the inner world.
º: ken- An external event determined the direction which
º %ºa. this outburst of the spirit of freedom should take. This
was the contact of the modern with the ancient mind,'
which followed upon what is called the Revival of s
Learning. The fall of the Greek Empire in 1453, while
it signalised the extinction of the old order, gave an
impulse to the now accumulated forces of the new. A
belief in the identity of the human spirit under all
previous manifestations, and in its uninterrupted con-
tinuity, was generated. Men found that in classical as
well as Biblical antiquity existed an ideal of human life,
THE SPIR/T OF THE REWA/SSAAVCAE 7
|
\
both moral and intellectual, by which they might profit
in the present. The modern genius felt confidence in its
own energies when it learned what the ancients had
achieved. The guesses of the ancients stimulated the
exertions of the moderns. The whole world’s history
Seemed once more to be one.
During the Middle Ages, again, the plastic arts, like 4 fresh
philosophy, had degenerated into barren and meaning-
less scholasticism—a frigid reproduction of lifeless forms
copied technically and without inspiration from debased
patterns. Pictures became symbolically connected with
the religious feelings of the people; formulae from which
to deviate would be impious in the artist, and confusing
to the worshipper. Superstitious reverence bound the
painter to copy the almond-shaped eyes and stiff joints
of the Saints whom he had adored from infancy; and,
even if it had been otherwise, he lacked the skill to
imitate the natural forms he saw around him. But with
the dawning of the Renaissance a new spirit in the arts
arose. Men began to conceive that the human body is
noble in itself and worthy of patient study. The object
of the artist then became to unite devotional feeling
and respect for the sacred legend with the utmost beauty,
inspira!
tion in
artr
and the utmost fidelity of delineation. In a word, he
humanised the, altar-pieces and the cloister frescoes upon
which he worked. Finally, when the classics came to
aid this work of progress, a new World of thought and
fancy was revealed to their astonished eyes.
It was scholarship, first and last, which revealed to
8 THE SPIRIT OF THE REAVA/SSAAVCE
The en-
thusiasm
for classi-
cal know-
ledge.
The
legend of
Julia.
men the wealth of their own minds, the dignity of human
thought, the value of human speculation, the importance
of human life regarded as a thing apart from religious
rules and dogmas. During the Middle Ages a few
students had possessed the poems of Virgil and the prose
of Boethius, together with fragments of Lucan, Ovid,
Statius, Juvenal, Cicero, and Horace. The Renaissance
opened to the whole reading public the treasure-houses
of Greek and Latin literature. At the same time the
Bible in its original tongues was re-discovered. Mines
of Oriental learning were laid bare for the students of
the Jewish and Arabic traditions. The Aryan and Semitic
revelations were for the first time subjected to something
like a critical comparison. It was an age of accumulation,
of uncritical and indiscriminate enthusiasm. Manu-
scripts were worshipped as reliques from the Holy Land
had been worshipped a few generations before. What
is most remarkable about this age of Scholarship is the
enthusiasm which pervaded all classes. Popes and
princes, captains of adventure and peasants, noble ladies
and the leaders of the demi-monde, alike became
scholars.
There is a story told by Infessura which illustrates the
temper of the times with singular felicity. On April 18,
1485, a report circulated in Rome that Some Lombard
workmen had discovered a Roman Sarcophagus while
digging on the Appian Way. It was a marble tomb,
with the inscription ‘Julia, daughter of Claudius'; and
inside lay the body of a beautiful girl of fifteen years,
THE SP//e/T OF THE RE/WA/SSAAVCE 9
preserved by precious unguents from corruption. The
bloom of youth was still upon her cheeks and lips; her
eyes and mouth were half open ; her long hair floated
round her shoulders. She was instantly removed—so
goes the legend—to the Capitol; and then pilgrims from
all the quarters of Rome flocked to gaze upon this Saint
of the old Pagan world. In the eyes of these enthusiastic
worshippers, her beauty was beyond imagination or
description; she was far fairer than any woman of the
modern age could hope to be. At last Innocent VIII.
feared lest the Orthodox faith would suffer by this new
cult of a heathen corpse, and Julia was buried Secretly
and at night by his directions. This tale is repeated in
MataraZZO and in Nantiporto with slight variation; in
One the girl's hair is said to have been yellow, in the
other glossy black. What foundation there may be for
the legend is beyond our inquiry; but there is a curious
document on the subject in a Latin letter, which has
not been published, from Bartholomaeus Fontius to his
friend Franciscus Saxethus, minutely describing the
Corpse, as if he had not only seen but had handled it.
We may at least use the mythus as a parable of the
ecstatic devotion which prompted the men of that age to
discover a form of unimaginable beauty in a tomb of the
classic World.
Then came the age of the critics, philologers, and
painters. They began their task by digesting and
arranging the contents of the libraries. There were then
no short cuts to learning, no comprehensive lexicons, no
The diffi-
culties to
be over-
CO7729.
IO THE SPIRIT OF THE REAVA/SSAAVCE
dictionaries of antiquities, no carefully prepared thesauri
of mythology and history. Each student had to hold
in his brain the whole mass of classical erudition. The
text and the canon of Homer, Plato, Aristotle, and the
tragedians had to be decided. Florence, Venice, Basle,
Lyons, and Paris groaned with printing presses. The
Aldi, the Stephani, and Froben toiled by night and day,
employing scores of Scholars, men of Supreme devotion
and of mighty brain, whose work it was to ascertain the
right reading of sentences, to accentuate, to punctuate,
to commit to the press, and to place beyond the reach
of monkish hatred or of envious time that everlasting
solace of humanity which exists in the classics. All
subsequent achievements in the field of Scholarship sink
into insignificance beside the labours of these men who
needed genius, enthusiasm, and the sympathy of Europe
for the accomplishment of their titanic task. Virgil was
printed in 1470, Homer in 1488, Aristotle in 1498, Plato
in 1513. They then became the inalienable heritage of
V mankind.
º ſº Not only did scholarship restore the classics and
logy. encourage literary criticism ; it also encouraged theo-
<> logical criticism. In the wake of theological freedom
followed a free philosophy, no longer Subject to the
dogmas of the Church. To purge the Christian faith
from false conceptions and to interpret religion to the
reason has been the work of succeeding centuries. The
whole movement of the Reformation is equally a phase
in that accelerated action of the modern mind which at . . . .
. . .”
THE SP/R/T OF 7 AE AAAWA/SSAAVCE I I
its commencement we call the Renaissance. It is a
mistake to regard the Reformation as an isolated
phenomenon, or as an effort to restore the Church to
purity. It exhibits in the region of religious thought
and national politics what the Renaissance displays in
the sphere of culture, art, and science—the recovered
energy and freedom of the reason. In this awakening
it was not without its mediaeval anticipations and fore-
shadowings. The heretics whom the Church successfully
combated in North Italy, France, and Bohemia were the
precursors of Luther. The scholars prepared the way
in the fifteenth century. Teachers of Hebrew, founders
of Hebrew type—Reuchlin in Germany, Alexander in
Paris, Won Hutten as a pamphleteer, and Erasmus as
a humanist—contribute each a definite momentum.
Luther, for his part, incarnates the spirit of revolt
against tyrannical authority, urges the necessity of a
return to the essential truth of Christianity as distin-
guished from the idols of the Church, and asserts the
right of the individual to judge, interpret, criticise, and
construct opinion for himself. The veil which the
Church had interposed between the human Soul and God
was broken down. The freedom of the conscience was
established.
It remains only to speak of the mechanical inventions
which aided the emancipation of the spirit in the modern
age. Discovered over and over again, and offered at
intervals to the human race at various times and on
divers soils, no effective use was made of these material
v/
The impe-
tus it gave
to Science.
<>
2-
I2 THE SPIR/T OF THE REAVA/SSA NCE
S-
The credit
attribu-
table to
Italy.
resources until the fifteenth century. The compass, dis-
covered according to tradition by Gioja of Naples in 1802,
was employed by Columbus for the voyage to America
in 1492. The telescope, known to the Arabians in the
Middle Ages, and described by Roger Bacon in 1250,
helped Copernicus to prove the revolution of the earth
in 1530, and Galileo to substantiate his theory of the
planetary system. Printing, after numerous useless
revelations to the world of its resources, became an art
in 1488; and paper, which had long been known to the
Chinese, was first made of cotton in Europe about 1000,
and of rags in 1319. Gunpowder entered into use about
1320, and in no long time revolutionised the art of War,
The feudal castle, the armour of the knight and his
battle-horse, the prowess of one man against a hundred,
and the pride of aristocratic cavalry trampling upon ill-
armed militia, lost their superiority with the invention
of cannon. Such reflections as these, however, are trite,
and must occur to every mind. It is more to the pur-
pose to say that not these inventions, but the intelligence
that used them, the conscious calculating spirit of the
modern world, should rivet our attention when we direct
it to the phenomena of the Renaissance.
In the work of the Renaissance all the great nations
of Europe shared. But it must never be forgotten that,
as a matter of history, the true Renaissance began in
Italy. It was there that the essential qualities which
distinguish the modern from the ancient and the
mediaeval world were developed. Italy created that new
THE SPIRIT OF THE REWAISSANCE I3
spiritual atmosphere of culture and of intellectual free-
dom which has been the life-breath of the European
races. As the Jews are called the chosen and peculiar
people of Divine revelation, so may the Italians be called
the chosen and peculiar vessels of the prophecy of the
Renaissance. In art, in scholarship, in Science, in the
mediation between antique culture and the modern
intellect, they took the lead, handing to Germany and
France and England the restored humanities complete.
Spain and England have since done more for the explora-
tion and colonisation of the World. Germany achieved
the labour of the Reformation almost single-handed.
France has collected, centralised, and diffused intelli-
gence with irresistible energy. But, if we return to the
first origins of the Renaissance, we find that, at a time
When the rest of Europe was inert, Italy had already
begun to organise the various elements of the modern
spirit, and to set the fashion whereby the other great
nations should learn and live.
I4
II
THE RISE OF THE COMMUNES
㺠ODERN Italian history may be said to begin
§ AYºA \; with the retirement of Honorius to Ravenna,
and the subsequent foundation of Odoacer's
kingdom in 476. The Western Empire
ended, and Rome was again recognised as a republic.
When the Greek Emperor Zeno sent the Goths into
Italy, Theodoric established himself at Ravenna, con-
tinued the institutions and usages of the ancient Empire,
and sought to naturalise his alien authority. Rome he
respected as the Sacred city of ancient culture and civility.
Her Consuls, appointed by the Senate, were confirmed
in due course by the Greek Emperor; and Theodoric
made himself the vicegerent of the Caesars rather than
an independent sovereign. When we criticise the Ostro-
Gothic occupation by the light of Subsequent history, it is
clear that this exclusion of the capital from Theodoric's
conquest and his veneration for the Eternal City Were
fatal to the unity of the Italian realm. From the moment
that Rome was separated from the authority of the Italian
kings there existed two powers in the Peninsula—the one
secular, monarchical, with the military strength of the

&E &ISE QR zak cowºwes I 5
barbarians imposed upon its ancient municipal organisa-
tion; the other ecclesiastical, pontifical, relying on the
undefined ambition of S. Peter's See and the uncon-
quered instincts of the Roman people Scattered through
the still surviving cities.
Justinian, bent upon asserting his rights as the Suc-
cessor of the Caesars, Wrested Italy from the hands of the
Goths; but scarcely was this revolution effected when
Narses, the successor of Belisarius, called a new nation
of barbarians to support his policy in Italy. Narses
died before the advent of the Lombards; but they de-
scended in forces far more formidable than the Goths,
and established a second kingdom at Pavia.
Under the Lombard domination Rome was again left
untouched. Venice, with her population gathered from
the ruins of the neighbouring Roman cities, remained in
quasi-subjection to the Empire of the East ; Ravenna
became a Greek garrison, ruling the Exarchate and
Pentapolis under the name of the Byzantine Emperors.
The Western coast escaped the Lombard domination ;
for Genoa grew slowly into power upon her narrow
cornice between hills and Sea, while Pisa defied the bar-
barians intrenched in military stations at Fiesole and
Lucca. In like manner the islands, Sicily, Sardinia,
and Corsica, were detached from the Lombard king-
dom; and the maritime cities of Southern Italy, Bari,
Naples, Amalfi, and Gaeta, asserted independence under
the shadow of the Greek ascendency. What the Lom-
bards achieved in their conquest, and what they failed
The
Lombard
conquest.
Its disin-
tegrating
effect.
16 THE RISE OF THE COMMUNES
Rome
calls for
assistance
zºpon
Charles
the Great.
.*
to accomplish, decided the future of Italy. They broke
the country up into unequal blocks; for while the inland
regions of the north obeyed Pavia, while the great
duchies of Spoleto in the centre and of Benevento in
the south owned the nominal sway of Alboin's successors,
Venice and the Riviera, Pisa and the maritime republics
of Apulia and Calabria, Ravenna and the islands, repelled
their sovereignty. Rome remained inviolable beneath
the aegis of her ancient prestige ; and the decadent
Empire of the East was too inert to check the freedom
of the towns which recognised its titular supremacy.
Not long after their settlement the princes of the
Lombard race took the fatal step of joining the Catholic
communion, whereby they strengthened the hands of
Rome and excluded themselves from tyrannising in the
last resort over the growing independence of the Papal
See. The causes of their conversion from Arianism to
orthodox Latin Christianity are buried in obscurity;
but it is probable that they were driven to this measure
by the rebelliousness of their great vassals and the
necessity of resting for Support upon the indigenous
populations they had subjugated. Rome, profiting by
the errors and the weakness of her antagonists, extended
her spiritual dominion by enforcing Sacraments, ordeals,
and appeals to ecclesiastical tribunals, organised her
hierarchy under Gregory the Great, and lost no oppor-
tunity of enriching and aggrandising her bishoprics.
In 718 she shook off the yoke of Byzantium by repelling
the heresies of Leo the Isaurian; and when this insur-
THE RISE OF 7"HE COMMUAVES 17
rection menaced her with the domestic tyranny of the
Lombard kings, who possessed themselves of Ravenna
in 728, she called the Franks to her aid against the now
powerful realm. Stephen II. journeyed in 753 to Gaul,
named Pippin Patrician of Rome, and invited him to the
conquest of Italy. In the war that followed the Franks
subdued the Lombards, and Charles the Great was
invested with their kingdom, and crowned Emperor in
800 by Leo III. at Rome.
The famous compact between Charles the Great and
the Pope was in effect a ratification of the existing state
of things. The new Emperor took for himself and con-
verted into a Frankish kingdom all the provinces that
had been wrested from the Lombards. He relinquished
to the Papacy Rome with its patriumony, the portions
of Spoleto and Benevento that had already yielded to
the See of S. Peter, the Southern provinces that owned
the nominal ascendency of Byzantium, the islands and
the cities of the Exarchate and Pentapolis which formed
no part of the Lombard conquest. By this stipulation
no real power was accorded to the Papacy, nor did the
new Empire surrender its paramount rights over the
peninsula at large. The Italian kingdom transferred to
the Franks in 800 was the kingdom founded by the
Lombards; while the outlying and unconquered districts
were placed beneath the protectorate of the power which
had guided their emancipation.
Thus the dualism introduced into Italy by Theodoric's
veneration for Rome, and confirmed by the failure of the
C
The
compact
betweenv
Charles
the Great
and the
Pope.
I 8 THE RISAE OF 7"HE COMMUAVES
The
Empire
and the
Papacy
eactend
their
Sway.
The Lom-
bard king-
dom, is
eactin-
guished.
Lombard conquest, was ratified by the settlement which
established a new Empire in Western Christendom.
Venice, Pisa, Genoa, and the maritime republics of the
South, excluded from the kingdom, were left to pursue
their own course ; and this is the chief among many
reasons why they rose so early into prominence. Rome
consolidated her ancient patrimonies and extended her
rectorship in the centre, while the Frankish kings who
succeeded each other at Pavia through eight reigns
developed their rule upon feudal principles by parcelling
the lands among their counts. New marches were formed,
traversing the previous Lombard fabric, and introducing
divisions that decentralised the kingdom. Thus the
great vassals of Ivrea, Verona, Tuscany, and Spoleto
raised themselves against Pavia; and when Berengar,
the last independent sovereign, strove to enforce his
declining authority he was met with the hatred and
resistance of his subjects.
The kingdom Berengar attempted to maintain against
his vassals and the Church was virtually abrogated by
Otho I., whom the Lombard nobles summoned into Italy.
When he appeared in 961, he was crowned Emperor at
Rome and assumed the title of King of Italy. Thus the
Lombard kingdom, after enduring for two centuries, was
merged in the Empire; and from this time the two great
potentates in the peninsula were an unarmed Pontiff
and an absent Emperor. The subsequent history of
the Italians shows how they succeeded in reducing both
these powers to the condition of principles; maintaining
THE RZSAE OF 7"HE COMMUAVAES I9
the pontifical and imperial ideas, but repelling the
practical authority of either potentate. Otho created
new marches and gave them to men of German origin.
Thus the ancient Italy of Lombards and Franks was
superseded by a new Italy of German feudalism, owing
allegiance to a suzerain whose interests detained him in
the provinces beyond the Alps.
At the same time the organisation of the Church was
fortified. The bishops were placed on an equality with
the counts in the chief cities, and viscounts were created
to represent their civil jurisdiction. It is difficult to
exaggerate the importance of Otho's concessions to the
bishops. During the preceding period of Frankish rule
about one-third of the soil of Italy had been yielded to
the Church, which had the right of freeing its vassals
from military Service; and since the ecclesiastical sees
were founded upon ancient sites of Roman civilisation,
without regard to the military centres of the barbarian
kingdoms, the new privileges of the bishops accrued
to the indigenous population. Milan, for example,
downtrodden by Pavia, still remained the major % of
Lombardy. Aquileia, though a desert, had her patri-
arch, while Cividale, established as a fortress to coerce
the neighbouring Roman towns, was ecclesiastically but
a village. At this epoch a third power emerged in Italy.
Berengar had given the cities permission to inclose
themselves with Walls in order to repel the invasions of
the Huns. Otho respected their right of self-defence,
and from the date of his coronation the history of the
The cities
gain im-
portance
Qūnder the
shadow
of the
Church.
C 2
2O THAE R/SAE OF 7THE COA/A/UAVES
free-burghs begins in Italy. It is at first closely con-
nected with the changes wrought by the extinction of the
kingdom of Pavia, by the exaltation of the clergy, and
by the dislocation of the previous system of feud-holding
which followed upon Otho's determination to remodel
the country in the interest of the German Empire. The
ancient landmarks of mobility were altered and confused.
The cities under their bishops assumed a novel character
of independence. Those of Roman origin, being eccle-
siastical centres, had a distinct advantage over the more
recent foundations of the Lombard and the Frankish
monarchs. The Italic population everywhere emerged
and displayed a vitality that had been crushed and over-
laid by centuries of invasion and military oppression.
The form The burghs at this epoch may be regarded as
of govern-
% d Tuminous points in the dense darkness of feudal aris-
adopte ſº e
º, the tocracy. Gathering round their cathedral as a centre,
CºlóS.
the towns inclose their dwellings with walls and bas-
tions, from which they gaze upon a country bristling
with castles, occupied by serfs, and lorded over by the
hierarchical nobility. Within the city the bishop and
the count hold equal sway; but the bishop has upon his
side the sympathies and passions of the burghers. The
first effort of the towns is to expel the count from their
midst. Some accident of misrule infuriates the citizens.
They fly to arms and are supported by the bishop. The
count has to retire to the open country, where he
strengthens himself in his castle. Then the bishop
remains victor in the town, and forms a government of
TA/E R/SE OF 7THA, COMMUAVAES 2 I
rich and noble burghers, who control with him the
fortunes of the new-born State. The constitution of the
city at this early period was simple. At the head of its
administration stood the bishop, with the Popolo of en-
franchised burghers. The Commune included the Popolo,
together with the non-qualified inhabitants, and was
represented by consuls, varying in number according to
the division of the town into quarters. Thus the Com-
mune and the Popolo were originally separate bodies,
and this distinction has been perpetuated in the archi-
tecture of those towns which still can show a Palazzo del
Popolo apart from the Palazzo del Commune. Since the
affairs of the city had to be conducted by discussion, we
find councils corresponding to the constituent elements
of the burgh. There is the Parlamento, in which the
inhabitants meet together to hear the decisions of the
bishop and the Popolo, or to take measures in extreme
cases that affect the city as a whole; the Gran Consiglio,
which is only open to duly-qualified members of the
Popolo ; and the Credenza, or privy council of specially
delegated burghers, who debate on matters demanding
Secrecy and diplomacy. Such, generally speaking, and
without regard to local differences, was the internal
constitution of an Italian city during the Supremacy of
the bishops.
In the North of Italy not a few of the greater vassals,
among whom may be mentioned the Houses of Canossa,
Montferrat, Savoy, and Este, creations of the Salic
Emperors, looked with favour upon the development of
Southern,
Italy
CO7720S
wºnder the
Papal
Swag/.
A

* 22. THAE A/SA OF 7THE COM/M UAVES
§
The influ-
ence of
Milan,
24hder her
arch-
bishop,
FHeribert.
the towns, while some nobles went so far as to constitute
themselves feudatories of bishops. At the same time,
While Lombardy and Tuscany were establishing their
municipal liberties, a sympathetic movement began in
Southern Italy which resulted in the conquest of Apulia,
Calabria, and Sicily by the Normans. Omitting all the
details of this episode, than which nothing more dramatic
is presented in the history of modern nations, it must be
enough to point out here that the Normans finally
severed Italy from the Greek Empire, gave a monarchical
stamp to the south of the peninsula, and brought the
government into the sphere of national politics under the
protection of the Pope. Up to the date of its con-
quest Southern Italy had a separate and confused his-
tory. It now entered the Italian community, and, by the
peculiar circumstances of its cession to the Holy See, was
destined in the future to become the chief instrument
whereby the Popes disturbed the equilibrium of the
peninsula in furtherance of their ambitious Schemes.
The greatness of the Roman cities under the popular
rule of their bishops is illustrated by Milan, Second only
to Rome in the last days of the Empire. Milan had
been reduced to abject misery by the kings, who spared
no pains to exalt Pavia at the expense of her elder sister.
After the dissolution of the kingdom she started into new
life, and in 1037 her archbishop, Heribert, was singled
out by Conrad II. as the protagonist of the episcopal
revolution against feudalism. Heribert was, in truth,
the hero of the burghs in their first strife for inde-

THE A*/SAE OF 7A/E COMMUAVES 23
pendence. It was he who devised the Carroccio, an im-
mense car drawn by oxen, bearing the banner of the
Commune, with an altar and priests ministrant, around
which the pikemen of the city mustered when they went
to war. This invention of Heribert's was soon adopted
by the cities throughout Italy. It gave cohesion and
confidence to the citizens, reminded them that the
Church was on their side in the struggle for freedom,
and served as symbol of their military strength in union.
The first authentic records of a Parliament, embracing
the nobles of the Popolo, the clergy, and the multitude,
are transmitted to us by the Milanese Chronicles, in
which Heribert figures as the president of a republic.
From this date Milan takes the lead in the contests for
municipal independence. Her institutions, like that of
the Carroccio, together with her tameless spirit, are com-
municated to the neighbouring cities of Lombardy, cross
the Apennines, and animate the ancient burghs of
Tuscany.
Having founded their liberties upon the episcopal
presidency, the cities now proceeded to claim the right
of choosing their own bishops. They refused the pre-
lates sent them by the Emperor, and demanded an elec-
tion by the chapters of each town. This privilege was
virtually won when the War of Investitures broke out
in 1073. After the death of Gregory VI. in 1046, the
Emperors resolved to enforce their right of nominating
the Popes. The first two prelates imposed on Rome,
Clement II. and Damasus II., died under suspicion of
The
privileges
obtained
through
Gregory
TVII.
* C 4
24 THE RISE OF THE COMMUAVES
The
rivalry of
the cities.
poison. Thus the Roman people refused a foreign Pope,
as the Lombards had rejected the bishops sent to rule
them. The next Popes, Leo IX. and Victor II., were
persuaded by Hildebrand, who now appears upon the
stage, to undergo a second election at Rome by the
clergy and the people. They escaped assassination. But
the fifth, Stephen X., again died suddenly, and now
the formidable monk of Soana felt himself powerful
enough to cause the election of his own candidate,
Nicholas II. A Lateran Council, inspired by Hildebrand,
transferred the election- of- Popes to the Cardinals,
and confirmed the privilege of cities to choose their
bishops, subject to Papal ratification. In 1073 Hilde-
brand assumed the tiara as Gregory VII., and declared
a war that lasted more than forty years against the
Empire. At its close in 1122 the Church and the
Empire were counterpoised as mutually exclusive auto-
cracies, the one claiming illimitable spiritual sway, the
other recognised as no less illimitably paramount in
civil society.
One of the earliest manifestations of municipal
vitality was the war of city against city, which began to
blaze with fury in the first half of the twelfth century,
and endured so long as free towns lasted to perpetuate
the conflict. No sooner had the burghs established
themselves beneath the presidency of their consuls
than they turned the arms they had acquired in the
war of independence against their neighbours. The
phenomenon was not confined to any single district. It
THE A*/SAE OF THE COMMUAVES 25
revealed a new necessity in the very constitution of the
Commonwealths. Penned up within the narrow limits
of their petty dependencies, throbbing with fresh life,
overflowing with a populace inured to warfare, de-
manding channels for their energies in commerce, com-
peting with each other on the paths of industry, they
clashed in deadliest duels for breathing space and means
of wealth. The occasions that provoked one commune to
declare war upon its rival were trivial. The animosity
was internecine and persistent, embittered by the
partisanship of Papal and Imperial principles. There-
fore, when Frederick Barbarossa was elected in 1152, his
first thought was to reduce the Garden of the Empire
to order. Soon after his election he descended into
Lombardy and formed two leagues among the cities of
the North—the one headed by Pavia, the centre of the
abrogated kingdom, the other by Milan, who inherited
the majesty of Rome, and contained within her loins
the future of Italian freedom. It will be enough for
our present purpose to remember that in the course of
that long contention both leagues made common cause
against the Emperor, drew the Pope, Alexander III.,
into their quarrel, and finally routed the Imperial
forces in 1183 near the small village of Legnano, to
the north of Milan. By the Peace of Constance, which
followed, the autonomy of all the cities was amply
guaranteed and recognised.
The advantages won by Milan, who sustained the
brunt of the Imperial onslaughts, and by the Splendour
26 THE A/SA OF THE COMAZ UAVES
The Com-
777,2,7,6S
acquire
more free-
dom.
of her martyrdom surmounted the petty jealousies of
her municipal rivals, were extended to the cities of
Tuscany. After the date of that compact, signed by
the Emperor and his insurgent subjects, the burghs
obtained an assured position as a third power between
the Empire and the Church. The most remarkable
point in the history of this contention is the unanimous
submission of the Communes to what they regarded as
the just suzerainty of Caesar's representative. Though
they were omnipotent in Lombardy, they took no
measures for closing the gates of the Alps against the
Germans. The Emperor was free to come and go as
he listed; and when peace was signed, he reckoned the
burghers who had beaten him by arms and policy among
his loyal vassals. Still, the Spirit of independence in
Italy had been amply asserted. This is notably dis-
played in the address presented to Frederick, before his
coronation, by the Senate of Rome. Regenerated by
Arnold of Brescia’s revolutionary mission, the Roman
people assumed its antique majesty in these remarkable
words: ‘Thou wast a stranger, I have made thee
citizen ; thou camest from regions beyond the Alps, I
have conferred on thee the principality.’ Presumptuous
boast as this sounded in the ears of Frederick, it proved
that the Communes were now taking their ground
against the Church and the barbarians. They still
recognised the Empire, because the Empire reflected
the glory of Italy, and was the crown which gave to its
people the presidency of civilisation. They still recog-
THAE A*/SAE OF 7:HE COMMUAVES 27
nised the authority of the Church, because the Church
was the eldest daughter of Italy emergent from the
wreck of Roman Society. But the Communes had
become conscious of their right to stand apart from 2–
either. -
Strengthened by their contest with Frederick Bar- Tenous
barossa, recognised in their rights as belligerent powers, *.
and left to their own guidance by the Empire, the
cities were now free to prosecute their Wars upon the
remnants of feudalism. The town, as we have learnt to
know it, was overlooked from neighbouring heights by
castles, where the nobles still held undisputed authority
over serfs of the soil. Against these dominating for-
tresses every city, with singular unanimity, directed the
forces it had formed in the preceding conflicts. At the
Same time, the municipal struggles of commune against
commune lost none of their virulence. The counts,
pressed on all sides by the towns that had grown up
around them, adopted the policy of pitting one burgh
against another. When a noble was attacked by the
township nearest his castle, he espoused the animosities
of a more distant city, compromised his independence
by accepting its captaincy, and thus became the servant
Or ally of a republic. In his desperation he emanci-
pated his serfs; and so the country-folk chiefly profited
by these dissensions between the cities and their feudal
masters. This new phase of republican evolution lasted
Over a long and ill-defined period, assuming different
characters in different centres; but the end of it was
º
28 THE RISE OF THE COMMUNAST
A Justice
of the
Peace inv-
stituted.
that the nobles were forced to submit to the cities.
They were admitted to the burghership, and agreed to
spend a certain portion of every year in the palaces
they raised within the circuit of the walls. Thus the
counts placed themselves beneath the jurisdiction of the
consuls, and the Italic population absorbed into itself
the relics of Lombard, Frank, and German aristocracy.
Still, the gain upon the side of the republics was
not clear. Though the feudal lordship of the nobles
had been destroyed, their wealth, their lands, and their
prestige remained untouched. In the city they felt
themselves but aliens. Their real home was still the
castle on the neighbouring mountain. Nor, when they
stooped to become burghers, had they relinquished the
use of arms. Instead of building peaceable dwelling-
houses in the city, they filled its quarters with fortresses
and towers, whence they carried on feuds among them-
selves, and imperilled the safety of the streets. The
authority of the consuls proved insufficient to maintain
an equilibrium between the people and the nobles.
Accordingly, a new magistrate started into being, com-
bining the offices of Supreme justiciary and military
dictator. When Frederick Barbarossa attempted to
govern the rebellious Lombard cities in the common
interest of the Empire, he established in their midst a
foreign judge, called Podestà, quasi habens potestatem
Imperatoris in hac parte.” This institution only served
at the moment to inflame and embitter the resistance
of the Communes; but the title of Podestà was sub-
THE /?/SAE OF THE COMMOWAVAES 29
sequently conferred upon the official summoned to
maintain an equal balance between the burghers and
the nobles. The lordship of the burgh still resided
with the consuls, who from this time forward began to
lose their individuality in the college of the Signoria—
called Priori, Anziani, or Rettori, as the case might be
in various districts.
The Italian republics had reached this stage when
Frederick II. united the Empire and the kingdom of the
Two Sicilies. It was a crisis of the utmost moment for
Italian independence. Master of the south, Frederick
Sought to reconquer the lost prerogatives of the Empire
in Lombardy and Tuscany; nor is it impossible that he
might have succeeded in uniting Italy beneath his sway
but for the violent animosity of the Church. The war-
fare of extermination carried on by the Popes against
the House of Hohenstauffen was no proof of their
partiality for the cause of freedom. They dreaded the
reality of a kingdom that should base itself on Italy
and be the rival of their own authority. Therefore they
espoused the cause of the free burghs against Frederick,
and when the north was devastated by his vicars, they
preached a crusade against EZZelino da Romano.
While Frederick foreshadowed the comparatively
modern tyrants of the coming age, EZZelino da Romano,
his vicar in the north of Italy, represented the atrocities
towards which they always tended to degenerate. Regard-
ing himself with a sort of awful veneration as the
divinely-appointed scourge of humanity, this monster
The op-
position
of the
Papacy to
Frederick
II.
E22elimo
da, Ro-
777 (1,720.
3O TAZAZ A&MSA OF 7THE CO////UAVES
in his lifetime was execrated as an aberration from ‘the
kindly race of men,” and after his death he became the
hero of a fiendish mythus. But in the succeeding
centuries of Italian history his kind was only too .
common; the immorality with which he worked out his
Selfish aims was systematically adopted, as we shall see,
by princes like the Wisconti, and reduced to rule by
theorists like Machiavelli. Ezzelino, a Small, pale, wiry
man, with terror in his face, and enthusiasm for evil in
his heart, lived a foe to luxury, cold to the pathos of
children, dead to the enchantment of Women. His one
passion was the greed of power, heightened by the lust
for blood. Originally a noble of the Veronese Marches,
he founded his illegal authority upon the captaincy of
the Imperial party delegated to him by Frederick. .
Verona, Vicenza, Padua, Feltre, and Belluno conferred
on him judicial as well as military Supremacy. How he
fearfully abused his power, how a crusade was preached
against him, and how he died in silence like a boar at
bay, rending from his wounds the dressings that his foes
had placed there to keep him alive, are notorious matters
of history. At Padua alone he erected eight prisons, two
of which contained as many as three hundred captives
each ; and though the executioner never ceased to ply
his trade there, they were always full. These dungeons
were designed to torture by their noisomeness, their
want of air and light and Space. EZZelino made him-
self terrible not merely by executions and imprisonments,
but also by mutilations and torments. When he cap- -
THE RISE OF 7"HAE COMMUNES 3 I
tured Friola, he caused the population of all ages, Sexes,
occupations, to be deprived of their eyes, noses, and
legs, and to be cast forth to the mercy of the elements.
On another occasion he walled up a family of princes
in a castle and left them to die of famine. Wealth,
eminence, and beauty attracted his displeasure no less
than insubordination or disobedience. Nor was he less
crafty than cruel. Sons betrayed their fathers, friends
their comrades, under the fallacious safeguard of his
promises. A gigantic instance of his scheming was the
coup-de-main by which he succeeded in entrapping 11,000
Paduan soldiers, only 200 of whom escaped the miseries
of his prisons. Thus by his absolute contempt of law,
his inordinate cruelty, his prolonged massacres, and his
infliction of plagues upon the whole peoples, Ezzelino
established the ideal in Italy of a tyrant marching to
his end by any means whatever. In vain was the
humanity of the race revolted by the hideous spectacle.
Wainly did the monks assemble pity-stricken multitudes
upon the plain of Paquara to atone with tears and peni-
tence for the insults offered to the saints in heaven by
Ezzelino's fury. It laid a deep hold upon the Italian
imagination, and by the glamour of loathing that has
strength to fascinate proved in the end contagious.
In the controversy that shook Italy from north to gueſsand
south the parties of Guelf and Ghibelline, of the Papacy º
and the Empire respectively, took shape and acquired
an ineradicable force. All the previous humours and
discords of the nation were absorbed by them. The
32 7TAZAZ A&MSA, OF 7: AIE COMA)/ UAVES
Guelf party meant the people of the Communes, the
men of industry and commerce, the upholders of civil
liberty, the friends of democratic expansion. The
Ghibelline party included the naturalised nobles, the
men of arms and idleness, the advocates of feudalism,
the politicians who regarded constitutional progress with
disfavour. Divided by irreconcilable ideals, each side
became eager to possess the city for itself, each prepared
to die for its adopted principles. The victorious party
then organises the government in its own interest,
establishes itself in a palazzo apart from the Commune,
where it develops its machinery at home and abroad,
and strengthens its finances by forced contributions and
confiscations. The exiles make common cause with
members of their own faction in an adverse burgh ; and
thus the most distant centres are drawn into the net-
work of a common dualism. In this way, we are
justified in Saying, Italy achieved her national conscious-
ness through strife and conflict ; for the Communes
ceased to be isolated, cemented by temporary leagues or
engaged in merely local dissensions. They were brought
together and connected by the sympathies and anti-
pathies of an antagonism which embraced and domi-
mated the municipalities, and merged the titular leaders
of the struggle, Pope and Emperor, in the uncontrollable
tumult.
* Society was riven down to its foundation. Rancours
party feel dating from the thirteenth century endured long after
ºng. the great parties ceased to have a meaning. They were
THE A*/SAE OF 7"HAE COMMUAVES 33
perpetuated in customs and expressed themselves in the
most trivial details. Banners, ensigns, and heraldic
colours followed the divisions of the factions. Ghibel-
lines wore feathers in their caps upon one side, Guelfs
upon the other. Ghibellines cut fruit at table crosswise,
Guelfs straight down. In Bergamo some Calabrians
were murdered by their host, who discovered by their
way of slicing garlic that they sided with the hostile
party. Ghibellines drank out of smooth, and Guelfs Out
of chased, goblets. Ghibellines wore white, and Guelfs
red, roses. Yawning, passing in the street, throwing
dice, gestures in speaking or Swearing, were used as
pretexts for distinguishing one half of Italy from the
other. So late as the middle of the fifteenth century,
the Ghibellines of Milan tore the crucifix from the high
altar of the Cathedral at Crema and buried it, because
the face turned to the Guelf shoulder. Every great city
has a tale of love and death that carries the contention
of its adverse families into the region of romance and
legend. The story of Romeo and Juliet at Verona is a
myth which brings both factions into play: the well-
meaning intervention of peace-making monks, and the
ineffectual efforts of the Podestà to curb the violence of
party warfare.
During the stress and storm of the fierce conflict
carried on by Guelfs and Ghibellines, the Podestà fell
into the Second rank. He had been created to meet
an emergency; but now the discord was too vehement
for arbitration. A new functionary appears, with the
D
A Captain
of the
People in-
Stituted.
34 THE RISAE OF 7THE COMMUAVES
vºtitle of Captain of the People. Chosen when one or
other of the factions gains supreme power in the burgh,
he represents the victorious party, takes the lead in pro-
scribing their opponents, and ratifies on his responsi-
bility the changes introduced into the constitution. The
old magistracies and councils, meanwhile, are not
abrogated. The Consiglio del Popolo, with the Capitano
at its head, takes the lead, and a new member, called the
Consiglio della Parte, is found beside them, watchful to
maintain the policy of the victorious faction. But the
Consiglio del Commune, with the Podestà, who has not
ceased to exercise judicial functions, still subsists. The
Priors form the Signory, as of old. The Credenza goes
on working, and the Gran Consiglio represents the body
of privileged burghers. The victorious party does but
tyrannise over the city it has conquered, and manipulates
the ancient constitution for its own advantage. In this
clash of Guelf with Ghibelline the beneficiaries were the
lower classes of the people. Excluded from the Popolo
of episcopal and consular revolutions, the trades and
industries of the great cities now assert their claims to
be enfranchised. The advent of the Arti is the chief
social phenomenon of the crisis. Thus the final issue
of the conflict was a new Italy, deeply divided by fac-
tions that were little understood, because they were so
vital, because they represented two adverse currents of
national energy, incompatible, irreconcilable, eternal in
antagonism as the poles. But this discordant nation
was more commercial and more democratic. Families
º, X/
\ \
\ // º
y \ſ
/
THE RISE of THE COMMUNES 35
of merchants rose upon the ruins of the old nobility.
Roman cities of industry reduced their military rivals of
earlier or later origin to insignificance. The plain, the
river, and the port asserted themselves against the
mountain fastness and the barrack burgh. The Several
classes of Society, triturated, shaken together, levelled by
warfare and equalised by industry, presented but few
obstacles to the emergence of commanding personalities,
however humble, from the ranks.
Y
The
'nature
and effect
of their
rule.
36
III
THE RULE OF TEIE DESPOTS
ºT was under the rule of despots—men of
º ăl diverse Origin, though for the most part
displaying great strength of character—
that the conditions of the Renaissance were
evolved. Under tyrannies, in the midst of intrigues,
wars and revolutions, the peculiar individuality of the
Italians obtained its ultimate development. This in-
dividuality, as remarkable for Salient genius and different
talent as for self-conscious and deliberate vice, determined
the qualities of the Renaissance, and affected by example
the whole of Europe.
If we examine the constitution of these tyrannies, we
find abundant proof of their despotic nature. The suc-
cession from father to son was always uncertain. Legi-
timacy of birth was hardly respected. The sons of Popes
ranked with the proudest of aristocratic families. Nobi-
lity was less regarded in the choice of a ruler than
personal ability. Power once acquired was maintained
by force, and the history of the ruling families is one
catalogue of crime. Yet the cities thus governed were
orderly and prosperous. Police regulations were care-

... -- THE RUZAZ OA. THE DESA’OTS 37
fully maintained by governors whose interest it was to
rule a quiet state. Culture was widely diffused without
regard to rank or wealth. Public edifices of colossal
grandeur were multiplied. Meanwhile the people at
large were being fashioned to that self-conscious and in-
telligent activity which is fostered by the modes of life
peculiar to political and social centres in a condition of
continued rivalry and change.
In Italy, where there existed no time-honoured
hierarchy of classes and no fountain of nobility in the
person of a Sovereign, one man was a match for another,
provided he knew how to assert himself. To the con-
ditions of a Society based on these principles we may
ascribe the unrivalled emergence of great personalities
among the tyrants. In the contest for power and in the
maintenance of an illegal authority the picked athletes
came to the front. The struggle by which they established
their tyranny, the efforts by which they defended it
against foreign foes and domestic adversaries, trained
them to endurance and daring. They lived habitually
in an atmosphere of peril which taxed all their energies.
Their activity was extreme, and their passions corre-
sponded to their vehement vitality. When a weakling
was born in a despotic family his brothers murdered him,
or he was deposed by a watchful rival. Thus only
gladiators of tried capacity and iron nerve, Superior to
religious and moral scruples, dead to natural affection,
perfected in perfidy, scientific in the use of fuelty and
terror, employing first-rate faculties of braſ. and bodily
f
Ełow it
was main-
tained.
38 THE RULE OF THE DESPO7s
The
general
character
of the
despots.
powers in the service of transcendent egotism, could
Survive and hold their own upon this perilous arena.
To record all the instances of crime revenged by
crime, of murder following on treachery, a large volume
might be compiled containing nothing but the episodes
in this grim history of despotism, now tragic and
pathetic, now terror-moving in sublimity of passion, now
despicable from the baseness of the motives, at one time
revolting through excess of physical horrors, at another
fascinating by the spectacle of heroic courage, intelligence,
and resolution. Isolated, crime-haunted and remorseless,
at the same time fierce and timorous, the despot not un-
frequently made of vice a fine art for his amusement,
and openly defied humanity. His pleasures tended to
extravagance. Inordinate lust and refined cruelty sated
his irritable and jaded appetites. He destroyed pity in
his soul and spent his brains upon the invention of new
tortures. From the game of politics, again, he won a
feverish pleasure, playing for states and cities as a man
plays chess, endeavouring to extract the utmost excite-
ment from the varying turns of skill and chance. But
it would be an exaggeration to assert that all the princes
of Italy were of this sort. We shall see that the saner
and nobler among them found a more humane enjoy-
ment in the consolidation of their states, the cementing
of their alliances, the Society of learned men, the friend-
ship of great artists, the building of palacesand churches,
the execution of vast Schemes of conquest. Some, indeed,
we shall find, combined the vices of a barbarian with the
THAE Ae UZAZ OA' 7"AE ZDAZSAO TS 39
enthusiasm of a scholar, while others, again, exhibited
every personal virtue with moderation in statecraft and a
noble width of culture. But the tendency to degenerate
was fatal to all the despotic houses; the strain of
tyranny proved too strong. Crime, illegality, or the sense
of peril, descending from father to son, produced mon-
sters in the shape of men. The last Wisconti, the last
La Scala, the last Sforza, the last Malatesta, the last
Farnesi, the last Medici are among the worst specimens
of human nature.
The power of the Wisconti in Milan was founded upon
that of the Della Torre family, who preceded them as
captains of the people at the end of the thirteenth cen-
tury. Otho, Archbishop of Milan, first laid a substantial
basis for the dominion of his house by imprisoning
Napoleone Della Torre and five of his relatives in three
iron cages, in 1277, and by causing his nephew, Matteo
Wisconti, to be nominated both by the Emperor and the
people of Milan as Imperial Vicar. Matteo, who headed
the Ghibelline party in Lombardy, was the model of
a prudent Italian despot. From 1311, when he finally
Succeeded to the sovereignty, to 1322, when he abdicated
in favour of his son Galeazzo, he ruled his states by
force of character, craft, and insight, more than by
violence and cruelty.
Galeazzo was less fortunate than Matteo, Surnamed
Il Grande by the Lombards. The Emperor, Louis of
Bavaria, threw him into prison on the occasion of his
visit to Milan in 1827, and only released him at the
The Vºs-
conti.
Galeazzo,
the SQm,
and A220,
the grand-
son, of Il
Grande.
4O THE RULE OF THE DESPOTS
Lucchino
and Gio-
waſn’ni,
Arch-
bishop of
Milan,
sons of Il
Grande.
Bernabo
and
Galeazzo,
grandsons
of Il
Grande.
intercession of his friend, Castruccio Castracane. He
married Beatrice d’Este, the widow of Nino di Gallura, of
whom Dante speaks in the eighth canto of the ‘Purgatory,’
and had by her a son named Azzo. AZZO consolidated
his power by the murder of his uncle Marco, in 1829,
and on his decease in 1839 was succeeded by another
uncle, Lucchino.
In Lucchino the darker side of the Wisconti character
appears for the first time. Cruel, moody, and jealous,
he passed his life in perpetual terror. His nephews,
Galeazzo and Barnabas, conspired against him, and
were exiled to Flanders. He left sons, but none of
proved legitimacy. He was therefore succeeded by his
brother Giovanni, Archbishop of Milan. This prince,
the friend of Petrarch, was one of the most notable
characters of the fourteenth century. His reign marks
a new epoch in the despotism of the Wisconti. Their
dynasty, though based on force and maintained by
violence, has come to be acknowledged, and we shall
Soon see them allying themselves with the royal houses
of Europe. -
After the death of Giovanni, Matteo's sons were
extinct. But Stefano, the last of the family, had left
three children, Matteo, Bernabo, and Galeazzo. Matteo
abandoned himself to bestial sensuality, and his two
brothers, finding him both feeble and likely to bring
discredit on their rule, caused him to be assassinated
in 1855. They then jointly swayed the Milanese with
unanimity remarkable in despots.
THAE Ae UZAZ OA; 7 AHA DAZSAOTS 4 I
Galeazzo was distinguished as the handsomest man
of his age. He was tall and graceful, with golden hair,
which he wore in long plaits or tied up in a net, or else
loose and crowned with flowers. Fond of display and
magnificence, he spent most of his vast wealth in shows
and festivals, and in the building of palaces and churches.
The same taste for splendour led him to seek royal
marriages for his children. His daughter Violante was
Wedded to the Duke of Clarence, son of Edward III. of
England, who received with her for dowry two hundred
thousand golden florins and five cities bordering on
Piedmont. It must have been a strange experience for
this brother of the Black Prince, leaving London, where
the streets were still unpaved, the houses thatched, the
beds laid on straw, and where wine was sold as a medicine,
to pass through the luxurious palaces of Lombardy,
Walled with marble, and raised high above smooth streets
of stone. On this occasion Galeazzo is said to have made
splendid presents to more than two hundred English-
men, So that he was reckoned to have outdone the
greatest kings in generosity. With equal display and
extravagance he married his son Gian Galeazzo to
Isabella, daughter of King John of France.
Galeazzo held his court at Pavia. His brother
reigned at Milan. Bernabo displayed all the worst vices
of the Wisconti in his cold-blooded cruelty. Together
with his brother, he devised and caused to be publicly
announced by edict that State criminals would be sub-
jected to a series of tortures extending over the space
Galeazzo
Wisconti.
Bernabo
Wisconti.
42 THE AULAE OF 7AHA: DESPOTS
Giaº,
Galeazzo
Viscomti.
of forty days. In this infernal programme every variety
of torment found a place, and days of respite were SO
calculated as to prolong the lives of the victims for
further suffering, till at last there was little left of them
that had not been hacked and hewed and flayed away.
Galeazzo died in 1378, and was succeeded in his own
portion of the Wisconti domain by his son Gian Galeazzo.
Now began one of those long, slow, internecine struggles
which were so common between the members of the ruling
families in Italy. Bernabo and his sons Schemed to get
possession of the young prince's estate. He, on the
other hand, determined to supplant his uncle, and to
re-unite the whole Wisconti principality beneath his own
sway. Craft was the weapon which he chose in this
encounter. Shutting himself up in Pavia, he made no
disguise of his physical cowardice, which was real, while
he simulated a timidity of spirit wholly akin to his
temperament. He pretended to be absorbed in religious
observances, and gradually induced his uncle and cousins
to despise him as a poor creature whom they could make
short work of when occasion served. In 1885, having
thus prepared the way for treason, he avowed his inten-
tion of proceeding on a pilgrimage to Our Lady of Warese.
Starting from Pavia with a body-guard of Germans, he
passed near Milan, where his uncle and cousins came
forth to meet him. Gian Galeazzo feigned a coupteous
greeting; but, when he saw his relatives within his grasp,
he gave a watchword in German to his troops, who sur-
rounded Bernabo and took him prisoner with his sons.
THE Aº (7/A5 OF 7TA/AE ZOA, SAO 7"S 43
Gian Galeazzo marched immediately into Milan, poisoned
his uncle in a dungeon, and proclaimed himself Sole lord
of the Wisconti heirship.
The reign of Gian Galeazzo, which began with this
coup-de-main (1385–1402), forms a very important chapter
in Italian history. Giovio describes him as having been
a remarkably sedate and thoughtful boy, so wise beyond
his years that his friends feared he would not grow to
man's estateCN o pleasures in after-life drew him away
from business) hunting, hawking, women, had alike no
charms for him. He took moderate exercise for the
preservation of his health, read and meditated much,
and relaxed himself in conversation with men of letters.
Pure intellect, in fact, had reached to perfect independence
in this prince, who was far above the boisterous pleasures
and violent activities of the age in which he lived. In
the erection of public buildings he was magnificent.
The Certosa of Pavia and the Duomo of Milan owed their
foundation to his sense of splendour. At the same time
he completed the palace of Pavia which his father had
begun, and which he made the noblest dwelling-house in
Europe. The University of Pavia was raised by him
from a state of decadence to one of great prosperity,
partly by munificent endowments, and partly by a wise
choice of professors. In his military undertakings he
displayed a kindred taste for vast engineering projects.
He contemplated, and partly carried out, a scheme for
turning the Mincio and the Brenta from their channels,
and for drying up the lagoons of Venice. In this way
The cha-
Tacter of
Gian,
Galeazzo.
C’
*
,”
44 THE RULE OF THE DESPOTS
FI is ani-
mosity to
the Scala,
family.
he purposed to attack his last great enemy, the Republic
of St. Mark, upon her strongest side. Yet, in the midst
of these huge designs, he was able to attend to the most
trifling details of economy. By applying mercantile
machinery to the management of his vast dominions, at
a time when public economy was but little understood in
Europe, he raised his wealth enormously above that of
his neighbours. As his personal timidity prevented him
from leading his troops in the field, he found it necessary
to employ paid generals, and took into his service all the
chief condottieri of the day, thus giving an impulse to
the custom which led to the corruption of the whole
military system of Italy.
Gian Galeazzo’s Schemes were first directed against
the Scala dynasty. Founded, like that of the Wisconti,
upon the Imperial authority, it rose to its greatest height
under the Ghibelline general, Can Grande, and his nephew
Mastino, in the first half of the fourteenth century (1312–
1351). Mastino had himself cherished the project of an
Italian kingdom ; but he died before approaching its
accomplishment. The degeneracy of his house began
with his three sons. The two younger killed the eldest ;
of the Survivors, the stronger slew the weaker, and then
died in 1874, leaving his domains to two of his bastards.
One of these, named Antonio, killed the other in 1381,
and afterwards fell a prey to the Wisconti in 1887.
Having obtained possession of all the principal cities
in Tuscany, and ruined their reigning families, chiefly by
the most despicable arts, Gian Galeazzo followed up his
THE RULE OF THE DESPOTS 45
Success by the annexation of Bologna, Siena, Lucca, and
Pisa. All Italy and Germany had now begun to regard
the usurpations of the Milanese despot with alarm.
There remained no power, except the Republic of
Florence and the exiled but invincible Francesco da
Carrara of Padua, to withstand his further progress.
Florence delayed his conquests in Tuscany. Francesco
managed to return to Padua. Still the peril which
threatened the whole of Italy was imminent. The Duke
of Milan was in the plenitude of manhood—rich,
prosperous, and full of mental vigour. His acquisitions
were well cemented ; his treasury brimful; his generals
highly paid. All his lieutenants in city and in camp
respected the iron will and the deep policy of the despot
who swayed their action from his arm-chair in Milan.
He alone knew how to use the brains and hands that did
him service, to keep them mutually in check, and by
their regulated action to make himself not one, but a
score of men. At last, when all other hope of inde-
pendence for Italy had failed, the plague broke out
with fury in Lombardy. Gian Galeazzo retired to
his isolated fortress of Marignano in Order to escape
infection. Yet there, in 1402, he sickened. A comet
appeared in the sky, to which he pointed, as a sign of
his approaching death—"God could not but signalise
the end of so supreme a ruler,’ he told his atten-
dants. He died aged fifty-five. Italy drew a deep
breath.
The systematic plan conceived by Gian Galeazzo for
46 THE RULE OF THE DESPOTS
The de-
cline of the
Visconti
power.
Gian.
Maria
Wisconti.
the enslavement of Italy, the ability which sustained him
in its execution, and the power with which he bent men
to his will, are scarcely more extraordinary than the
sudden dissolution of the dukedom at his death. As
long as he lived and held the band of great commanders
he had trained in his service in leading-strings, all went
well. But at his death his two sons were still mere boys.
He had to entrust their persons, together with the conduct
of his hardly-won dominions, to these captains in con-
junction with the Duchess Catherine and a certain
Francesco Barbavara. This man had been the duke's
body-servant, and was now the paramour of the duchess.
The generals refused to act with them; and each seized
upon such portions of the Wisconti inheritance as he
could most easily acquire. The vast tyranny of the first
Duke of Milan fell to pieces in a day. Many scions
of the ejected families also recovered their authority.
Meanwhile, Giovanni Maria Wisconti was proclaimed
Duke of Milan, and his brother Filippo Maria occupied
Pavia.
In the despotic families of Italy, as already hinted,
there was a progressive tendency to degeneration. The
strain of tyranny Sustained by force and craft for genera-
tions, the abuse of power and pleasure, the isolation and
dread in which the despots lived habitually, bred a kind
of hereditary madness. This constitutional ferocity of
the race appeared as monomania in Giovanni, and an
organic timidity amounting to almost imbecility in his
brother. Gian Maria distinguished himself chiefly by
TAZAZ Aº U/CAE OF 7"AE DAESPOTS 47
cruelty and lust. He used the hounds of his ancestors
no longer in the chase of boars, but of living men. All
the criminals of Milan, and all whom he could get
denounced as criminals, even the participators in his
own enormities, were given up to his infernal Sport.
His huntsman, Squarcia Giramo, trained the dogs to
their duty by feeding them on human flesh, and the
duke watched them tear his victims in pieces with the
ecstasy of a lunatic. In 1412 some Milanese noblemen
succeeded in murdering him, and threw his mangled
corpse into the street.
Filippo Maria meanwhile had married the widow of
Facino Cane, one of the most distinguished of his father’s
generals, who brought him nearly half a million of florins
for dowry, together with her husband's soldiers and the
cities he had seized after Gian Galeazzo's death. He
beheaded her six years afterwards on the strength of a
false accusation which he had himself instigated; but by
this alliance he gradually recovered the Lombard portion
of his father's dukedom. The minor cities, purged by
murder of their usurpers, once more fell into the grasp
of the Milanese despot, after a series of domestic and
political tragedies that drenched their streets with blood.
Piacenza was utterly depopulated. It is recorded that
for the space of a year only three of its inhabitants
remained within the walls.
This Filippo, the last of the Wisconti tyrants, was
extremely ugly, and so sensitive about his ill-formed
person that he scarcely dared to show himself abroad.
Filippo
Maria,
Visconti.
His death.
opens the
way to
I'ranceSca.
Sforza.
48 THE RULE OF THE DESPOTS
He habitually lived in secret chambers, changing them
frequently, and, when he issued from his palace, disre-
garded salutations in the street. As an instance of his
nervousness, the chronicles report that he could not
endure to hear the noise of thunder. At the same time
he inherited much of his father's insight into character,
and the power of controlling men more bold and active
than himself. But he lacked the keen decision and
broad views of Gian Galeazzo. He vacillated in policy,
and kept devising plots that had no result but his own
disadvantage. Excess of caution made him surround the
captains of his troops with spies, and check them at the
moment when he feared they might become too powerful.
This want of confidence neutralised the advantage which
he might have gained by his choice of fitting instruments.
Thus his selection of Francesca Sforza for his general
against the Venetians in 1431 was a wise one. But he
could not attach the great Soldier of fortune to himself.
Sforza took the pay of Florence against his old patron,
and in 1441 forced him to a ruinous peace; one of the
conditions of which was the marriage of his only
daughter, Bianca, to the Son of the peasant of Cotignola.
Bianca was illegitimate, and Filippo Maria had no male
heir. The great family of the Wisconti had dwindled
away. Consequently, after the duke's death in 1447,
Sforza found his way open to the Duchy of Milan, which
he first secured by force, and then claimed in right of
his wife. An adverse claim was set up by the House of
Orleans, Louis of Orleans having married Valentina, the
THAE A* U/CAE OA” 7TAIAE DA2SA’OTS 49
legitimate daughter of Gian Galeazzo. But both of these
claims were invalid, since the investiture granted by
Wenceslaus to the first duke excluded females. So
Milan was once again thrown open to the competition
of usurpers.
The inextinguishable desire for liberty in Milan
blazed forth upon the death of the last duke. In spite
of so many generations of despots, the people still
regarded themselves as Sovereign. But a state which
had served the Wisconti for nearly two centuries could
not in a moment shake off its weakness and rely upon
itself alone. Feeling the necessity of mercenary aid, the
republic was short-sighted enough to engage Francesco
Sforza as commander-in-chief against the Venetians who
had availed themselves of the anarchy in Lombardy to
push their power west of the Adda. In one brilliant
campaign he drove the Venetians back beyond the Adda,
burned their fleet at Casal Maggiore on the Po, and
utterly defeated their army at Caravaggio. Then he
returned as conqueror to Milan, reduced the Surrounding
cities, blockaded the Milanese in their capital, and forced
them to receive him as their duke in 1450.
Sforza got his name from his great physical strength.
He was a peasant of the village of Cortignola, who,
being invited to quit the mattock for a sword, threw his
pickaxe into an oak, and cried : ‘If it stays there it is a
sign that I shall make my fortune.’ The axe stuck in
the tree, and Sforza went forth to found a line of dukes.
He never obtained the sanction of the Empire to his
Francesco
Sforza, ob-
tains the
dukedom.
Francesco
Sforza’s
creditable
rule.
IE
5O THE RULE OF THE DESPOTS
title. But the great condottiere, possessing the sub-
stance, did not care for the external show of monarchy.
He ruled firmly, wisely, and for those times well, attending
to the prosperity of his State, maintaining good disci-
pline in her cities, and losing no ground by foolish and
ambitious schemes. Louis XI. of France is said to have
professed himself Sforza’s pupil in statecraft, than which
no greater tribute could be paid to his political sagacity.
In 1466 he died, leaving three sons—Galeazzo, Duke of
Milan, the Cardinal Ascanio, and Lodovico, surnamed
Il Moro. -
The tragic * Francesco's crown,’ says Ripamonti, ‘was destined
fate of his * * e
!. to pass to more than six inheritors, and these five
SO7°S.
successions were accomplished by a series of tragic
events in his family. * Galeazzo, his son, was murdered
because of his abominable crimes, in the presence
of his people, before the altar, in the middle of the
sacred rites. Giovanni Galeazzo, who followed him,
was poisoned by his uncle, Lodovico. Lodovico was
imprisoned by the French, and died of grief in a
dungeon. One of his sons perished in the same way;
and the other, after years of misery and exile, was
restored in his childless old age to a throne which had
been undermined, and when he died his dynasty was
extinct. This was the recompense for the treason of
Francesco to the State of Milan. It was for such suc-
cesses that he passed his life in perfidy, privation, and
danger.’
Such was the condition of Italy at the end of the
ZTAZAZ At ULAE OF 7THE ZOAZSA’O 7TS 5 I
fifteenth century. Neither public nor private morality,
in our sense of the word, existed. The crimes of the
tyrants against their subjects and the members of their
own families had produced a correlative order of crime
in the people over whom they tyrannised. Cruelty was
met by conspiracy. Tyrannicide became honourable.
Murders, poisonings, rapes, and treasons were common
incidents of private as of public life. In cities like
Naples bloodguilt could be atoned at an inconceivably
low rate. The palaces of the nobles swarmed with
professional cut-throats, and the great ecclesiastics
claimed for their abodes the rights of Sanctuary. Popes
sold absolution for the most horrible excesses, and
granted indulgences beforehand for the commission of
The preva-
lence of
crime.
crimes of lust and violence. Success was the standard -
by which acts were judged ; and the man who could
help his friends, intimidate his enemies, and carve a
way to fortune by any means he chose, was regarded
as a hero.
Yet it must not be overlooked that even in such a
soil the spirit of the Renaissance had reached maturity,
and was putting forth its choicest fruits. ‘We may
anticipate what will be noticed again how at this time
Filelfo was receiving the pay of Filippo Maria, Wisconti;
that Guarino of Verona was instructing the heir of
Ferrara, and Wittorino da Feltre the children of the
Marquis of Mantua. We think of Lionardo da Vinci
delighting Milan with his music and his magic world of
painting; of Boiardo singing the prelude to Ariosto's
The
growth of
the Re-
7vaissance
w?vaf-
fected.
E 2
52 THE RULE OF THE DESPOTS
Giovanºvi.
Pandolfo
Malatesta.
melodies in Ferrara ; of Poliziano pouring forth honeyed
eloquence at Florence; of Ficino expounding Plato, and
Pico della Mirandola dreaming of a reconciliation of the
Hebrew, Pagan, and Christian traditions. It is well to
note these facts while we record the ferocity and crimes
of despots who seemed little likely to appreciate and
protect these masters in arts and letters. But this was
an age in which even the wildest and most perfidious of
tyrants felt the ennobling influences and the sacred
thirst of knowledge.
Sigismondo Pandolfo Malatesta, the Lord of Rimini,
might be selected as a true type of the princes who
united a romantic zeal for culture with the vices of
barbarians. The coins which bear the portraits of this
man, together with the medallions in red Verona marble
on his church at Rimini, show a narrow forehead pro-
tuberant above bushy eyebrows, a long hooked nose,
hollow cheeks, and petulant, passionate, compressed lips.
The whole face seems ready to flash with sudden violence,
to merge its self-control in a spasm of fury. This
Malatesta killed three wives in succession, and com-
mitted outrages on his children. So much of him
belongs to the mere Savage. He caused the magnificent
church of S. Francesco at Rimini to be raised by Leo
Alberti in a manner more Worthy of a pagan pantheon
than of a Christian temple. He encrusted it with ex-
quisite bas-reliefs in marble, the triumphs of the earliest
Renaissance style, carved his own name and ensigns
upon every scroll and frieze and point of vantage in the
ZTAZ /& UZZ OA” ZTAZ ZDASPO 7'S 53
building, and dedicated a shrine there to his concubine—
Diva Isothae Sacrum. In the spirit of the Neo-pagan of
the fifteenth century, he brought back from Greece the
mortal remains of the philosopher Gemistos Plethon,
buried them in a sarcophagus Outside his church, with
this epigraph: ‘These remains of Gemistus of Byzantium,
chief of the sages of his day, Sigismondo Pandolfo
Malatesta, son of Pandolfo, commander in the war
against the king of the Turks in the Morea, induced by
the mighty love with which he burns for men of learning,
brought hither and placed within this chest, 1466.’ He,
the most fretful and turbulent of men, read books with
patient care, and bore the contradictions of pedants in
the course of long discussions on philosophy, arts, and
letters. At the same time, as condottiere, he displayed
all the duplicities, cruelties, Sacrileges, and tortuous
policies to which the most accomplished villain of the
age could have aspired.
It is pleasant to be able to conclude these illustrations
of the worst features of Italian despotism with a brief
sketch of the character of the good Duke Frederick,
Count of Montefeltro, created Duke of Urbino in 1474
by Pope Sixtus IV. His life covers the better part of
the fifteenth century (b. 1422, d. 1482). A little corner
of old Umbria, lying between the Apennines and the
Adriatic, Rimini and Ancona, formed his patrimony.
Speaking roughly, the whole duchy was but forty miles
Square, and the larger portion consisted of bare hillsides
and Serrated ravines. Yet this poor territory became
Frederick,
Duke of
Urbimo.
i
f
V
54 THE RULE OF 7"HE DESA’OTS
the centre of a splendid court. The chivalry of Italy
flocked to Urbino in order to learn manners and the art
of war from the most noble general of his day. The
library contained copies of all the Greek and Latin
authors then discovered, the principal treatises on
theology and Church history, a complete series of Italian
poets, historiographers and commentators, various
medical, mathematical, and legal works, essays on music,
military tactics, and the arts, together with such Hebrew
books as were accessible to copyists. Military service
formed his trade. As a condottiere, Federigo was
famous in this age of broken faith for his sincerity and
plain dealing. To his soldiers in the field he was con-
siderate and generous; to his enemies compassionate
and merciful. But Frederick was not merely an ac-
complished prince. Concurrent testimony proves that
he remained a good husband and a constant friend
throughout his life, that he controlled his natural quick-
ness of temper, and subdued the Sensual appetites which
in that age of lax morality he might have indulged with-
out reproach. In his relations to his subjects he showed
what a paternal monarch should be, conversing familiarly
with the citizens of Urbino, accosting them with head
uncovered, inquiring into the necessities of the poorer
artisans, relieving the destitute, dowering orphan girls,
and helping distressed shopkeepers with loans.
Frederick wore the Order of the Garter which
Henry VII. conferred on him, the Neapolitan order of
the Ermine, and the Papal decoration of the Rose, the
7THAE Ae U/CAE OF 7THAE ZOAESA’O 7'S 55
Hat, and the Sword. He served three pontiffs, two kings
of Naples, and two dukes of Milan. The Republic of
Florence, and more than one Italian League, appointed
him their general in the field. If his military career
was less brilliant than that of the two Sforzas, Piccino,
or Carmagnuola, he avoided the crimes to which ambition
led some of these men, and the rocks on which they
struck. At his death he transmitted a flourishing
duchy, a cultivated court, a renowned name, and the
leadership of the Italian League to his son Guidobaldo,
who died childless, after exhibiting for many years an
example of patience in sickness and of dignified cheer-
fulness under the restraint of enforced inaction. His
wife, Elizabetia Gonzaga, one of the most famous women
of her age, was no less a pattern of noble conduct and
Serene contentment.
\
The pres-
tige of the
Papacy
conduces
to their
power.
56
IV
THE POPES OF THE RENAISSANCE
; ºn the fourteenth and the first half of the
§§§ fifteenth centuries, the authority of the
Popes, both as heads of the Church and
as temporal rulers, had been impaiyad by
exile in France and by ruinous schisms. A new era
began with the election of Nicholas W. in 1447, and
ended during the pontificate of Clement VII. with the
sack of Rome in 1527. Through the whole of this period
the Popes acted more as monarchs than as pontiffs, and
the Secularisation of the See of Rome was carried to its
utmost limits. The contrast between the Sacerdotal
pretensions and the personal immorality of the Popes
was glaring; nor had the chiefs of the Church yet
learned to regard the liberalism of the Renaissance with
suspicion.
We find in the Popes of this period what has been
already noticed in the despots—learning, the patronage
of the arts, the passion for magnificence, and the refine-
ments of polite culture, alternating and not unfrequently
combined with barbarous ferocity of temper, and with
savage and coarse tastes. On the one side we observe a

THE POPAES OF 7A/AE RAEAVA/SSAAVCE 57
pagan dissoluteness which would have scandalised the
parasites of Commodus and Nero ; on the other, a seem-
ing zeal for dogma worthy of S. Dominic. In the States
of the Church the temporal power of the Popes, founded
upon false donations, confirmed by tradition, and con-
tested by rival despots, was an anomaly. In Rome it-
Self their situation, though different, was no less peculiar.
The government was ostensibly republican. The Pope
had no sovereign rights, but only the ascendency in-
separable from his wealth and from his position as
Primate of Christendom. Italy, however, regarded the
Papacy as indispensable to her prosperity, while Rome
Wà,S proud to be called the metropolis of Christendom
and ready to sacrifice the shadow of republican liberty
for the material advantages which might accrue from
the sovereignty of her bishop. Now was the proper
moment, therefore, for the Popes to convert their ill-
defined authority into a settled despotism, to Secure
themselves in Rome as sovereigns, and to subdue the
States of the Church to their temporal jurisdiction.
The work was begun by Thomas of Sarzana, who
ascended the chair of S. Peter, in 1447, as Nicholas W.
Educated at Florence, under the shadow of the house
of Medici, he had imbibed those principles of deference
to princely authority which were supplanting the old
republican virtues throughout Italy. The schisms which
had rent the Catholic Church were healed; and, finding
mo opposition to his spiritual power, he determined to
consolidate the temporalities of his See. In this purpose
Nicholas
V.
58 THE POPES OF 7"HE REAVA/SSAAWCE
His public
works in
Rome.
he was confirmed by the conspiracy of Stefano Porcari,
a Roman noble who had endeavoured to rouse republican
enthusiasm in the city at the moment of the Pope's
election, and who subsequently plotted against his liberty,
if not his life. Porcari and his associates were put to
death in 1453, and by this act the Pope proclaimed him-
self a monarch.
The vast wealth which the Jubilee of 1450 had
poured into the Papal coffers he employed in beautifying
the city of Rome and in creating a stronghold for the
Sovereign Pontiff. The mausoleum of Hadrian, used
long before as a fortress in the Middle Ages, was now
strengthened; while the bridge of S. Angelo and the
Leonine city were so connected and defended by a system
of walls and outworks as to give the key of Rome into
the hands of the Pope. A new Vatican began to rise,
and the foundations of a nobler S. Peter’s Church were
laid within the circuit of the Papal domain. Nicholas
had, in fact, conceived the great idea of restoring the
supremacy of Rome, not after the fashion of a Hilde-
brand, by enforcing the spiritual despotism of the Papacy,
but by establishing the Popes as kings, by renewing the
architectural magnificence of the Eternal City, and by
rendering his court the centre of European culture. In
the will which he dictated on his death-bed to the
princes of the Church, he set forth all that he had done
for the secular and ecclesiastical architecture of Rome,
explaining his deep sense of the necessity of Securing
the Popes from internal revolution and external force,
THE POPAES OF 7TAZ /8 FAWA/SSA WCAE 59
together with his desire to exalt the Church by rendering
her chief seat splendid in the eyes of Christendom. This
testament of Nicholas remains a memorable document.
Nothing illustrates more forcibly the transition from the
Middle Ages to the worldliness of the Renaissance than
the conviction of the Pontiff that the destinies of Chris-
tianity depended on the state and glory of the town of .
Rome.
Of Alfonzo Borgia, who reigned for three years as
Calixtus III., little need be said, except that his pon-
tificate prepared for the greatness of his nephew,
Roderigo Lenzuoli, known as Borgia in compliment to
his uncle. The last days of Nicholas had been em-
bittered by the fall of Constantinople (1453), and the
imminent peril which threatened Europe from the
Turks. The whole energies of Pius II. were then
directed towards the one end of uniting the European
nations against the infidel. • .
AEneas Sylvius Piccolomini, as an author, an orator,
a diplomatist, a traveller, and a courtier, bears a name
illustrious in the annals of the Renaissance. As a Pope
he claims attention for the single-hearted zeal which he
displayed in the vain attempt to rouse the piety of
Christendom against the foes of civilisation and the
faith. Rarely has a greater contrast been displayed
between the man and the pontiff than in the case of
Pius. The pleasure-loving, astute, free-thinking man
of letters and the world had become a Holy Father,
jealous for Christian proprieties, and bent on stirring
Calia:tus
III.
Pius f
6O THE POPES OF 77HAE REAVA/SSAAVCE
\/
Pant! II.
Europe by an appeal to motives which had lost their
force three centuries before. Pius bimself was not un-
conscious of the discrepancy between his old and his
new self. “AEmeam réjicite, Pium recipite,’ he exclaims
in a celebrated passage of his ‘Retractation,’ where he
declares his heartfelt Sorrow for the irrevocable words of
light and vain romance that he had scattered in his
careless youth. Yet, though Pius II. proved a virtual
failure by lacking the strength to lead his age either
backwards to the ideal of earlier Christianity, or
forwards on the path of modern culture, he is the last
Pope of the Renaissance period whom we can regard
with real respect. Those who follow, and with whose
personal characters rather than their action as pontiffs
we shall now be principally occupied, sacrificed the
interests of Christendom to family ambition, secured their
Sovereignty at the price of discord in Italy, transacted
with the infidel and played the part of Antichrist upon
the theatre of Europe.
Paul II. was a Venetian named Pietro Barbi, who
began life as a merchant. He had already shipped his
worldly goods on board a trading vessel for a foreign
trip, when news reached him that his uncle, of whom we
shall see more during his enforced retirement from
Rome, had been made Pope under the name of
Eugenius IV. His call to the ministry consisted of
the calculation that he could make his fortune in the
Church with a Pope for uncle sooner than on the high
seas by his wits. So he unloaded his bales, took to his
TAIAE AOAAFS OF THE RE/WA/SSAAVCAE 61
book, became a priest, and at the age of forty-eight rose
to the Papacy. Being a handsome man, he was fain
to take the ecclesiastical title of Formosus; but the
cardinals dissuaded him from this parade of vanity,
and he assumed the tiara as Paul in 1464. A vulgar love
of show was his ruling characteristic. He spent enor-
mous sums upon a collection of jewels, and his tiara
alone was valued at 200,000 golden florins. In all
public ceremonies, whether ecclesiastical or secular, he
was splendid, delighting to Sun himself before the eyes
of the Romans equally as the chief actor in an Easter
benediction or in a carnival procession. The poorer
cardinals received subsidies from his purse in order
that they might add lustre to his pageants by their
retinues. The arts found in him a munificent patron.
Eor the building of the palace of S. Marco, which
marks an abrupt departure from the previous Gothic
style in vogue, he brought architects of eminence to
Rome, and gave employment to Mino da Fiesole, the
sculptor, and to Giuliano da San Gallo, the wood-carver.
The arches of Titus and Septimus Severus were restored
at his expense, together with the statue of Marcus
Aurelius and the horses of Monte Cavallo. This
patronage of contemporary art, no less than the ap-
preciation of classical monuments, marked him as a
Maecenas of the true Renaissance type.
But the qualities of a dilettante were not calculated
to shed lustre on a pontiff who spent the substance
of the Church in heaping up valuable curiosities, and
Ełis dis-
courage-
memt of
learning.
62 THE POPES OF THE REAVA/SSA AVCE
whose love of hoarding was so extreme that, when
bishoprics fell vacant, he often refused to fill them up,
drawing their resources for his own use. His court was
luxurious, and he was addicted to sensual lust. This
would not, however, have brought his name into bad
odour in Rome, where the Holy Father was already
regarded as an Italian despot with certain Sacerdotal
additions. It was his prosecution of the Platonists
which made him unpopular in an age when men had
the right to expect that, whatever happened, learning
at least would be respected. The example of the
Florentine and Neapolitan academies had encouraged
the Romans to found a society for the discussion of
philosophical questions. The Pope conceived that a
political intrigue was the real object of this club. Nor
was the suspicion wholly destitute of colour. The
conspiracy of Porcari against Nicholas W. was still fresh
in people's memories; nor was the position of the Pope
in Rome as yet by any means Secure. He seized the
chief members of the Roman Academy, imprisoned
them, put them to the torture, and killed some of them
upon the rack. “You Would have taken the Castle of
S. Angelo for Phalaris' bull,’ writes Platina; ‘the
hollow vaults did so resound with the cries of innocent
young men.” No evidence of a conspiracy could be
extorted. Then Paul tried the survivors for unortho-
doxy. They proved the Soundness of their faith to the
Satisfaction of the Pope's inquisitors. Nothing re-
mained but to release them, or to shut them up in
TAZAZ AOAAES OF THE A*AAVA/SSA AVCE 63
dungeons in order that people might not say the Holy
Father had arrested them without due cause. The
latter course was chosen. Platina, the historian of the
Popes, was one of the Secretaries of the Briefs, and One
of the Platonists whom Paul had tortured.
Paul did not live as long as his comparative youth
led people to anticipate. He died of apoplexy in 1471,
alone and suddenly, after supping on two huge Water-
melons. His successor was a man of base extraction,
named Francesco della Rovere, born near the town of
Savona on the Genoese Riviera. It was his whim to be
thought noble ; SO he bought the goodwill of the ancient
house of Rovere of Turin by giving them two cardinals'
hats, and proclaimed himself their kinsman. Theirs is
the golden oak-tree on an azure ground which Michael
Angelo painted on the roof of the Sistine Chapel, in
compliment to Sixtus and his nephew Julius. Having
bribed the most venal members of the Sacred College,
Francesco della Rovere was elected Pope and assumed
the name of Sixtus IV.
He began his career with a lie ; for though he suc-
ceeded to the avaricious Paul, who had spent his time
in amassing money which he did not use, he declared
that he only found 5,000 florins in the Papal treasury.
This assertion was proved false by the prodigality with
which he lavished wealth immediately upon his nephews.
It is difficult even to hint at the horrible suspicions
which were cast upon the birth of two of the Pope's
nephews, and upon the nature of his weakness for
Sætus IV.
His
public and
private
£nfamy
64 THE POPES OF THE REAVAISSA NCE
them; yet the private life of Sixtus rendered the most
monstrous stories plausible. We may, however, dwell
upon the principal features of his nepotism ; for Sixtus
was the first Pontiff who deliberately organised a system
of pillaging the Church in order to exalt his family to
principalities. But Christendom beheld in Sixtus not
merely the spectacle of a Pope who trafficked in the
bodies of his subjects, and the holy things of his office,
to squander ill-gotten gold upon abandoned minions.
The peace of Italy was destroyed by desolating wars in
the advancement of the most Worthless favourites.
Sixtus desired to annex Ferrara to the dominions of
Girolamo Riario, the son of his sister Jolanda. Nothing
stood in his way but the house of Este, firmly planted
for centuries, and connected by marriage or alliance
with all the chief families of Italy. The Pope, whose
lust for blood and broils was only equalled by his
avarice and his libertinism, rushed with wild delight
into a project which involved the discord of the whole
peninsula. He made treaties with Venice and unmade
them, stirred up all the passions of the despots and set
them together by the ears, called the Swiss mercenaries
into Lombardy, and when, finally, tired of fighting for
his nephew, the Italian powers concluded the peace of
Bagnolo, he died of rage in 1484. The Pope did
actually die of disappointed fury, because peace had
been restored to the country he had mangled for the
sake of a favourite nephew.
The crime of Sixtus which most vividly paints the
THE A*OAAES OF TAZAZ A&AEAVA/SSAAVCAE 65
corruption of the Papacy in that age remains still to be
told. This was the sanction of the Pazzi Conjuration
against Giuliano and Lorenzo de' Medici. In the year
1477, the Medici, after excluding the merchant princes of
the Pazzi family from the magistracy of Florence, and
otherwise annoying them, had driven Francesco de' Pazzi
in disgust to Rome. Sixtus chose him for his banker in
the place of the Medicean Company. He became inti-
mate with Girolamo Riario, and was well received at
the Papal court. Political reasons at this moment
made the Pope and his nephew anxious to destroy the
Medici, who opposed Girolamo's Schemes of aggrandise-
ment in Lombardy. Private rancour induced Francesco
de’ Pazzi to second their views, and to stimulate their
passion. The three between them hatched a plot which
was joined by Salviati, Archbishop of Pisa, another
private foe of the Medici, and by Giambattista Monte-
secco, a captain well affected to the Count Girolamo.
The first design of the conspirators was to lure the
brothers Medici to Rome and to kill them there. But
the young men were too prudent to leave Florence.
Pazzi and Salviati then proceeded to Tuscany, hoping
either at a banquet or in church to succeed in mur-
dering them. Bernardo Bandini, a man of blood by
trade, and Francesco de' Pazzi were chosen to assassinate
Giuliano. Giambattista Montesecco undertook to dis-
pose of Lorenzo. April 26, 1478, was finally fixed for
the deed. The place selected was the Duomo. The
elevation of the Host at Mass was to be the signal.
F
The Pazzi
consp?-
racy
against
the
Medici.
66 THE POPES OF THE REAVA/SSAAVCE
Both the Medici arrived. The murderers embraced
Giuliano, and discovered that this timid youth had left
his secret coat of mail at home. But a difficulty, which
ought to have been foreseen, arose. Montesecco, cut-
throat as he was, refused to stab Lorenzo before the
high altar; at the last moment some sense of the religio
loci dashed his courage. Two priests were then dis-
covered who had no such silly scruples. In the words
of an old chronicle: ‘Another man was found, who,
being a priest, was more accustomed to the place, and
therefore less Superstitious about its sanctity.’ This,
however, spoiled all. The priests, though more
sacrilegious than the bravos, were less used to
the trade of assassination. They failed to strike
home. Giuliano, it is true, was stabbed to death by
Bernardo Bandini and Francesco de' Pazzi at the
very moment of the elevation of Christ's body; but
Lorenzo escaped with a slight flesh-wound. The whole
conspiracy collapsed. In the retaliation which the
infuriated people of Florence took upon the murderers,
the Archbishop Salviati, together with J acopo and
Erancesco de' Pazzi, and some others among the
principal conspirators, were hung from the windows of
the Palazzo Publico. For this act of violence to the
sacred person of a traitorous priest, Sixtus, who had
upon his own conscience the crime of mingled treason,
sacrilege, and murder, excommunicated Florence, and
carried on for years a Savage war with the Republic.
It was not until 1481, when the descent of the Turks
THE PO PAES OF THE REAVA/SSAAWCAE 67
upon Otranto made him tremble for his own Safety, that
he chose to make peace with those whom he had himself
provoked and plotted against.
Another feature in the pontificate of Sixtus deserves
special mention. It was under his auspices, in 1478,
that the Inquisition was founded in Spain for the
extermination of Jews, Moors, and Christians with a
taint of heresy. During the next four years 2,000
victims were burned in the province of Castile. In
Seville, a plot of ground called the Quemadero, or place
of burning, was set apart for executions; and here, in
one year, 280 heretics were committed to the flames,
while 79 were condemned to perpetual imprisonment,
and 17,000 to lighter punishments of various kinds. In
Andalusia alone 5,000 houses were at once abandoned
by their inhabitants. Then followed, in 1492, the
celebrated edict against the Jews. Before four months
had expired, the whole Jewish population were bidden to
leave Spain, carrying with them nothing in the shape of
gold or silver. Wainly did the persecuted race endeavour
to purchase a remission of the sentence by the payment
of an exorbitant ransom. Torquemada appeared before
Ferdinand and his consort, raising the crucifix, and
crying: “Judas sold Christ for thirty pieces of silver;
Sell ye him for a larger sum, and account for the same
to God ' ' The exodus began. Eight hundred thousand
Jews left Spain—some for the coast of Africa, where
the Arabs ripped up their bodies in search for gems or
gold that they might have swallowed, and deflowered
The Inz-
quisition,
Žn Spain.
and ea:pul-
Sion of the
Jews.
F 2
68 THE POPES OF THE RENAISSA/VCE
FIºs
religious
obliquity.
their women—some for Portugal, where they bought the
right to exist for a large head-tax, and where they saw
their sons and daughters dragged away to baptism.
Others were sold as slaves, or had to satisfy the rapacity
of their persecutors with the bodies of their children.
Many flung themselves into the Wells, and sought to
bury despair in suicide. The Mediterranean was covered
with famine-stricken and plague-breeding fleets of exiles.
Putting into the port of Genoa, they were refused leave
to reside in the city, and died by hundreds in the
harbour. Their festering bodies bred a pestilence along
the whole Italian seaboard, of which, at Naples alone,
20,000 persons died. Flitting from shore to shore, these
forlorn spectres, the victims of bigotry and avarice,
everywhere pillaged and everywhere rejected, dwindled
away and disappeared.
Most singular is the attitude of a Sixtus—indulging
his lust and pride in the Vatican, adorning the chapel
called after his name with masterpieces, rending Italy
with broils for the aggrandisement of favourites, haggling
over the prices to be paid for bishoprics, extorting
money from starved provinces, plotting murder against
his enemies, hounding the Semi-barbarous Swiss moun-
taineers on Milan by indulgences, refusing aid to Venice
in her championship against the Turk—yet meanwhile
thinking to please God by holocausts of Moors, by
myriads of famished Jews, conferring on a faithless and
avaricious Ferdinand the title of Catholic, endeavouring
to wipe out his sins by the blood of others, to burn his
TA/AE POPAZS OF 7TAZ A&AEAVA/SSAAVCAE 69
own vices in the autos da fé of Seville, and by the foun-
dation of that diabolical engine, the Inquisition, to
Secure the fabric his own infamy was undermining.
After Sixtus IV. came Innocent VIII. His secular
name was Giambattista Cibo. The Sacred College,
terrified by the experience of Sixtus into thinking that
another Pope SO reckless in his creation of Scandalous
cardinals might ruin Christendom, laid the most solemn
obligations on the Pope elect. Cibo took oaths on every
relic, by every Saint, to every member of the conclave,
that he would maintain a certain order of appointment
and a purity of election in the Church. No cardinal
under the age of thirty, not more than one of the Pope's
own blood, none without the rank of Doctor of Theology
or Law, were to be elected, and so forth. But, as soon
as the tiara was on his head, he renounced them all as
inconsistent with the rights and liberties of S. Peter’s
chair. Engagements made by the man might always
be broken by the Pope.
Of Innocent's pontificate little need be said. He
was the first Pope publicly to acknowledge his seven
children and to call them sons and daughters. Avarice,
venality, sloth, and the ascendency of base favourites
made his reign loathsome without the blaze and splen-
dour of the scandals of his fiery predecessor. In
corruption he advanced a step even beyond Sixtus, by
establishing a bank at Rome for the Sale of pardons.
Each sin had its price, which might be paid at the
convenience of the criminal; 150 ducats of the tax
Innocent
WIII.
His cha.
7'acter.
/
\/
7o THE POPES OF THE REAVA/SSAAVCAE
Its evil
effect on
the cottºn-
£ry.
were poured into the Papal coffers; the surplus fell to
Franceschetto, the Pope's son. This insignificant prince-
ling, for whom the county of Anguillara was purchased,
showed no ability or ambition for aught but getting and
spending money. He was small of stature and tame-
spirited ; yet the destinies of an important house of
Europe depended on him—for his father married him to
Maddalena, the daughter of Lorenzo de' Medici, in 1487.
This led to Giovanni de' Medici receiving a cardinal’s
hat at the age of thirteen, and thus the Medicean interest
in Rome was founded. In the course of a few years the
Medici gave two Popes to the Holy See, and by their
ecclesiastical influence riveted the chains of Florence.
The traffic which Innocent and Franceschetto carried
on in theft and murder filled the Campagna with brigands -
and assassins. Travellers, pilgrims, and even ambassa-
dors were stripped and murdered on their way to
Rome ; and in the city itself more than two hundred
people were publicly assassinated with impunity during
the last months of the Pope's life. He was gradually
dozing off into his last long sleep, and Franceschetto
was planning how to carry off his ducats. While the
Holy Father still hovered between life and death, a
Jewish doctor proposed to reinvigorate him by the trans-
fusion of young blood into his torpid veins. Three boys
throbbing with the elixir of early youth were sacrificed
in vain. Each boy, Says Infessura, received one ducat.
He adds, not without grim humour : ‘Et paulo post
mortui Sunt; Judaeus quidem aufugit, et Papa non
TAZAZ AOAAES OA' 2"AZ AºAAVAZSSAAVCAE 71
servatus est.’ The epitaph of this poor old Pope reads
like a rather clever but blasphemous witticism: “Ego
autem in Innocentiã mea ingressus sum.' *-
Meanwhile the cardinals had not been idle. The
tedious leisure of Innocent's long lethargy was employed
by them in active simony. Simony, it may be said in
passing, gave the great Italian families a direct interest
in the election of the richest and most paying candidate.
It served the turn of a man like Ascanio Sforza to fatten
the golden goose that laid such eggs before he killed it—
in other words, to take the bribes of Innocent and
Alexander, while deferring for a future time his own
election. All the cardinals, with the exception of
Roderigo Borgia, the son of Isabella Borgia, niece of
Pope Calixtus III., were the creatures of Sixtus or of
Innocent. Having bought their hats with gold, they
Were now disposed to sell their votes to the highest
bidder. The Borgia was the richest, strongest, and
most worldly of them all. He ascertained exactly what
the price of each suffrage would be, and laid his plans
accordingly. The Cardinal Ascanio Sforza, brother of
the Duke of Milan, would accept the lucrative post of
vice-chancellor. The Cardinal Orsini would be satisfied
with the Borgia Palace at Rome and the castles of
Monticello and Saviano. The Cardinal Colonna had a
mind for the Abbey of Subbiaco with its fortresses.
The cardinal of S. Angelo preferred the comfortable
bishopric of Porto, with its palace stocked with choice
Wines. The cardinal of Parma would take Nepi. The
The in-
trigues at
the meat
Papal
election
72 THE POPES OF THE RENA ISSANCE
U’
Aleaxander
TVI.
cardinal of Genoa was bribable with the church of
S. Maria in Via Lata. Less influential members of the
conclave sold themselves for gold. The fiery Giuliano
della Rovere remained implacable. In the Borgia his
vehement temperament perceived a fit antagonist.
But Roderigo Borgia, having corrupted the rest of
the college, with the exception of five other cardinals,
assumed the tiara in 1492 with the ever-memorable
title of Alexander VI.
In Roderigo Borgia Rome only saw as yet a man
accomplished at all points, of handsome person, royal
carriage, majestic presence, and affable address. He was
a brilliant Orator, a passionate lover, a demigod of court .
pageantry and ecclesiastical parade—qualities which, -
although they do not suit our notions of a churchman,
imposed upon the taste of the Renaissance. As he rode
in triumph towards the Lateran, voices were loud in his
praise. There is no reason to suppose that the majority
of the Italians regarded the elevation of the Borgia with
any concealed sentiments. As a cardinal he had given
proof of his ability, but shown no signs of fraud or
cruelty. Nor were his morals worse than those of his
colleagues. If he was the father of Several children,
so was Giuliano della Rovere, who was to succeed him
as Julius II., and so had been Pope Innocent before him.
This mattered but little in an age when the Primate of
Christendom had come to be regarded as a secular
potentate, less fortunate than other princes, inasmuch
as his rule was not hereditary, but more fortunate in so
7 HE POPAES OF THE A&AEAVA/SSAAVCAE 73
far as he could wield the thunders and dispense the
privileges of the Church.
Alexander VI. was a stronger and a firmer man than
\–-----
his immediate predecessors. ‘He combined,’ says
Guicciardini, ‘craft with singular Sagacity, a Sound
judgment with extraordinary powers of persuasion; and
to all the grave affairs of life he applied ability and pains
Hºs
ambitious
policy.
beyond belief.” His first care was to reduce Rome to
order. The old factions of Colonna and Orsini, which
Sixtus had scotched, but which had raised their heads
again during the dotage of Innocent, were destroyed in
his pontificate. In this way, as Machiavelli observed,
he laid the real basis for the temporal power of the
Papacy. All considerations of religion and morality
were subordinated by him with strict impartiality to
policy; and his policy he restrained to two objects—the
advancement of his family and the consolidation of the
temporal power. These were narrow aims for the
ambition of a potentate who, with one stroke of his pen,
pretended to confer the new-found world on Spain. Yet
they taxed his whole strength and drove him to the
perpetration of enormous crimes.
Former Popes had preached crusades against the
Turk. Alexander frequently invited Bajazet to enter
Europe and relieve him of the princes who opposed his in-
trigues to favour his children. The fraternal feeling which
subsisted between the Pope and the Sultan was to some
extent dependent on the fate of Prince Djem, a brother
of Bajazet and son of the conqueror of Constantinople,
Prince
Djem.
74 TAZAZ AOA ES OF THE REAVA/SSA A/CE
who had fled for protection to the Christian powers, and
whom the Pope kept prisoner, receiving 40,000 ducats
yearly from the Porte for his jail-fee. Innocent VIII.
had been the first to snare this lucrative guest in 1489.
The Lance of Longinus was sent him as a token of the
Sultan's gratitude, and Innocent, who built an altar in
S. Peter’s for the relique, caused his own tomb to be
raised close by. His effigy in bronze, by Pollajuolo, still
carries in its hand this blood-gift from the infidel to the
Vº Priest of Christendom. Djem meanwhile remained
in Rome, and held his Moslem court side by side with
the Pontiff in the Vatican. Despatches are extant in
which Alexander and Baja Zet exchanged terms of the
warmest friendship, the Turk imploring his Greatness—
So he addressed the Pope—to put an end to the unlucky
Djem, and promising as the price of this assassination a
sum of 300,000 ducats and the tunic worn by Christ,
presumably the very seamless coat over which the soldiers
on Calvary had cast their dice. The money and the
relique arrived in Italy, and were intercepted by the
partisans of Giuliano della Rovere. Alexander, before
the bargain with the Sultan had been concluded by the
murder of Djem, was forced to hand him over to the
French king. But the unlucky Turk died in Charles's
camp between Rome and Naples. Whatever crimes
may be condoned in Alexander, it is difficult to extenuate
this traffic with the Turks. By his appeal from the
powers of Europe to the Sultan, at a time when the
peril to the Western world was still most serious, he
7TA/AE POAA.S OF 7TA/AE A*/2AWA/SSA AVCAE 75
stands attainted for high treason against Christendom,
of which he professed to be the chief; against civilisa-
tion, which the Church pretended to protect ; against
Christ, whose Vicar he presumed to style himself.
Like Sixtus, Alexander combined this deadness to the ãº.
spirit and interests of Christianity with Zeal for dogma. sorship of
º e the press.
He never flinched in formal Orthodoxy, and the measures
which he took for riveting the chains of Superstition on
the people were calculated with the military firmness of
a Napoleon. It was he who established the censure of
the press, by which printers were obliged, under pain of
excommunication, to submit the books they issued to
the control of the archbishops and their delegates. The
Brief of June 1, 1501, which contains this order, may
be reasonably said to have retarded civilisation, at least
in Italy and Spain.
Carnal sensuality was the besetting vice of this Pope His gross
throughout his life. This, together with his almost #.
insane weakness for his children, whereby he became a
slave to the terrible Cesare, caused all the crimes that
he committed. At the same time, though sensual, he
was not gluttonous. Boccaccio, the Ferrarese ambassa-
dor, remarks : “The Pope eats only of one dish. It is,
therefore, disagreeable to have to dine with him.’ In
this respect he may be favourably contrasted with the
Roman prelates of the age of Leo. His relations to
Vannozza Catanei, the titular wife first of Giorgio de
Croce and then of Carlo Canale, and to Julia Farnese,
surnamed La Bella, the titular wife of Orsino Orsini,
76 TA/A2 AOA ES OF THE REAVA/SSAAVCAE
His nepo-
tism.
were open and acknowledged. These two Sultanas ruled
him during the greater portion of his career, conniving
meanwhile at the harem, which, after truly Oriental
fashion, he maintained in the Vatican.
The nepotism of Sixtus was like water to the strong
Wine of Alexander's paternal ambition. Of his children
by Wannozza, he caused the eldest son to be created Duke
of Gandia ; the youngest he married to Donna Sancia,
a daughter of Alfonso of Aragon, by whom the boy was
honoured with the dukedom of Squillace. Cesare, the
Second of the family, was appointed Bishop of Valentia
and cardinal. The dukedoms of Nepi and Camerino
were given to another son, John, whom he first declared
to be his grandson through Cesare. This John may
possibly have been Lucrezia's bastard son. The duke-
dom of Sermoneta, wrenched for a moment from the
hands of the Gaetani family, who still own it, was con-
ferred upon Lucrezia's Son, Roderigo. Lucrezia, the
only daughter of Alexander, by Wannozza, took three
husbands in succession, after having been formally
betrothed to two Spanish nobles. She was finally
married to Alfonzo, crown prince of Ferrara, in 1502;
and whatever may have been her earlier faults, owing to
the foul atmosphere in which she had been reared, it is
due to truth to record that at Ferrara she won the esteem
of a husband who had married her unwillingly, attached
the whole state to her by her Sweetness of temper, and
received the panegyrics of the two Strozzi, Bembo,
Ariosto, Aldo Manuzio, and many other men of note.
THE POA ES OF THE REAVA/SSAAVCAE 77
2^
Like her mother, Wannozza, she gave herself, in the
decline of life, to works of charity and mercy.
Alexander was now to receive a wound on the tender-
est side of his character. The murder of the Duke of
Gandia is related with great circumstantiality and with
surprising sang-froid by Burchard, the Pope's master of
the ceremonies. The duke, with his brother Cesare,
then Cardinal Valentino, supped one night at the house
of their mother, Wannozza. On their way home the
duke joined company with a masked stranger, dismissed
his only attendant, and was never seen again alive. His
servant was attacked and half murdered. When the
news of the duke's disappearance spread abroad, a boat-
man of the Tiber deposed to having seen the body of a
man thrown into the river on the night of the duke's
death, June 14, but he had not thought it worth while
to report the circumstance, as he had seen ‘a hundred
bodies thrown into the Water at the same spot, and no
questions asked about them afterwards.’ The Pope had
the Tiber dragged for some hours, while the wits of
Rome made epigrams upon this true Successor of
S. Peter, this new fisher of men. At last the body of
the Duke of Gandia was hauled up. Nine Wounds—one
in the throat, the others in the head, the legs, and the
trunk—were found upon the corpse. Whether the real
perpetrators of this murder were ever discovered is not
known. In the absence of official declarations on the
subject, and in the dead silence of judicial authority
which followed, the public surmised that Cesare had
The mºur-
der of the
Duke of
Gandia. ~
78 THE POA ES OF 7THE REAVA/SSA MCAE
Cesare
Borgia.
planned it ; whether, as some have supposed, out of a
jealousy of his brother, or because he wished to take
the first place in the Borgia family, can never be
known. The Pontiff in his rage and grief was like a
wild beast at bay. He shut himself in a private room,
refused food, and howled with so terrible a voice that it
was heard in the streets beyond the palace. When he
rose up from this agony, remorse seemed to have
struck him. He assembled a conclave of the cardinals,
wept before them, rent his robes, confessed his sins,
and instituted a commission for the reform of the
abuses he had sanctioned in the Church. But the
storm of anguish spent its strength at last. A visit
from Wannozza, the mother of his children, wrought a
sudden change from fury to reconcilement. What passed
between them is not known for certain. Wannozza is
supposed, however, to have pointed out, what was in-
disputably true, that Cesare was more fitted to support
the dignity of the family by his abilities than had been
the weak and amiable Duke of Gandia. The miserable
father rose from the earth, dried his eyes, took food, put
from him his remorse, and forgot, together with his
grief for Absalom, the reforms which he had promised
for the Church.
Henceforth he devoted himself with sustained energy
to building up the fortunes of Cesare, whom he released
from all ecclesiastical obligations, and to whose service
he seemed bound by some mysterious power. Nor did
he even resent the Savageness and cruelty which this
THE POPAES OF 7A/AE AEA, AVA/SSAAVCAE 79
young hell-cat vented in his presence on the persons of
his favourites. At one time Cesare stabbed Perotto, the
Pope's minion, with his own hand when the youth had
taken refuge in Alexander's arms; the blood spurted out
upon the priestly mantle, and the young man died there.
At another time he employed the same diabolical temper
for the delectation of his father. He turned out some
prisoners sentenced to death in a courtyard of the
palace, arrayed himself in fantastic clothes, and amused
the Papal party by shooting the unlucky criminals.
They ran round and round the court, crouching and
doubling to avoid his arrows. He showed his skill by
hitting each where he thought fit. The Pope and
Lucrezia looked on applaudingly. Other scenes, not of
bloodshed, but of grovelling sensuality, devised for the
entertainment of his father and his sister, though de-
scribed by the dry pen of Burchard, can scarcely be
transferred to these pages.
The vision of an Italian sovereignty which Charles
of Anjou, Gian Galeazzo Wisconti, and Galeazzo Maria
Sforza had successively entertained, now fascinated the
imagination of the Borgias. Having resolved to make
Cesare a prince, Alexander allied himself to Louis XII.
of France, promising to annul his first marriage and to
sanction his nuptials with Ann of Brittany, if he would
undertake the advancement of his son. The bribe in-
duced Louis to create Cesare Duke of Valence, and to
confer on him the hand of Charlotte of Navarre. He
also entered Italy, and with his arms enabled Cesare to
The atro-
city of
Aleaxan-
der’s cont-
quests.
8O THE POPAES OF THE REAVA/SSA NCE
The pro-
motion of
his family
his sole
considera-
tion.
subdue Romagna. The system adopted by Alexander
and his son in their conquests was a simple one. They
took the capitals and murdered the princes. Thus
Cesare strangled the Warami at Camerino in 1502, and
the Vitelli and Orsini at Sinigaglia in the same year.
By his means the Marescotti had been massacred whole-
sale in Bologna ; Pesaro, Rimini, and Forli had been
treated in like manner; and after the capture of Faenza
in 1501, its lord, Astone Manfredi, with his brother
Ottaviano were sent to Rome, where they were exposed
to the Worst insults, strangled, and their bodies thrown
into the Tiber. A system of equal simplicity kept their
policy alive in foreign courts. The Bishop of Cette, in
France, was poisoned for hinting at a Secret of Cesare's
(1498); the Cardinal d'Amboise was bribed to maintain
the credit of the Borgias with Louis XII.; the offer of a
red hat to Briçonnet during the invasion of Charles VIII.
saved Alexander from the terrors of a General Council
in 1494, as we shall subsequently See.
The historical interest of Alexander's method consists
in his deliberate use of all the means in his power to one
end—the elevation of his family. His spiritual autho-
rity, the wealth of the Church, the honours of the Holy
College, the arts of an assassin, the diplomacy of a
despot, were all devoted Systematically and openly to the
purpose in view. Whatever could be done to weaken
Italy by foreign invasions and internal discords, so as
to render it a prey to his poisonous son, he attempted.
When Louis XII. made his infamous alliance with
TA/AE POPAES OF THE RAE AWA/SSA MCAE 8 I
Ferdinand the Catholic for the spoliation of the house
of Aragon in Naples, the Pope gladly gave it his sanc-
tion. The two monarchs quarrelled over their prey;
then Alexander formented their discord in order that
Cesare might have an opportunity of carrying on his
operations in Tuscany unchecked. Patriotism in his
breast—whether the patriotism of a born Spaniard or the
patriotism of an Italian potentate—was as dead as Chris-
tianity. To make profit for the house of Borgia by
fraud, sacrilege, and the dismemberment of nations was
the Papal policy.
It is a relief to come at last to the end of this cata-
logue of crime. The two Borgias—so runs the legend—
invited themselves to dine with the Cardinal Adriano of
Corneto in a vineyard of the Vatican belonging to their
host. Thither, by the hands of Alexander's butler, they
had previously forwarded some poisoned wine. By mis-
take, or by contrivance of the cardinal, who may have
bribed the trusted agent, they drank the death-cup
mingled for their victim. Nearly all contemporary
Italian annalists, including Guicciardini, Paolo Giovio,
and Sanudo, gave currency to this version of the tragedy,
which became the common property of historians,
novelists, and moralists. Yet Burchard, who was on the
spot, recorded in his diary that both father and son were
attacked by a malignant fever; and Giustiniani wrote to
his masters in Venice that the Pope's physician ascribed
his illness to apoplexy. The season was remarkably un-
healthy, and deaths from fever had been frequent. A
b
{
* G
FI is mys-
terious
death.
82 THE A*OA’ES OF THE REAVA/SSAAVCAE
The relief
that it
caused.
circular letter to the German princes, written probably
by the Cardinal of Gurk, and dated August 31, 1503,
distinctly mentioned fever as the cause of the Pope's
sudden decease. Machiavelli, again, who conversed with
Cesare Borgia about this turning-point in his career,
gave no hint of poison, but spoke only of son and father
being simultaneously prostrated by disease.
Whatever may have been the proximate cause of his
sickness, Alexander died, a black and swollen mass,
hideous to contemplate. “All Rome,” says Guicciardini,
‘ran with indescribable gladness to view the corpse.
Men could not satiate their eyes with feeding on the car-
cass of the Serpent who, by his unbounded ambition and
pestiferous perfidy, by every demonstration of horrible
cruelty, monstrous lust, and unheard-of avarice, selling
without distinction things sacred and profane, had filled
the world with venom." Cesare languished for some days
On a sick-bed ; but in the end, by the aid of a powerful
constitution, he recovered, to find his claws cut and his
plans in irretrievable confusion. ‘The state of the Duke
of Valence,’ says Filippo Nerli, ‘vanished even as smoke
in air, or foam upon the water.” Thus over-reaching
themselves ended this pair of adventurers, the most
notable two who ever played their part upon the stage of
the great world. The fruit of so many crimes and such
persistent effort was reaped by their enemy, Giuliano
della Rovere, for whose benefit the nobles of the
Roman state and the despots of Romagna had been
extirpated.
TAZAZ AOAAES OF 7TA/AE /*A*/VA/SSAAVCAE 83
Of Pius III., who reigned for a few days after Alex-
ander, no account need be taken. Giuliano della Rovere
was made Pope in 1503. Whatever opinion may be
formed of him, considered as the high-priest of the
Christian faith, there can be no doubt that Julius II.
was one of the greatest figures of the Renaissance, and
that his name, instead of Leo X., should by right be
given to the golden age of letters and of arts in Rome.
He stamped the century with the impression of a power-
ful personality. It is to him we owe the most splendid
of Michael Angelo's and Raphael’s masterpieces. The
Basilica of S. Peter's—that materialised idea which re-
mains to symbolise the transition from the Church of
the Middle Ages to the modern semi-secular supremacy
of Papal Rome—was his thought. No nepotism, no
loathsome sensuality, no flagrant violation of ecclesias-
tical justice, stains his pontificate. His one purpose was
to secure and extend the temporal authority of the Popes;
and this he achieved by curbing the ambition of the
Venetians, who threatened to absorb Romagna, by
reducing Perugia and Bologna to the Papal sway, by an-
nexing Parma and Piacenza, and by entering on the
heritage bequeathed to him by Cesare Borgia.
At his death he transmitted to his successors the
largest and most solid sovereignty in Italy. But rest-
less, turbid, never happy unless fighting, Julius drowned
the peninsula in blood. He has been called a patriot,
because from time to time he raised the cry of driving
the barbarians from Italy. It must, however, be
Julius II.
The power
of the
Church.
advanced
at the ea:-
pense of
the cowº-
try.
G 2
84 THE POPAES OF THE REAVA/SSAAVCE
Leo X.
remembered that it was he, while still Cardinal of San
Pietro in Wincoli, who finally moved Charles VIII. from
Lyons; it was he who stirred up the League of Cambray
against Venice, and who invited the Swiss mercenaries
into Lombardy, in each case adding the weight of the
Papal authority to the forces which were enslaving his
country. Julius, again, has been variously represented
as the saviour of the Papacy and as the curse of Italy.
He was emphatically both. In those days of national
anarchy it was perhaps impossible for Julius to magnify
the Church except at the expense of the nation, and
to achieve the purpose of his life without inflicting
the scourge of foreign war upon his countrymen. The
Powers of Europe had outgrown the Papal discipline.
Italian questions were being decided in the cabinets of
Louis, Maximilian, and Ferdinand. Instead of con-
trolling the arbiters of Italy, a Pope could only play off
one against another.
Leo X. Succeeded Julius in 1513, to the great relief
of the Romans, wearied with the continual warfare of
the Pontifice terribile. In the gorgeous pageant of his
triumphal procession to the Lateran, the streets were
decked with arches, emblems, and inscriptions. This
first Pope of the house of Medici enjoyed at Rome the
fame of his father, Lorenzo the Magnificent, at Florence.
Extolled as an Augustus in his lifetime, he has given his
name to what is called the golden age of Italian culture.
As a man he was well qualified to represent the neo-
pagan freedom of the Renaissance. Saturated with the
THE AOAAES OF THE REAVA/SSA AVCAE 85
spirit of his period, he had no sympathy with religious
earnestness, no conception of moral elevation, no aim
beyond a superficial polish of the understanding and the
taste. Good Latinity seemed to him of more importance
than true doctrine. At the same time he was extrava-
gantly munificent to men of culture, and hearty in his
zeal for the diffusion of liberal knowledge. But what
was reasonable in the man was ridiculous in the Pontiff.
There remained an irreconcilable incongruity between
his profession of the Primacy of Christendom and his
easy epicurean philosophy.
Leo, like all the Medici after the first Cosimo, was
a bad financier. His reckless expenditure contributed in
no small measure to the corruption of Rome and to the
ruin of the Latin Church, while it won the praises of
the literary world. His table, which was open to all the
poets, singers, scholars, and buffoons of Rome, cost half
the revenues of Romagna and the March. He founded
the knightly order of S. Peter to replenish his treasury,
and turned the conspiracy of the Cardinal Petrucci
against his life to such good account—extorting from the
Cardinal Riario 150,000 ducats, and from the Cardinals
Soderini and Hadrian the sum of 125,000—that Won
Hutten was almost justified in treating the whole of that
dark business as a mere financial speculation. The
creation of thirty-nine cardinals in 1517 brought him in
above 500,000 ducats. Yet, in spite of these expedients
for getting gold, the bankers of Rome were half ruined
when he died, owing to the large amount he owed them.
IHis eac-
trava-
ga?!Cé.
86 THE POPES OF THE REAVA/SSA MCAE
flººr. When Leo was made Pope he said to Giuliano, Duke
º of of Nemours, ‘Let us enjoy the Papacy, since God has
given it us.” It was in this spirit that he administered
the Holy See. The key-note which he struck dominated
the whole society of Rome. Masques and balls, comedies
and carnival processions, filled the streets and palaces
of the Eternal City with a mimicry of pagan festivals,
while Art went hand in hand with Luxury. The
hoarse rhetoric of friars in the Coliseum, and the drone
of pifferari from the Ara Coeli, mingled with the Latin
declamations of the Capitol and the twang of lute-strings
in the Vatican. Meanwhile, amid crowds of cardinals
in hunting-dress, dances of half-naked girls, and masques
of Carnival Bacchantes, moved pilgrims from the north
with wide, astonished, woeful eyes—disciples of Luther,
in whose soul, as in a scabbard, lay sheathed the sword
of the Spirit, ready to flash forth and Smite.
; d A more complete conception may be formed of Leo
7°C.Sü0
with by comparing him with Julius. Julius disturbed the
Julius II.
peace of Italy with a view to establishing the temporal
power of the See. Leo returned to the old nepotism of
the previous Popes and fomented discord for the sake of
the Medici. Julius was violent in temper but observant
of his promises. Leo was suave and slippery. He lured
Gianpaolo Baglioni to Rome by a safe-conduct, and then
had him imprisoned and beheaded in the castle of S.
Angelo. Julius delighted in war, and was never happier
than when the cannons roared around him at Mirandola.
Leo vexed the soul of his master of the ceremonies be-
THE AEOPAES OF THAE AEA MAJSSAAVCAE 87
cause he would ride out a-hunting in top-boots. Julius
designed S. Peter's and comprehended Michael Angelo.
Leo had the wit to patronise the poets, artists, and his-
torians who added lustre to his court, but he brought
no new great man of genius to the front. The portraits
of the two Popes, both from the hand of Raphael, are
exceedingly characteristic. Julius, bent and emaciated,
has the nervous glance of a passionate and energetic
temperament. Leo, heavy-jawed, dull-eyed, with thick
lips and a brawny jowl, betrays the coarser fibre of a
Sensualist.
It has often been remarked that both Julius and Leo
raised money by the sale of indulgences with a view to
the building of S. Peter's, thus aggravating one of the
chief Scandals which provoked the Reformation. In
that age of maladjusted impulses the desire to execute a
great work of art, combined with the cynical resolve to
turn the Superstitions of the people to account, forced
rebellion to a head. Leo was unconscious of the
magnitude of Luther's movement. If he thought at all
seriously of the phenomenon, it stirred his wonder. Nor
did he feel the necessity of reformation in the Church
of Italy. The rich and many-sided life of Rome, and
the diplomatic interests of Italian despotism, absorbed
his whole attention. It was but a small matter what
barbarians thought and did.
The sudden death of Leo threw the Holy College into
great perplexity. To choose the new Pope without refer-
ence to political interests was impossible ; and these were
Without
prescience
of the
Reforma-
tion.
The diffi-
culty of
choosing a
SQLCC0SSO?".
88 THE POPAES OF 7THE A&AEAVA/SSAAVCAE
Adrian
WI.
divided between Charles W. the Emperor and Francis I. of
France. After twelve days spent by the cardinals in con-
clave, theresult of their innumerable schemes and counter-
Schemes was the election of the Cardinal of Tortosa. No
One knew him ; and his elevation to the Papacy, due to
the influence of Charles, was almost as great a surprise to
the electors as to the Romans. In their rage and horror
at having chosen this barbarian, the College began to
talk about the inspiration of the Holy Ghost, seeking the
most improbable of all excuses for the finistake to which
intrigue had driven them.
Adrian VI. came to Rome for the first time as Pope.
He knew no Italian, and talked Latin with an accent un-
familiar to southern ears. His studies had been confined
to Scholastic philosophy and theology. With courts he
had no commerce ; and he was so ignorant of the state
a Pope should keep in Rome that he wrote beforehand
requesting that a modest house and garden might be
hired for his abode. When he saw the Vatican, he
exclaimed that here the successors, not of Peter, but of
Constantine should dwell. Leo kept one hundred grooms
for the service of his stable ; Adrian retained but four.
Two Flemish valets sufficed for his personal attendance,
and to these he gave each evening one ducat for the
expenses of the next day's living. A Flemish Serving-
woman cooked his food, made his bed, and washed his
linen. Rome, with its splendid immorality, its classic
art and pagan culture, made the same impression on
him that it made on Luther. When his courtiers
7 HE AOAAES OF THE ACA2AWA/SSA AVCAE 89
pointed to the Laocoon as the most illustrious monument
of ancient sculpture, he turned away with horror, mur-
muring: ‘Idols of the pagans !' The Belvedere, which
was fast becoming the first statue-gallery in Europe, he
walled up and never entered. At the same time he set
himself with earnest purpose, so far as his tied hands
and limited ability would go, to reform the more patent
abuses of the Church. Leo had raised about three
million ducats by the sale of offices; by a stroke of his
pen Adrian cancelled these contracts, and threw upon
the world a crowd of angry and defrauded officials. It
was but poor justice to remind them that their bargain
with his predecessor had been illegal. Such attempts,
however, at a reformation of ecclesiastical Society were
as ineffectual as pin-pricks in the cure of a fever which
demands blood-letting. The real corruption of Rome,
deeply seated in high places, remained untouched.
Luther meanwhile had carried all before him in the
north, and accurate observers in Rome itself dreaded
Some awful catastrophe for the guilty city.
Great was the rejoicing when another Medici was
made Pope in 1523. People hoped that the merry days
of Leo would return. But things had gone too far for-
ward towards dissolution. Clement VII. failed to give
Satisfaction to the courtiers whom his more genial cousin
had delighted : even the scholars and the poets grumbled.
His rule was weak and vacillating, so that the Colonna
faction raised its head again and drove him to the castle
of S. Angelo. The political horizon of Italy grew darker
Clement
WII.
90 THE POPAES OF THE REAVA/SSA NCE
and more sullen daily, as before some dreadful storm.
At last the crash came. Clement, by a series of treaties,
treacheries, and tergiversations, had deprived himself of
every friend and exasperated every foe. Italy was so
worn out with warfare, so accustomed to the anarchy of
aimless revolution and to the trampling to and fro of
stranger squadrons on her soil, that the news of a
Mutheran troop, levied with the express object of pillag-
ing Rome, and reinforced with Spanish ruffians and the
Scum of every nation, scarcely roused his apathy. The
so-called army of Frundsberg—a horde of robbers held
together by the hope of plunder—marched without
difficulty to the gates of Rome. So low had the honour
of Italian princes fallen that the Duke of Ferrara, by
direct aid given, and the Duke of Urbino, by counter-force
withheld, opened the passes of the Po and of the Apen-
nines to these marauders. They lost their general in
Lombardy. The Constable Bourbon, who succeeded
him, died in the assault of the city. The troops and
inhabitants of Rome showed the utmost pusillanimity.
Thus the city for nine months was abandoned to the lust,
rapacity, and cruelty of some 30,000 brigands without
a leader. It was then shown to what lengths of insult,
violence, and bestiality the brutal barbarism of Germans
and the avarice of Spaniards could be carried. Clement,
beleaguered in the castle of S. Angelo, Saw, day and night,
the Smoke ascend from desolated palaces and desecrated
temples, heard the wailing of Women and the groans
of tortured men mingle with the jests of Lutheran
THE POA ES OF THAE AEAAVA/SSAAVCAE 9 I
drunkards and the curses of Castilian bandits. Roam-
ing its galleries, and looking with hopeless eyes upon so
much misery and shame, he was wont to exclaim with
Job: ‘Wherefore hast thou brought me forth from the
Womb 2 Oh, that I had given up the ghost, and no eye
had seen me.” What the Romans, emasculated by luxury
and priest rule—what the cardinals and prelates, lapped
in sensuality and sloth—were made to suffer during this
long agony can scarcely be described. When at last
the barbarians, sated with blood, Surfeited with lechery,
glutted with gold, and decimated with pestilence, with-
drew, Rome raised her head a widow. From the shame
and torment of that sack she never recovered—never
again became the gay, licentious capital of arts and
letters—the glittering, extravagant Rome of Leo X.
W
SA VONAROLA : SCOURGE AND SEER
㺠§ OTHING is more characteristic of the sharp
contrasts of the Italian Renaissance than
the emergence, not only from the same
Society, but also from the bosom of the
same Church, of two men so diverse as the Pope
Alexander VI. and the monk Girolamo Savonarola.
Savonarola has been claimed as a precursor of the
Lutheran reformers, and as an inspired exponent of the
spirit of the fifteenth century. In reality he neither
shared the revolutionary genius of Luther, which gave
a new vitality to the faiths of Christendom, nor did he
sympathise with that free movement of the modern
mind which found its first expression in the arts and
humanistic studies of renaissant Italy. Both towards
Renaissance and Reform he preserved the attitude of a
monk, showing, on the one hand, an austere mistrust of
pagan culture, and, on the other, no desire to alter either
the creeds or the traditions of the Romish Church.
Yet the history of Savonarola is not to be dissociated
from that of the Italian Renaissance. He, more clearly
than any other man, discerned the moral and political

SA VOAVAA’O/CA. SCO UAEGAZ A/V/O SAE AER 93
situation of his country. When all the states of Italy
seemed sunk in peace and cradled in prosperity, he
predicted war and felt the imminence of overwhelming
calamity. The purification of customs which he
preached was demanded by the flagrant vices of the
Popes and by the wickedness of the tyrants. The
whirlwind which he prophesied did in fact descend upon
Italy. In addition to this clairvoyance, by right of
which we call him Seer, the hold he took on Florence
at a critical moment of Italian history is alone enough
to entitle him to more than passing notice. -***
Girolamo Savonarola was born at Ferrara in 1452.
His grandfather Michele, a Paduan of noble family, had
removed to the capital of the Este princes at the begin-
ning of the fifteenth century. There he held the office
of court physician ; and Girolamo was intended for the
same profession. But early in his boyhood the future
prophet showed signs of disinclination for a Worldly life,
and an invincible dislike of the court. Under the house
of Este, Ferrara was famous throughout Italy for its
gaiety and splendour. No city enjoyed more brilliant
and more frequent public shows. Nowhere did the
aristocracy maintain so much of feudal magnificence
and chivalrous enjoyment. The Square castle of red
brick, which still stands in the middle of the town, was
thronged with poets, players, fools who enjoyed an
almost European reputation, court flatterers, knights,
pages, Scholars; and fair ladies. But beneath its cube
of Solid masonry, on a level with the moat, shut out
His early
life at
Ferrara.
Hº-
94 SA VOAVA ROLA: SCO URGE AAWD SEER
EI is re-
ligious
tendency.
FI's
thoughts
turn to a
monastic
life.
from daylight by a sevenfold series of iron bars, lay
dungeons in which the objects of the duke's displeasure
clanked chains and sighed their lives away. Within
the precincts of this palace the young Savonarola,
learned to hate alike the worldly vices and the despotic
cruelty against which in after-life he declaimed and
fought unto the death.
Of his boyhood we know but little. His biographers
only tell us that he was grave and Solitary, frequenting
churches, praying with passionate persistence, obsti-
mately refusing, though otherwise docile, to join his
father in his visits to the court. Aristotle and S.
Thomas Aquinas seem to have been the favourite
masters of his study. In fact, he refused the new lights
of the humanists, and adhered to the ecclesiastical
training of the schoolmen.
The attractions of the cloister, as a refuge from the
storms of the world, and as a rest from the torments of
the sins of others, now began to Sway his mind. But
he communicated his desire to no one. It would have
grieved his father and his mother to find that their son,
who was, they hoped, to be a shining light at the court
of Ferrara, had determined to assume the cowl. At
length, however, came the time at which he felt that
leave the world he must. ‘It was on April 23, 1475,’
says Willari, “he was sitting with his lute and playing
a sad melody; his mother, as if moved by a spirit of
divination, turned suddenly round to him and exclaimed
mournfully: “My Son, that is a sign we are soon to
SA VOAVA/CO/CA. SCOURGAZ AAVO SAE AER 95
part.” He roused himself and continued, but with a
trembling hand, to touch the strings of the lute without
raising his eyes from the ground.’ This would make a
picture: Spring twilight in the quaint Italian room,
with perhaps a branch of fig-tree or of bay across the
open window ; the mother looking up with anxious face
from her needlework; the youth, with those terrible
eyes and tense lips and dilated nostrils of the future
prophet, not yet worn by years of care but strongly
marked and unmistakable, bending over the melan-
choly chords of the lute, dressed almost for the last time
in secular attire.
On the very next day Girolamo left Ferrara in secret
and journeyed to Bologna. There he entered the order
of S. Dominic, the order of the Preachers, the Order of
his master S. Thomas—the Order, too, let us remember,
of inquisitorial crusades. The letter written to his father,
after taking this step, is memorable. In it he says:
“The motives by which I have been led to enter into a
religious life are these: the great misery of the world;
the iniquities of men, their rapes, adulteries, robberies,
their pride, idolatry, and fearful blasphemies, so that
things have come to such a pass that no one can be
found acting righteously. Many times a day have I
repeated with tears the verse :
Heu, fuge crudeles terras, fuge littus avarum. /
I could not endure the enormous wickedness of the
blinded people of Italy; and the more so because I saw
Fºnters the
Order of
S. Domi-
7vic at
Bologna
96 SA VOAVA ROMA - SCOURGE AAWD SEER
everywhere virtue despised and vice honoured.’ We
see clearly that Savonarola's vocation took its origin in
a deep sense of the wickedness of the world. It was the
same spirit as that which drove the early Christians of
Alexandria into the Thebaid. Austere and haggard,
consumed with the zeal of the Lord, he had moved long
enough among the Ferrarese holiday-makers. Those
elegant young men in tight hose and parti-coloured
jackets, with oaths upon their lips, and deeds of violence
and lust within their hearts, were no associates for him.
It is touching, however, to note that no text of Ezekiel
or Jeremiah, but Virgil's musical hexameter, Sounded
through his soul the warning to depart.
FI is mis- The career of Savonarola as a preacher began in
stoms to
Ferrara 1482, when he was first sent to Ferrara and then to
* Florence on missions from his superiors. But at
neither place did he find acceptance. A prophet has
no honour in his own country; and for pagan-hearted
Florence, though destined to be the theatre of his life-
drama, Savonarola had as yet no thunderous burden Of
invective to utter. Besides, his voice was sharp and
thin ; his face and person were not prepossessing. The
style of his discourse was adapted to cloistral disputa-
tions, and overloaded with Scholastic distinctions. The
great orator had not yet arisen in him. The friar, with
all his dryness and severity, was but too apparent.
His first In the cloisters of San Marco, enriched with splendid
id º g º
*** libraries by the liberality of the Medicean princes, he
IMarco.
was at peace. The walls of that monastery had recently
--------r
SA VO/VA/COLA : SCO URGE AA D SEER •97
been decorated with frescoes of Fra Angelico. Among
these Savonarola meditated and was happy. But in the
pulpit, and in contact with the holiday-folk of Florence,
he was ill at ease. Lorenzo de' Medici overshadowed
the whole city. Lorenzo, in whom the pagan Spirit of
the Renaissance, the spirit of free culture, found a
proper incarnation, was the very opposite of Savonarola,
who had already judged the classical revival by its fruits,
and had conceived a spiritual resurrection for his
country.
The young Savonarola was as yet no match for
Lorenzo. And whither could he look for help ? The
reform of morals he so ardently desired was not to be
expected from the Church. Florence well knew that
Sixtus had planned to murder the Medici before the
altar at the moment of the elevation of the Host. Ex-
communicated for the act of justice which we have
related, the city had long been at war with the Pontiff.
Savonarola and Lorenzo were opposed as champions of
two hostile principles alike emergent from the very life
of the Renaissance: paganism reborn in the one, the
spirit of the Gospel in the other. Both were essentially
modern; for it was the function of the Renaissance to
restore to the soul of man its double heritage of the
classic past and Christian liberty, freeing it from the
ſetters which the Middle Ages had forged. Not yet,
however, were Lorenzo and Savonarola destined to clash.
The obscure friar at this time was preaching to an
audience of some thirty persons in San Lorenzo, while
H
Unappre-
ciated by
Lorenzo.
98 SA VOAVARO LA : SCO URGE AAVD SEAEA."
At S. Ge-
"nigmamo.
His suc-
CéSS at
Brescia.
Poliziano and all the fashion of the town crowded to the
sermons of Fra Mariano da Genezzano in Santo Spirito.
This man flattered the taste of the moment by com-
posing orations on the model of Ficino's addresses to
the Academy, and by complimenting Christianity upon
its similarity to Platonism. Who could then have
guessed that beneath the cowl of the harsh-voiced
Dominican, his rival, burned thoughts that in a few years
would inflame Florence with a conflagration powerful
enough to destroy the fabric of the Medicean despotism 2
From Florence, where he had met with no success,
Savonarola was sent to San Gemignano, a little town on
the top of a high hill between Florence and Siena. We
now visit San Gemignano in order to study some fading
frescoes of Gozzoli and Ghirlandajo, or else for the sake
of its strange feudal towers, tall pillars of brown stone,
crowded together within the narrow circle of the town
walls. But not yet had he fully entered on his vocation.
His voice was weak; his style uncertain; his soul, we
may believe, still wavering between strange dread and
awful joy, as he beheld the mantle of the prophets
descend upon him.
The flame which began to Smoulder in him at San
Gemignano burst forth into a blaze at Brescia, in 1486.
Savonarola was now aged thirty-four. ‘Midway upon
the path of life’ he opened the Book of Revelation; he
figured to the people of Brescia the four-and-twenty
elders rising to denounce the sins of Italy, and to de-
clare the calamities that must ensue. He pictured to
SA VOAVA/2O/LA. SCO URGE A/VD SEAER 99
them their city flowing with blood. His voice, which
now became the interpreter of his soul in its resonance
and earnestness, in its piercing shrillness, thrilled his
hearers with strange terror. Already they believed his
prophecy ; and twenty-six years later, when the soldiers
of Gaston de Foix slaughtered six thousand souls in the
streets of Bregula, her citizens recalled the Apocalyptic
warnings of the Dominican monk.
After leaving Brescia, he moved to Reggio, where he
made the friendship of the famous Giovanni Pico della
M. vandola. They continued intimate till the death of
the latter in 1494; it was his nephew, Giovanni Fran.
cesco Pico della Mirandola, who afterwards wrote the life
of Savonarola. From Reggio the friar went to Genoa;
and by this time his fame as a prophet in the north of
Lombardy was well established. Now came the turning-
point of his life. Lorenzo de' Medici, strangely enough,
was the instrument of his recall to Florence. Lorenzo,
who, if he could have foreseen the future of his own
family in Florence, would rather have stifled this monk’s
voice in his cowl, took pains to send for him and bring
him to S. Mark’s, the monastery upon which his father
had lavished so much wealth. He hoped to add lustre
to his capital by the preaching of the most eloquent
friar in Italy. Clear-sighted as he was, he could not
discern the flame of liberty which burned in Savonarola's
Soul. On August 1, 1490, the monk ascended the pulpit
of S. Mark’s and delivered a tremendous Sermon on a
passage from the Apocalypse. On the eve of this
t {} ºf #
Recalled
to Flo-
'rence by
Lorenzo.
H 2
IOO SA VOAVARO/LA. SCO URGE AAVD SEER
His pro-
phetic dis-
CO2/?"SøS.
commencement he is reported to have said : “To-morrow
I shall begin to preach, and I shall preach for eight years.’
The Florentines were greatly moved. Savonarola had
to remove from the church of S. Mark to the Duomo;
and thus began the spiritual dictatorship which he exer-
cised thenceforth without intermission till his death.
“I began,' Savonarola writes himself with reference
to a course of sermons delivered in 1491—“I began
publicly to expound the Revelation in our Church of
S. Mark. During the course of the year I continued to
develop to the Florentines these three propositions:
That the Church would be renewed in our time: that
before that renovation God would strike all Italy with a
fearful chastisement : that these things would happen
shortly.” He was no apostle of reform. It did not occur
to him to reconstruct the creed, to dispute the discipline,
or. to criticise the authority of the Church. He was no
ounder of a new order. Unlike his predecessors,
Dominic and Francis, he never attempted to organise a
Society of Saints or preachers. Unlike his successors,
Caraffa the Theatine and Loyola the Jesuit, he enrolled
no militia for the defence of the faith, constructed no
machinery for education. Starting with simple horror
at the wickedness of the world, he had recourse to the
old prophets. He caught the inspiration and the lan-
guage of Malachi and Jeremiah. He became convinced
that for the wickedness of Italy a judgment was immi-
nent.
There are materials which Serve to give us some idea
o
.
:
S.A VOAVA RO/CA. SCO URGE A/V/O SAE AER I OI
of Savonarola’s appearance and style of preaching at
this time. Fra Bartolommeo, one of his followers,
painted a profile of him in the character of S. Peter
Martyr. This shows all the benignity and grace of
expression which his stern lineaments could assume.
But the noblest portrait is an intaglio engraved by
Giovanni della Corniole, now to be seen in the Uffizi
at Florence. Of this work Michael Angelo, himself a
disciple of Savonarola, said that art could go no further,
A thick hood covers the whole head and shoulders.
Beneath it can be traced the curve of a long and some-
what flat skull, rounded into extraordinary fulness at
the base and side. From a deeply sunken eye-Socket
emerges, scarcely seen, but powerfully felt, the eye that
blazed with lightning. The nose is strong, prominent,
and aquiline, with wide nostrils capable of terrible dila-
tion under the stress of vehement emotion. The mouth
has full, compressed, projecting lips. It is large, as if
made for a torrent of eloquence; it is Supplied with
massive muscles, as if to move with energy and calcu-
lated force. The jawbone is hard and heavy, the cheek-
bone emergent : between the two the flesh is hollowed.
The face on the whole is ugly, but not repellent ;
and, in spite of its great strength, it shows signs of
feminine sensibility.
Savonarola was a visionary and a monk. The disci-
pline of the cloister left its trace upon him. Yet, from
the midst of profound debility, so that he could scarcely
crawl up the pulpit steps, he would pass suddenly into
His per-
Sonal ap-
pearance.
PHis
thrilling
oratory.
I O2 SA VOAVA RO/CA. SCO URGE AAWD SEAEA’
the plenitude of power, filling the Dome of Florence
with denunciations, sustaining his discourse by no mere
trick of rhetoric that flows to waste upon the lips of
shallow preachers, but marshalling the phalanx of em-
battled arguments and pointed illustrations, pouring his
thoughts forth in columns of continuous flame, mingling
figures of Sublimest imagery with reasonings of severest
accuracy, at One time melting his audience to tears, at
another freezing them to terror, again quickening their
Souls with prayers and pleadings that had in them the
sweetness of the very spirit of Christ. His sermons
began with scholastic exposition; as they advanced, the
ecstasy of inspiration fell upon the preacher, till the
sympathies of the whole people of Florence gathered
round him. The walls of the church re-echoed with
sobs, and wailings dominated by One ringing voice. The
scribe, to whom we owe the fragments of these Sermons,
at times breaks off with these words: ‘Here I was so
overcome with weeping that I could not go on.’ Pico
della Mirandola tells us that the mere sound of Savo-
narola's voice, startling the stillness of the Duomo,
thronged through all its space with people, was like a
clap of doom ; a cold shiver ran through the marrow
of his bones, the hairs of his head stood on end as he
listened. Another witness reports : “These sermons
caused such terror, alarm, sobbing, and tears, that every-
one passed through the streets without speaking, more
dead than alive.’ º
Such was the preacher, and such was the effect of
SA VO/WARO/CA. SCO UAEGAZ AAV/O SAEAEA’ IO3
his oratory. The theme on which he loved to dwell was
this: “Repent a judgment of God is at hand; a Sword
is suspended over you, Italy is doomed for her iniquity—
for the sins of the Church whose adulterers have filled
the World—for the sins of the tyrants who encourage
crime and trample on souls—for the sins of you people,
you fathers and mothers, you young men, you maidens,
you children that lisp blasphemy Nor did Savonarola
deal in generalities. He described in plain language
every vice ; he laid bare every abuse; so that a mirror .
was held, up to the souls of his hearers, in which they
Saw their most Secret faults appallingly portrayed and
ringed round with fire. He entered with particularity
into the details of the coming woes. One by one he
enumerated the bloodshed, the ruin of cities, the
trampling down of provinces, the passage of armies,
the desolating wars that were about to fall on Italy.
We may read pages of his sermons which seem like
vivid narratives of what afterwards took place in the
Sack of Prato, in the storming of Brescia, in the battle
of the Ronco, in the cavern massacre of Vicenza.
Within three years after his first sermon in S. Mark’s,
Charles VIII. had entered Italy, Lorenzo de' Medici was
dead, and politicians no less than mystics felt that a new
chapter had been opened in the World’s history.
Lorenzo soon began to resent the influence of this
uncompromising monk, who, not content with moral
exhortations, confidently predicted the coming of a
foreign conqueror, the fall of the Magnificent, the peril
His de-
77,741. Cº-
ations.
His un-
bending
conduct
towards
Lorenzo.
IO4 S.A VOAVARO/LA. SCO URGE AAWD SEEA’
of the Pope, and the ruin of the King of Naples. Yet it
was no longer easy to suppress the preacher. Very early
in his Florentine career Savonarola had proved himself
to be fully as great an administrator as an Orator. San
Marco, dominated by his personal authority, had made
him. prior in 1491, and he was already engaged in a
thorough reform of all the Dominican monasteries of
Tuscany. It was usual for the prior-elect to pay a
complimentary visit to the Medici, their patron. Savo-
narola, thinking this a Worldly and unseemly custom,
Omitted to observe it. Lorenzo, noticing the dis-
courtesy, is reported to have said with a smile : “See
how ! here is a stranger who has come into my house
and will not deign to visit me.’ At the same time the
prince made overtures of good-will to the prior, fre-
quently attended his services, and dropped gold into
the alms-box of S. Mark's. Savonarola took no notice
of him, but handed his florins over to the poor of the
city. Then Lorenzo stirred up Mariano da Genezzano,
Savonarola's old rival, against him ; but the clever
rhetorician was no longer a match for the full-grown
athlete of inspired eloquence. Da Genezzano was
forced to leave Florence in angry discomfiture. With
such unbending haughtiness did Savonarola already
dare to brave the powers that be. He had recognised
the oppressor of liberty, the corrupter of morality, the
Opponent of true religion, in Lorenzo. He hated him
as a tyrant. He would not give him the right hand of
friendship or the salute of civility. In the same spirit
SA VOAVA RO/LA. SCO UA’GAZ AAV/O SAEE/º IO5
he afterwards denounced Pope Alexander VI., Scorned
his excommunication, and plotted with the kings of
Christendom for the convening of a council. Lorenzo,
however, was a man of Supreme insight into character,
and knew how to value his antagonist. Therefore,
when the hour for dying came, and when, true child of
the Renaissance, he felt the need of Sacraments and
absolution, he sent for Savonarola, saying that he was
the only honest friar he knew. The magnanimity of
the prince was only equalled by the firmness of the
monk. Standing by the bedside of the dying man, who
had confessed his sins, Savonarola said: ‘Three things
are required of you : to have a full and lively faith in
God’s mercy; to restore what you have unjustly gained;
to give back liberty to Florence.’ Lorenzo assented
readily to the two first requisitions. At the third he
turned his face in silence to the wall. He must indeed
have felt that to demand and promise this was easier
than to carry it into effect. Savonarola left him without
absolution. Lorenzo died.
To Lorenzo succeeded the incompetent Piero de'
Medici, who surrendered the fortresses of Tuscany, as we
shall see, to the French army. While Savonarola was
prophesying the judgment at hand, Charles VIII. rode at
the head of his knighthood into Florence. The city was
leaderless, unused to liberty. Who but the monk who
had predicted the invasion should now attempt to
control it 2 His administrative faculty in a narrow
sphere had been proved by his reform of the Dominican
…”
L^
His effort
to rowse
the spirit
of the Flo-
remtimes.
Ioé SA VOAVA ROIA. SCOURGE AAVID SAEEA’
His ad-
ministra-
tion of the
State.
monasteries. He felt that the Lord had raised him up
to act as well as to utter : the people felt it. He was
not the man to shirk responsibility. During the years
1493 and 1494 the voice of Savonarola never ceased to
ring. From his pulpit beneath the sombre dome of
Brunelleschi he kept pouring forth words of power to
resuscitate the free spirit of the Florentimes.
In 1495, when the Medici had been expelled, and
the French army had gone on its way to Naples, as we
shall presently see, Savonarola was called upon to
reconstitute the State. He bade the people abandon
their old system and to establish a Grand Council after
the Venetian type. This institution, which seemed to
the Florentines the best they had ever adopted, might
be regarded by the historian as only one among their
many experiments in constitution-making, if Savonarola
had not stamped it with his peculiar genius by an-
nouncing that Christ was to be considered the Head of
the State. This step at once gave a theocratic bias to
the government which determined all the acts of the
monk’s administration. Not content with political
organisation, too impatient to await the growth of good
manners from sound institutions, he set about a moral
and religious reformation. Pomps, vanities, and vices
were to be abandoned. Immediately the women and
the young men threw aside their silks and fine attire.
The carnival songs ceased. Hymns and processions
took the place of obscene choruses and pagan triumphs.
The laws were remodelled in the same severe and abrupt
SA VOMARO/LA. SCO URGAE A/VD SEER Io'7
Spirit. Usury was abolished. Whatever Savonarola
Ordained, Florence executed. By the magic of his in-
fluence the city for a moment assumed a new aspect.
The change was far too violent. The temper of the race
was not prepared for it. It clashed too rudely with
Renaissance culture. It outraged the sense of propriety
in the more moderate citizens, and roused to windictive
fury the worst passions of the self-indulgent and the
worldly. A reaction was inevitable.
It was no wonder if, passing as he had done from *
the discipline of the cloister to the dictatorship of a
republic, Savonarola should make extravagant mistakes.
The tension of this abnormal situation in the city grew
to be excessive, and cool thinkers predicted that Savona-
rola's position would become untenable. The followers
of the monk, by far the largest Section of the people,
received the name of Piagoni or Frateschi. The friends
of the Medici, few at first, and cautious, were called
Biji. The opponents of Savonarola and of the Medici, L^
who hated the theocracy, and (desired to see an oli-
garchy and not a tyranny in Florence, were known as
the Arrabbiati
The discontent which germinated in Florence dis- The inter-
played itself in Rome. Alexander found it intolerable to tº:
be assailed as antichrist by a monk who had made him- ander VI.
Self master of the chief Italian republic. At first he
used his arts of blandishment and honeyed words, in
L^
Order to lure Savonarola to Rome. The friar refused to
quit Florence. Then Alexander suspended him from
IoS SA VOAVARO L.A.: SCO URGE A/VD SEER
preaching. Savonarola obeyed, but wrote at the same
time to Charles VIII., denouncing his indolence and
calling upon him to reform the Church. At the request
of the Florentine Republic, though still suffering from
the Pope’s interdict, he then resumed his preaching.
Alexander sought next to corrupt the monk he could not
intimidate. To the suggestion that a cardinal's hat
might be offered him, Savonarola replied that he pre-
ferred the red crown of martyrdom. Ascending the
pulpit of the Duomo in 1496, he prepared the most fiery
of all his Lenten courses.
Savona L^ V ery terrible indeed are the denunciations contained
7'ola is
deposed
by the
Sigmory.
in these discourses—denunciations fulminated without
disguise against the Pope and priests of Rome, against
the Medici, against the Florentines themselves, in whom
the traces of rebellion were beginning to appear.
Mingled with these vehement invectives, couched in
Savonarola’s most impassioned style, and heightened
by the most impressive imagery, are political harangues
and polemical arguments against the Pope. The posi-
tion assumed by the friar in his war with Rome was not
a strong one, and the reasoning by which he supported
it was marked by curious self-deception mingled with
apparent efforts to deceive his audience. He had not
the audacious originality of Luther. He never went to
the length of braving Alexander by burning his bulls,
and by denying the authority of popes in general. Not
daring to break all connection with the Holy See, he was
driven to quibble about the distinction between the office
SA VOAVA/2O/CA : SCO URGAZ AAVZ) SE/2 ſº IO9.
and the man, assuming a hazardous attitude of obe-
dience to the Church whose head and chief he daily out-
raged. All the tyrants came in for a share of his
prophetic indignation. Lodovico Sforza, the lord of
Mirandola, and Piero de' Medici felt themselves specially
aggrieved, and kept urging Alexander to extinguish this
source of scandal to established government. Against So
great and powerful a host one man could not stand
alone. Savonarola's position became daily more dan-
gerous in Florence. The merchants, excommunicated
by the Pope, and thus exposed to pillage in foreign
markets, grumbled at the friar who spoiled their trade.
The ban of interdiction lay upon the city, where the
Sacraments could no longer be administered or the dead
be buried with the rites of Christians. Meanwhile a
band of high-spirited and profligate young men, called
Compagnacci, used every occasion to insult and interrupt
him. At last, in March 1498, his staunch friends the
Signory, or Supreme executive of Florence, suspended
him from preaching in the Duomo. Even the populace
were weary of the protracted quarrel with the Holy See;
nor could any but his own fanatical adherents anticipate
with equanimity the wars which threatened the State.
Savonarola himself felt that the Supreme hour was
come. One more resource was left; to that he would
now betake himself. This last step was the convening
of a General Council. Accordingly, he addressed letters
to all the European potentates. One of these, inscribed
to Charles VIII., was intercepted and conveyed to
PHis letters
of justi-
fication.
I IO SA VOAVA RO/CA. SCO URGE AAVD SAEER
His im-
prison-
ment and
tortºtºre.
Alexander. He wrote also to the Pope and warned him
of his purpose. The termination of that epistle is note-
worthy: ‘I can thus have no longer any hope in your
Holiness, but must turn to Christ alone, who chooses the
weak of this world to confound the strong lions among
the perverse generations. He will assist me to prove
and Sustain, in the face of the world, the holiness of the
work for which I so greatly suffer; and He will inflict a
just punishment on those who persecute me and would
impede its progress. As for myself, I seek no earthly
glory, but long eagerly for death. May your Holiness
no longer delay, but look to your salvation.’
While thus girding on his armour for this single-
handed combat with the Primate of Christendom and
the princes of Italy, the martyrdom to which Savo-
narola now looked forward fell upon him. Growing
yearly more confident in his visions, and more will-
ing to admit his supernatural powers, he had imper-
ceptibly prepared the pit which finally engulfed him.
Often had he professed his readiness to prove his voca-
tion by fire. Now came the moment when this defiance
to an ordeal was answered. A Franciscan of Apulia of
fered to meet him in the flames and see whether he were
of God or not. Fra Domenico, Savonarola's devoted
friend, took up the gauntlet and proposed himself as
champion. The pile was prepared ; both monks stood
ready to enter it ; all Florence was assembled in the
Piazza dei Signori to witness what should happen.
Various obstacles, however, arose ; and, after Waiting a
SA VOAVA/&O/A - SCOU/&G E A/VD SAEE/8 III
whole day for the friar's triumph, the people had to
retire to their homes under a pelting shower of rain,
unsatisfied, and with a dreary sense that after all their
prophet was but a mere man. The Compagnacci, who
probably initiated the challenge, thus got the upper
hand. San Marco was besieged ; Savonarola was led to
prison, never to issue till the day of his execution by
the rope and faggot. Little is known about these last
weeks, except that in his cell the friar composed his
meditations on the 31st and 51st Psalms, the latter of
which was published in Germany with a preface by
Luther in 1573. Of the rest we hear only of prolonged
torture before stupid and malignant judges, of falsified
evidence and of contradictory confessions. What he
really said and chose to stand by, what he retracted,
what he shrieked out in the delirium of the rack, and
what was falsely imputed to him, no one now can settle.
Though the spirit was strong, the flesh was weak; he
had the will but not the nerve for martyrdom.
At ten o’clock on May 23, 1498, Savonarola was
led forth, together with brother Salvestro, the con-
fidant of his visions, and brother Domenico, his
His death.
champion in the affair of the Ordeal, to a stage prepared
in the same Piazza. These two men were hanged first.
As the hangman tied the rope round Savonarola's neck,
a voice from the crowd shouted: ‘Prophet, now is the
time to perform a miracle.' The Bishop of Wasona,
who conducted the execution, stripped the friar's frock
from him, and said: ‘I separate thee from the Church,
II 2 SAVONAROLA: SCOURGE AND SEER
The
honours
paid to his
memory. .
militant and triumphant.” Savonarola, firm and
combative even at the point of death, replied : ‘Militant,
yes: triumphant, no : that is not yours.’ The last
words he uttered were : ‘The Lord has suffered so
much for me.’ Then the noose was tightened round his
neck. The fire beneath was lighted. The flames did
not reach his body while life was in it; but those who
gazed intently thought they saw the right hand give the
signal of benediction. A little child afterwards saw his
heart still whole among the ashes cast into the Arno ;
and almost to this day flowers have been placed every
morning of May 23 upon the slab of the Piazza where
his body fell.
Thus died Savonarola ; and immediately he became
a saint. His sermons and other works were universally
distributed. Medals in his honour were struck. Raphael
painted him among the Doctors of the Church in the
Camera della Segnatura of the Vatican. The Church,
with strange inconsistency, proposed to canonise the
man whom she had burned as a contumacious heretic
and a corrupter of the people. This canonisation never
took place; but many Dominican churches used a
special office with his name and in his honour. A
legend similar to that of S. Francis, in its wealth of
mythical details, embalmed the memory of even the
smallest details of his life. But, above all, he lived in
the hearts of the Florentines. For many years to come
his name was the watchword of their freedom ; his
prophecies sustained their spirits during the siege of
SAVONAROZA: SCOURGE AWD SEER II 3
1529, of which we shall speak later on ; and it was only
by returning to his policy that Niccolo Caponi and
Francesco Carducci ruled the people through those
troublous times. The political action of Savonarola
forms but a short episode in the history of Florence.
His moral revival belongs to the history of popular
enthusiasm. His philosophical and theological writings
are chiefly interesting to the student of post-mediaeval
Scholasticism. His attitude as a monastic leader of the
populace, attempting to suspend by appeals to piety the
factious Warfare of a previous age, was anachronistic.
But his insight into the coming of a new era for the
Church and for Italy is a main fact in the psychology of
the Renaissance.
The ac-
cession of
Charles
TVIII.
II 4
WI
THE RAID OF CHARLES VIII
#º HE first sign of the alteration about to take
§§§ #3; place in European history was the invasion
of Italy by Charles VIII. This holiday
excursion by a hare-brained youth was as
transient as a border foray on a large Scale. The So-
called conquest was only less sudden than the subsequent
loss of Italy by the French. Yet the tornado which
swept the peninsula from north to south, and returned
upon its path from south to north within the space of a
few months, left ineffaceable traces on the country which
it traversed, and changed the whole complexion of the
politics of Europe.
The invasion of Italy had been long prepared in the
counsels of Louis XI. After spending his lifetime in the
consolidation of the French monarchy, he constructed
an inheritance of further empire for his successors by
dictating to the old King René of Anjou (1474) and to
the Count of Maine (1481) the two wills by which the
pretensions of the House of Anjou to the Crown of
Naples were transmitted to the royal family of France.
On the death of Louis, Charles VIII. became king in

TAZAZ ACA//D OF CA/A/e/A2S V//7 II 5
1483. He was then aged only thirteen, and was still
governed by his elder sister, Anne de Beaujeu. It was
not until 1492 that he actually took the reins of the
kingdom into his own hands. This year, we may re-
mark, is one of the most memorable dates in history.
In 1492 Columbus discovered America : in 1492
Roderigo Borgia was made Pope : in 1492 Spain be-
came a nation by the conquest of Granada. Each of
these events was no less fruitful of consequences to
Italy than was the accession of Charles VIII.
Both Philip de Comines and Guicciardini have
described the appearance and the character of the
prince who was destined to play a part so prominent, so
pregnant of results, and yet so trivial, in the affairs of
Europe. “From infancy he had been weak in constitu-
tion and subject to illnesses. His stature was short and
his face very ugly, if you except the dignity and vigour
of his glance. His limbs were so disproportioned that
he had less the appearance of a man than of a monster.
Not only was he ignorant of liberal arts, but he hardly
knew his letters. Though eager to rule, he was in
truth made for anything but that ; for while surrounded
by dependents he exercised no authority over them, and
preserved no kind of majesty. Hating business and
fatigue, he displayed in Such matters as he took in hand
a want of prudence and of judgment. His desire for
glory sprang rather from impulse than from reason.
His liberality was inconsiderate, immoderate, promis-
cuous. When he displayed inflexibility of purpose, it
BIis cha-
7"acter.
I 2
II6 THE RAID OF CHARLES VIII
Prepares
to invade
Italy.
The views
777, which
this was
held.
was more often an ill-founded obstimacy than firmness;
and that which many people called his goodness of
nature rather deserved the name of coldness and feeble-
ness of spirit.’ This is Guicciardini's portrait. De
Comines is more brief: ‘The king was young, a fledg-
ling from the nest; provided neither with money nor
with good sense ; weak, wilful, and surrounded by foolish
counsellors.”
The splendour and novelty of the proposal to conquer
such a realm as Italy inflamed the imagination of
Charles and the cupidity of his courtiers. In order to
assure his situation at home, Charles concluded treaties
with the neighbouring great powers. He bought peace
with Henry VII. of England by the payment of large
Sums of money. The Emperor Maximilian, whose re-
sentment he had aroused by sending back his daughter
Margaret after breaking his promise to marry her, and
by taking to wife Anne of Brittany, who was already
engaged to the Austrian, had to be appeased by the
cession of provinces. Ferdinand of Spain received, as
the price of his neutrality, the strong places of the
Pyrenees which formed the key to France on that side.
After concentrating stores at the southern ports of
Marseilles and Genoa, Charles moved downward ..with
his army to Lyons in 1494.
There were various instances of private cupidity and
spite on the part of the princes to which this impending
calamity to Italy may be traced: Lodovico Sforza's
determination to Secure himself in the usurped Duchy of
7TA/AE /*A/D OA’ CA/AA’/LAES V/// I 17
Milan ; the concealed hatred of his father-in-law, Ercole
d’Este, Duke of Ferrara, who hoped to secure his own
advantage in the general confusion; and Alexander VI.'s
unholy eagerness to aggrandise his bastards. On the
part of the people the invasion of the French was
regarded with that sort of fascination which a very new
and exciting event is wont to inspire. In one mood the
Italians were inclined to hail Charles as a general paci-
ficator and restorer of old liberties. Savonarola had
preached of him as the flagellum Dei, the minister-
appointed to regenerate the Church, and to purify the
fount of spiritual life in the peninsula. In another
frame of mind they shuddered to think what the advent
of the barbarians—so the French were called—might
bring upon them. It was universally agreed that
Lodovico by his invitation had done no more than bring
down, as it were, by a breath the avalanche which had
been long impending.
While Alfonso of Naples, against whom the invasion Charles's
was specially directed, was doing what he could to get ºf.
Florence, Rome, Bologna, and all the minor powers of bardy.
Romagna to assist him, Charles VIII. remained at
Lyons, still uncertain whether he should enter Italy by
Sea. Or land, or, indeed, whether he should enter it at
all. Having advanced as far as the Rhone valley, he
felt Satisfied with his achievement, and indulged himself
in a long bout of tournaments and pastimes. Besides,
the want of money, which was to be his chief embarrass-
ment throughout the expedition, had already made itself
II.8 7TA/A2 RAA/O OF CA/AA’/LES V///
felt. It was an Italian who at length roused him to
make good his purpose against Italy—Giuliano della
Rovere, the haughty nephew of Sixtus, the implacable
foe of Alexander, whom he was destined, as we have
Seen, to succeed upon the papal throne. Burning to
punish the Marrano, or apostate Moor, as he called
Alexander, Giuliano stirred the king with taunts and
menaces until Charles felt that he could delay no longer.
When once the French army got under weigh it moved
rapidly. Leaving Vienne on August 23, 1494, 3,600
men-at-arms, the flower of the French chivalry, 6,000
Breton archers, 6,000 crossbowmen, 8,000 Gascon
infantry, 8,000 Swiss and German lances, crossed the
Mont Genevre, debouched on Susa, passed through
Turin, and entered Asti on September 19. Neither
Piedmont nor Montferrat stirred to resist them. The
princes, whose interest it might have been to throw
obstacles in the way of Charles, were but children.
The At Asti Charles was met by Lodovico Sforza and
tº his father-in-law, Ercole d'Este, with the whole court
"*" of Milan. It was the policy of the Italian princes to
entrap their conqueror with courtesies, and to entangle
in silken meshes the barbarian they dreaded. What
had happened already at Lyons, what was going to
repeat itself at Naples, took place at Asti. The French
king lost his heart to ladies, and confused his policy
by promises made to Delilahs in the ball-room. But he
shortly moved on to Pavia, and here he had to endure
the pathetic spectacle of his forlorn cousin, the young
TAZAZ AºA //D OA’ CA/A/R/LA.S. V/// I IQ
Gian Galeazzo Sforza, in prison, and of the beautiful
Isabella of Aragon pleading for him. Nursed in chival-
rous traditions, incapable of resisting a woman's tears,
what was Charles to do when this princess in distress—
the wife of his first cousin and the sister of the man
he had come to ruin, Alfonso of Naples—was at his
feet beseeching him for mercy on her husband, on
her brother, and on herself? The situation was in-
deed enough to move a stouter heart than that of the
feeble young king. For the moment he returned evasive
answers; and he had no sooner set forth on his Way to
Piacenza than Il Moro determined that there should be
no further room for vacillation by having his nephew
poisoned.
The French force pushed on to Parma, and in the
beginning of November appeared before the walls of
Sarzana. There had been no opposition from Piero
de' Medici, who had undertaken to defend the passes of
the Apennines. This false and weak-hearted tyrant, on
the contrary, rode with all speed into the French camp,
and delivered up to Charles the keys not only of
Sarzana, but of Leghorn and Pisa, and so opening up
the way along a narrow belt of land hemmed in by the
sea and the highest mountain-range in Italy, which
might easily have been defended. The Florentimes,
whom Piero had hitherto engaged in an unpopular
policy, now rose in fury, expelled him from the city,
Sacked his palace, and erased from their memory the
name of Medici except for execration. He saved his
Advances
to Pisa.
I2O THE A*A/D OF CHARLES V///
I'lorence
and Pisa,
7"ecover
their
liberties.
He enters
Florence.
life by flying first to Bologna and thence to Venice,
Where he remained in a sort of polite captivity.
On November 9, Florence, after a tyranny of
fifty years, and Pisa, after the servitude of a century,
recovered their liberties and were able to reconstitute
republican governments. But the situation of the two
States was very different. The Florentines had never
lost the name of liberty, which in Italy at that period
meant less the freedom of the inhabitants to exercise
Self-government than the independence of the city in
relation to its neighbours. The Pisans, on the other
hand, had been reduced to subjection by the Florentines,
their civil life had been stified, their pride wounded, and
their population decimated by proscription and exile.
The great sin of Florence was the enslavement of Pisa;
and Pisa, in this moment of anarchy, burned to obliterate
her shame.
After the flight of Piero and the proclamation of
Pisan liberty, the King of France was hailed as a
saviour of the free Italian towns. Charles received a
magnificent address from Savonarola, who proceeded to
Pisa and harangued him as the chosen vessel of the
Lord and the deliverer of the Church from anarchy. At
the same time the friar conveyed to the French king a
courteous invitation from the Florentine republic to
enter their city and enjoy their hospitality. Charles,
after upsetting Piero de' Medici with the nonchalance of
a horseman in the tilting-yard and restoring the
freedom of Pisa for a caprice, remained as devoid of
TAZAZ AºA //D OF CA/AA’/LAES V/// I 2 I
policy and as indifferent to the part assigned him by
the prophet as he was before. He rode, armed at all
points, into Florence on November 17, and took up his
residence in the palace of the Medici. Then he
informed the elders of the city that he had come as
conqueror and not as guest, and that he intended to
reserve to himself the disposition of the state.
It was a dramatic moment. Florence, with the Arno
flowing through her midst, and the hills encircling her
grey with olive-trees, was then even more lovely than we
see her now. The whole circuit of her walls, with its
towers, was then unimpaired. Brunelleschi's dome and
Giotto's tower, Arnolfo's Palazzo and the Loggia of
Orcagna, gave distinction to her streets and Squares.
Her churches were splendid with frescoes in their bloom
and with painted glass, Over which as yet the injury of
but a few brief years had passed. Her palaces, that
are as strong as castles, overflowed with a population
cultivated, polished, refined, and haughty. This Flo-
rence, the city of scholars, artists, intellectual Sybarites,
and citizens in whom the blood of the old factions
beat, found herself suddenly possessed as a prey of war
by flaunting Gauls in their outlandish finery, plumed
Germans, kilted Kelts, and parti-coloured Swiss.
Charles here, as elsewhere, showed his imbecility. He
had entered and laid hands on hospitable Florence like
a foe. What would he now do with her ?—reform the
republic—legislate—-impose a levy on the citizens, and
lead them forth to battle 2 No. He asked for a large
Florence
at that
time.
;
}
He accepts
Q, 7 (1.77 SO???,
to quit
Florence.
I 22 TAIAE A*A I/O OF CHA R/LA2S V///
sum of money, and began to bargain. The Florentine
secretaries refused his terms. He insisted. Then Piero
Capponi Snatched the paper on which they were written,
and tore it in pieces before his eyes. Charles cried : ‘I
shall sound my trumpets.” Capponi answered, “We will
ring our bells.’ Beautiful as a dream is Florence; but
her sombre streets, overshadowed by gigantic belfries
and grim palace-fronts, contained a menace that the
French king could not face. Let Capponi sound the
tocsin, and each house would become a fortress, the
streets would be barricaded with iron chains, every
quarter would pour forth men by hundreds, well versed
in the arts of civic warfare. Charles gave way, covering
with a bad joke the discomfiture he felt : ‘Ah / Ciappon,
Ciappom, voisiete um mal Ciappon / All he cared for was
to get money. He agreed to content himself with
v 120,000 florins. A treaty was signed, and in two days
he quitted Florence.
His way Rome now lay before him, magnificent in desolation :
Open to - -> * -
%. not the Rome which the Farnesi and Chigi and Barbe-
which he e ‘e g & º e
enters. rini have built up from the quarried ruins of amphi-
theatres and baths, but the Rome of the Middle Ages, the
city crowned with relics of a pagan past, herself still
pagan, and holding in her midst the modern Antichrist.
The progress of the French was a continued triumph.
They reached Siena on December 2. The Duke of
Urbino and the Lords of Pesaro and Bologna laid down
their arms at their approach. The Orsini opened their
castles; Virginio, the captain-general of the Aragonese
THE RA/D OF CAA R/CAE.S V/// I23
army, and grand constable of the kingdom of Naples,
hastened to win for himself favourable terms from the
French sovereign. The Baglioni betook themselves to
their own rancours in Perugia. The Duke of Calabria
retreated. Italy seemed bent on proving that cowardice,
Selfishness, and incapacity had conquered her. Viterbo
was gained; the Ciminian heights were traversed; the
Campagna, bounded by the Alban and the Sabine hills,
with Rome a bluish cloud upon the lowlands of the Tiber,
spread its solemn breadth of beauty at the invader's feet.
Not a blow had been struck when he reached the Porta
del Popolo upon December 31, 1494. It was nine at
night before the last soldiers, under the flaring light of
torches and flambeaux, defiled through the gate and took
up their quarters in the streets of the Eternal City.
The gigantic barbarians of the cantons, flaunting with
plumes and emblazoned surcoats; the chivalry of France,
splendid with silk mantles and gilded corslets; the
Scotch guard in their wild costume of kilt and philibeg ;
the scythe-like halberts of the German landsknechts; the
tangled elf-locks of stern-featured Bretons, stamped an
ineffaceable impression on the people of the South. On
this memorable occasion, as in a show upon Some holi-
day, marched past before them specimens and Vanguards
of all those legioned races which, thirty-two years later, as
we have related, when Clement VII. Was Pope, were rioting
in every street and dwelling-place. Nothing was wanting
to complete the symbol of the coming doom but repre-
sentatives of the coarse, black, wiry infantry of Spain.
I24 TAZAZ A*A/D OA, CHARIA.S V///
His terms
to quit
Romve.
Alfonso,
the Mag-
namimous,
of Naples.
The Borgia meanwhile crouched within the castle of
S. Angelo. How would the conqueror, the flagellum Dei,
deal with the abomination of desolation seated in the holy
place of Christendom ? At the side of Charles were the
Cardinals Ascanio Sforza and Giuliano della Rovere,
urging him to summon a council and depose the Pope.
But still closer to his ear was Briçonnet, the ci-devant
tradesman, now Bishop of S. Malo, who thought it would
become his dignity to wear a cardinal's hat. On this
trifle turned the destinies of Rome, the doom of Alexander,
the fate of the Church. Charles demanded a few for-
tresses, a red hat for Briçonnet, Cesare Borgia as a
hostage for four months, and Djem, the brother of the
Sultan. After these agreements had been made and
ratified, Alexander ventured to leave his retreat, and
receive the homage of the faithful. Charles stayed a
Amonth in Rome, and then set out for Naples. -
The dynasty in Naples which Charles now hoped to
dispossess was Spanish. After the death of Joanna II. in
1435, Alfonso, King of Aragon and Sicily, who had no
claim to the crown beyond what he derived through a
bastard branch of the old Norman dynasty, conquered
Naples, expelled Count René of Anjou, and established
\/himself in this new kingdom, which he preferred to those
he had inherited by right. Alfonso, Surnamed the
Magnanimous, was one of the most brilliant and romantic
personages of the fifteenth century. Historians are never
weary of relating his victories over Caldora and Fran-
cesco Sforza, the coup-de-main by which he expelled his
7THE ACA//D OA’ CA/AA’/CAES V/// I 25
rival, René, and the fascination he exercised in Milan,
while a captive over the jealous spirit of Filippo Maria
Wisconti. Scholars are no less profuse in their praises of
his virtues, his justice, humanity, generosity, and culture,
which rendered him pre-eminent among the princes of
that period. The many splendid qualities by which he
was distinguished were enhanced rather than-obscured
by the romance of his private life. Married to Margaret
of Castile, he had no legitimate children : Ferdinand,
with whom he shared the government of Naples in 1443,
and whom he designated as his successor in 1458, was
supposed to be his son by Margaret de Hijar, though
Pontano, who was Ferdinand's Secretary, affirmed that
the real father of the Duke of Calabria was a Marrano
of Calabria. The queen, however, caused her supposed
rival to be murdered.
It would indeed be almost incredible that such a
father could have been the parent of such a son. In
Ferdinand the instinct of liberal culture degenerated
into vulgar magnificence; courtesy and confidence gave
place to cold suspicion and brutal cruelty. His ferocity
bordered on madness. He used to keep the victims of
his hatred in cages, where their misery afforded him the
same delight as Some men derive from watching the
antics of monkeys. In his hunting establishment were
repeated the Worst atrocities of Bernabo Wisconti;
wretches mutilated for neglect of his hounds extended
their handless stumps for charity to the travellers
through his villages. Alfonso, the Magnanimous, had
IHis son,
Ferdi-
mand.
I 26 THE RAID OF CHARLES V///
Alfonso II.
I'erdi-
nand II.
been remarkable for his generosity and sincerity.
Ferdinand was a demon for dissimulation, treachery,
and avarice.
Alfonso II. was a son Worthy of such a terrible
father. The only difference between them was that
Ferdinand dissembled, while Alfonso, whose bravery at
Otranto against the Turks had surrounded him with
military glory, abandoned himself with cynicism to his
passions. Yet, bold general in the field, and able man
of affairs as he might be, he found no courage to resist
the approaching conqueror. It is no fiction of a poet or
a moralist, but plain matter of history, that this King
of Naples, grandson of the great Alfonso, and father of
the Ferdinand to be, quailed before the myriads of ac-
cusing dead that rose to haunt his tortured fancy in this
hour of peril. The people, too, around his gates were
muttering in rebellion. The dastard abdicated in
favour of his son, took ship for Sicily, and died there
conscience-stricken in a monastery before the year was
out.
For Ferdinand, though a brave youth, beloved by
the nation in spite of his grandfather’s and father's
tyranny, the situation was untenable. Everywhere he
was beset by traitors. Without Soldiers, without allies,
with nothing to rely upon but the untried goodwill of
subjects who had just reason to execrate his race, and
with the conqueror of Italy advancing with strides
through his states, retreat alone was left him. After
abandoning his castles to pillage, burning the ships in
THE ACA/ZO OF CA/AA’ZAZS V/// 127
the harbour, and setting Don Federigo, together with
the Queen dowager and the Princess Joanna, upon a
quick-Sailing galley, Ferdinand bade farewell to his
kingdom. Between the beach of Naples and the rocky
shore of Ischia, for which the exiles were bound, there
is only the distance of Some seventeen miles. It was in
February, a month of mild and melancholy Sunshine in
those southern regions, when the whole bay of Naples
with its belt of distant hills is wont to take one tint
of modulated azure, that the royal fugitives performed
this voyage. As the shore receded from his view, his-
torians relate that the unhappy Ferdinand, in a voice
as sad as Boabdil's when he sat down to weep for
Granada, exclaimed from the 127th Psalm : ‘Except
the Lord keep the city, the Watchman waketh but in
vain.”
Charles entered Naples as a conqueror or liberator
on February 22, 1495. He was welcomed and fêted by
the Neapolitans, than Whom no people are more
childishly delighted with a change of masters. He en-
joyed his usual sports, and indulged in his usual love
affairs. With suicidal insolence and want of policy he
alienated the sympathies of the noble families by divid-
ing the titles, offices, and fiefs of the kingdom among his
retinue. Without receiving so much as a provisional
investiture from the Pope, he satisfied his vanity
by parading, On May 12, as sovereign, with a ball
in one hand and a Sceptre in the other, through the
city.
Charles
enviers
Naples.
I 28 TA/A2. AºA MD OF CA/AR/CAES V///
The storm,
rises in
his rear.
His re-
treat and
feturn to
Asti.
While Charles was amusing himself in Naples, a
storm was gathering in his rear. A league against him
had been formed in April by the great powers of
Europe. Venice, alarmed for the independence of Italy,
and urged by the Sultan, headed the league. Lodovico,
now that he had attained his selfish object in the quiet
possession of Milan, was anxious for his safety.
Maximilian, who could not forget the slight put upon
him in the matter of his daughter and his bride, was
willing to co-operate against his rival. Ferdinand and
Isabella, having secured themselves in Roussillon,
thought it behoved them to re-establish Spaniards of
their kith and kin in Naples. .
The danger was imminent. - Already Ferdinand the
Catholic had disembarked troops on the shore of Sicily,
and was ready to throw an army into the ports of
Reggio and Tropea ; Alexander had refused to carry out
his treaty by the surrender of Spoleto; Cesare Borgia
had escaped from the French camp. The Lombards
were menacing Asti, which the Duke of Orleans held,
and without its possession there was no safe retreat to-
wards France. His troops decimated by disease and
worn out by debauchery, Charles saw the necessity of
retracing his steps in haste, passed Rome, and reached
Siena on June 13. The forces of the league had already
taken the field. The key of the pass through the
Apennines by which Charles sought to regain Lombardy
is the town of Poutremoli. Leaving that in ashes on
June 29, the French army, distressed for provisions and
THE RAMZO OF CA/A/8/A2S W/// I29
in peril amongst the hills, pushed onward with all
speed. They knew that the allied forces, commanded
by the Marquis of Mantua, were waiting for them at the
other side upon the Taro, near the village of Fornovo.
Here, if anywhere, the French ought to have been
crushed. They numbered about 9,000 men in all, while
the troops of the league were close upon 40,000. The
French were weary with long marches, insufficient food,
and bad quarters. The Italians were fresh and well
cared for. Yet in spite of all this, in spite of blind
generalship and total blundering, Charles continued to
play his part of Fortune's favourite to the end. A
bloody battle, which lasted for an hour, took place upon
the banks of the Taro. The Italians suffered so
severely that, though they still far outnumbered the
French, no persuasion could make them rally and renew
the fight. Charles in his own person ran great risks
during this engagement, and, when it was over, he had
to retreat upon Asti in the teeth of other forces. But
the good luck of the French and the dilatory cowardice
of their opponents again Saved them for the last time.
Charles, at the head of the remnant of his invading • *
army, marched into Asti on July 15, and was practically
Safe.
At Asti the young king continued to give signal
proofs of his weakness. He made no effort to relieve
the Duke of Orleans, who was hard pressed in Novara,
or to use the 20,000 Switzers who had descended from
their Alps to aid him in the struggle with the league.
R
Ełe takes
his dila-
tory way
back to
France.
13O THE RA //D OF CHA R/LAES V///
The effect
of his raid
Qupon
Italy.
V
At Turin, to which he now pushed on, he spent his time
in flirting with Anna Soleri, the daughter of his host.
This girl had been sent to harangue him with a set
oration, and had fulfilled her task, in the words of an
old witness, “without Wavering, coughing, Spitting, or
giving way at all.' Her charms delayed the king in
Italy until October 19, when he signed a treaty at Wer-
celli with the Duke of Milan. He now only cared for a
quick return to France. Reserving to himself the nomi-
nal right of using Genoa as a naval station, he made
over the town to Lodovico Sforza, and confirmed him in
the tranquil possession of his duchy. On October 22
Charles left Turin, and entered his own dominions
through the Alps of Dauphiné. Already his famous
conquest of Italy was reckoned among the wonders of
the past, and his sovereignty over Naples had become
the shadow of a name.
In spite of its transitory character, the invasion of
Charles VIII. was a great fact in the history of the Re-
, naissance. It was the revelation of Italy to the nations
of the North. Like a gale sweeping across a forest of
trees in blossom, and bearing their fertilising pollen to
far-distant trees, the storm of Charles's army carried far .
and wide through Europe the productive energy of the
Renaissance. For Italy the French invasion opened
indeed a new era, but only in the sense that a pageant
may form the prelude to a tragedy. Every monarch of
Europe, dazzled by the Splendid display of Charles, and
forgetful of its insignificant results, began to look with
THA. AEA/D OA’ CA/AA’/CAES WZZZ I3 I
greedy eyes upon the wealth of the peninsula. In the
course of a few years, as we have seen, the Swiss found
in those rich provinces an inexhaustible field for depre-
dation. The Germans, under the pretence of religious
Zeal, gave a loose rein to their animal appetites in the
metropolis of Christendom. France and Spain engaged
in a duel to the death for the possession of so fair a prey.
Louis XII., who succeeded Charles, lost himself in petty
intrigues, by which he finally weakened his own cause
to the profit of the Borgias and Austria. Francis I.
foamed his force away like a spent wave at Marignano
and Pavia. The real conqueror of Italy was Charles W.
Italy in the sixteenth century was destined to receive the
impress of the Spanish spirit, and to bear the yoke of
Austrian dukes. Whether the Renaissance of the modern
world would not have been yet more brilliant if Italy
had remained free, who shall say? The very conditions
which produced her culture seem to have rendered that
impossible.
VII
THE REVIVAL OF LEARNING:
vival, and in order that the work to be
performed by the Italian students may be
accurately measured, it will 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 Renaissance, and that we have moved
continuously on other lines to other objects since the
opening of the fifteenth century. Mediaeval 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 intellect was forced to deal subtly
with a very limited class of conceptions.
* Long before the fall of the Roman Empire it became
§fore the clear that both fine arts and literature were gradually
º declining. The Church, while battling with paganism,
recognised her deadliest foe in literature. Not only were
the Greek and Latin masterpieces the strongholds of a

THAZ /ē/2 V/VA/C OA” ZAZAA’AV/AWG I33
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 idealised a form of
human life which the new faith regarded as worthless.
What was the use of making this life refined and agree-
able by study, when it formed but an insignificant
prelude to an eternity wherein worldly learning would
be valueless 2
During the dark ages Italy had in no sense enjoyed
Superiority of culture over the rest of Europe. On the
contrary, the first abortive attempt at a revival of learn-
$ng was due to Charlemagne at Aix; the second to the
Emperor Frederick in Apulia and Sicily; and while the
Romance nations had lost the classical tradition, it was
still to some extent preserved by the Moslem dynasties.
The more we study the history of mediaeval learning, the
more we recognise the debt of civilised humanity to the
Arabs for their conservation and transmission of Greek
thought in an altered form to Europe. Yet, though the
Italians came comparatively late 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 effecting
for the education of the modern intellect that which
Dante and Petrarch performed—the one by the produc-
tion of a monumental work of art in poetry, the other by
Italy was
Avot ºn
advance
of other
countries
tº this.
wº . . . .
the communication of a new enthusiasm for antiquity
!
to students.
134 & THE A&E VIVAZ. OA' LEAA’AVYAVG
The inviti-
ative given
by Dante.
v/
Š
Dante does not belong in any strict sense to the
history of the Revival of Learning. The Divine
Combdy closes the Middle Ages and preserves their
spirit. But it may be truly said that he initiated the
movement of the modern intellect in its entirety, though
The other
SO?!,7°C6
flowing
from
Petrarc).
he did not lead the Revival considered as a separate
movement 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 traveller may listen to the murmurs of two streams
—the one hurrying down to form the Rhine, the other
to contribute to the Danube or the Po. Born within.
W
Petrarch
the In-
"V terpreter.
* A
hearing of each other's voices, and nourished by the self-
Same clouds that rest upon the crags about them, they
are henceforth destined to an ever-widening separation.
While the one sweeps onward to the Northern seas, the
other will 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 schools and in the lore of chivalrous
love.
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 Simpulse of the fifteenth century. We have
nothing to do with his Italian poetry. The Rimé
dedicated to Madonna Laura have eclipsed the fame of
TAZAZ AºA VVVA/L OF LEAA’AV/AVG I3
5
~ f
the Latin epic, philosophical discourses, epistles, ora-
tions, invectives, and dissertations which made Petrarch
the Woltaire of his own age, and on which he thought his
immortality would rest. 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 com-
position of the most perfect Sonnets. He may continue
to live in the thoughts of most people only as the poet of
Laura, while students will know how much the World
owes to his humanistic ardour; and by that we mean
the new and vital perception he gave of the dignity of
man as a rational being apart from theological deter-
minations, and the further perception that classic
literature alone displayed human nature in the plenitude
of intellectual and moral freedom.
While regarding Petrarch as the first and, in Some His weak
º oints.
respects, the greatest of the humanists, we are bound to p
recognise the faults as well as the good qualities he
shared with them. Foremost among these may be
reckoned his Vanity, his eagerness to grasp the poet’s ſº
crown, his appetite for flattery, his restless change from |
place to place in Search of new admirers, his self-com-
placent garrulity. To achieve renown by Writing—to
wrest for himself, even in his lifetime, a firm place among
the immortals—begane his feverish spur to action. He
was never tired of praising Solitude, and many years
of his manhood were spent in actual retirement at
Vaucluse. Yet he only loved seclusion as a contrast to
I36 THE A*A. VIVA L OF LEARAV/AWG
the society of Courts, and would have been most miser-
able 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 im- We are, however, justified in hailing Petrarch as the
; Columbus of a new spiritual hemisphere, the discoverer
studies. Aof modern culture. That he knew no Greek, that his
\/ Latin verse was lifeless 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 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 Revival of Learning, and all that it implies,
might have been delayed until too late. He died in
1374. The Greek Empire was destroyed in 1453.
Between those dates Italy recovered the Greek classics;
but whether the Italians 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.
The vast influence he immediately exercised, while
Dante, though gifted with a far more powerful individu-
ality, remained comparatively inoperative, proves that
the age was specially prepared to receive his inspiration.
TAZAZ RAE VIVAL OF LEAA’AVING I37vº .*
Incited by Petrarch's brilliant renown, Boccaccio, Boccaccio.
while still a young man, began to read the classical
authors, bemoaning the years he had wasted in com-
merce 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 literary enthusiasm, it appears
that Petrarch's example was decisive in determining his
course. There is, however, another tale, reported by his
fellow-citizen Villani, 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.
“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 Thai TVºſſed 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,
brooding 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 Muse smote his
heart, and, turning homeward, 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 marvellous progress. This
when his father noted, and perceived that the heavenly
-I38 THE RE VIVA/L OF LEARAVAWG
FI is admi-
ration of
Petraºrch.
Eſis
influence
O%, Q)07°-
'nacular
literature.
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
5
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 geniality and
Sweetness, cannot fail to win affection. When circum-
stances brought him into personal relations with
Petrarch, he transferred the whole homage of his ardent
Soul to the only man alive who seemed to him a fit
inheritor of ancient fame. 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 a year before his own in
1375.
Independently of his contributions to learning,
Boccaccio occupies a prominent place in the history of
the Revival through the new spirit he introduced into
the vulgar literature. He was the first who frankly
(sought to justify the pleasures of the carnal life, whose
temperament, unburdened by asceticism, found a con-
genial element in amorous legends of antiquity. The
romances of Boccaccio, with their beautiful gardens and
THE REVIVAL OF LEARNING I39
sunny skies, fair women and luxurious lovers, formed a
transition from the chivalry of the early an poets to
the sensuality of Beccadelli and Pontano. vº
Another of Petrarch's disciples, Giovanni Malpa- º
Q, Mºoſ-T-
ghino, called from his birthplace Giovanni da Ravenna, venna.
exercised a more active personal influence over the
destinies of scholarship. While still a youth he had
been employed by Petrarch as secretary and amanuensis.
His general ability, clear handwriting, 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 Ravenna became himself a learned man, acquiring a
finer sense of Latinity than was possessed by any other -
Scholar of his time. He could not long, however,
content himself with being even Petrarch's scribe. He
longed to gain the glory he was always reading of.
- Petrarch, incapable of comprehending that any honour
was greater than that of being his satellite, treated this
ambitious pupil like a wilful child. A quarrel ensued.
Giovanni left his benefactor's house, but want and
misery drove him back to it for a time. Again the
Vagrant impulse came upon him, and for a season he
filled the post of chancellor in the little principality of
Carrara. The one thing, however, that he could not
endure was the routine of fixed employment. He soon
left Carrara, and took up the more congenial occupation
of a Wandering professor. His prodigious memory, by N/
enabling him to retain, word for word, the text of
I4O THE A&AE V/VA L OF LEA RAW/AVG
Luigi
Marsigli.
vº
authors he had read, proved of invaluable service to him
in this career.
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 distin-
guished abilities, had exhorted him to make a special
study of theology, and to enter the lists as a champion
of Christianity against the Averrhoists. Under the
name of Averrhoists in the fourteenth century were
ranged all 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 as that of the schoolmen, but directed to a
very different end. Petrarch disliked their want of
liberal culture as much as he 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 re-
garded by him as so many obstacles to his own ideal
of humanism. Against Averrhoes, ‘the raging hound
who barked at all things sacred and divine,’ Petrarch
therefore sought to stimulate the young Marsigli.
Marsigli, however, while he shared Petrarch's respect
for human culture, seems to have sympathised with the
audacity and freedom 9f his proposed antagonists. The
monastery of S. Spirito became under his influence the
centre of a learned society who met there regularly for
disputations.
...~~~
THE ACA2 V/VA/C OF / EAA’AV/AVG I4 I
_`
U-T
A disciple of this Marsigli, Coluccio de' Salutati, Coluccio
de' Salºt-
who entered in 1375 on the duties of Florentine Chan- tati.
cellor, 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 stylist. Before he was called upon 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 diligent collector of manu->
scripts and promoter of Greek studies, as a writer on
mythology and morals, as an orator and miscellaneous
author. For the first time he introduced into public w/
documents the gravity of style and melody of phrase he
had learned in the school of classic rhetoricians. Giam
Galeazzo Wisconti is said to have declared that Salutati
had done him more harm by his style than a troop of
paid mercenaries. The epistles, despatches, protocols
and manifestoes, composed by their Chancellor for the
Florentine priors, were distributed throughout Italy, and
Ciceronian phrases were henceforth reckoned among the
indispensable engines of a diplomatic armoury. When
the illustrious Chancellor died, in the year 1406, at the
age of seventy-six, he was honoured with a public
funeral; the poet's Wreath was placed upon his brow, a
panegyrical oration was recited, and a monument was
erected to him in the Duomo.
What Salutati accomplished for the style of public
documents, Gasparino da Barzizza effected for familiar
correspondence. After teaching for several years at
* .* ,”
Gasparing’
y
I42 *
THE RE VIVA L OF LEA RAWING
Manuel
Chryso-
loras.
ſ
Venice and Padua, he was summoned to Milan by
Filippo 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 fa-
miliariter scribendi. Epistolography in general, con-
sidered as a branch of elegant literature, occupied all
the scholars of the Renaissance, and had the advantage
of establishing a link of union between learned men
in different parts of Italy. We therefore recognise in
him the initiator, after Petrarch, of a highly important
branch of Italian culture. -
We must close this brief retrospect with the advent
of a man who played a part in the Revival of Learning
only second to that of Petrarch. Manuel Chrysoloras, a
v. Byzantine of noble birth, came to Italy during the ponti-
ficate of Boniface IX., charged by the Emperor Palaeo-
logus with the mission of attempting to arm the states of
Christendom against the Turks. His fame, as the most
accomplished and eloquent Hellenist of his age, awoke a
passionate desire in Palla degli Strozzi and Niccolo de'
Niccoli to bring him to Florence. Their urgent appeals
to the Signory resulted in an invitation whereby Chryso-
loras in 1896 was induced to fill the Greek chair in
the university. This engagement Secured the future of
Greek erudition in Europe. The Scholars who assembled
in the lecture-rooms of Chrysoloras felt that the Greek
texts, whereof he alone supplied the key, contained
TAZAZ A&AE VIVA/C OA’ CAEA ACAV/AWG I43
those elements of spiritual freedom and intellectual
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 implied the birth of criticism, com- |
parison, research; it opened philosophical horizons far |
beyond the dream-world of the churchmen and the
monks; it resuscitated a sense of the beautiful in art
and literature, and stimulated into activity the germs
of Science.
The ºmfor-
est and
walue of
their
works.
I44
VIII
THE FLORENTINE EIISTORIANS
gence in modern times. Other nations
have surpassed the Italians in their genius
—the quality which gave a Superhuman
power of insight to Shakespeare, and an universal sym-
pathy to Goethe. But nowhere else except at Athens
has the whole population of a city been so permeated
with ideas, so highly intellectual by nature, so keen in
perception, so witty and so subtle, as at Florence.
This marvellous intelligence, which was her pride,
burned brightly in a long Series of historians and
annalists, who have handed down to us the biography
of the city in volumes as remarkable for penetrative
acumen as for definite delineation and dramatic
interest. We possess picture-galleries of pages in which
the great men of Florence live again and seem to
breathe and move, epics of the commonwealth’s vicissi-
tudes from her earliest commencement, detailed tra-
gedies and highly-finished episodes, studies of separate
characters, and idylls detached from the main current
of her story. The whole mass of this historical literature

THE FLOREAVT/AVE A/S 7TORIAAVS I45
is instinct with the spirit of criticism and vital with
experience. Trained in the study of antiquity, as well
as in the council chambers of the republic and in the
courts of foreign princes, they survey the matter of their
histories from a lofty vantage ground, fortifying their
Speculative conclusions by practical knowledge, and
purifying their judgment of contemporary events with
the philosophy of the past. Owing to this rare mixture
of qualities, the Florentines deserve to be styled the
discoverers of the historic method for the modern world.
The year 1300 marks the first development of his-
torical research in Florence. Two great Writers, Dante
Alighieri and Giovanni Villani, at this epoch pursued
different lines of study which determined the future of
this branch of literature for the Italians. Giovanni
Villani relates how, having visited Rome on the occa-
sion of the Jubilee, when 200,000 pilgrims crowded the
streets of the Eternal City, he was moved to the depths
of his soul by the spectacle of the ruins of the dis-
crowned mistress of the world. “When I saw the great
and ancient monuments of Rome, and read the histories
and the great deeds of the Romans, written by Virgil
and by Sallust, by Lucan and by Livy, by Valerius and
Orosius, and other masters of history, who related
small as well as great things of the acts and doings
of the Romans, I took style and manner from them,
though, as learner, I was not worthy of so vast a
work.” Like our own Gibbon, musing upon the steps
of Ara Celi, within sight of the Capitol, and hearing
Giovanni
Villamy.
l
* I,
I46 THE FLOREAVT/AVE HISTORIA MS
FI is
history
continued
by his
brother
and
nephew.
Dante’s
method
772O7%
philo-
Sophical
than
Villani’s.
within the monks at prayer, he felt the genius loci stir
him with a mixture of astonishment and pathos.
The result of this visit to Rome in 1300 was the
VChronicle which Giovanni Villani carried, in twelve
books, down to the year 1346. Two years afterwards
he died of the plague, and his work was continued on
the same plan by his brother Matteo. Matteo in his
turn died of the plague in 1862, and left the Chronicle
to his son Filippo, who brought it down to the year
1865. Of the three Villani, Giovanni is the greatest,
both as a master of style and as an historical artist.
This Chronicle is a treasure-house of clear and accurate
delineation rather than of profound analysis. Not only
does it embrace the whole affairs of Europe in annals
which leave little to be desired in precision of detail and
brevity of statement; but, what is more to our present
purpose, it conveys a lively picture of the internal con-
dition of the Florentines and the manners of the city in
the fourteenth century. The Work remains a monument,
unique in mediaeval literature, of statistical patience and
economical Sagacity, proving how far in advance of the
European nations were the Italians at this period.
Dante's aim was wholly different. Of statistics and
of historical detail we gain but little from his prose works.
His mind was that of a philosopher who generalises,
and of a poet who seizes Salient characteristics, not that
of an annalist who aims at Scrupulous fidelity in his
account of facts. In his treatise De Monarchia we
possess the first attempt at political speculation, the first
ZTA/A2 A*/OA&AEAVT//VAE A/ZS ZTO/e/AAVS I47
essay in constitutional philosophy to which the liter-
ature of modern Europe gave birth ; while his letters
addressed to the princes of Italy, the cardinals, the
Emperor, and the republic of Florence, are in like
manner the first instances of political pamphlets setting
forth a rationalised and consistent system of the rights
and duties of nations. In the De Monarchia Dante
bases a theory of universal government upon a definite
conception of the nature and the destinies of humanity.
Amid the anarchy and discord of Italy, where selfish-
ness was everywhere predominant, and where the
factions of the papacy and empire were but cloaks for
party strife, Dante endeavours to bring his countrymen
back to a sublime ideal of a single monarchy, a true
imperium, distinct from the priestly authority of the
Church, but not hostile to it, Seeking rather Sanction
from Christ's Vicar while affording protection to the
Holy See. The Epistles contain the same thoughts:
peace, mutual respect, and obedience to a common
head, the duty of the chief to his subordinates, and of
the governed to their lord.
While discussing the historical Work of Dante and
the Villani, it is impossible that another famous
Florentine should not arrest our notice, whose name
has long been connected with the civic contests that
resulted in the exile of Italy's greatest poet from his
native city. Yet it is not easy for a foreign critic to
deal with the question of Dino Compagni's Chronicle—a
question which for years has divided Italian students into
IDino Com-
ſpagni.
T, 2
I48 THE FLOREAVT/AWAE HAS 7 OR/AAVS
two camps, which has produced a voluminous literature
of its own, and which still remains undecided.
* Dino Compagni, whose “Chronicle' embraces the
*. period between 1280 and 1312, took the popular side in
apart from the struggles of 1282, sat as prior in 1289 and in 1301,
> ->
the doubt ge & ſº
throw?? and was chosen Gonfalonier of Justice in 1293. He was
#. therefore a prominent actor in the drama of those
troublous times. He died in 1824, two years and four
months after the date of Dante's death, and was buried
in the Church of Santa Trinità. He was a man of the
same stamp as Dante; burning with love for his
, country, but still more a lover of the truth; severe in
\ judgment, but beyond suspicion of mere partisanship ;
brief in utterance, but weighty with personal experience,
profound conviction, prophetic intensity of feeling,
sincerity, and justice. As an historian he narrowed his
labours to the field of one small but highly-finished
\/ picture. He undertook to narrate the civic quarrels of
his times, and to show how the commonwealth of
Florence was brought to ruin by the selfishness of her
own citizens; nor can his “Chronicle,” although it is
by no means a masterpiece of historical accuracy or of
lucid arrangement, be surpassed for the liveliness of its
delineation, the graphic clearness of its characters, the
earnestness of its patriotic spirit, and the acute analysis
which lays bare the political situation of a republic
torn by factions, during the memorable period which
embraced the revolution of Giano della Bella and the
struggles of the Neri and Bianchi. If it were a forgery,
THE FLORAEAVT/WE HISTORIAAWS I49
the labour of concocting it must have been enormous.
With all its defects the ‘Chronicle' would still remain a
masterpiece of historical research, imagination, Sym-
pathy with bygone modes of feeling, dramatic vigour,
and antiquarian command of language.
The historians of the first half of the sixteenth cen-
tury are a race apart. Amid the universal corruption of
public morals, from the depth of sloth and servitude,
when the reality of liberty was lost, when fate and for-
tune had combined to render constitutional reconstruc-
tion impossible for the shattered republics of Italy, the
intellect of the Florentines displayed itself with more
than its old vigour in a series of the most brilliant poli-
tical writers who have ever illustrated one short but
eventful period in the life of a single nation. That
period is marked by the years 1494 to 1537. It em-
braces the two final efforts of the Florentines to shake
off the Medicean yoke; the efforts of Savonarola in this
cause, and his contest with Alexander VI. ; the Church-
rule of the Medicean Popes, Leo X. and Clement VII. ;
the disastrous siege during the pontificate of the latter,
which we have still to narrate; and the final eclipse of
liberty beneath the Spain-appointed dynasty of the
younger Medicean line. The names of the historians of
this period are :
Born Died A
Niccolò Machiavelli . . . . . 1469 1527 V/
Jacopo Nardi . g tº te tº . 1476 1556
Francesco Guicciardini . * & . 1482 1540
Filippo Nerli . © e i. * . 1485 1536
Donato Giannotti . g o tº . 1492 1572
*
L 3
Later his-
torians.
I 50 THE FLOREAVTVAWAE HIS 7 OR/AAVS
Machia-
velli.
Hö3
official
OCC%20-
pations.
Born Died
Benedetto Warchi . te g º . 1502 1565
Bernardo Segni. tº e we e . 1504 1558
Jacopo Pitti . tº ſº tº g . 1519 1589
In these men the mental qualities which we admire
in Dante, the Villani, and Compagnireappear, combined
indeed in different proportions, tempered with the new
philosophy and scholarship of the Renaissance, and per-
meated with quite another morality.
The biography of Machiavelli consists for the most
part of a record of his public services to the State of
Florence. He was born on May 3, 1469, of parents who
belonged to the prosperous middle class of Florentine
citizens. His ancestry was noble ; for the old tradition
which connected his descent with the feudal house of
Montespertoli has been confirmed by documentary evi-
dence. His forefathers held offices of high distinction
in the commonwealth ; and, though their wealth and
station had decreased, Machiavelli inherited a small
landed estate.
In 1494, the date of the expulsion of the Medici,
V Machiavelli was admitted to the Chancery of the Com-
mune as a clerk; and in 1498 he was appointed to the
post of chancellor and secretary to the Dieci di libertà e
pace. This place he held for the better half of fifteen
years—that is to say, during the whole period of Floren-
tine freedom. His diplomatic missions, undertaken at
the instance of the republic, were very numerous. Omit-
ting those of less importance, we find him at the camp of
Cesare Borgia in 1502, in France in 1504, with Julius II.
TP/E FLORE/VT/AWE HAS 7 OAZAAVS I 5 I
in 1506, with the Emperor Maximilian in 1507, and
again at the French court in 1510. To this department
, of his public life belong the despatches and Relazioni
which he sent home to the Sigmory of Florence, his
monograph upon the massacre of smºria, his trea-
tises upon the method of dealing with Pisa, Pistoja, and
Valdichiana, and those two remarkable studies of foreign
nations which are entitled Ritratti delle Cose dell’ Ale-
Tmagna and Ritratti delle Cose di Francia. It was also in
the year 1500 that he laid the first foundation of his im-
proved military system. The political sagacity and the
patriotism for which Machiavelli has been admired are
nowhere more conspicuous than in the discernment
which suggested this measure, and in the indefatigable
Zeal with which he strove to carry it into effect. Ponder-
ing upon the causes of Italian weakness when confronted
with nations like the French, and comparing contempo-
rary with ancient history, Machiavelli came to the con-
clusion that the universal employment of mercenary
troops was the chief secret of the insecurity of Italy. He
therefore conceived a plan for establishing a national
militia, and for placing the whole male population at
the service of the state in times of War. The Floren-
times allowed themselves to be convinced, and on his re-
commendation they voted in 1506 a new magistracy for
the formation of companies, the discipline of Soldiers,
and the maintenance of the militia in a state of readi-
N ness for active service. Of this board he became the
Secretary.
I 52 THE FLOA’EAVT/AWE HISTORIAAWS
PHis im-
prison-
ment by
the Medici,
and retire-
7ment.
He ap-
peals to
be reim-
stated.
It must be admitted that the new militia proved in-
effectual in the hour of need. To revive the martial
spirit of a nation, enervated by tyranny and given over
to commerce, merely by a stroke of genius, was beyond
the force of even Machiavelli. When Prato was sacked
in 1512, the Florentines, destitute of troops, divided
among themselves, and headed by the excellent but
hesitating Piero Soderini, threw their gates open to the
Medici. Giuliano, the brother of Pope Leo, and Lo-
renzo, his nephew, whose statues sit throned in the im-
mortality of Michael Angelo's marble upon their tombs
in San Lorenzo, disposed of the republic at their plea-
sure. On the ground of his being concerned in a con-
spiracy, Machiavelli was, in 1513, imprisoned in the
Bargello, and tortured to the extent of four turns of the
rack. It seems that he was innocent, for Leo X. released
him by the act of amnesty passed upon his assuming
the tiara ; and Machiavelli immediately retired to his
farm near San Casciano. The letters he wrote at this
time, in the desire for further employment, are not
creditable to his memory.
In some respects Dante, Machiavelli, and Michael
Angelo Buonarroti may be said to have been the three
greatest intellects produced by Florence. Dante, in
exile and in opposition, would hold no sort of traffic with
her citizens. Michael Angelo, after the siege, worked at
the Medici tombs for Pope Clement as a peace-offering
for the fortification of San Miniato; while Machiavelli
entreats to be put ‘to roll a stone,' if only he may
|
*
:
TAZAZ A.Z.O/CAAVZTMAVE A/ZSTOA’/AAVS I 53
SO escape from poverty and dulness. He owed nothing
to the Medici who had disgraced and tortured him; yet
what was the gift with which he came before them as a
the celebrated Principe—which, misread it as Machia-
velli's apologists may choose to do, or explain it as the
rational historian is bound to do, yet carries venom in
its pages. Remembering the circumstances under
which it was composed, we are in a condition to esti-
mate the proud humility and prostrate pride of the
dedication. “Niccolò Machiavelli to the Magnificent
Lorenzo, son of Piero de’ Medici': so runs the title.
‘Desiring to present myself to your Magnificence with
Some proof of my devotion, I have not found among
my various furniture aught that I prize more than the
knowledge of the actions of great men acquired by me
through a long experience of modern affairs and a con-
tinual study of ancient. These I have long and dili-
gently resolved and examined in my mind, and have
now compressed into a little book which I send to your
Magnificence. And though I judge this work unworthy
of your presence, yet I am confident that your huma-
nity will cause you to value it when you consider that I
could not make you a greater gift than this of enabling
you in a few hours to understand what I have learned
through perils and discomforts in a lengthy course of
years. . . . If your Magnificence will deign, from the
Summit of your height, some time to turn your eyes to
my low place, you will know how unjustly I am forced #
I 54 THE FLOA&AEAVT/AWE HISTORIA MS
The ethics
of his
work “De
Princi-
patibils.
!
FIºs
lectures
ſin the
Florentine
Academy.
to endure the great and continued malice of fortune.’ The
work so dedicated was sent in manuscript for the Magnifi-
cent’s private perusal. It was not published until 1532,
by order of Clement VII., after the death of Machiavelli.
If we can pretend to sound the depths of Machia-
velli’s mind at this distance of time, we may conjecture
that he had come to believe the free cities too corrupt --
for independence. The only chance Italy had of holding
her own against the great powers of Europe was by
union under a prince, and if the power of the Church
could not be neutralised, then with the Pope for an ally.
He believed, accordingly, that the right way to attain a
result so splendid as the liberation of Italy was to pro-
ceed by force, craft, bad faith, and all the petty acts of
a political adventurer. The public ethics of the day
had sunk to this low level. Success, he thought, by
means of plain dealing was impossible. The game of
statecraft could only be carried on by guile and
violence. Even the clear genius of Machiavelli had
been obscured by the muddy medium of intrigue in
which he had been working all his life. We learn from
Varchi that Machiavelli was execrated in Florence for
| his Principe, the poor thinking it would teach the
Medici to take away their honour, the rich regarding it
as an attack upon their wealth, and both discerning in
it a death-blow to freedom.
Not receiving from Lorenzo the employment he
hoped for, we find Machiavelli, between 1516 and 1519,
taking part in the literary and philosophical discussions
7 AE A*/ORAEAVTV/VE A/STOR/AAVS I 55
of the Florentine Academy, which assembled at that
period in the Rucellai Gardens. It was here that he
read the ‘Discourses on the First Decade of Livy'—a
series of profound essays upon the administration of the
state, to which the sentences of the historian Serve as
texts. Having set forth in the Principe the method of
gaining or maintaining sovereign power, he shows in the
Discorsi what institutions are necessary to preserve the
body politic in a condition of vigorous activity. We may
therefore regard the Discorsi as in some sense a con-
tinuation of the Principe. A-, *--~-----.
The seven books on the Art of War may be
referred with certainty to the same period of Machia-
velli's life. If we may venture to connect the Works of
his enforced leisure according to the plan above Sug-
gested, this treatise forms a supplement to the Principe
and the Discorsi. Both in his analysis of the successful
tyrant, and in his description of the powerful common-
wealth, he had insisted on the prime necessity of
Warfare, conducted by the rulers in person. The mili-
tary Organisation of a great kingdom is here developed,
and Machiavelli's favourite scheme for nationalising the
militia of Italy is systematically expounded.
By this time Lorenzo had made up his mind to take
Machiavelli again into favour; but the work and the
missions he was called upon to undertake were of no
importance. His great achievement in the last years of
his life was the Istorie Fiorentine. The commission for
this work he received from Giulio de' Medici, and in
EI's views
of war-
fare.
FIºs
Florentime
History.
I56 7THE FLOREAVTVAWE HISTORIAAWS
FIis death.
Guicci.
} ardini.
|
|
1527, the year of his death, he dedicated the finished
history to Clement VII. This masterpiece of literary
art, though it may be open to the charges of inaccuracy
and Superficiality, marks an epoch in the development of
modern historiography. By applying the philosophical
method to history, Machiavelli enriched the science of
humanity with a new department. His style is adequate
to the matter of his work. Never were clear and
definite thoughts expressed with greater precision in lan-
guage of more masculine vigour.
Machiavelli, according to the letter addressed by his
son Pietro to Francesco Nelli, died of a dose of medicine
taken at a wrong time. He was attended on his death-
bed by a friar, who received his confession. His private
morality was but indifferent. His contempt for weak-
ness and simplicity was undisguised. His knowledge of
the world and men had turned to cynicism. The frigid
philosophy expressed in his political essays, and the
sarcastic speeches in which he gave a vent to his soured
humours, made him unpopular. It was supposed that
he died with blasphemy upon his lips, after turning all
the sanctities of human nature into ridicule. Through
these myths, as through a mist, we may discern the
bitterness of that great disenchanted, disappointed soul.
Francesco Guicciardini, in 1505, at the age of
twenty-three, had already So distinguished himself as a
student of lay that he was appointed by the Signoria
of Florence to read the Institutes in public. But, pre-
ferring active to professorial work, he began to practise
TAZAZ AT/CO/PAEAV7'/AVAE A/ZS 7'O/8/AAVS I 57
eloquent speaker. This reputation, together with his
character for gravity and insight, determined the Signoria
to send him on an embassy to the court of Ferdinand
of Aragon in 1512. Thus Guicciardini entered on the
real work of his life as a diplomatist and statesman.
Returning to Florence, he was, in 1513, deputed to
meet Leo X. at Cortona on the part of the republic.
Leo, who had the faculty of discerning able men and
making use of them, took him into favour, and three
years later appointed him Governor of Reggio and
Modena, to which Parma was added in 1521. In 1523
he became Viceroy of Romagna, and in 1526 Lieutenant-
General of the Papal Army. In consequence of this
high commission, he shared in the humiliation attach-
ing to all the officers of the League at the sack of Rome
in 1527. He was, however, with the army, not as a
general, but as a referee in the Pope's interest, and as
a reporter to the Vatican. In 1531 he was advanced to
the governorship of Bologna, the most important of all
the Papal lieutenancies. This post he resigned in 1534,
on the election of Paul III., preferring to follow the
fortunes of the Medicean princes at Florence. It was
an unfortunate choice for his future career and reputa-
tion. He had been declared a rebel in 1527 by the
Florentine government for his adherence to the Medici,
and this insult he had revenged on the citizens in 1530,
when deputed by Clement VII. to punish them. It was,
therefore, now still more to his interest to maintain the
His public
engage-
77.077ts.
I 58 TAZAZ A.I.O.R.EAVT/AVE HIS 7 OR/AAVS
Hºs
History
of Italy.
/
\/
FI is later
works.
bastard Alessandro in power, and he successfully de-
fended him at the court of Charles W. at Naples, in
1535, when arraigned by the exiles for his unbearable
despotism. Two years later, after the assassination of
Alessandro, having seated the young Cosimo, with the
title of Duke, at the head of affairs, and finding that
his own influence had waned, Guicciardini reluctantly
retired to his villa, and in 1540 died there at the age of
fifty-eight.
Turning now from the statesman to the man of
letters, we find in Guicciardini one of the most consum-
mate historians of any nation or of any age. The work
by which he is best known, the Istoria d' Italia, is one
that can Scarcely be surpassed for masterly control of a
very intricate period, for the subordination of the parts
to the whole, for calmness of judgment, and for philo-
Sophic depth of thought. Considering that he in this
great work was writing the annals of his own times, and
that he had to disentangle the ravelled skein of Italian
politics in the sixteenth century, these qualities are most
remarkable. Yet Guicciardini in this work deserves
less commendation as a Writer than as a thinker. His
periods are almost interminable, and his rhetoric is
prolix and monotonous.
Two other masterpieces from his pen, the Dialogo
del Reggimento di Firenze, and the Storia Fiorentina,
have been only recently given to the world. In these
writings we find him at his best. His style is more
spontaneous; his utterances are less guarded. At the
THE ATLOA&EAVT/WE HISTORIANS I 59
Same time the political Sagacity of the statesman is
revealed in all its vigour.
The other writers we have mentioned carry on the
Storia Fiorentina from the year 1527 to the year
1537. Nardi, who composed his history in exile at
Venice, where he died, acted as Secretary and advocate
for Filippo Strozzi and the other exiles when, as we
have mentioned, Guicciardini was pleading the cause of
Alessandro de' Medici before Charles W. Nerli also took
part in the events of those troublous times, but on the
Wrong side, by mixing himself up with the exiles, and
acting as a spy upon their projects. Giannotti was also
an actor in the events of the siege, and afterwards
appeared among the exiles of that time.
Warchi, in whom the flame of patriotism burns
brightest, and who is by far the most copious annalist
of the period, was a native of Montevarchi. Yet, as
often happens, he was more Florentine than the Floren-
times; and of the events which he describes he had for
the most part been witness. Duke Cosimo employed
him to write the history; and it is a credit both to the
prince and to the author that its chapters should be full
of criticisms so outspoken, and of aspirations after
liberty so vehement. Segni was nephew of the Gon-
falonier Capponi, and shared the anxieties of the
moderate Liberals during the siege of Florence. Lastly,
Pitti was a member of the great house who contested
the leadership of the republic with the Medici in the
fifteenth century; his zeal for the popular party and
Nardi,
Nerlì, and
Giammott.
Varchi,
Segni, and
Pitti.
I6o THE FLOREAVTVAVE HAS 7 OAZAAVS
A com-
parison of
their
various
styles.
his hatred of the Palleschi, the Medicean faction, may
still perhaps be tinctured with ancestral animosity.
The literary qualities of these historians are very
different, and seem to be derived from essential differ-
ences in their characters. Pitti is by far the most bril-
liant in style, concentrated in expression to the point
of epigram, and weighty in judgment. Nardi, though
deficient in some of the most attractive characteristics
of the historian, is invaluable for sincerity of intention
and painstaking accuracy. The interest of his chronicle
is greatest in the part which concerns Savonarola,
though even here the peculiarly reticent and dubitative
nature of the man is obvious. While he sympathises
with Savonarola's political and moral reforms, he raises
a doubt about his inner sincerity, and does not approve
of the attitude of his followers, the Piagnoni. Segni is
far more lively than Nardi, while he is not less pains-
taking to be accurate. Rarely have the entangled
events of a specially dramatic period been set forth
more lucidly, more succinctly, and with greater elegance
of style. He is deficient, when compared with Warchi,
only perhaps in volume, minuteness, and that wonderful
mixture of candour, enthusiasm, and Zeal for truth
which makes Warchi incomparable. His sketches of
men, critiques, and digressions upon statistical details
are far less copious than Warchi’s ; but in idiomatic
purity of language he is superior. Varchi had been
spoiled by academic habits of composition. His
language is diffuse and lumbering. He lacks the
7TA/A2 A.M.OA’AAV7'ZZVE A/ZS 7"O/e/AAVS I6I
vivacity of epigram, selection, and pointed phrase.
Nerli is altogether a less interesting writer than those
that have been mentioned; yet some of the particulars
which he relates, about Savonarola’s reform of manners,
for example, and the literary gatherings in the Rucellai
gardens, are such as we find nowhere else.
Too much time has hardly been spent in this survey
of the annalists of one of the most interesting periods in
the fortunes of Florence. For the student of history
their narratives have a value almost unique. They
suggest the possibilities of a true science of comparative
|history, and reveal a vivacity of the historic conscious-
|
iness which can be paralleled by no other nation. How
different might be our conceptions of the vicissitudes of
Athens between 404 and 338 B.C. if we possessed a
similar band of contemporary Greek authors
The value
of these
works
to the
student.
I62
IX
I, ITERARY SOCIETY AT FLORENCE
ğ OTHING is more obvious to the student who
has mastered the first difficulties caused
by the intricacy of Italian 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 light, Over the rest of
the peninsula. This is true of the revival of learning
no less than of the fine arts and of the Origin of Science.
From the republics of Tuscany, and from Florence in
particular, proceeded the impulse and the energy that
led to fruitful results in all of these departments.
ſº In Florence, if anywhere in Italy, existed the con-
favourable ditions under which a republic of letters and of culture
to culture. could be formed. She could boast of a population of
burghers excelling in intelligence and taste, owing less
to ancestry than to personal eminence, devoting their
energies to civic ambition worthy of the Romans,
and to mental activity which reminds us of the ancient
Greeks. Here, therefore, and here alone, was created 8,
public capable instinctively of comprehending what is
T--~. _--~~~ "T"---- - ------- - -
beautiful in art and humane in letters, a race of Crafts-
*** -...--
----- - - *~.
aº T-

MATE/PAA’ Y SOCIETY A 7" AZOA’AºAVCE I63
men and of scholars who knew that their labours could
not fail 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.
What makes the part played by Florence in the The lead-
ing men
history of learning the more remarkable is, that the give it
€72 CO2/7°-
chiefs of the political factions were at the same time *
the leaders of intellectual progress. Rinaldo degli
Albizzi and Cosimo de' Medici, while opposed as an-
tagonists 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. Rinaldo was himself no
mean scholar; and he chose one of the greatest men of
the age, Tommaso da Sarzana, to be tutor to his children.
We have already mentioned Palla degli Strozzi's ser-
vices in the cause of Greek learning. Besides the
invitation he caused to be sent to Manuel Chrysoloras,
he employed his wealth and influence in providing books
necessary for the prosecution of Hellenic studies. -
The work begun by Palla degli Strozzi was ably §: de?
continued by his enemy, Cosimo de' Medici, Pater Patriæ.)
No Italian of his epoch combined Zeal for learning, and
generosity in all that could advance the interests of arts
and letters, more characteristically with political cor-
ruption and cynical egotism. Much of the influence
which he transmitted to his descendants was due to his
sympathy with the intellectual movements of the age.
He had received a solid education ; and, though he was
not a Greek Scholar, his mind was open to the interests
MI 2
I64 A 7TAZA'AA' P SOC/AE 7"Y A 7" FMLOA’AºAVCE
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. The sums of money spent by
him in building were enormous. Of these the most
important were the monastery of S. Marco, the church
of S. Lorenzo, and the abbey of Fiesole, while his villas
at Careggi and Caffagiolo implied a further large ex-
penditure.
He instv- The chief benefit conferred by him on learning was
^ tutes tº e ©
public the accumulation and the housing of large public
libraries.
libraries. During his exile (Oct. 3, 1433, to Oct. 1, 1434)
he built the library of S. Giorgio Maggiore at Venice,
and after his return to Fiorence he formed three
separate collections of MSS. While the hall of the
library of S. Marco was in process of construction,
Niccolò de' Niccoli died, in 1437, bequeathing his
800 MSS. to the care of trustees, of whom Cosimo was
one. He obtained the sole right to this collection by
taking upon himself the heavy debts left by Niccoli. In
1441 the hall of S. Marco was finished, and 400 of
Niccoli's MSS. were placed there, the other 400 being
retained for the Medicean library. At the same time
he spared no pains in adding to the Marcian collection.
When the abbey of Fiesole was finished, he set about
providing this also with a library suited to the wants of
learned ecclesiastics. The two libraries thus formed for
AZTEAAA' V SOCIETY A 7" F/LO/PA/VCAE I65
the monasteries of S. Marco and Fiesole, together with
his own private collection, constitute the oldest portion
of the present Laurentian Library.
Cosimo's zeal for learning was not confined to the
building of libraries nor to book-collecting. His palace
formed the centre of a literary and philosophical Society
which united all the wits of Florence and the visitors
who crowded to the capital of culture. The discernment
of character possessed by him 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
Hellenic studies. It was he who founded the Platonic
Academy, and educated Marsilio Ficino, the Son of his
physician, of whom We shall speak presently, for the
Special purpose of interpreting Greek philosophy.
Among the friends in the entourage of Cosimo, to
whose personal influence the revival of learning owed a
vigorous impulse, mention must be first made of Niccolò
de’ Niccoli. 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
collection. 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, calling him the “censor of the Latin tongue.”
The
literary
coterie
formed by
Wºº-
Niccolò de'
Niccoli.
I66 A 7TAZA'AA' V SOCIE 7TP A 7T F/LOA’AºAVCE
Bruni.
Notwithstanding his fine sense of language, Niccoli 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.
Certainly his reserve, in an age noteworthy for arrogant
display, has tended to confer on him distinction. The
position he occupied at Florence was that of a literary
dictator. All 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.
Foreigners from all parts of Italy paid him visits; the
strangers who came to Florence at that time, if they
missed the opportunity of seeing him, thought that they
had wasted their time. 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 work as
freely as he criticised the essays of the Scholars. What
distinguished Niccolò, therefore, was the combination of
refinement and humane breeding with Open-handed
generosity and devotion to the cause of culture.
Among the men of ability who adorned Florence at
this period, no one stands forth with a more distinguished
personality than Lionardo Bruni. In his boyhood at
Arezzo, where his parents occupied a humble position,
JC/7ZA'AA' V SOC/A27 V A T AWA.O.RAE/WCAE I67
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 scholarship. At first, however,
being poor and of no reputation, he was forced to apply
his talents to the study of the law. From these uncon-
genial labours the patronage of Salutati and the influence
of Chrysoloras saved him. Having begun to write for
the public, his fame as a Latinist soon spread so wide
that he was appointed Apostolic Secretary to the Roman
Curia. After sharing the ill fortunes of John XXIII. at
Constance, and Serving under Martin W. at Florence, he
was appointed to the Chancery of the Republic in 1427,
a post which he occupied until his death in 1443. His
diplomatic letters were regarded as models of that kind
of composition, and his public speeches, carefully pre-
pared beforehand, were compared with those of Pericles.
Among the compositions which secured his reputation
should first be mentioned the Latin History of Florence,
a work unique of its kind at that time in Italy. The
grateful republic rewarded their Chancellor by bestowing
upon him the citizenship of Florence, and by exempting
the author and his children from taxation. His medi-
aeval erudition was exercised in a 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 Commentaries on his own times, and in ten
volumes of collected letters. These original Works were
possibly of less importance than his translations from
the Greek, which passed in his own age for models of
EI's
literary
work. \V
I68 JAZTEAAA’ Y SOC/E 7"Y A 7T F/LOA’EAVCE
Aretino.
Sound Scholarship as well as pure Latinity. If we con-
sider that, in the midst of these severe labours, and under
the pressure of his public engagements, he still found
time to compose Italian lives of Dante and Petrarch,
We shall understand the admiration universally expressed
by his contemporaries for his comprehensive talents, and
share their gratitude for services so numerous in the
cause of learning. When he died, in 1443, the priors
decreed him a public 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
Wreath upon his brow. The monument beneath which
he reposes is an excellent specimen of Florentine sepul-
chral statuary, executed by Bernardo Rossellino.
Facing Bruni's tomb in S. Croce is that of Carlo
Aretino, wrought with subtler art and in a richer style
by Desiderio da Settignano. Aretino, who succeeded
Bruni in the Chancery of the Republic, shared during
his lifetime, as well as in the public honours paid him at
his death, very similar fortunes. His family name was
Marsuppini, and he was born of a good family in Arezzo.
Having come to Florence while a youth to study Greek,
he fell under the notice of Niccolò de' Niccoli, who intro-
duced him to the Medicean family, and procured him an
engagement at a high Salary from the Uffiziali dello Studio.
A/TAEA'AA' V SOC/AE 7TV A T AW/LOA’AºAVCAE I69
At the time when he began to lecture, Eugenius IV.
Was holding his court at Florence. The cardinals and
nephews of the Pope, attended by foreign ambassa-
dors, and followed by the apostolic secretaries, mingled
with burghers of Florence and students from a distance
round the desk of the young scholar. Aretino's reading
was known to be extensive, and his memory was cele-
brated as prodigious. Yet on the Occasion of his first
lecture he far surpassed all that was expected of him.
* Before a crowd of learned men,’ says Wespasiano, “he
gave a great proof of his memory, for neither Greeks nor
Romans had an author from whom he did not quote.’
He was soon made Apostolic Secretary, and then pro-
moted to the Chancery of Florence. He was grave in
manner, taciturn in speech, and much given to melan-
choly. His contemporaries regarded him as a man of
no religion, and he was said to have died without con-
fession or communion. This did not prevent his being
buried in S. Croce with ceremonies similar to those
decreed for Lionardo Bruni. Matteo Palmieri pronounced
the funeral oration, and placed the laurel on his brow.
Matteo Palmieri, whom we have just mentioned,
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 Città di Vita, which, though it
was condemned for its heretical opinions, obtained
from Ficino for its author the title of Poeta. Theolo-
gicus. Palmieri claims a passing notice here among the
Palmier.
I7o A 7TEAAA Y SOCIETY AT FLORENCE
Mametti.
His official
€709090-
77.077ts.
humanists who acquired high place and honour by the
credit of his eloquence and style.
Giannozzo Manetti, whom we have seen at the tomb
of Bruni, belonged to an illustrious house, and in his
youth, like other well-born Florentines, was trained for
mercantile affairs. At the age of five-and-twenty he
threw off the parental control, and gave himself entirely
to letters. His house and garden communicated with
the monastery of S. Spirito, and, being passionately fond
of disputation, he sought his chief amusement there in
the debating society founded by Marsigli. Ambrozio
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, kept a Jew in his own house. When he had
acquired sufficient familiarity 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 philology suggested to him. The
great work of his literary leisure was a polemical dis-
course, Contra Judaeos et Gentes; for, unlike Aretino, 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 life he was continually employed
as ambassador to the republic at Venice, Naples, Rome,
JC/TAERA R V SOCIETY A 7" FMLOA'AºAVCE 17 I
and other courts of Italy. He administered the govern-
ment 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 various topics
addressed to potentates and princes throughout Italy.
He 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 obliged to end his life an exile from his native
land. Florence never behaved worse to a more blameless
citizen ; for Manetti, by his cheerful acceptance of
public burdens, by his prudence in the discharge of
weighty offices, by the piety and sobriety of his private
life, 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 W., who had previously named him Apostolic
Secretary; and on the death of that Pope he sought a
final refuge with Alfonso at Naples. There he devoted
himself entirely to literature, translating the whole of
the New Testament, and carrying his great controversial
work against the Jews and Gentiles onwards to comple-
tion.
Ambrozio Traversari, Manetti's master in Greek,
was of a different stamp from those who felt the
neo-pagan impulse of the classical revival; yet he owed
His ill-
treatment
by the
Medici.
Tra-
wersari.
I72 A. ZZTAEAAA’ Y SOC/E 7TY A 7T F/LOA’AºAVCE
His public
OCC?!,-
pations.
*
º
Eugenius
IV.
political influence and a high place among the leaders of
his age to humanistic enthusiasm. Born in Romagna,
and admitted while yet a child into the Monastery degli
Angeli at Florence, he gave early signs of his capacity
for literature. At a time when knowledge of Greek was
still a rare title to distinction, Traversari 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 Aretino, joined with
Niccoli and Poggio in earnest conversation.
It seemed as though he were destined to pursue a
peaceful student’s life among his books; and for this
career nature had marked out the little, meagre, lively
and laborious man. To be eminent in scholarship,
however, and to avoid the burdens of celebrity, was im-
possible in that age. Eugenius IV., while resident in
Florence, was so impressed with his literary eminence
and strength of character that he made him General of
the Camaldolese Order in 1431; and from this time for-
ward Traversari's life 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 mood to his Order and another to his
literary friends.
These men—Niccoli, Bruni, Aretino, Manetti, and
Traversari—formed the literary oligarchy who sur-
JL/TAEAEAR Y SOC/AE 7TV A T A/COAAAWCAE I73
rounded Cosimo de' Medici, and through their industry
and influence restored the siudies of antiquity at
Florence. A combination of external circumstances gave
an impulse to this activity. Eugenius IV. had been
expelled from Rome, and, as we have frequently had
occasion to mention, had fixed his headquarters in
Florence, whither, in 1438, he transferred the 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, of whom Gemistos Plethon was the
most distinguished, with cardinals and secretaries, now
took up their quarters in the city of the Medici. A
temporary building at Santa Maria Novella was erected
for the sessions of the council, 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 ecclesiastical, of this
council, the meeting of the Eastern and the Western
powers in conclave vividly impressed the imagination
of the Florentines, and communicated a more than tran-
sient impulse to their intellectual energies.
To pass on now to a later period, Cosimo, before his
death in 1464, had succeeded in rendering his family
necessary to the State of Florence. Both his son Piero,
called by the Florentines Il Gottoso, and his grandson
Lorenzo, who gained the title by which Machiavelli had
addressed him of the Magnificent, well understood the
parts they had to play. Piero, who was of a sickly
Piero de?
Medici.
I74 AZTEAAA’ Y SOC/E 7TY A 7T A/LOREAVCE
constitution, enjoyed his dignity for only five years, but
he had strengthened the position and influence of his
family by marrying his Son Lorenzo to Clarice degli
Orsini, of the princely Roman house.
fºrenzo Though Lorenzo neglected the pursuit of wealth,
Medici, whereby Cosimo had raised himself from insignificance
to the dictatorship of Florence, he surpassed his grand-
father in the use he made of literary patronage.
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
acknowledge for their leader the ablest by far of the
men of parts in Italy. He possessed one of those rare
natures, fitted to comprehend all knowledge and to
sympathise with the most diverse forms of life. While
he never for one moment relaxed his grasp on politics,
among philosophers 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 dis-
cernment and consummate taste. Pleasure-seekers
knew in him the libertine, who jousted with the boldest,
danced and masqueraded with the merriest, sought
adventures in the streets at night, and joined the people
in their carnival festivities.
º ſº º This, then, was the man round whom the greatest
/ formed his scholars assembled, at whose table Sat Angelo Poliziano,
entourage.
Cristoforo Landino, Marsilio Ficino, Giovanni Pico
della Mirandola, Leo Battista Alberti, Michael Angelo
JC/TAEA'AA' V SOC/E TV. A 7" Aſ/LOA&AEAVCE I75
Buonarroti, Luigi Pulci. The mere enumeration of these
names suffices to awake a crowd of memories in the
mind of those to whom Italian art and poetry are dear.
Lorenzo’s villas, where this brilliant circle met for grave
discourse or social converse, heightening the Sober
pleasures of Italian country life with all that wit and
learning could produce, have been so often sung by
poets and celebrated by historians, that Careggi, Caffa-
giolo, and Poggio a Cajano, are no less familiar to us
than the studious shades of Academe.
To speak first of Ficino When he was a youth of Ficino.
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
delicate, his sensibilities acute; the temper of his intel-
lect, 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 unbelief or want
of morals by the authority of the classics. Ficino
remained throughout his life 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. He was forty-four years of age
when he finished the translation of Plato's works into
Latin. This was followed by a life of the philosopher,
and with a treatise on the Platonic Doctrine of Immor-
tality. The importance of his other contributions to
philosophy consists in the impulse he gave to Platonic
176 M.I.T.A.R.A.A. Y SOCIETY AT FLOREAVCE
Pico della,
Mºranz-
dola.
studies. That he did not comprehend Plato, or distin-
guish his philosophy 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.
Among those we have mentioned who appeared at
Lorenzo's receptions, in 1484, was a young man of
princely birth and of striking beauty. “Nature,” wrote
Poliziano, “Seemed to have showered on this man, or
hero, all her gifts. He was tall and finely moulded :
from his face a something of divinity shone forth.
Acute, and gifted with prodigious memory, in his studies
he was indefatigable, in his style perspicuous and
eloquent. You could not say whether his talents or his
moral qualities conferred on him the greater lustre.
Familiar with all branches of philosophy, and the master
of many languages, he stood on high above the reach of
praise.’ This was Giovanni Pico della Mirandola, whose
portrait in the Uffizi Gallery, with its long brown hair
and penetrating grey eyes, compels attention even from
those who know not whom it is supposed to represent.
He was little more than twenty when he came to
Florence. His personal attractions, noble manners,
splendid style of life, 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 amuse-
ments of his age.
AZZTE/e A A' V SOC/AE ZTV. A 7" /º/, OA&AEAVCAE I77
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 Renaissance—more com-
pletely realised. There is even reason to regret that,
together with the follies of youth, he put aside the
collection of his Latin poems which Poliziano praised,
and took no pains to preserve those Italian verses, the
loss whereof we deplore no less than those of Lionardo
da Vinci. While he continued to live as became a
Count of Mirandola, he personally inclined each year
to graver and more abstruse studies and to greater
austerity, until at last the prince was merged in the
philosopher, the man of letters in the mystic.
Pico's abilities displayed themselves in earliest boy-
hood. 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, philosophy, and Oriental languages.
He afterwards continued his education at Paris, the
headquarters of scholastic theology. His powerful
memory must have served him in good stead ; it is
recorded that a single reading fixed the language and
the matter of what he studied on his mind for ever.
Nor was this faculty for retaining knowledge accom-
panied by any sluggishness of mental power. To what
extent he relied on his powers of debate, as well as on his
vast stores of erudition, was proved by the publication
N
The
dignity of
his life.
EI is learn-
Žng and
piety.
178 A.ZTEAAA’ Y SOCIETY A 7" A Y.OA&EAVCAE
JHis con-
ception of
the unity
of know-
Zedge.
of the famous nine hundred theses at Rome in 1486.
These questions seem to have been constructed in
defence of the Platonic mysticism which had already
begun to absorb his attention. The philosophers and
theologians who were challenged to contend with him
in argument had the whole list offered to their choice.
Pico was prepared to maintain each and all of his
positions without further preparation. Ecclesiastical
prudence, however, prevented the champions of Ortho-
doxy from descending into the arena. They found it
Safer to prefer a charge of heresy against him, and his
theses were condemned in a brief of Innocent VIII.,
dated August 3, 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
intelligence 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, and then pardoned, by two such Popes, is one
of the curious anomalies of that age.
To harmonise the Christian and classical tradition
was a problem that Manetti, as we have seen, had
crudely attempted. Pico approached it in a more
philosophical spirit, and resolved to devote his whole life
to the task. Yet he was not intent so much on merely
reconciling hostile systems of thought, or on confuting
the errors of the Jews and Gentiles. He had conceived
the great idea of the unity of knowledge; and having
JL/TAERARY SOCIETY A 7" F/LORAEAVCE I79
acquired the omne scibile of his century, he sought to
seize the Soul of truth that animates all systems.
Chance brought him at this time into contact with
a Jew who had a copy of the Cabbala for sale. Into
this jungle of abstruse learning Pico plunged with all
the ardour of his powerful intellect. Asiatic fancies,
Alexandrian myths, Christian doctrines, Hebrew tradi-
tions, are so wonderfully blended in that labyrinthine
commentary that Pico believed he had discovered the
key to his great problem, the quintessence of all truth.
It seemed to him that the Science of the Greek and the
faith of the Christian could only be understood in the
light of the Cabbala. Death, however, overtook him
before the book intended to demonstrate this discovery
could be written. He died at the age of thirty-one,
on the day that Charles VIII. made his entry into
Florence.
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. He obtained the Chair of Rhetoric and
Poetry in 1457, and continued till his death in 1504 to
profess Latin literature at Florence. While Ficino and
Pico represented the study of philosophy, he devoted
himself exclusively to Scholarship, annotating Horace
and Virgil, and translating Pliny’s Natural Histories.
A marked feature in his professorial labours was the
attention he paid to the Italian poets. In 1460 he
The eac-
position of
his theory
invier-
Tupted by
death.
Landino.
Jef M
N 2
I So JA 7TAZAAA’ Y SOC/E 7"Y A 7" FLOA’AºAVCE
Leo
Battista
Allberti.
began to lecture on Petrarch, and in 1481 he published
an edition of Dante with voluminous commentaries.
Though he is now best known in connection with his
Dantesque studies, one of his Latin works, the Camal-
dolese Discussions, will always retain peculiar 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.
The distinguished place allotted in this dialogue to
Leo Battista Alberti, who is best known as an architect,
proves the singular regard in which this most remark-
able 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 Renaissance. Physical strength
and dexterity were given to him at birth in measure
equal to his mental faculties. His insight into every
branch of knowledge seemed intuitive, and his command
of the arts was innate. At the age of twenty he com-
posed the comedy of Philodoarius, which passed for an
antique, and was published by the Aldi as a 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 delight to scientific judges.
/L/7/2/CAA’ V SOC/E 7" V A 7" A.A.O.RAEAVCAE I8 I
He painted pictures, and wrote three books on painting;
practised architecture, and compiled ten books on this
Subject. Of his paintings, chiefly portraits, nothing
remains; and of his greatness as an architect we shall
have more to say.
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 republic, 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 Barto-
lommeo Scala, the miller's son, who lived to be the
Chancellor of Florence. The splendour of that office
had been considerably diminished since the days when
Bruni, Aretino, 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.
Angelo Poliziano, whose name has been so often
introduced, was born in 1454. This name, so famous in
Italian literature, is a Latinised version of his birthplace,
Montepulciano. His father, Benedetto Ambrogini, was
a man of Some consequence, but of Small means, who fell
a victim to the enmity of private foes among his fellow-
Scala.
Poliziano.
I82 L/TAEA'A R Y SOC/E 7")^ A 7" FLOA’AºAVCAE
EI is re-
markable
scholar-
ship.
Defects of
Style.
citizens, leaving his widow and five young children
almost wholly unprovided for. This accounts for the
obscurity that long enveloped the history of Poliziano's
childhood, and also for the doubts expressed about the
Surname of his family. At the age of ten he came to
study in the University of Florence, where he profited
by the teaching of Landino and Ficino. The precocity
of his genius displayed itself early in Latin poems and
Greek epigrams, and as early as the year 1470 in the
commencement of a Latin translation of Homer, which
Aretino had attempted.
The fame of this great undertaking, which for some
unexplained reason did not extend beyond the Fifth Book,
attracted universal attention to Poliziano. It is probable
that Ficino first introduced him to Lorenzo, who received
the young student into his own house and made himself
responsible for his future fortunes. Before Poliziano
reached the age of thirty, he 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, Poliziano 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 litera-
ture.
The Spirit of Roman literature lived again in Poli-
Ziano. He wrote Latin as if it were a living language,
not culling phrases from Cicero or reproducing the
I/7 ERA R V SOCIETY A 7" F/LORAE/VCE I83
periods of Livy; but trusting to his instinct and his
ear with the confidence of conscious power. Yet it
must be conceded 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 de-
Scriptions are often more diffuse than vigorous. Nor
Will he bear comparison with some more modern
Scholars on the point of accuracy. The merit, however,
remains to him of having been the most copious and
least slavish interpreter of the ancient to the modern
world.
As a professor, none of the humanists achieved more His
brilliant successes than Poliziano. Among his pupils sº CºS
could be numbered the chief students of Europe. Not fessor.
to mention Italians, it will suffice to record the names of
Reuchlin, Grocin, Linacre, and the Portuguese Tesiras,
who carried each to his own country the culture they
had gained in Florence. The first appearance of Poli-
Ziano in the lecture-room was not calculated to win
admiration. Ill-formed, with eyes that had something
of a squint in them, and nose of disproportionate size,
he seemed more fit to be a solitary scholar than the
Orpheus of the classic literatures. 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
ungainliness of the teacher was forgotten; charmed
through their ears and their intellect, they eagerly
I84 AA 7TAZA'AA' Y SOCIETY A 7" FLOA'EAVCE
Płis re-
gard for
Ilorenzo
de’
Medici.
The
gloomy
C27°C2/???-
stances of
his death.
drank in his eloquence, applauding the improvisations
Wherewith he illustrated the spirit and intentions of
his authors, and silently absorbing the vast and well-
Ordered stores of knowledge he so prodigally scattered.
To complete this sketch, without touching upon the
vast range of subjects which formed the topic of his
lectures and of his publications, we are bound, in
illustration of his character, to add that Poliziano was
deficient in the noble quality of self-respect. He
flattered Lorenzo and begged for presents, in phrases
that remind us of Filelfo’s prosiest epigrams. That a
Scholar should vaunt his own achievements 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.
At the same time it must be allowed that to overpraise
Lorenzo from a scholar’s point of view would have been
difficult, while the affection that bound the student
to his patron was genuine. Poliziano, who watched
Lorenzo in his last moments, described the scene of his
death in a letter, marked by touching sorrow, addressed
to Antiquari; and by the Latin monody which he left
unfinished he proved that grief for his dead master
could inspire his muse with loftier strains than any
expectation of future favours while he lived had done.
Two years after Lorenzo's death Poliziano himself
died, dishonoured and Suspected by the l’iagnoſti.
Savonarola, as we have seen, had swept away all the
festive appliances and the light-hearted indulgences of
/L/7/2/0/1/0 V SOCZAZ ZY A T /7/LO/CAAVCAE I85
Lorenzo's holiday reign. Instead of rispetti and ballate,
the refrain of Misereres filled the city, and the
Dominican's prophecy of blood and ruin drowned with
its Solemn reverberations the loftier disquisitions of the
advocates of knowledge. Poliziano's lament for Lorenzo
had, therefore, become one for his own fate: “Oh that
my head were waters, and mine eyes a fountain of tears,
that I might weep day and might ! So mourns the
widowed turtle-dove; so mourns the dying Swan ; SO
mourns the nightingale.' But this at least of grace the
gods allowed Poliziano, that he should die in the same
year as his friend Pico della Mirandola, a few weeks
before the deluge prophesied by Savonarola burst upon
Italy.
The open-
£ng for
scholars
at Rome.
I86
X
MEN OF LETTERS AT ROME AND NAPLE'S
§º N passing from Florence to Rome, we are
G §l struck with the fact that neither in letters
nor in art had the papal city any real life
gº - ~
sº
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 niggard-
liness of another ; petted and caressed by Nicholas W.,
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 vicissi-
tudes at Rome. Very few of the scholars who shed
lustre on the reigns of liberal Pontiffs were Romans, nor
did the nobles of the Papal States affect the fame of
patrons.
In spite of these variable conditions, one class of
humanists never failed at Rome. T)uring the period of
schisms and councils, when Pope and Anti-Pope were
waging wordy warfare in the courts of congregated
Christendom, it was impossible to dispense with the
services of practised writers and accomplished Orators.

MEAW OF LETTAEA'S A T ROME AND AWAPIAS 187
As composers of diplomatic despatches, letters, bulls and
protocols; as disseminators of squibs and invectives; as
redactors of state papers; as pleaders, legates, ambas-
sadors and private secretaries—scholars Swarmed around
the person of the Pontiff. Men of acute intellect 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 Rome. They soon became a
separate and influential class, divided from the nobility
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.
* It was from Florence that Rome received her in-
tellectual stimulus. The connection began in 1402,
when Boniface IX. appointed Poggio to the post of Apos-
tolic Secretary, which he held for fifty years. In 1405,
Lionardo Bruni obtained the same office from Inno-
cent VII. The powerful personality of these men, in
whom the energies of the humanistic revival were con-
centrated, impressed the Roman Curia with a stamp
it never lost. During the insignificant pontificate of
Martin W., while the Curia, resided in exile at Florence,
the chain which was binding Rome to the city of Italian
culture continued to gain strength. The result of all
the discords which rent the Church in the first half of
the fifteenth century was to Italianise the Papal See ;
nor did anything contribute to this end more powerfully
Tho
Papal
Court
Żmbibes
culture
from Flo-
7'07?, Ce.
V
I88 /k/EZV OF LETTERS A T ROME AAVD AWAP/LES
Eugenius
Flavio
Biondo.
than the Florentime traditions of three successive Popes
—Martin W., Eugenius TV., and Nicholas W.
Eugenius was a Venetian of good family, who in-
herited considerable wealth from his father. In 1431
he was raised to the Papacy, but the disturbed state of
Rome 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, as we have seen;
and, 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 re-
ceived from him the title of Apostolic Secretary, and
was appointed interpreter between the Greeks and
Italians at the council of the two Churches. Even the
paganising Aretino was enrolled upon the list of papal
secretaries, while Filelfo and Decembrio, who added
lustre at this epoch to the court of Milan, were invited
by Eugenius with highly flattering promises.
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 con-
scientious students of the time. Though Biondo had
but little 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 illus-
trate the antiquities of Italy in a series of historical,
topographical, and archaeological studies. In estimating
the value of Biondo's contributions to history, we must
remember that he had no previous compilations whereon
MEN OF LETTERS AT KOMAE AND AWAPLAES 189
to base his own researches. His History of the Decline
and Fall of the Roman Empire, conceived in an age
devoted to stylistic niceties, and absorbed by the attrac-
tions of renascent Hellenism, inspires our strongest
admiration. Yet its author failed in his lifetime to win
the distinctions he deserved. Though he held the office
of Apostolic Secretary under four Popes, his marriage
stopped the way to ecclesiastical preferment. Eugenius
could appreciate a man of his stamp better than
Nicholas W., whose special tastes inclined to elegant
humanism rather than to ponderous erudition.
The lives of all the humanists illustrate the honours
and the wealth secured by learning for her votaries in
the Renaissance. No example, however, is so striking
as that furnished by the biography of Nicholas W., of
whose measures to add to the power and beauty of Rome
we have already spoken. Tommaso Parentucelli was
born at Pisa in 1398. While he was still an infant, his
parents, in spite of their poverty and humble station,
which might have been expected to shield them from
political tyranny, were exiled to Sarzana ; and at the
age of nine he lost his father at that place.
The young Tommaso found means to go to the
University of Bologna, and after six years’ residence his
destitute means led him to seek work in Florence. He
must already have acquired some reputation, since
Rinaldo degli Albizzi received him as house-tutor to his
children for one year, at the expiration of which time he
entered the service of Palla degli Strozzi in a similar
Nicholas
W.
BI's educa-
tion and
early life.
vº
190 MEN OF LETTERS AT ROME AAWD NAPLES
His rapid
7°ise to the
Papacy.
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 fully
launched in life. The education he had received at
Bologna qualified him for office in the Church, while his
two years’ residence in Florence had rendered him
familiar with men of polite learning and of gentle
breeding. Niccolo degli Albergati, Archbishop of
Bologna, became his patron, and appointed him con-
troller of his household. Albergati was one of the
cardinals of Eugenius IV., a man of considerable
capacity, and alive to the intellectual interests of his
age. When he followed the papal court to Florence,
Tommaso attended him; and here began the period
which was destined to influence his subsequent career.
He soon became familiar with Cosimo de' Medici,
and no meetings of the learned were complete without
him.
Soon after the death of Albergati in 1443, Eugenius
promoted him to the See of Bologna ; a cardinal's hat
followed within a few months; and in 1447 he was
elected Pope of Rome. So Sudden an elevation from
obscurity and poverty to the highest place in Christen-
dom has rarely happened ; nor is it easy even now to
understand what combinations of unsuccessful intrigues
among the princes of the Church enabled this little,
. Peter's Seat.
º bright-eyed, restless-minded scholar to creep into
The rejoicings with which the humanists hailed the
MEAV OF LETTERS AT ROME AAWD AWAPLES 191
elevation of one of their own number to the papal
throne may be readily imagined ; nor were their golden
expectations, founded on a previous knowledge of his
liberality in all things that pertained to learning,
destined to be disappointed. The most permanent
benefit conferred by Nicholas W. 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.
The profuse liberality of Nicholas towards the
scholars whom he employed in translating Greek works
into Latin brought him into relation with the whole
learned world of Italy. Among the humanists who
resided in his court at Rome, mention must be made of
Lorenzo Walla, who was appointed Apostolic Scriptor in
1447, and opened a School of eloquence in 1450; and of
Piero Candido Decembrio, who also was employed, but
about whom We shall hear more in connection with
scholarship at Naples and Milan. Our attention must
now be turned to a man who, even more than Nicholas
himself, might claim the right to give his own name to
this age of learning.
Gian Francesco Poggio Bracciolini is better known
in the annals of literature as Poggio Fiorentino, though
he was not made a burgher of Florence until late in life.
Born in 1880 at Terranova, a village of the Florentine
contado, he owed his education to Florence. During
his youth he supported himself by copying MSS. for the
Florentine market. Coluccio Salutati and Niccolo de'
The satis-
faction
given to
scholars.
NV
Hºs
liberal
treatme?vt
of them.
Poggio.
192 *
MEN OF LETTERS A 7" ROME AAWD AWA PLES
His great
ability
and
learning.
The power
of his
invective.
Niccoli befriended the young student, who entered as
early as the year 1402 or 1403 into the Papal Chancery.
Though Poggio's life for the following half-century was
spent in the service of the Roman Curia, he refused to
take orders in the Church, and remained at heart a
humanist. His duties and his tastes alike made him a
frequent traveller, and not the least of the benefits con-
ferred by him upon posterity are his pictures of foreign
IYlällllel’S.
In literature he embraced the whole range of con-
temporary studies, making his mark as a public orator,
a Writer of rhetorical treatises and dialogues, a pane-
gyrist of the dead, a violent impeacher and impugner
of the living, a translator from the Greek, an elegant
epistolographer, a grave historian, and a facetious com-
piler 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. His controversial writings passed
for models of distinctive eloquence, his satires on the
clergy for masterpieces of Sarcastic humour, his Floren-
time History for a Supreme achievement in the noblest
Latin manner. Yet the whole of this miscellaneous
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.
Poggio, next to Filelfo, was the most formidable
gladiator in that age of literary duellists. ‘In his
MEAV OF LETTERS AT ROME AAVD AWAPLES 193
invectives he displayed such vehemence,’ writes Wes-
pasiano, “that the whole world was afraid of him.’
Even Alfonso of Naples found it prudent to avert his
anger by a bribe; and the overtures made to him by
Filippo Maria Wisconti, with the consideration he
received from Cosimo de' Medici, testified to the desire
of princes for the goodwill of a spiteful and unscrupulous
pamphleteer. His quarrel with Filelfo, which was more
personal than literary, extended 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. The
History of the Florentine Republic, written in continua-
tion 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.
Any survey of the court of Nicholas W. would be in-
complete without some notice of the Cardinal Bessarion.
Early in life he rose to high station in the Greek Church,
and attended the Council 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. His palace at Rome became the
meeting-place of scholars of all nations, where refugee
Greeks in particular were sure of finding hearty welcome.
The fortunes of Roman scholarship kept varying with
the personal tastes of each successive Pope. Calixtus III.
* O
Cardinal
Bessariom.
The for-
tunes of
scholar-
194 MEAV OF LETTERS A T ROME AAVD AWAPLES
ship follow
the cha-
aracter of
successive
Popes.
differed wholly from his predecessor, Nicholas W.
Learned in theology and mediaeval Science, he was dead
to the interests of humanistic literature. Vespasiano
assures us that, when he entered the Vatican Library
and saw its Greek and Latin authors in their red and
silver bindings, instead of praising the munificence of
Nicholas, he exclaimed : ‘Behold whereon he spent the
substance of the Church of God ' ' AFneas Sylvius
Piccolomini, on the other hand, ranked high among the
humanists. As an Orator, courtier, state Secretary, and
man of letters, he shared the general qualities of the
class to which he belonged. While a fellow-student of
Beccadelli 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 familiar letters, histories, cosmo-
graphical treatises, rhetorical disquisitions, apoph-
thegms, and commentaries, written in a fluent and
picturesque Latin style, distinguished him for wit and
talent from the merely laborious students of his age. A
change, however, came over him when he assumed the
tiara with the title of Pius II. Learning in Italy owed
but little to his patronage, and, though he strengthened
the position of the humanists at Rome by founding the
College of Abbreviators, he was more eager to defend
Christendom against the Turk than to make his See the
capital of culture. Paul II. was chiefly famous for his
persecution of the Rºman Platonists, as we have already
noticed; and Sixtus IV., though he deserves to be
MEAV OF LETTERS AT ROME AAWD NAPLAES 195
remembered as the Pontiff who opened the Vatican
Library to the public, plays no prominent part in the
history of scholarship. 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.
Under these Popes humanism had to flourish, as
best it could, in the Society of private individuals. Ac-
cordingly, we find the Roman Scholars forming among
themselves academies and learned circles. Of these the
most eminent took its name from its founder, Julius
Pomponius Laetus. He was a bastard of the princely
- house of the Sanseverini, to whom, when he became
famous and they were anxious for his friendship, he
penned the celebrated epistle : ‘Pomponius Laetus to his
kinsmen and relatives, greeting. What you ask cannot
be. Farewell.’ Pomponius derived his scholarship from
Valla, and devoted all his energies to Latin literature ;
refusing, it is even said, to learn Greek, lest it should
distract him from his favourite studies. Men praised in
him a second Cato for Sobriety of conduct, frugal diet,
and rural industry. 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. His celebrity was chiefly acquired by his
forming an academy for the avowed purpose of pro-
secuting the study of Latin antiquities, and promoting
the adoption of antique customs into modern life. It is
only from the language in which its members refer to
The
academy
of Julius
Pomponi-
7ts Laºtºls.
O 2
196 MEN OF LETTERS AT ROME AAWD AWAPLES
Lætus that we gain a due notion of his influence ; for
he left but little behind him as an author. He lived 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, and buried in S. Sal-
wator in Lauro.
The In passing down to Naples, we find a marked change
4. of 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 com-
pliments 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 Rome; while
the peculiar advantages, both political and Social, which,
even under the Sway of the Medicean family, made
Florence a real republic of letters, existed in no other
town in Italy.
The en- Each of the dynasties which held the throne of the
º Two Sicilies could boast a patron of literature. Robert
given by
ºff. of Anjou was proud to call himself the friend of
| Petrarch, and Boccaccio found the flame of inspiration
J at his court. After making all deductions for the
flattery of official historiographers, it is clear that
Alfonso of Aragon found his most enduring satisfaction
MEAV OF LETTERS AT ROME AAVD MAPLES 197
in the company of students, listening 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.
Among the humanists who stood nearest to the
person of this monarch, Antonio Beccadelli, called from
his birthplace Il Panormita, deserves the first place.
Born at Palermo in 1394, he received his education at
Siena, where he was a fellow-student with Æneas
Sylvius Piccolomini, afterwards Pius II. The city of
Siena was notorious throughout Italy for luxury of
living. Here, therefore, it may be presumed that
Beccadelli in his youth enjoyed the experiences which
he afterwards celebrated in Hermaphroditus. Nothing is
more striking in that amazing—coffection-eſ-elegies than
the frankness of their author, the free and liberal
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
with applause by the grey-headed Guarino da Verona,
extolled 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. When the Emperor Sigismund crowned Becca-
delli poet at Siena in 1433, he only added the weight
Becca-
delli.
198 MEW OF LETTERS A T ROME AAWD AWAPLAES
Becomes
notorious,
wich, and
Tespected.
Valla.
of Imperial approval to the verdict of the lettered
public.
The Church could not, however, tolerate the scandal.
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. Eugenius IV. proscribed the reading of it
under penalty of excommunication. Yet all this made
little difference to Beccadelli's reputation. He lectured
with honour at Bologna and Pavia, received a stipend
from the Wisconti, and in 1435 was summoned to the
court of Naples. Alfonso raised him to the rank of
noble, and continually employed him near his person,
enjoying his wit and taking special delight in his
readings of classic authors. As official historiographer,
Beccadelli committed to writing the memorable deeds
and sayings of his royal master. As ambassador 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, cannot
be adduced.
Yet the position of Lorenzo Walla, at the same court,
is even more remarkable. While Beccadelli urged the
levity of youth in extenuation of his heathenism, and
spoke with late regret of his past follies, Walla showed
MEAV OF LETTERS A T ROME A/VD AWAP/CAES 199
the steady front of a deliberate critic, hostile at all
points to the traditions and the morals of the Church.
The parents of this remarkable man were natives of
Piacenza, though, having probably been born at Rome,
he assumed to himself the attribute of Roman. At the
age of twenty-four he tried to get the post of Apostolic
Secretary, but without success. In 1431 we hear of
him at Pavia, and at this period he became the Supreme
authority on points of Latin style in Italy by the
publication of his Elegantia. True to his own genius,
Walla displayed in this masterly treatise the qualities
that gave him a place among the Scholars of his day.
When Alfonso invited Walla 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,
Walla's treatise on Constantine's Donation, which ap-
peared in 1440, assumed the character of a political
pamphlet. 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
Płºs
attacks
on the
Papacy.
2OO MEAW OF LETTERS A T ROME AAWD. NAPLAES
was in store for a worldly and Simoniacal priesthood, if
the Popes refused to forego their usurped temporalities,
and to confess the shame that criticism had unmasked.
War to the death was thus declared between Walla, and
Rome. The storm his treatise excited raged at first so
wildly that Walla thought it prudent to take flight. He
crossed the sea to Barcelona, and remained there a
short 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 authority of the
Apostles' Creed.
º The friars, whom Walla attacked with frigid scorn,
70thºng to - º
outcry, and whose empire over the minds of men he was
engaged in undermining, could not be expected to leave
him quiet. Sermons from all 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 interro-
gatories of the inquisitors Walla replied that “he believed
as Mother Church believed : it was quite true that she
knew nothing : yet he believed as she believed.' That
was all they could extract from the disdainful scholar,
who, after openly defying them, walked away to the
ME/W OF LETTERS A 7" ROME A/VD AWAP/CAES 20I
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 W. summoned
Walla to Rome, not to answer for his heresies and insults
at the papal bar, but to receive the post of Apostolic
Writer, with magnificent appointments. The entry of
Walla into the Roman 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 dangerous antagonist to
silence. He simply wanted to attach an illustrious
scholar to his court, and to engage him in the task of
translating from the Greek. To heresy and Scepticism
he showed the indifference of a tolerant and enlightened
spirit. With the friars he had nothing whatever in
common. The attitude assumed by Nicholas on this
occasion illustrates the benefit which learning in the
Renaissance derived from the worldliness of the Papacy.
It was not until the schism of the Teutonic Churches,
and the intrusion of the Spaniards into Italy, that the
court of Rome consistently adopted a policy of persecu-
tion and repression. The rest of Walla's biography is
taken up with his quarrels with Poggio and other men
of mark. He died in 1457.
While the academy of Pomponius Laetus flourished
at Rome, that of Naples was no less active under the
presidency of Jovianus Pontanus. When death had
broken up the brilliant circle surrounding Alfonso the
Called by
Nicholas
to Rome.
The
academy
of Jovi-
aïvus Pom-
ta?vus.
2O2 A/AEAV OF LETTERS A T ROME AAVD AWAPLAES
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 culti-
wated scholars. Born in 1426, he settled there in his
early manhood, and Beccadelli introduced him to his royal
patrons. During the reigns of Ferdinand I., Alfonso II,
and Ferdinand II., 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 VIII. entered Naples as
a conqueror, Pontanus greeted him with a panegyrical
oration, proving himself more courtly than loyal to the
princes he served. Throughout his writings he shows
himself to have been an Original and vigorous thinker, a
complete master of Latin Scholarship, unwilling to abide
contented with bare imitation, and bent upon expressing
the facts of modern life, the actualities of personal
emotion, in a style that might compete with good
models of antiquity. 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. He died in 1503.
2O3
XI /
MILAN, MANTUA, AND FERIZARA
;:WING to the marked diversity exhibited
& Aſºº Yº 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 the Two Sicilies were not themselves
addicted to serve scholarship, the lighter kinds of
writing flourished there abundantly, and Naples gave
her own peculiar character to literature. This was
not the case with Milan. Yet Milan, during the reigns
of the last Wisconti and the first Sforza, claims attention,
owing to the accident of Filelfo’s residence at the ducal
court. Filippo Maria Wisconti was, as we have seen, one
of the most repulsive tyrants who have ever disgraced a
civilised country. Shut up within his palace walls
among astrologers, minions, and monks, carefully
protected from the public eye, and watched by double
sets of mutually suspicious body-guards, it was impossible
that he should extend the free encouragement to learned
men which we admire at Naples. The history of
humanism at Milan has, therefore, less to do with the
city or the ducal circle than with the private labours

2O4 MILAN, MANTUA, A WD FERRARA
of students allured to Lombardy by the promise or
expectancy of high pay.
ſºme Piero Candido Decembrio began life as Filippo
Maria's secretary. To his vigorous pen the student of
Italian 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 recollection,
though his works, original and translated, if we may
f trust his epitaph in S. Ambrozio, amounted to 127
/ books when he died in 1447.
\/ria. Francesco Filelfo was born in 1398 at Tolentino in the
March of Ancona. He studied grammar, rhetoric, and
Latin literature 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. After being
admitted citizen of Venice by public decree he was
appointed secretary to the Baily (Bailo, or Consul-
General) of Constantinople. There he put himself at
once under the tuition of John Chrysoloras, the brother
of Manuel, whose influence at the Imperial court
brought Filelfo into favour with John Palaeologus. The
young Italian student, having speedily acquired famili-
arity with the Greek tongue, received the titles of
Secretary and Counsellor, and executed some important
diplomatic missions for his Imperial master.
MILAN, MANTUA, AAWD FERRA RA 2O5
After his marriage to Theodora, the daughter of his
tutor Chrysoloras, Filelfo received an offer of the Chair
of Eloquence at Venice, and landed there with his wife
and infant son in 1427. The object of his journey
to Constantinople had been fully 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. His
proud boast, frequently repeated in after-life, that no
man living 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
Virgil, and the Greek of Homer and of Xenophon with
equal versatility, was not altogether an empty vaunt.
Taken at their lowest Valuation, the claims of Filelſo,
well founded in fact, mark him out as the most universal
scholar of his age.
His 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
their 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. He was not destined
to remain there long, however, for the disturbed state
of the town rendered teaching impossible; and when
flattering proposals arrived from the Florentines, he set
His great
acquire-
ments.
Successive
envgage-
77vents.
2O6 MILAN, MANTUA, AAWD FERRAA’A
FI's
feuds at
Florence.
Ple retires
to Siena.
off in haste and transferred his family across the
Apennines.
They were halcyon days for Filelfo during his early
residence in Florence, while he was still enjoying the
friendship of learned men, receiving new engagements
from the university, and when he had not yet won the
hatred of the Medicean faction. But he was soon in-
volved in feud with the Florentine scholars. His arro-
gance, the meanness of his private life, and his impru-
dence in public, Were so great, that even the men who
invited him became his bitter foes. Niccolo de’ Niccoli,
always jealous of Superiority and apt to take offence,
was the first with whom he quarrelled; then followed
Carlo Aretino and Ambrozio Traversari; until 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 himself
the public opponent of Cosimo.
Already in the spring of 1433 he had been stabbed
in the face, while Walking to the university one morning,
by a hired bravo; and when he accepted an invitation
from Antonio Petrucci to lecture for two years at Siena
he hired a Greek to retaliate upon his foes in Florence.
It seems incredible that even the foulness of Poggio's
invectives, and the fury of Filelfo's satires, should
account for the intervention of assassins. However, the
most honourable invitations now began to shower upon
him. The Council of Basle, the Venetian Senate, the
MIZAAW, MAAWTUA, AND FERRARA 2O7
Emperor of the East, Eugenius IV., the Universities of
Perugia and Bologna, and the Duke of Milan, applied for
his services.
He closed first with the offers of the Senate of
Bologna, but after a sojourn there of only a few months
he transferred himself to Milan, where he had a flatter-
ing reception, in 1440, from Filippo Maria Wisconti.
We find him, during his residence at Milan, continually
engaged in the exercise of rhetoric and in various
literary work. He had the misfortune at this time to lose
his wife Theodora, to whom he was much attached, but
he soon married again. During the disasters that befell
the State of Milan on the death of Filippo Maria, Filelfo
at first espoused the cause of the burghers, but was soon
afterwards content to accept the patronage of Francesco
Sforza. His avarice, and the literary scurrility by
which he sought to profit, had become a distinguishing
trait in his character.
But, by fair means or by foul, Filelfo had managed
to Secure a splendid reputation throughout Italy. His
journey to Naples in 1453 resembled a triumphal pro-
gress. Nicholas W. entertained him with distinction;
Alfonso dubbed him knight, and placed the poet's
laurel on his brow with his own hands. As he passed
through their capitals, the princes received him like
an equal. At Ferrara, he enjoyed the hospitalities of
Duke Borso, at Mantua the friendship of the Mar-
chese Lodovico Gonzaga ; the terrible Gismondo Pan-
dolfo Malatesta welcomed him in Rimini, and the
His life
at Milant.
The
honour
shown
him at
carious
CO2(7°ts.
2O8 MILAAV, MAAVTUA, AAWD FERRARA
|His ill
Success at
Rome, and
'return to
Milan.
His career
ends at
Florence.
General Jacopo Piccinino in his camp at Fossom-
brome.
Until the death of Francesco Sforza, Milan continued
to be the city of Filelfo's choice. After that event he
turned his thoughts to Rome. Pius II., Paul II., and
Sixtus IV. in succession had testified their regard for
him. At last, in 1474, he had the offer of a professorial
chair from the last-named Pope, and the promise of the
first vacant post in the Apostolic Chancery. Again the
old man of seventy-seven years crossed the Apennines,
and began his lectures in Rome. The vigorous old
scholar at first felt that all his previous life had been
a tedious prologue to this blissful play. The usual
clouds, however, soon appeared: quarrels with the
Pope's treasurer and with the Pope himself, with the
usual accompaniment of fierce invectives and scathing
letters, leading to his return to Milan in 1476, to find his
third wife dead of the plague, and buried on the eve of
his arrival. -
Filelfo's last journey was undertaken in 1481. Ill
at ease and sore of heart, the veteran of Scholarship still
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 just managed to reach
Florence, where he died of dysentery, a fortnight after
his arrival, at the age of eighty-three. The Florentines
buried him in the church of the Annunziata.
MILA W, MANTUA, AAWD FERRARA 209
Some notice should be given to Vittorino da Feltre,
who has been mentioned as having been engaged in
educating the Sons of the Marquis of Mantua. His
father's name was Bruto de' Rambaldoni; but, having
been born at Feltre in the year 1378, he took from his
birthplace the surname by which he is best known.
His early studies were carried on at Padua, from which
town he appears to have moved about the year 1417 to
Venice; and, having learnt Greek there, he returned to
his old university as professor of rhetoric. We find that,
as soon as he was settled again in Padua, he opened a
school for a fixed number of young men, Selected without
regard to rank or wealth. Becoming dissatisfied with
this, he moved a second time to Venice in 1423, where
he continued his work as a private tutor. By this time
he had acquired considerable reputation as an educator,
and the Marquis of Mantua, Gian Francesco Gonzaga,
being in want of a master for his children, the choice
fell on Wittorino. His mode of education had much of
the modern character, combining athletics with study.
He lived to a hale and hearty old age; and when he died,
in 1446, it was found that the illustrious scholar, after
enjoying for so many years the liberality of his princely
patron, had not accumulated enough money to pay for
his own funeral. Whatever he possessed he spent in
charity during his lifetime. Few lives of which there is
any record in history are so perfectly praiseworthy as
Wittorino da Feltre's ; few men have more nobly realised
the idea of living for the highest objects of their age;
P
Vittorino
da Feltre.
LT
_2^
2 IO MILAN, MAAWTUA, AAWD FERRARA
The patro-
7tage ea:-
tended at
Ferrara.
Guarino
da
Verona.
few have succeeded in keeping themselves So wholly un-
spotted 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; but, though
the arts and letters flourished with exceeding brilliance
beneath the patrons of Boiardo, Ariosto, and Tasso, they
were but accessories to a splendid and voluptuous court
life.
The golden age of culture at Ferrara began in 1402,
when Niccolo III. 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 resembles in many points 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 Ravenna, and,
while still a lad of eighteen, travelled to Constantinople,
at the cost of a noble Venetian, Paolo Zane, in order to
learn Greek. After an absence of five years he returned
tº Venice, and began to lecture to crowded audiences.
ike all humanists, at that time, 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 sub-
stantial reputation as a teacher to which he owed the
invitation of Niccolo d’Este in 1429.
He was now a man of nearly sixty, the master of the
MILAN, MANTUA, AND FERRARA 2 II
two languages, and well acquainted with the method of His life at
instruction. The Marquis of Ferrara engaged him as Ferrara.
tutor to his illegitimate son Lionello, heir apparent to
his throne. For seven years Guarino devoted himself
wholly to the education of this youth, who passed for one
of the best scholars of his age. Amid the pleasure of
the chase, to which he was passionately devoted, and
the distractions of the gayest court in Italy, the young
prince found time to correspond on topics of Scholarship
with Poggio, Filelfo, Decembrio, and Francesco Barbaro.
His conversation turned habitually upon the fashionable
themes of antique ethics, and his favourite companions
were men of polite education. It is no wonder that the
humanists, who saw in him a future Augustus, deplored
his early death with unfeigned sorrow. The profile por-
trait of Lionello, in our National Gallery, may possibly
do him some injustice.
Guarino, like his friend Vittorino da Feltre, was His well.
celebrated for his method of teaching, and for the exact º
order of his discipline. Students flocked from all the tion.
cities of Italy to his lecture-room ; for, as soon as his
tutorial engagements with the prince permitted, he re-
ceived a public appointment as professor of eloquence.
In this post he laboured for many years, maintaining
his reputation as a student, and filling the universities
of Italy with his pupils. He was one of the few huma-
nists 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
P 2
2 I 2 MILAN, MAAWTUA, AAWD FERRARA
Aurispa.
i
of Verona, it was possible to say with truth that he had
realised the ideal of a temperate scholar’s life.
The name of Giovanni Aurispa must not be
omitted in connection with Ferrara. Born in 1869 at
Noto in Sicily, he lived to a great age, dying in 1459.
He, too, travelled in early youth to Constantinople, and
returned, laden with manuscripts and learning, to
profess the humanities in Italy. His life forms, there-
fore, a close parallel with that of both Guarino and
Filelfo. Aurispa, however, was gifted with a less un-
resting temper than Filelfo ; nor did he achieve the
same professional success as Guarino. In his school at
Ferrara, he enjoyed the calmer pleasures of a student's
life, ‘devoted,’ as Filelfo phrased it, ‘to the placid Muses.’
To give an account of all the minor courts, where
humanism flourished under the patronage of petty
princes, would be tedious and unprofitable. It is enough
to notice that the universities, in this age of indefati-
gable energy, kept forming Scholars eager to make their
way as Secretaries and tutors, while the nobles competed
for the honour and the profit to be derived from the ser–
vice of illustrious Wits and ready pens. The seeds of
classic culture were thus sown in every little city that
could boast its castle. But of the men thus trained, it
would be an ungenerous Omission to conclude without
recording the name of Vespasiano da Bisticci, from
whose Lives of Illustrious Men we have had so frequent
occasion to quote. Peculiar interest attaches to him as
the last of mediaeval Scribes, and at the same time the
M/ZAAV, MANTUA, AAWD FERRAAA 2 I 3
first of modern booksellers. Besides being the agent of
Cosimo de Medici, Nicholas W., and Frederick of Urbino,
Vespasiano supplied the foreign markets, sending manu-
Scripts 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 be superseded, and
When Scholars were already inquiring for news about
the art that saved expense and shortened the labour of
the student. Born in 1421 at Florence, he lived till
1498; so that, after having helped to form the three
greatest collections of manuscripts in Italy, he witnessed
the triumph of printing, and might have even handled
the Musæus issued from the Aldine press in 1493. Wes-
pasiano was no mere tradesman. His knowledge of the
books he sold was accurate; continual study enabled
him to overlook the copyists, and to vouch for the ex-
actitude of their transcripts. 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 he possessed rare merit. Personally ac-
quainted with the men of whom he wrote, he drew their
characters with praiseworthy succinctness and simpli-
city. The qualities he loves to celebrate are piety, chas-
tity, generosity, devotion to the cause of liberal culture,
and high-Souled patriotism. It is pleasant thus to
conclude with the character of a man so blameless
in his life, so charitable in his judgments, and so trust-
worthy in his record of contemporary history.
}
The
Italian
character
eacempli-
fied in
their art
products.
XII
THE FINE ARTS
; : T has been granted only to two nations, the
Greeks and the Italians, and to the
latter only at the time of the Renaissance,
to invest every place and variety of
intellectual energy with the form of art. Nothing
notable was produced in Italy between the thir-
teenth and the seventeenth centuries that did not bear
the stamp and character of fine art. If the methods
of Science may be truly said to regulate our modes
of thinking at the present time, it is no less true that,
during the Renaissance, art exercised a like controlling
influence. Not only was each department of the fine
arts practised with singular success; not only was the
national genius to a very large extent absorbed by
painting, sculpture, and architecture; but the aesthetic
impulse was more subtly and widely diffused than this
alone would imply.
As we travel through Italy at the present day, when
‘time, war, pillage, and purchase 'have done their worst
to denude the country of its treasures, we still marvel at
the incomparable and countless beauties stored in every

THAE F/AWE AA’ TS 2 I 5
burgh and hamlet. Pacing the picture-galleries of
Northern Europe, the country seats of English nobles,
and the palaces of Spain, the same reflection is still
forced upon us: how could Italy have done what she
achieved within so short a space of time 2 What must
the houses and the churches once have been from which
these spoils were taken, but which still remain So rich in
masterpieces ? Psychologically to explain this universal
capacity for the fine arts in the nation at this epoch is
perhaps impossible. Yet the fact remains that he who
would comprehend the Italians of the Renaissance must
study their art, and cling fast to that Ariadne-thread
throughout the labyrinthine windings of national
character. He must learn to recognise that herein lay
the sources of their intellectual strength as well as the
Secret of their intellectual weakness.
Architecture is always the first of the fine arts to
emerge from barbarism in the Service of religion and of
civic life. In no way is the characteristic diversity
of the Italian communities So noticeable as in their
buildings. Each district, each town, has a well-defined
peculiarity, reflecting the specific qualities of the inhabi-
tants, and the conditions under which they grew in
culture. Thus the name of the Lombards has been
given to a style of Romanesque which prevailed through
Northern and Central Italy during the period of
Lombard ascendency. The Tuscans never forgot the
domes of their remote ancestors; the Romans adhered
closely to Latin traditions; the Southerners were
Archi-
tecture
varying
with the
locality.
2 I6 7THE A*/AWAE AR7'S
affected by Byzantine and Saracenic models. In many
instances the geology of the neighbourhood determined
the picturesque features of its architecture. The clay-
fields of the valley of the Po produced the brick-work of
Cremona, Pavia, Crema, Chiaravalle, and Vercelli. To
their quarries of mandorlato the Veronese builders owed
the peach-bloom tints of their columned aisles. Carrara
provided the Pisans with mellow marble for their
cathedral and baptistery; Monte Ferrato supplied
Pistoja and Prato with green serpentine; while the
pietra serena of the Apennines added austerity to the
interior of Florentine buildings. In other instances we
uetect the influence of commerce or of conquest. The
intercourse of Venice with Alexandria determined the
unique architecture of S. Mark’s. The Arabs and the
Normans left ineffaceable traces of their sojourn on
Palermo. Naples and Messina still bear marks upon
their churches of French workmen. All along-the-
coasts we here and there find evidences of Oriental style
imported into mediaeval Italy, while the impress of the
Spaniard is no less manifest in edifices of a later period.
| If Lombard architecture, properly so called, was
\Roman-
esque partial in its influence and confined to a comparatively
style. narrow local sphere, the same is true of the Tuscan
Romanesque. The church of San Miniato, overlooking
Florence (about 1013) and the cathedral of Pisa (begun
1063), not to mention other less eminent examples at
Lucca and Pistoja, are sufficient evidences that in the
darkest period of the Middle Ages the Italians were
THE FIAWE ARTS 217
aiming at an architectural Renaissance. The influence
of classical models is apparent both in the construction
and the detail of these basilicas ; while the deeply
grounded preference of the Italian genius for round
arches, for colonnades of pillars and pilasters, and for
large rectangular spaces with low roofs and shallow
tribunes, finds full satisfaction in these Original and
noble buildings.
The advent of Gothic architecture in Italy was due
partly to the direct influence of German emperors,
partly to the imperial sympathies of the great nobles,
partly to the Franciscan friars who aimed at building
large churches cheaply, and partly to the admirationi
excited by the grandeur of the Pointed style as it pre-
Vailed in Northern Europe. But it is not to be under-
stood that this style was of purely foreign origin.
Italy, in common with the rest of Europe, passed by a
natural process of evolution from the Romanesque to the
Pointed manner, and treated the latter with an origi-
nality that proves a certain matural assimilation. Yet
the first Gothic church—that of S. Francis at Assisi—was
designed by a German ; the most splendid, that of Our
Lady at Milan, is emphatically German in style, though
its first architect was a Milanese. While, during the
brief period of Gothic ascendency, we have the cathe-
drals of Siena, Orvieto, Lucca, Bologna, Florence, and
Milan, together with the town-halls of Perugia, Siena,
and Florence, the style refused to take hold upon the
national taste, and died away before the growing
The ill-
Success of
Gothic.
2 I 8 TA/A2 FAWAE AA’ 7TS
Domestic
archi-
tecture.
Mulvicipal
buildings.
passion for antiquity that restored the Italians to a
sense of their own intellectual greatness.
About the same time that the cathedrals were being
built, the nobles filled the towns with fortresses. These,
at first, were gaunt and unsightly, with tall, bare watch-
towers, as may be still seen at San Gemignano, or at
Pavia and Bologna. In course of time, when the aris-
tocracy came to be fused with the burghers, and public
Order was maintained by law in the great cities, these
forts made way for spacious palaces. The temper of the
--~~~~s
--------- -> *
citizens in each place and the local character of artistic
taste determined the specific features of domestic as of
ecclesiastical architecture. Though it is hard to define
what are the social differences expressed by the large
quadrangles of Francesco Sforza’s hospital at Milan,
and the heavy cube of the Riccardi palace at Florence,
we feel that the genius loci has in each case controlled
the architect.
To the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries, again,
we owe the town-halls and public palaces that form SO
prominent a feature in the city architecture of Italy.
Few of these public palaces have the good fortune to be
distinguished, like that of the Doges at Venice, by World-
historical memories and by works of art as yet unrivalled.
The spirit of the Venetian republic still lives in that
unique building. Two others, of the time of the Com-
munes, rearing their towers above the town for tocsin
and for ward, may be mentioned for their intrinsic
beauty. These are the Palazzo Pubblico of Siena, and
TA/AE A*/AVAE AA’ ZTS 2 I 9
the Palazzo Vecchio of Florence. Few buildings in
Europe are more picturesquely fascinating than the
palace of Siena, with its outlook over hill and dale to
cloud-capped Monte Amiata. Yet, in spite of its un-
paralleled position on the curved and sloping piazza,
this palace lacks the vivid interest attaching to the
home Arnolfo raised at Florence for the rulers of his
native city. During their term of office the priors never
quitted the palace of the Signory. All deliberations on
state affairs took place within its walls, and the bell was
the pulse that told how the heart of Florence throbbed.
The architect of this huge mass of masonry was
Arnolfo del Cambio, one of the greatest builders of the
Middle Ages—a man who may be called the Michael
Angelo of the thirteenth century. No Italian architect
has enjoyed the proud privilege of stamping his own in-
dividuality more strongly on his native city than Arnolfo.
When we take our stand upon the hill of San Miniato,
the Florence at our feet is seem to owe her physiognomy
in a great measure to this man. The tall tower of the
Palazzo Vecchio, the bulk of the Duomo, and the long,
low, oblong mass of Santa Croce, are all his. His, too,
are the Walls that define the City of Flowers from the
gardens round about her. Even the master-works of
his successors subordinate their beauty to his first con-
ception. Giotto's campanile, Brunelleschi's cupola, and
Orcagna's church of Orsammichele, in spite of their
undoubted and authentic originality, are placed where
he had planned.
Arnolfo
del
Cambio.
22O ZTAPA2 A*/A, AE AA’ 7.S.
y
A style
& adapted
from
Roman
Yemains.
The build-
ings of
Brunel-
leschi.
The classical revival of the fifteenth century made
itself immediately felt in architecture, and Brunelleschi's
visit to Rome in 1403 may be fixed as the date of the
Renaissance in this art. The problem was how to
restore the manner of ancient Rome as far as possible,
adapting it to the modern requirements of ecclesiastical,
civic, and domestic buildings. Of Greek art they knew
comparatively nothing ; mor, indeed, would Greek archi-
tecture have offered for their purpose the same plastic
elements as Roman—itself a derived style, admitting
of easier adjustment to modern uses than the inflexibly
pure art of Greece. At the same time they possess but
immerfect fragments of Roman work. The ruins of
baths, theatres, temple-fronts, and triumphal arches
were of little immediate assistance in the labour of
designing churches and palaces. All that the architects
could do, after familiarising themselves with the remains
of ancient Rome, and assimilating the spirit of Roman
§ {
*
w
art, Was to clothe their own inventions with classic
details. The form and structure of their edifices were
modern ; the parts were copied from antique models.
A Want of Organic unity and structural sincerity is
always the result of those necessities under which a
secondary and adapted style must labour ; and thus the
pseudo-Roman buildings, even of the best Renaissance
period, display faults similar to those of the Italian
Gothic.
Brunelleschi, in designing the basilica of S. Lorenzo,
in 1425, after an Original but truly classic type, remark-
TAZAZ F/AWE ARTS 22 I
able for its sobriety and correctness, followed what he
had learnt from the ruins of Rome under the guidance
of his own artistic instinct. And yet the general effect
resembles nothing we possess of antique work. It is a
masterpiece of intelligent Renaissance adaptation. The
same is true of S. Spirito, built in 1470, after his death,
according to his plans. The extraordinary capacity of
this great architect will, however, win more homage
from ordinary observers when they contemplate the
Pitti Palace and the cupola of the Duomo. Both of
these are masterpieces of personal Originality.
Almost contemporary with Brunelleschi was Leo
Battista Alberti, of whose extraordinary ability in every
Leo
Battista,
Albertà.
department of the fine arts we have already spoken. In
his church of S. Francesco at Rimini, and that of S.
Andrea at Mantua, he sought to reproduce more closely
the actual elements of Roman architecture. Like
Brunelleschi, he displayed his talent as an architect in
the building of the Palazzo Rucellai, of which frequent
mention has been made in connection with the society
at Florence in the time of the Medici. This building,
One of the most beautiful in Italy, became a model to
subsequent architects. It was copied by Francesco di
Giorgio and Bernardo Fiorentino for the palaces they
constructed at Pienza, a little town near Montepulciano.
The first medium between mediaeval massiveness and
classic simplicity was attained in countless buildings,
beautiful and various beyond description. Bologna is
full of them ; and Urbino, in the ducal palace, contains
2
2
2
THAE AWAVE A A' TS
Michel-
lozzo.
Benedetto
da,
Majano.
Bra-
/
V mante.
One specimen unexampled in extent and unique in
interest. After Brunelleschi and Alberti came Michel-
lozzo, who was commissioned to raise the large, but
comparatively humble, Riccardi Palace in the corner
of the Via Larga, which continued to be the residence
of the Medici through all their chequered history until
they took possession of the Palazzo Pitti. But one of
the most beautiful of all the Florentine dwelling-
houses designed at this period is that which Benedetto
da Majamo built for Filippo Strozzi. Combining the
burgher-like austerity of antecedent ages with a grandeur
and a breadth of style peculiar to the Renaissance, the
Palazzo Strozzi may be chosen as the perfect type of
Florentine domestic architecture.
To Bramante must be assigned the foremost place
among the architects of the golden age. Though little
of his work survives entire and unspoiled, it is clear that
he exercised the profoundest influence over both suc-
cessors and contemporaries. What they chiefly owed to
him was the proper subordination of beauty in details
to the grandeur of simplicity and to unity of effect. He
came at a moment when constructive problems had
been solved, when mechanical means were perfected,
and when the sister arts had reached their highest
point. It is hard to say how much of the work
ascribed to him in Northern Italy is genuine ; but most
of it, at any rate, belongs to the manner of his youth.
The church of S. Maria della Consolazione at Todi, the
palace of the Cancellaria at Rome, and the unfinished
THAE F/AWAZ AA’ 7.S. 223
cathedral of Pavia enable us to comprehend the
general character of this great architect's refined and
noble manner. S. Peter's, it may be said in passing,
retains, in spite of all subsequent modifications, many
essentially Bramantesque features—especially in the
distribution of the piers and rounded niches.
At Rome the influence of Bramante was propagated
through Raphael, Giulio Romano, and Baldassare
Peruzzi. Raphael's claim to consideration as an architect
rests upon the Palazzi Vidoni and Pandolfini, the Capella
Chigi in S. Maria del Popolo, and the Villa Madama.
The last-named building, executed by Giulio Romano
after Raphael’s designs, is carried out in a style so forcible
as to make us fancy that the pupil had a larger share
in its creation than his master. These Works, however,
sink into insignificance before the Palazzo del Te at
Mantua, the masterpiece of Giulio’s genius. This most
noble of Italian pleasure-houses remains to show what
the imagination of a poet-artist could recover from the
splendour of old Rome, and adapt to the use of his own
age. A pendent to the Palazzo del Te is the Villa
Farnesina, raised on the banks of the Tiber by Baldassare
Peruzzi for his fellow-townsman Agostino Chigi of Siena.
The frescoes of Galatea and Psyche, executed by
Raphael and his pupils, have made this villa famous in
the ammals of Italian painting.
Among the great edifices of a later period we may
reckon Jacopo Sansovino's buildings at Venice, though
they approximate rather to the style of the earlier
Raphael
as archi-
tect.
Giulio
Romano.
Baldas-
SQ.7°6.
Peruzzi.
Jacopo
Samso-
wimo, the
architect.
*
*
- - -
*
L^
224 THE FIAWAE AA 7'S
Renaissance in all that concerns exuberance of decora-
tive detail. The court of the ducal palace, the Scuola
di S. Rocco, the Palazzo Corner, and the Palazzo
Wendramini-Calergi illustrate the strong yet fanciful
bravura style that pleased the aristocracy of Venice.
Nowhere else does the architecture of the Middle Ages
melt by more imperceptible degrees into that of the
revival, retaining through all changes the impress of
a people splendour-loving in the highest sense. The
v Library of S. Mark, built by Sansovino in 1536, remains,
Michael
Angelo as
architect.
however, the crowning triumph of Venetian art. It is
impossible to contemplate its double row of open arches
without echoing the judgment of Palladio that nothing
more Sumptuous or beautiful had been invented since
the age of ancient Rome.
Passing over a crowd of other architects who
gained distinction in the first half of the sixteenth
century—Antonio di San Gallo, famous for fortifications;
Baccio d'Agnolo, who raised the campanile of S. Spirito
at Florence; Giovanni Maria Falconetto, to whose
genius Padua owed so many princely edifices; Michaele
Sanmicheli, the military architect of Verona, and the
builder of five mighty palaces for the nobles of his
native city—our attention must be arrested at the
name of Michael Angelo. In architecture as in Sculpture,
he not only bequeathed to posterity masterpieces in
their kind unrivalled, but he also prepared for his
successors a false way of working, and justified by his
example the extravagances of the decadence. Without
THAE AWAVE AA 7TS 225
noticing the façade designed for S. Lorenzo at Florence,
the transformation of the baths of Diocletian into a
church, the remodelling of the Capitoline buildings, and
the continuation of the Palazzo Farnese—works that
either exist only in drawings or have been confused
by later alterations—it is enough here to mention
the Sagrestia Nuova of S. Lorenzo and the dome of
S. Peter's. The sacristy may be looked on as the master-
piece of a sculptor who required fit setting for his
statues, or of an architect who designed statues to
enhance the structure he had planned. Both arts are
used with equal ease, nor has the genius of Michael
Angelo dealt more masterfully with the human frame
than with the forms of Roman architecture in this
chapel. What S. Peter's would have been if he had
lived to finish it can only be imagined from his plans
and elevations still preserved. It must always remain
a matter of profound regret that his design was so
far altered as to sacrifice the effect of the dome from the
piazza.
With the decadence of the Renaissance the archi-
tects inclined more to base their practice upon minute
study of antique writers. They, more than any of
their predecessors, realised the long-sought restitution
of the classic style according to precise scholastic
canons. The greatest builder of the time we speak
of was Andrea Palladio of Vicenza, who combined a
more complete analytical knowledge of antiquity with a
firmer adherence to rule and precedent than even the
Q
IPalladio.
226 - THE A*/AVAE AR7 S
Niccola.
Pisano.
most imitative of his forerunners. It is useless to seek
for decorative fancy, wealth of detail, or sallies of
inventive genius in the Palladian style. All is cold and
calculated in the many palaces and churches which
adorn both Venice and Vicenza. They make us feel
that inspiration has been Superseded by the reason.
But one great public building of Palladio's—the
Palazzo della Ragiome at Vicenza—may be cited as
perhaps the culminating point of pure Renaissance
architecture.
In the procession of the fine arts Sculpture always
follows close upon the steps of Architecture, and at first
appears in some sense as her handmaid. Mediaeval
Italy found her Pheidias in a great man of Pisan
origin, born during the first decade of the thirteenth
!century. It was Niccola Pisano, architect and sculptor,
who first with the breath of genius breathed life into the
{ wº forms of plastic art. From him we date the dawn
of the aesthetical Renaissance with the same certainty
as from Petrarch that of humanism; for he determined
the direction not only of Sculpture but also of painting
in Italy. In truth, Niccola Pisano put the artist on the
right track of cerabining the study of antiquity with the
study e-naise; and to him belongs the credit not
merely of his own achievement, considerable as that
may be, but also of the work of his immediate scholars
and of all who learnt from him to portray life. From
Niccola Pisano onward to Michael Angelo and Cellini.
we trace our genealogy of Sculptors who, though they
7THE A*/AWE AR7 S 227
*\
carried art beyond the sphere of his invention, looked
back to him as their progenitor. Besides minor works,
the hexagonal pulpit in the baptistery of Pisa, the
Octagonal pulpit in the cathedral of Siena, the foun-
tain in the market-place of Perugia, and the shrine of
S. Dominic at Bologna—all of them designed and partly
finished between 1260 and 1274 by Niccola and his
Scholars—display his mastery over the art of sculpture
in the maturity of his genius.
Niccola Pisano founded a School. His son Giovanni,
and the numerous pupils employed on the works we
have mentioned, carried on the tradition of their
master, and spread his style abroad through Italy.
Giovanni, to whom We Owe the Spina Chapel and the
Campo Santo at Pisa, the façade of the Duomo at
Siena, and the altar shrine of S. Donato at Arezzo—
four of the purest Works of Gothic art in Italy—showed
a decided leaning to the vehement and mystic style
of the Transalpine sculptors. We trace a dramatic
intensity in Giovanni's work, not derived from his
father, not caught from study of the antique, and
curiously blended with the general characteristics of
the Pisan school. The Gothic element so cautiously
adopted by Niccola is used with sympathy and freedom
by his son, whose masterpiece, the pulpit of S. Andrea
at Pistoja, might be selected as the Supreme triumph
of Italian Gothic sculpture. The Superiority of that
complex and consummate work of plastic art over the
pulpit of the Pisan baptistery, in all the most important
Giovanni,
Pisano.
Q 2
228 7TAZAZ AIAWAE AA 7TS
The Ca.
thedral of
Orvieto.
Andrea
Pisamo.
V
qualities of style and composition, can scarcely be called
in question.
As the church of S. Francis at Assisi formed an
epoch in the history of painting, by concentrating the
genius of Giotto on a series of masterpieces, so the
Duomo of Orvieto, by giving free scope to the school of
Pisa, marked a point in the history of sculpture. It
would be difficult to find elsewhere even separate works
of greater force and beauty belonging to this, the first
Or architectural period of Italian sculpture; and no-
where has the whole body of Christian belief been set
forth with method more earnest and with vigour more
sustained. Whether Giovanni Pisano had any share in
the sculpture on the façade of this cathedral is not
known for certain. The Orvietan archives are singu-
larly silent with regard to a monument of so large extent
and vast importance, which must have taxed to the
uttermost the resources of the ablest stone-carvers in
Italy. But his manner, as continued and developed by
his school, is unmistakable here ; and in the absence of
direct information we are left to Conjecture the con-
ditions under which this, the closing if not the crown-
ing, achievement of thirteenth-century sculpture was
produced.
Among the most distinguished Scholars of Niccola
Pisano's tradition must now be mentioned Andrea da
Pontadera, called Andrea Pisano, who carried the man-
ner of his master to Florence, and helped to fulfil the
destiny of Italian sculpture by Submitting it to the
ZTA/AE A/AWAE A/PTS 229)
rising art of painting. Under the direction of Giotto he
carved statues for the Campanile and the façade of the
Duomo; and in the first gate of the baptistery he be-
queathed a model of bas-relief in bronze, which largely
influenced the style of masters in the fifteenth century.
To overpraise the simplicity and beauty of design, the
purity of feeling, and the technical excellence of Andrea's
bronze-work would be difficult.
The most eminent pupil of Andrea Pisano was a
Florentime—the great Andrea Arcagnuolo di Ciome,
commonly known as Orcagna. This man, like the more
illustrious Giotto, was one among the earliest of those
comprehensive, many-sided natures produced by
Florence for her everlasting glory. He studied
under his father, Cione, like other Tuscan artists,
the technical details of the goldsmith's craft, which
then supplied the strictest method of design. With
his brother, Bernardo, he practised painting. Like
Giotto, he was no mean poet; and, like all the higher
craftsmen of his age, he was an architect. Though the
church of Orsammichele owes its present form to Taddeo
Gaddi, Orcagna, as capo maestro after Gaddi’s death,
completed the structure; and though the Loggia de'
Lanzi, long ascribed to him by Writers upon archi-
tecture, is now known to be the work of Benci di Ciome,
yet Orcagna's Loggia del Bigallo, more modest but not
less beautiful, prepared the way for its construction.
His genius as a painter is proved by the frescoes in the
Strozzi chapel of S. Maria Novella. As a sculptor he is
f
Orcagma.
23O THE FAA. A. AA 7TS
The com -
petition
for the
other
gates of
the bap-
tistery.
best known through the tabernacle in Orsalmmichele,
built to enshrine the picture of the Madonna by Ugolino
da Siena. In this monument the subordination of
sculpture to architectural effect is noticeable; and the
Giottesque influence appears even more strongly here
than in the gate of Andrea Pisano.
When the Sigmory decided to complete the bronze
gates of the baptistery in the first year of the fifteenth
century, they issued a manifesto inviting the Sculptors of
Italy to prepare designs for competition. Their call was
answered by Giacomo della Quercia of Siena, by Filippo
Brunelleschi and Lorenzo di Cino Ghiberti of Florence,
and by two other Tuscan artists of less note. The
young Donatello, aged sixteen, is Said to have been con-
sulted as to the rival merits of the designs submitted to
the judges. Thus the four great masters of Tuscan art
in its prime met before the Florentine baptistery.
Giacomo della Quercia was excluded from the compe-
tition at an early stage; buſ the umpires wavered long
between Ghiberti and Brunelleschi, until the latter, with
noble generosity, feeling the Superiority of his rival, and
conscious perhaps that his own laurels were to be
gathered in the field of architecture, withdrew his
claim. In 1403 Ghiberti received the commission for
the first of the two remaining gates. He afterwards
obtained the second ; and, as they were not finished
until 1452, the better part of his lifetime was spent
upon them.
How Della Quercia treated the subject given, the
THE A*/AVAE AA’ 7S 23 I
Sacrifice of Isaac, we do not know. His bas-reliefs upon Della
the façade of S. Petronio at Bologna, and round the Quercia.
font of S. John's Chapel in the cathedral of Siena,
enable us, however, to compare his style with that of
Ghiberti. There is no doubt but that he was a for-
midable rival. Had the gates been intrusted to his exe-
cution, we might have possessed a masterpiece of more
heroic style. While smoothness and an almost volup-
tuous suavity of outline distinguish Ghiberti's figures,
Della Quercia, by the concentration of robust and
rugged power, anticipates the style of Michael Angelo.
Two other memorable works of Della Quercia may be
mentioned in passing: the Fonte Gaja. On the public
Square of Siena, now unhappily restored, and the
portrait of Ilaria del Carretto on her tomb in the
cathedral of Lucca.
One great advantage of the early days of the Donatello.
Renaissance over the latter was this, that pseudo-
paganism and pedantry had not as yet distorted the ſ
judgment or misdirected the aims of artists. Of the V
impunity with which a sculptor in that period could /\
Submit his genius to the service and the study of y
ancient art without sacrificing individuality, Donatello
furnishes a still more illustrious example than Ghiberti.
Early in his youth he journeyed with Brunelleschi to
Rome, in order to acquaint himself with the monuments
then extant. How thoroughly he comprehended the
classic spirit is proved by the bronze patera wrought for
his patron Ruberto Martelli, and by the frieze of the
232 THE FIAWE ARTS
!Verocchio.
triumphant Bacchus. Yet the great achievements of his
genius were Christian in their sentiment and realistic in
their style. The bronze Magdalen of the Florentine
baptistery, and the bronze Baptist of the Duomo at
Siena, as also the wooden Baptist in the Frari at Venice,
are executed with an unrelenting materialism, not alien
indeed to the sincerity of classic art, but divergent from
antique tradition, inasmuch as the ideas of repentant
and prophetic asceticism had no place in Greek
mythology. A more felicitous embodiment of modern
feeling was achieved by him in his S. George, a marble
statue placed upon the north Wall of Orsammichele, and
in his bronze David, cast for Cosimo de' Medici, and now
in the Bargello. His numerous other works in bronze
and marble, to be found in churches and museums,
show how widely his influence was diffused through
Italy, and of what inestimable value it was in cor-
recting the false direction towards pictorial sculpture
which Ghiberti might have given. -
Andrea Verocchio, goldsmith, painter, and worker in
bronze, was the most distinguished of Donatello's pupils.
To all the arts he practised he applied limited powers, a
meagre manner, and a prosaic mind. But the fact that
he numbered Lionardo da Vinci, Lorenzo di Credi, and
Pietro Perugino among his scholars proves the esteem
he enjoyed among his contemporaries; and when we
have observed that the type of face Selected by Lionardo
and transmitted to his followers appears also in the
pictures of Lorenzo di Credi, and is found in the David
TA/A2 F/AWAE AA’ ZTS 233
of Werocchio, we have a right to affirm that the master
of these men was an artist of creative genius as well as
a careful workman. His most famous work is the
equestrian statue of the great Condottiere, Bartolommeo
Colleoni, which stands in the piazza in front of the
Scuola di S. Marco, better known as the Campo di
S. Zanipolo, at Venice.
Luca della Robbia, whose life embraced the first eighty
years of the fifteenth century, offers in many important
respects a contrast to his contemporaries Ghiberti and
Donatello, and still more to their immediate followers.
He made his art as true to life as it is possible to be,
without the rugged realism of Donatello or the somewhat
effeminate graces of Ghiberti. He was apprenticed in
his youth to a goldsmith; but of what he wrought
before the age of forty-five we know but little. At that
time his faculty had attained full maturity, and he pro-
duced the groups of dancing children and choristers in-
tended for the organ gallery of the Duomo. Movement
has never been suggested in stone with less exaggeration,
nor have marble lips been made to utter Sweeter and
more varied music. His true perception of the limits to
be observed in sculpture appears most eminently in the
glazed terra cotta work by which he is best known. His
nephew, Andrea della Robbia, with his four sons, con-
tinued to manufacture the glazed earthenware of Luca's
invention, but their work lacked the fine taste of their
master. They were followed by Agostino di Gucci or di
Duccio, a Sculptor who handled terra cotta somewhat in
Luca,
della.
Robbia.
234 THE FYWE ARTS
Rossel-
limo.
Civitale.
the manner of Donatello's flat-relief, and aiming at
more passion than Luca's taste permitted.
Four sculptors, the younger contemporaries of Luca,
della Robbia, and marked by certain common qualities,
demand a passing mention. All the work of Antonio
Rossellino, Matteo Civitale, Mino da Fiesole, and
Benedetto da Majano, is distinguished by sweetness,
grace, tranquillity and Self-restraint. But there are
differences in their style which may be noticed.
Rossellino has a leaning towards the manner of Ghiberti,
whose landscape backgrounds he has adopted in the
circular medallions of his monumental sculpture. Rare
dignity, however, is to be found in the much-admired
monument of the young Cardinal di Portogallo, in the
church of San Miniato. The sublimity of the slumber
that is death has never been more nobly and feelingly
portrayed. Matteo Civitale, of Lucca, was at least
Rossellino's equal in the sculpturesque delineation of
Spiritual qualities; but the motives he chose for treat-
ment were more varied. All his work is penetrated with
deep, prayerful, intense feeling, as though the artist's
Soul, poured forth in ecstasy and adoration, had been
given to the marble. For the people of Lucca he
designed the Chapel of the Santo Wolto—a gem of the
purest Renaissance architecture—and a pulpit in the
same style. The altar of S. Regulus might also be
named as an epitome of all that is most characteristic of
the earlier Renaissance. Mino di Giovanni, called Da
Fiesole, was characterised by grace that tended to
THE FIAWE AA’ TS 235
degenerate into formality. The tombs in the abbey
of Florence have an almost infantile sweetness of style,
which might be extremely piquant were it not that he
pushed this quality in other works to the verge of
mannerism. His bust of Bishop Salutati in the cathe-
dral of Fiesole is, however, a powerful portrait, no less
distinguished for vigorous individuality than consum-
mate workmanship. Benedetto da Majano, whom we
have already mentioned as the designer of the Strozzi
Palace, and his friend Desiderio da Settignano, One of
Donatello's few scholars, were endowed with the same
gift of exquisite taste as Mino da Fiesole.
The list of fifteenth-century sculptors is almost
ended; and already, on the threshold of the sixteenth,
stands the mighty form of Michael Angelo. Andrea
Contucci da Sansovino and his pupil, Jacopo Tatti, called
also Sansovino, must, however, be mentioned as con-
tinuing the Florentime tradition without subservience to
the style of Buonarroti. Andrea da Sansovino was a
Sculptor in whom, for the first time, the faults of the
mid-Renaissance period are glaringly apparent. He
persistently sacrificed simplicity of composition to deco-
rative Ostentation, and tranquillity of feeling to theatrical
effect. The truth of this will be acknowledged by all
who have studied the tombs of the cardinals in S. Maria
del Popolo, and the bas-reliefs upon the Santa Casa at
Loreto. Jacopo Tatti was a genius of more distinction.
Together with San Gallo and Bramante he studied the
Science of architecture in Rome, where he also worked
Mino do,
Fiesole.
Andrea da
Samso-
vino,
the
sculptor.
Jacopo
Tatti.
236 THE A*/AVAE AA 7TS
\_2^
Bandi-
nelli and
Aºnºma-
nati.
at the restoration of newly-discovered antiques, and cast
in bronze a copy of the Laocoon. He was called, in 1523,
by the Doge, Andrea Gritti, to Venice, and there he
worked until his death in 1570, building the Zecca, the
Library, the Scala d’Oro in the ducal palace, and the
Loggietta beneath the bell-tower of S. Mark. He was a
first-rate craftsman, and marks the final intrusion of
paganism into modern art. The classical revival had
worked but partially and indirectly upon Ghiberti and
Donatello—not because they did not feel it intensely,
but because they clung to nature far more closely than
to antique precedent. The most beautiful and spirited
pagan statue of the Renaissance period is Sansovino's
Bacchus in the Bargello Museum. Both the Bacchus
and the Satyriscus at his side are triumphs of realism,
irradiated and idealised by the sculptor's sense of
natural gladness. Considered as a restitution of the
antique manner, this statue is decidedly superior to
the Bacchus of Michael Angelo.
It is a long descent to name Baccio Bandinelli and
Bartolommeo Ammanati, who filled the squares of the
Italian cities with statues of Hercules and Satyrs,
Neptune and River-gods. We know not whether to
select the vulgarity, the feebleness, or the pretentious-
mess of these pseudo-classical colossi for condemnation.
They have nothing Greek about them but their names,
their nakedness, and their association with myths, the
significance whereof was never really felt by the sculp-
tors. But, at the same time, there were works produced
THE AE/AVAE AA’ 7.S. 237
in illustration of classical mythology which have true
value as works of art. The Perseus of Benvenuto
Cellini and some of Gian Bologna's statues belong to a
class of aesthetic productions which show how much that
is both original and excellent may be raised in the hot-
bed of culture.
Beginning as the handmaid of the Church, and
stimulated by the enthusiasm of the two great popular
monastic orders, painting was at first devoted to em-
bodying the thoughts of mediaeval Christianity. In
proportion as the painters fortified themselves by study
of the natural World, their art became more secular.
About the year 1440 this process of Secularisation was
hastened by the influence of the classical revival, re-
newing an interest in the past life of humanity, and
stirring a zeal for science.
We may still recall the story of Cimabue's picture,
visited by Charles of Anjou and borne in triumph
through the streets to S. Maria Novella; for this was the
birthday festival of nothing less than what the world
now values as Italian painting. In this public act of
joy the people of Florence recognised and paid en-
thusiastic honour to the art arisen among them from
the dead. In a dark transept, raised by steps above the
level of the church, still hangs this famous Madonna of
the Rucellai. It is in the Byzantine or Romanesque
manner, from which Cimabue did not free himself; but
we see here a distinctly fresh endeavour to express
emotion and to depict life.
Benvenwuto
Cellimº,
and Giaº
Bologna.
Painting
CLS Q//?,
aid to L^
religion.
Cimabwe.
/
V
2^
238 THE FAWE AR7 S
Giotto. It remained for Giotto Bondone, born at Vespignano
in 1276, just at the date of Niccola Pisano's death, to
carry painting in his lifetime even further than the
Pisan sculptor had advanced the sister art. As we
travel from Padua in the north, where his Arena chapel
sets forth the legend of Mary and the life of Christ in a
series of incomparable frescoes, Southward to Naples,
where he adorned the convent of S. Chiara, we meet
with Giotto in almost every city. Nothing, indeed, in
the history of art is more remarkable than the fertility
of this Originative genius, no less industrious in labour
than fruitful of results for men who followed him. Like
Niccola Pisano, Giotto not only founded a school in his
native city, but spread his manner far and wide over
Italy, so that the first period of the history of painting
is the Giottesque. The Gaddi of Florence, Giottino,
Puccio Capanna, the Lorenzetti of Siena, Spinello of
Arezzo, Andrea Orcagna, Domenico Veneziano, and the
lesser artists of the Pisan Campo Santo, were either
formed or influenced by him.
Guido da It is necessary to observe that at Siena painting had
Siena, - & © -> * &
and an independent origin, and Guido da Siena may claim
Duccio.
to rank even earlier than Cimabue. But the first great
painter there was Duccio di Buoninsegna. The comple-
tion of his masterpiece—a picture of the Majesty of
the Virgin, executed for the high altar of the Duomo–
marked an epoch in the history of Siena. As in the
case of Cimabue's Madonna, bells rang and trumpets
blew as this image of the Sovereign mistress of the city
THE ATM/VE AAC TS 239
was carried along the streets to be enthroned in her
high temple.
* Far more than their neighbours at Florence, the
Sienese remained fettered by the technical methods and
the pietistic formulae of the earliest religious painting.
When they attempted subjects on a large scale, the
faults of the miniaturist clung about them. Ambrozio
and Pietro Lorenzetti, however, form notable exceptions
to this general statement. But it must be applied to
Simone Martini, who during his lifetime enjoyed a
celebrity second only to that of Giotto. His first un-
disputed works are to be seen at Siena and Assisi, where
we learn what he could do as a frescante in competition
with the ablest Florentines.
We must return again to Florence; and foremost
among the pioneers of Renaissance painting, towering
above them all by head and shoulders, like Saul among
the tribes of Israel, stands Masaccio. The Brancacci
chapel of the Carmine, painted in fresco almost entirely
by his hand, was the School where all succeeding
artists studied, and whence Raphael deigned to borrow
the composition and the figures of a portion of his
cartoons. The Legend of S. Catherine, painted by
Masaccio in S. Clemente at Rome, though an earlier
work, is scarcely less remarkable as evidence that a new
age had begun for art. Born in 1402, he left Florence
in 1429 for Rome, and was not again heard of by his
family. Thus perished, at the early age of twenty-seven,
a painter whose work reveals not only the originality of
Ambrozio
and
Pietro Tao-
remaetti.
SimOne
Martini.
Masaccio.
\!/
/
24O THE AT/AVAE AA TS
creative genius, but a maturity that moves our wonder.
Gifted with exceptional powers, he overleaped the diffi-
culties of his art, and arrived intuitively at results
whereof as yet no scientific certainty had been
secured.
Piero della Francesca, a native of Borgo San
Sepolcro, and a pupil of Domenico Veneziano, must be
placed among the painters of this period who advanced
their art by scientific study. Those who have once seen
his fresco of the Resurrection in the hall of the Compagna,
della Misericordia at Borgo San Sepolcro will never
forget the deep impression of solitude and aloofness from
all earthly things produced by it. In addition to the
many great paintings that command our admiration, he
may claim the honour of being the teacher of Melozzo da
Forli and of Luca Signorelli.
Signorelli bears a name illustrious in the first rank of
Italian painters. He anticipated the greatest master of
the sixteenth century, not only in his profound study of
human anatomy, but also in his resolution to express
high thought and tragic passion by pure form, discard-
ing all the minor charms of painting. Life-long study
of perspective, in its application to the drawing of the
figure, made the difficulties of foreshortening, and the
delineation of brusque attitude, mere child's play to this
audacious genius. The most rapid movement, the most
perilous contortion of bodies falling through the air
or flying, he depicted with hard, firmly-traced, unerring
Piero
della.
Fram-
C&SCCú.
Luca,
Signorelli.
outline.
THE PAWAE AA 7'S 24 I
While the Florentine and Umbro-Tuscan masters
were perfecting the arts of accurate design, a similar
direction towards scientific studies was given to the
painters of Northern Italy at Padua. The influence, in
this direction, of Francesco Squarcione was considerable.
It is clear that he was himself less an artist than an
amateur of painting, with a turn for teaching, and a
conviction, based upon the humanistic instincts of his
age, that the right way of learning was by imitation of
the antique. During the course of his career he is
said to have taught no less than 137 pupils, training his
apprentices by the exhibition of casts and drawings, and
giving them instruction in the Science of perspective.
From his school issued the mighty Andrea Mantegna,
whose life-work was one of the most weighty moments in
the history of modern art. He was born near Padua
in 1431, and it is probable that he was the son of a
small Lombard farmer. Studying the casts and draw-
ings collected by Squarcione, the young Mantegna found
congenial exercise for his peculiar gifts. His early
frescoes in the Eremitani at Padua look as though they
had been painted from statues or clay models, carefully
selected for the grandeur of their forms, the nobility of
their attitudes, and the complicated beauty of their
drapery. His inspiration was clearly derived from
the antique. The beauty of classical bas-relief
entered deep into his Soul and ruled his imagina-
tion. In later life he spent his acquired wealth in
forming a collection of Greek and Roman antiquities.
R
Squar-
cione.
Man-
tegºla.
242 THAE F/AWE AA’ 7S
Gentile da
Fabria/mo.
A
ngelico.
He was, moreover, the friend of students, eagerly absorb-
ing the knowledge brought to light by Ciriac of Ancona,
Flavio Biondo, and other antiquaries; and so com-
pletely did he assimilate the materials of Scholarship that
the spirit of a Roman seemed to be incarnate in him.
Without attempting a detailed history of painting
in this period of divided energy and diverse effort, it is
needful to turn aside for a moment and to notice those
masters who remained comparatively uninfluenced by the
scholastic studies of their contemporaries. Of these the
earliest and most notable was Gentile da Fabriano, the
last great painter of the Gubbian School, and Fra Angelico,
who, of all the painters of this period, most Successfully
resisted the persuasions of the Renaissance, and per-
fected an art that owned little sympathy with the external
world. He thought it a sin to study or to imitate the
naked form, and his most beautiful faces seem copied
\ / * * *
% from angels seen in visions, not from any Sons of men.
JBenozzo
Gozzoli.
Benozzo Gozzoli, the pupil of Fra Angelico, but in
no sense the continuator of his tradition, exhibits the
blending of Several styles by a genius of less creative
than assimilative force. That he was keenly interested
in the problems of perspective and foreshortening, and
that none of the knowledge collected by his fellow-
workers had escaped him, is sufficiently proved by his
frescoes at Pisa. His compositions are rich in architec-
tural details, not always chosen with pure taste, but
painted with an almost infantile delight in the mag-
*
nificence of buildings.
THE A*/AWAE AA’ TS 243
Another painter favoured by the Medici was Fra
Filippo Lippi, of the Carmine, whose pleasure-loving
temperament led him into irregularities inconsistent with
a monastic life. It can Scarcely be doubted that the Schism
between his practice and profession served to debase
and vulgarise a genius of fine imaginative quality, while
the uncongenial work of decorating choirs and painting
altar-pieces limed the wings of his swift spirit with the
dulness of routine that Savoured of hypocrisy. Whether
Filippino Lippi was in truth his son by Lucrezia. Buti,
a novice he is said to have carried from her cloister in
Prato, has been called in question by recent critics; but
they adduce no positive arguments for discrediting the
story of Wasari. There can, however, be no doubt that
to the Frate, whether he was his father or only his
teacher, Filippino owed his style.
Sandro Botticelli, the other disciple of Fra Lippo,
bears a name of greater mark. He is one of those
artists, much respected in their own days, who suffered
eclipse from the Superior splendour of immediate suc-
cessors, and to whom, through sympathy stimulated by
prolonged study of the fifteenth century, we have of late
paid tardy and perhaps exaggerated honours. His
fellow-workers seem to have admired him as an able
draughtsman gifted with a rare if whimsical imagina-
tion ; but no one recognised in him a leader of his age.
For us he has an almost unique value as representing
the interminglement of antique and modern fancy at a
moment of transition—as embodying in some of his
Fra, 2
Filipp L^
Lippi.
Filippino
Lippi.
Botticelli. vº
R 2
244 THE A*/AVA. AA’ 7.S
Piero dº,
Cosimo.
Ghirlanº-
dajo.
pictures the subtlest thought and feeling of men for
whom the classic myths were beginning to live once
more, while new guesses were timidly hazarded in the
sphere of Orthodoxy.
The biography of Piero di Cosimo forms one of the
most amusing chapters in Vasari, who has taken great
delight in noting Piero's quaint humours and eccentric
habits, and whose description of a Carnival triumph
devised by him is one of our most precious documents
in illustration of Renaissance pageantry. The point that
connects him with Botticelli is the romantic treatment
of classical mythology, best exemplified in his pictures
of Perseus and Andromeda in the Uffizi, and of the
murdered Procris watched by a Satyr in our National
Gallery.
It remains to speak of the painter who closes and at
the same time gathers up the whole tradition of this
period. Domenico Ghirlandajo deserves the place of
honour, not because he had the strongest passion, the
subtlest fancy, the loftiest imagination—for in these
points he was excelled by some one or another of his
contemporaries or predecessors—but because his intel-
lect was the most comprehensive and his mastery of art
the most complete. His life lasted from 1449 to 1498,
and he did not distinguish himself as a painter till he
was past thirty. It is almost with reluctance that a
critic feels obliged to name this powerful but prosaic
painter as the Giotto of the fifteenth century in
Florence, the tutelary angel of an age inaugurated by
THAE A*/AWE AA’ 7.S. 245
Masaccio. He was a consummate master of the science
collected by his predecessors. No one surpassed him
in the use of fresco. His orderly composition, in the
distribution of figures and the use of architectural ac-
cessories, is worthy of all praise; his portraiture is
dignified and powerful, his choice of form and
treatment of drapery noble. Yet we cannot help
noting his deficiency in the finer sense of beauty, the
absence of poetic inspiration or feeling in his work,
the commonplaceness of his colour, and his wearisome
reiteration of calculated effects. Who, however, but
Ghirlandajo could have composed the frescoes of S.
Fina at S. Gemignano, of the Death of S. Francis in
S. Trinità at Florence, or that of the Birth of the
Virgin in S. Maria Novella 2 -
The Renaissance, so far as painting is concerned,
may be said to have culminated between the years 1470
and 1550. The thirty years at the close of the fifteenth
Century may be taken as one epoch in this climax of the
art, while the first half of the sixteenth forms a second.
Within the former falls the best work of Mantegna,
Perugino, Francia, the Bellini, Signorelli, and Fra Bar-
tolommeo. To the latter we may assign Michael Angelo, .
Raphael, Giorgione, Correggio, Titian, and Andrea del
Sarto. Lionardo da Vinci, though belonging chrono-
logically to the former epoch, ranks first among the
masters of the Second ; and to this also may be given
Tintoretto, though his life extended far beyond it to the
Y-
last years of the century.
The cul-
7mination,
of £enais-
Sa??ce art.
}
V
* R 3
246 THE FIAWE AR7 S
V
Perugino.
Raphael.
The place occupied by Perugino in the evolution of
Italian painting is peculiar. In the middle of a positive
and worldly age, declining fast to frigid Scepticism and
political corruption, he set the final touch of technical
art upon the devotion transmitted from earlier and
more enthusiastic centuries. The flower of Umbrian
piety blossomed in the masterpieces of his youth, and
faded into dryness in the affectations of his manhood.
In our National Gallery we have in a triptych one of
his sincerest devotional oil pictures. His frescoes of
S. Sebastian at Panicale, and of the Crucifia;ion at
Florence, are tolerably well known through reproduc-
tions; while the Vision of S. Bernard at Munich and the
Pietà in the Pitti Gallery are familiar to all travelled
students of Italian painting.
The influence of Perugino upon Italian art was
powerful though transitory. He formed a band of able
pupils, among whom was the great Raphael; and
though Raphael speedily abandoned his master's narrow
footpath through the fields of painting, he owed to
Perugino the invaluable benefit of training in solid
technical methods and traditions of pure taste. The
life and work of this supreme artist have been so fully
and ably handled by various writers, and the subjects
he treated are so much the common property of even
the least educated, that we are hardly called upon, in
the space at our disposal, to do more than allude to the
school in which his genius first began to display itself.
Of other scholars of Perugino, Bernardo Pinturicchio
THE AWAVE AA 7'S - 2.47
can also alone be mentioned. A thorough naturalist,
though saturated with the mannerism of the Umbrian
school, Pinturicchio was not distracted either by
Scientific or ideal aims from the clear and fluent presen-
tation of contemporary manners and customs. He is a
kind of Umbrian Gozzoli, who brings us here and there
in close relation to the men of his own time, and has, in
consequence, a special value for the student of Renais-
sance life.
There are still two painters who come within the
limits of the fifteenth century that we can only glance at.
Francesco Raibolini, surnamed Francia from his master
in the goldsmith's art, was one of the most sincerely
pious of Christian painters, and we possess a good ex-
ample of his style in the Dead Christ in our National
Gallery. In order to be rightly known, his numerous
pictures at Bologna should be studied by all lovers of
the quattrocento style in its most delightful moments.
Bartolommeo di Paolo dei Fattorino, better known
as Baccio della Porta or Fra Bartolommeo, forms at
Florence the connecting link between the artists of the
earlier Renaissance and the golden age. By chrono-
logical reckoning he is nearly a quarter of a century
later than Lionardo da Vinci, and is the exact contem-
porary of Michael Angelo. It was in Cosimo Rosselli's
bottega that he made acquaintance with Mariotto Alber-
tinelli, who became his intimate friend and fellow-worker,
in spite of their disagreements in politics and religion.
Pintu-
ricchio.
Francesco
Francia.
Fra, Bar-
tolomimeo.
Albertinelli was wilful, obstinate, a partisan of the Albert:
melli.
248 7THE FAWAE AA 7TS
The four
greatest
7masters.
Medici, and a loose liver. Bartolommeo was gentle,
yielding, and industrious. He fell under the influence
of Savonarola. and took the cowl of the Dominicans.
So firm was the bond of friendship established in boy-
hood between this ill-assorted couple, that they did not
part company until 1512, three years before Alberti-
nelli's death, and five before that of Bartolommeo.
Albertinelli’s Salutation in the Uffizi yields no point
of grace and vigour to any of his more distinguished
contemporary’s paintings. As a colourist Fra Barto-
lommeo is superior to any of his rivals in the school of
Florence. Few painters of any age have combined har-
mony of tone so perfectly with brilliance and richness.
We have now reached the great age of the Italian
Renaissance in art—the age in which, not counting for
the moment Venice, four most remarkable men gathered
up all that had hitherto been achieved in art since the
days of Pisano and Giotto, adding such illumination from
the sunlight of their inborn genius that in them the
f
wº for ever sees what art can do. Lionardo da Vinci
TTS ––->~-
W
as born in Valdarno in 1452, and died in France
in 1519. Michael Angelo Buonarroti wh; born at
\/ Caprese, in the Casentino, in 1475, and died at Rome
in 1564, having outlived the lives of his great peers by
ſ nearly half a century. Raphael Santi was born at
v
\,
Urbino in 1483, and died in Rome in 1520. Antonio
Allegri was born at Correggio in 1494, and died there in
1534. To these four men, each in his own degree and
according to his own peculiar quality of mind, the
THAE Aſſ/VE AA’ 7TS 2.49
fulness of the Renaissance in its power and freedom was
revealed. In their work posterity still may read the
meaning of that epoch, differently rendered according to
their different gifts, but comprehended in its unity by
study of the four together.
It was a fact of the greatest importance for the
development of the fine arts in Italy that painting in
Venice reached maturity later than in Florence. Owing
to this circumstance one chief aspect of the Renaissance,
its material magnificence and freedom, received consum-
mate treatment at the hands of Jitian, Tintoretto, and
Veronese. To idealise the sensualities of the external
universe, to achieve for colour what the Florentines had
done for form, to invest the Worldly grandeur of human
life at One of its most gorgeous epochs with the dignity
of the highest art, was what these great artists were
called on to accomplish. Their task could not have
been so worthily performed in the fifteenth century as
in the sixteenth, if the development of the aesthetic sense
had been more premature among the Venetians.
It is in the heart of Venice, in the House of the
Republic, tha§the Venetian painters, considered as the
interpreters of worldly splendour, fulfilled their function
with the most complete success. Centuries contributed
to make the Ducal Palace what it is. The massive
colonnades and Gothic loggias of the external basement
date from the thirteenth century; their sculpture
belongs to the age when Niccolo Pisani’s genius was in
the ascendant. The square fabric of the palace, so
The
Wenetian?
School.
}
The Ducal
Palace.
25O THE FAWE AR7 S
beautiful in the irregularity of its pointed windows,
SO singular in its mosaic diaper of pink and white, was
designed at the same early period. The inner court and
the façade that overhangs the lateral canal display the
handiwork of Sansovino. The halls of the palace—
spacious chambers where the senate assembled, where
ambassadors approached the Doge, where the Savi
V/deliberated, where the Council of Ten conducted their
inquisition—are walled and roofed with pictures of
inestimable value. -
The note Long before Venetian painting reached a climax in
y * the decorative triumphs of the Ducal Palace, the masters
artists. of the school had formed a style expressive of the spirit
of the Renaissance, considered as the spirit of free
enjoyment and living energy. To trace the history of
Jºº. painting is to follow through the several stages
the growth of that mastery over colour and sensuous
beauty which was perfected in the works of Titian and
his contemporaries. Under the Vivarini of Murano,
the Venetian School in its infancy began with a selection
from the natural world of all that struck them as most
brilliant. No other painters of their age in Italy
employed such glowing colours, or showed a more
marked predilection for the imitation of fruits, rich
stuffs, architectural canopies, jewels, and landscape
backgrounds. Their piety, unlike the mysticism of the
Sienese and the deep feeling of the Florentine masters,
is somewhat superficial and conventional.
What the Vivarini began, the three Bellini, Jacopo
TAZAZ A.M/VE AA’ 7.S. 25 I
and his sons Gentile and Giovanni, with Crivelli, Ca-
paccio, Mansueti, Basaiti, Catena, Cima da Conegliano,
Bissolo, Cordegliaghi, continued. Bright costumes,
distinct and sunny landscapes, broad backgrounds of
architecture, large skies, polished armour, gilded cor-
nices, young faces of fisherboys and country girls, grave
faces of old men brown with sea-wind and sunlight,
withered faces of women hearty in a hale old age, the
strong manhood of Venetian senators, the dignity of
patrician ladies, the gracefulness of children, the
amber-coloured tresses of the daughters of the Adriatic
and lagoons—these are the source of inspiration to
the Venetians of the second period. Mantegna, a
few miles distant, at Padua, was working out his ideal
of severely classical design. Yet he scarcely touched
the manner of the Venetians with his influence,
though Gian Bellini was his brother-in-law and pupil,
and though his genius, in grasp of matter and in
management of composition, Soared above his neigh-
bours. Tionardo da Vinci, at Milan, was perfecting his
problems of psychology in painting, offering to the
world Solutions of the greatest difficulties in the de-
lineation of the spirit by expression. Yet not a trace
of Lionardo's subtle play of light and shadow upon
thoughtful features can be discerned in the work of the
Bellini. For them the mysteries of the inner and the
outer World had no attraction. The externals of a full
and vivid existence fascinated their imagination. They
undertook to paint only what they could see. Very
Theºn-
Subjects
derived
from the
locality.
4–
252 THE FIVE A R TS
instructive are the wall-pictures of this period, painted
not in fresco but on canvas by Carpaccio and Gentile
Bellini, for the decoration of the Scuole of S. Ursula and
S. Croce—the halls of meeting for companies named
after patron Saints. Not only do these bring before us
the life of Venice in its manifold variety, but they illus-
trate the tendency of the Venetian masters to express
the actual World rather than to formulate an ideal
of the fancy. This realism, if the name can be
applied to pictures so poetical as those of Carpaccio,
is not, like the Florentine realism, hard and scientific.
A natural feeling for grace and a sense of romance
inspire the artist, and breathe from every figure that
he paints.
Giorgione, did we but possess enough of his authentic
works to judge by, would be found the first painter
of the true Renaissance among the Venetians, the in-
augurator of the third and great period. He died at
the age of thirty-six, the inheritor of unfulfilled renown.
Time has destroyed the last vestige of his frescoes, and
criticism has reduced the number of his genuine easel
pictures to half-a-dozen. Of his undisputed pictures,
the grandest is the Monk at the Clavichord in the Pitti
Palace at Florence. Fate has dealt less unkindly with
Titian, Tintoretto, and Paolo Veronese. The works of
these great artists, in whom the Venetian Renaissance
attained completion, have been preserved in large
Carpaccio
and
Gentile
Belliºvi.
Giorgiome.
numbers and in excellent condition.
THE A*/AVE AA’ 7 S 253
Titian holds, in relation to the Venetian school, the
position held by Raphael among his contemporaries in
the rest of Italy, and their works are in both cases SO
numerous and so equally well known that it is needless
to give an account of them in the One case more than
in the other. Together, these Supreme artists may be
termed a double-star in that bright field of genius, where
the mode in which their faculties are used appeals in
an equal degree to the imagination, and to our sense of
wonder and delight.
Tintoretto, called by the Italians the thunderbolt
of painting, because of his vehement impulsiveness and
rapidity of execution, soars above his brethren by the
faculty of pure imagination. It was he who brought to
perfection the poetry of chiaroscuro, expressing moods
of passion and emotion in brusque lights, luminous half-
shadows, and semi-opaque darkness. He, too, engrafted
on the calm and natural Venetian manner something of
the Michael Angelesque sublimity, and sought to vary by
dramatic movement the romantic motives of his school.
In his work, more than in that of his contemporaries,
Venetian art ceased to be decorative and idyllic.
Veronese elevated pageantry to the height of serious art.
His domain is moonday Sunlight ablaze on sumptuous
dresses and Palladian architecture. Where Tintoretto
is dramatic, he is scenic. Titian, in a wise harmony,
continuing the traditions of Bellini and Giorgione,
with a breadth of treatment peculiar to himself, gave
Timºto-
'retto.
|Veronese.
254 7THE FIAWE AA 7TS
to colour in landscape and the human form a sublime
yet sensuous poetry no other painter in the world has
reached. Among the Venetian painters, it may be
observed in conclusion, there was no conflict between
art and religion, no reaction against previous pietism,
no perplexity of conscience, no confusion of aims. Titian,
Tintoretto, and Veronese were children of the people,
men of the world, men of pleasure; Wealthy, urbane,
independent, pious—all these by turns; but they were
never mystics, scholars, or philosophers. In their
aesthetic ideal religion found a place, nor was sensuality
rejected; but the religion was Sane and manly, the
sensuality was vigorous and virile. Not the intellectual
greatness of the Renaissance, but its happiness and free-
dom, was what they represented.
ionardo It was the special good fortune of the pupils of
* * Lionardo da Vinci that what he actually accomplished
bore no proportion to the suggestiveness of his teaching
and the fertility of his invention. Of finished work he
left but little to the World ; while his sketches and
designs, the teeming thoughts of his creative brain, were
an inestimable heritage. It remained for his disciples,
Vº in his own sphere, with inferior powers and feebler
intellect, to perpetuate the genius of their master.
Thus the spirit of Lionardo continued to live in Lom-
bardy after he was dead. Andrea Salaino, Marco
d'Oggiono, Francesco Melzi, Giovanni Antonio Bel-
traffio, and Cesare da Sesto were all of them skilled
workmen. But two painters of this School, Bernardino
7THE FIAWAE AA’ 7"S 255
Luini and Gaudenzio Ferrari, demand more particular
notice. Without Lionardo it is difficult to say what
Luini would have been, so thoroughly did he appro-
priate his teacher's type of face and refinement of
execution. And yet Luini stands on his own ground, in
no sense an imitator, with a genius more simple and
idyllic than Da Vinci's. Little conception of his charm
can be formed by those who have not seen his frescoes
in the Brera and S. Maurizio Maggiore at Milan, in the
church of the Angeli at Lugano, or in the pilgrimage
church of Saronno. Gaudenzio Ferrari was a genius of
a different order, more robust, more varied, but less
single-minded than Luini. His style reveals the
influences of a many-sided, ill-assimilated education,
blending the manners of Bramantino, Lionardo, and
Raphael without proper fusion. His dramatic scenes
from Sacred history, rich in novel motives and exube-
rantly full of invention, crowd the churches of Vercelli;
while a whole epic of the Passion is painted in fresco
above the altar of S. Maria delle Grazie at Warallo,
covering the wall from basement to ceiling. The prodi-
gality of power displayed by Ferrari makes up for much
of crudity in style and confusion in aim ; nor can we
refuse the tribute of Warmest admiration to a master
who, when the Schools of Rome and Florence were
sinking into emptiness and bombast, preserved the fire
of feeling for serious themes.
Passing from Lionardo to Raphael, we find the
reverse of what has been noticed with regard to the
Lºuini.
Gaw-
denzio
Ferrari.
º
256 THE FIAWE AR7RS
No inspi-
*ration
\/ descended
from :
Raphael.
Giulio
Romano.
Sebastian
del
Piombo,
Wenusti,
and
Daniele
da,
Volterra.
influence of the master and the suggestiveness of his
teaching. Raphael Worked out the mine of his own
thought so thoroughly, and carried his style to such
perfection, that he left nothing untried for his fol-
lowers. When he died, inspiration seemed to pass from
them as colour fades from clouds at sunset. But the
times were also against them. The patrons of art
required show far more than thought, and this the
pupils of Raphael were competent to supply without
much effort. Giulio Romano alone, by dint of robust
energy and lurid fire of fancy, to be seen through the
Smoke of his coarser nature, achieved a not undeserving
triumph. His Palazzo del Te will always remain the
monument of a specific moment in Renaissance history,
since it is adequate to the intellectual conditions of a
race demoralised, but living still, with largeness and a
Sense of grandeur.
Michael Angelo, whose history and great achieve-
ments will not admit of compression, formed no school
in the strict sense of the word; yet his influence was not
the less felt on that account, nor less powerful than
Raphael’s in the same direction. During his manhood
Sebastian del Piombo, Marcello Venusti, and Daniele da
Wolterra had endeavoured to add the charm of oil-
colouring to his designs; and long before his death the
Seduction of his mannerism began to exercise a fatal
charm for all the Schools of Italy. As his fame
increased, his peculiarities grew more defined; so that
imitators fixed precisely upon that which sober critics
7TA/A2 Aſ/AWAE AA’ 7.S. 257
now regard as a deduction from his greatness. They
fancied they were treading in his footsteps, and using
the grand manner, when they covered church roofs and
canvases with sprawling figures in distorted attitudes.
Correggio, again, though he can hardly be said to
have founded a school, was destined to exercise wide and
perilous influence over a host of manneristic imitators.
Francesco Mazzolo, called Il Parmigianino, followed
him so closely that his frescoes at Parma are hardly
distinguishable from the master's; while Federigo
Baroccio at Urbino endeavoured to preserve the Sen-
suous and almost childish sweetness of his style in its
integrity. But the real attraction of Correggio was only
felt when the new barocco architecture called for a new
kind of decoration. Every cupola throughout the length
and breadth of Italy began then to be painted with
rolling clouds and lolling angels. What the Wits of
Parma had once stigmatised as a ragoût of frogs now
seemed the Only possible expression for celestial ecstasy;
and to delineate the joy of heaven upon those multitudes
of domes and semi-domes was a point of religious
etiquette. At the same time the Caracci made Cor-
reggio's style the object of more serious study; and the
history of Bolognese painting shows what was to be de-
rived from this master by intelligent and conscientious
Workmen.
We have been speaking chiefly of the errors of artists
copying the external qualities of their great predecessors.
It is refreshing to turn from the epigoni of the so-called
S
*
Correggio.
Il Parmſ.
gianino
and Ba-
roccio.
The
Caracci.
Andrea.
del Sarto.
vº
/
258 THE FAAVE AA 7TS
Francia-
bigio,
Rosso de'
Rossi,
Pontormo.
JBronzino.
Roman school to masters in whom the flame of the
Renaissance still burned brightly. Andrea del Sarto,
the pupil of Piero di Cosimo, but more nearly related in
style to Fra Bartolommeo, was himself a contemporary
of Raphael and Correggio. To make a just estimate of
his achievement is a task of no small difficulty. The
Italians called him “il pittore Senza errori,’ or the
faultless painter. What they meant by this must have
been that, in all the fechnical requirements of art, in
drawing, composition, handling of fresco and oils, dis-
position of draperies and feeling for light and shadow,
he was above criticism. As a colourist he went further
and produced more beautiful effects than any Florentine
before him. What he lacked was precisely the most
precious gift—inspiration, depth of emotion, energy of
thought. Yet there is no affectation, no false taste, no
trickery in his style. His workmanship is always solid,
his hand unerring. -
Among Del Sarto's followers it will be enough to
mention Franciabigio, Vasari’s favourite in fresco paint-
ing, Rosso de' Rossi, who carried the Florentine manner
into France, and Pontormo, the masterly painter of
portraits. In the historical pictures of these men,
whether sacred or Secular, it is clear how much was
done for Florentine art by Fra Bartolommeo and
Andrea del Sarto, independently of Michael Angelo and
Lionardo da Vinci. Angelo Bronzino, the pupil of
Pontormo, is chiefly valuable for his portraits. Hard
and cold, yet obviously true to life, they form a gallery
ZCHAE A*/AVE AA 7TS 259
of great interest for the historian of Duke Cosimo's
reign. His frescoes and allegories illustrate the defects
that have been pointed out in the imitators of Raphael
and Michael Angelo.
Siena, after a long period of inactivity, received a
fresh impulse at the same time as Florence. Giovanni
Antonio Bazzi, or Razzi, called Il Sodoma, born at
Vercelli about 1477, studied under Lionardo da Vinci,
and then removed to Rome, where he became a friend of
Raphael. These double influences determined a style
that never lost its own originality. With what delicacy
and naïveté, almost like a second Luini, but with more
of humour and sensuousness, he approached historic
themes may be seen in his frescoes at Monte Oliveto,
near Siena. These are superior to his frescoes in the
Farnesina at Rome. Sodoma’s influence at Siena,
where he lived a picturesque life, delighting in his
horses and surrounding himself with strange four-footed
pets of all sorts, soon produced a school of worthy
masters. Girolamo del Pacchia, Domenico Beccafumi,
and Baldassare Peruzzi, though they owed much to the
stimulus of his example, followed him in no servile
Spirit.
To mention the remaining schools of Italy in detail
would be wearisome. True art still flourished at Ferrara,
where Garofalo endeavoured to carry on the Roman
manner of Raphael without the necessary strength or
ideality, but also without the soulless insincerity of the
mannerists. His best quality was colouring, gemlike
Il,
Sodoma.
Garofalo.
S 2
26O THE FIAWE ARTS
and rich; but this found little scope for exercise in the
Dosso dry and laboured style he affected. Dosso Dossi fared
Dossi. better, perhaps, through never having experienced the
seductions of Rome. His glowing colour and quaint
fancy give the attraction of romance to many of his
pictures.
3. Cremona, at this epoch, had a school of painting
SC/2001 S.
influenced almost equally by the Venetians, the Milanese,
and the Roman mannerists. The Campi family covered
those grave Lombard vaults with stucco, fresco, and
gilding, in a style only just removed from the barocco.
Brescia and Bergamo remained within the influence of
Venice, producing Work of nearly first-rate quality in
Moroni. Moretto, Romanino, and Lorenzo Lotto. Moroni, the
pupil of Moretto, was destined to become one of the
\/ most powerful character painters of the modern world,
and to enrich the studies of historians and artists with
a series of portraits impressive by their fidelity to the
spirit of the sixteenth century at its conclusion. Venice
* herself, at this period, was still producing masterpieces
of the genuine Renaissance. But the decline into
mannerism, caused by circumstances similar to those
at Rome, was not far distant.
º: de- It may seem strange to those who have visited the
CCLCL(27? C6
of art. picture galleries of Italy, and have noticed how large a
number of painters flourished after 1550, that we should
have to look upon the last half of the sixteenth century
\jas a period of decadence. This it was, however, in a deep
and true Sense of the word. The force of the Renais-
ZTAZAZ AAAWAE AA’7'S 26I
* * ; -
sance was exhausted, and a time of relaxation had to
be passed through before the reaction known as the
counter-reformation could make itself felt in art. Then,
\
and not till then, a new spiritual impulse produced a
new style. This secondary growth of painting began to
flourish at Bologna in accordance with fresh laws of
taste. Religious sentiments of a different order had to
be expressed; society had undergone a change, and the
arts were governed by a genuine, if far inferior, in-
spiration. Meanwhile, the Renaissance in Italy, under
the aspect we have been considering, had come to an
end. But we have now to retrace our steps, and to take,
to Some perhaps, a more interesting path through another
field, before we reach the same point of view, and see
the horizon darkening in every quarter.
262
XIII
THE REVIVAL OF VERNACULAR LITERATURE
#ºl{IE first and most brilliant age of Italian
literature ended with Boccaccio, who traced
the lines on which the future labours of the
nation were conducted. It was succeeded,
as we have seen, by nearly a century of Greek and Latin
scholarship. To study the masterpieces of Dante and
Petrarch, or to practise their language, was thought
beneath the dignity of men like Walla, Poggio, or
Pontano. But towards the close of the fifteenth century,
chiefly through the influence of Lorenzo de' Medici and
his courtiers, a strong interest in the mother tongue
revived. The vernacular literature of the Renaissance,
therefore, as compared with that of the expiring middle
ages, was itself a renascence or revival. It reverted to
the models furnished by Dante, Petrarch, and Boeeaccio,
and combined them with the classics, which had for so
long a time eclipsed their fame. The nation, educated
by Scholarship, and brought to a sense of its identity,
resumed the Vulgar tongue ; and what had hitherto been
Tuscan now became Italian.

THE REVIVAZ OF VERNACULAR LITERATURE 263
During the fifteenth century there was an almost
complete separation between the cultivated classes and
the people. Humanists, intent upon the exploration of
The disuse
of the
Q)0%.0.C2/-
lar by
Scholars.
the classics, deemed it below their dignify to use the
vulgar tongue. They thought and wrote in Latin, and
had no time to bestow upon the education of the common
folk. A polite public was formed, who in the courts of
princes and the palaces of noblemen amused themselves
with the ephemeral literature of pamphlets, essays, and
epistles in the Latin tongue. For these well-educated
readers Poggio and Pontano wrote their Latin novels.
The same learned audience applauded the gladiators
of the moment, Walla and Filelfo, when they descended
into the arena and plied each other with pseudo-Cicero-
nian invectives. To quit this refined circle and address
the vulgar crowd was thought unworthy of a man of
erudition. Only here and there a humanist of the first
rank is found who, like Bruni, devoted a portion of his
industry to the Italian lives of Dante and Petrarch, or,
like Filelfo, lectured on the Divine Comedy, or, again, like
Landino, composed a Dantesque commentary in the
mother tongue. Moreover, Dante and Petrarch passed
for almost classical ; and, in nearly all such instances of
condescension, pecuniary interest swayed the scholar
from his wonted orbit. It was want of skill in Latin,
rather than love for his own idiom, that induced
Vespasiano to pen his lives of great men in Italian. Not
spontaneous inspiration, but the whim of a ducal patron,
forced Filelfo to use terza rima for his worthless poem
264 THE REVIVAL OF VERNACULAR LITERATURE
It affected
their
critical
taste.
on S. John, and to write a commentary upon Petrarch
in the vernacular.
This attitude of learned writers produced a curious ob-
tuseness of critical insight. Niccolò dei Niccoli, though a
Elorentine, called Dante “a poet for bakers and cobblers.”
Pico della Mirandola preferred Lorenzo de' Medici's
verses to Petrarch. Landino complained—not, indeed,
without good reason in that century—that the vulgar
language could boast of no great authors. Filippo
Villani, in the proem to his biographies, apologised
for his father Matteo, who exerted humble faculties to
his best ability. Lorenzo de' Medici defended himself
for paying attention to an idiom which men of good
judgment blamed for “lowness, incapacity, and unworthi-
ness to deal with high themes or grave material.”
Benedetto Warchi, who lived to be an excellent though
Somewhat cumbrous writer of Italian prose, gives this
account of his early training: “I remember that, when I
was a lad, the first and strictest rule of a father to his
Sons, and of a master to his pupils, was that they should
on no account and for no object read anything in the
vulgar speech ; and Master Guasparre Mariscotti da
Marradi, who was my teacher in grammar, a man of
hard and rough but pure and excellent manners, having
Once heard, I know not how, that Schiatta di Bernardo
Bagnesi and I were wont to read Petrarch on the sly,
gave us a Sound rating for it, and nearly expelled us
from his School.” Some of Warchi’s own stylistic pedan-
tries may be attributed to this Latinising education.
THE REVIVA/ OF VERMACULAR LITERATURE 265
Lorenzo de' Medici and Angelo Poliziano reunited
the two currents of Italian literature, plebeian and culti-
vated, by giving the form of refined art to popular lyrics
of divers kinds, to the rustic idyll, and to the Sacred
drama. Another member of the Medicean circle, Luigi
Pulci, aided the same work of restoration by taking up
the rude tales of the Cantori da Piazza, and producing
the first romantic poem of the Renaissance.
Of all the numerous forms of literature, three seem
to have been specially adapted to the Italians of this
period. They were the Novella, the Romantic Epie, and
the Idyll. With regard to the Norella and the Idyll, it
is enough in this place to say that we may reckon them
indigenous to modern Italy. They suited the temper of
the people and the age; the Norella furnishing the fit
artistic vehicle for Italianrealism and objectivity; the
Idyll presenting a point of contact with the literature
Of antiquity, and expressing that calm sensibility to
natural beauty which was so marked a feature of the
----- ---
national character amid the distractions of the sixteenth
century. The Idyll and the Novella formed, moreover,
the most precious portion of Boccaccio's legacy.
The Romantic Epic, on the other hand, had no
*~
*~~
romantic tales of Roland and of Charlemagne, which
formed the basis of the most considerable narrative poems
of the Renaissance, seems uncongenial to the Italians.
Feudalism had never taken a firm hold on the country.
* Cantor,
da,
Piazza.”
The
Novella,
and Idyll.
Romantic
266 ZTAE/A2 A*A. WWVA/C OA, WAEA’AVA COWAAA’ A.Z 7"E.RA TUA’A.
Chivalry was more a pastime of the upper classes, more
consciously artificial, than it had been in France or even
England. The interest of the Italians in the Crusades
was rather commercial than religious, and the people
were not stirred to their centre by the impulse to recover
the Holy Sepulchre. The enthusiasm of piety which
animated the northern myth of Charlemagne was not
characteristic of the race that, earlier than the rest of
Europe, had indulged in speculative scepticism and Sar-
castic raillery; nor were the marvels of the legend con-
genial to their positive and practical imagination, turned
ever to the beauties of the plastic arts.
The It seemed, then, as though the great foreign epics,
bli
fººt in which had been transported into Italy during the
/romantic * º
\/ tails in thirteenth century, would find no permanent place in
gº the southern literature after the close of the fourteenth.
- The cultivated classes, in their eagerness to discover and
appropriate the ancient authors, lost sight of peer and
paladim. Even Boccaccio alluded contemptuously to
º romance, as fit reading only for idle women;
V and when he attempted an epical poem in Octave stanzas,
he chose a tale of ancient Greece. Still, in spite of these
apparent drawbacks, in spite of learned scorn and
polished indifference, the Carolingian Cycle) had taken a
firm hold upon the popular fancy. special class of
literary craftsmen reproduced its principal episodes in
prose and verse for the multitudes gathered on the
squares to hear their recitations, or for readers in the

workshop and the country farm. Now, in the renascence
THE RAE V/VAZ OA' VAAAWACOZAR Z/7ZRATURAE 267
of the native literature, poets of the highest rank were
destined to receive the same material from the people,
and to give it a form appropriate to their own culture.
This fact must not be forgotten by the student of Pulci,
Boiardo, Berni, and Ariosto. The romantic epics of the
golden age had a plebeian origin; and the masters of
Verse who devoted their best energies to that brilliant
Series of poems were dealing with legends which had
taken shape in the imagination of the people, before they
applied their own inventive faculties to the task of
beautifying them with art unrivalled for splendour and
variety of fancy. This, and this alone, explains the
anomalies of the Italian romantic epic—the mixture of
burlesque with seriousness, the irony and sarcasm alter-
nating with gravity and pathos, the wealth of comic
episodes, the interweaving of extraneous incidents, the
antithesis between the professed importance of the
subject-matter and the spirit of the poet who plays with
it as if he felt its puerility—all the startling contrasts, in
a word, which has made this glittering harlequin of art
So puzzling to modern critics.
Boccaccio, in his desire to fuse the classic and the
mediaeval modes of thought and style, not merely adapted
the periods of Latin to Italian prose, but also sought to
treat an antique subject in the popular measure of the
Octave stanza. His Tescide is a narrative poem, in which
the Greek hero plays a prominent part, while all the
chiefs of Theban and Athenian legend are brought upon
N-
the scene. Yet the main motive is a tale of love, and
The poets
first
essayed
to put
antique
Subjects
£nto
"modern,
dress.
**.
... *
&
~ *
268 THE RE VIVAL OF VERAVACULAR LITERA 7TURE
Pulci.
the language is as modern as need be. Writing to
please the mistress of his heart, and emulous of epic
fame, Boccaccio rejected the usual apostrophes and
envoys of the Cantori da Banca, and constructed a poem
divided into books. Poliziano approached the problem
of fusing the antique and the modern from a different
point of view. He adorned a courtly theme of his own
day with phrases and decorative details borrowed from
the classic authors, presenting in a series of brilliant
pictures an epitome of ancient art. It remained for
Pulci to develop, without classical admixture, the
elements of poetry existing in the popular Italian
romances. The Morgante Maggiore is, therefore, more
thoroughly and purely Tuscan than any work of equal
magnitude that had preceded it. This is its great
merit, and this gives it a place apart among the hybrid
productions of the Renaissance.
The Pulci were a noble family, reduced in circum-
stances, and attached to the Casa Medici by ties of
political and domestic dependency. The most famous
of three brothers was Luigi, whose correspondence with
Lorenzo de' Medici proves him to have been a kind of
court poet in the palace of the Via Larga, while the
sonnets he exchanged with Matteo Franco breathe, in
their scurrility and slang, the plebeian spirit of Burchiello,
the rhyming barber, whom we need not notice. He
had a wild fantastic temperament, inclining to bold
speculations on religious topics; tinctured with curiosity
that took the form of magic art ; bizarre in expression,
THE REVIVAL OF VERNACULAR LITERATURE 269
yet withal so purely Florentine that his prose and verse
are a mine of quattrocento idioms gathered from the
jargon of the streets and squares. Of humanistic
culture he seems to have possessed but little. Still, the
terms of familiar intercourse on which he lived with
Poliziano, Palmieri, and Toscanellienabled him to gather
much of the learning then in vogue. The theological
and scientific speculations of the age are transmitted to
us in his comic stanzas with a vernacular raciness that
renders them doubly interesting.
Pulci dealt with the Carolingian Cycle in what may be
termed a bourgeois Spirit. Whether humorous or earnest,
he maintained the tone of Florentine society; and
his Morgante reflects the peculiar conditions of the
Medicean circle at the date of its composition. The
second great poem on the same group of legends,
Boiardo's Orlando Innamorato, transports us into a very
different social and intellectual atmosphere. The high-
born Count of Scandiano, reciting his cantos in the
huge square castle surrounded by its moat, which still
survives to speak of mediaeval Italy in the midst of
Perrara, had but little in common with Luigi Pulci, whose
Tuscan fun and satire amused the merchant-princes of
the Via Larga. The value of the Orlando Immamorato
for the student of Italian development is principally this,
that it is the most purely chivalrous poem of the
Renaissance. Composed before the French invasion,
and while the classical revival was still unaccomplished,
we find in it an echo of an earlier semi-feudal civility.
Boiardo.
270 7"HE RE VIVAL OF VERNACULAR LITERA 7TURE
His posi-
tion at
Ferrara.
Unlike the other literary performances of that age,
which were produced for the most part by professional
humanists, it was the Work of a nobleman to whom feats
of arms and the chase were familiar, and who disdained
the common folk.
Matteo Maria Boiardo was almost an exact con-
temporary of Pulci. He was born about 1434 at his
hereditary fief of Scandiano, a village seven miles from
Reggio at the foot of the Apennines, celebrated for its
excellent vineyards. His mother was Lucia Strozzi, a
member of the Ferrarese house, connected by descent
with the Strozzi of Florence. At the age of twenty-
eight he married Taddea. Gonzaga, daughter of the
Count of Novellara. He lived until 1494, when he died
at the same time as Pico and Poliziano, in the year of
Charles VIII.'s invasion, two years after the death of
Lorenzo de' Medici, and four years before Ficino. These
dates are not unimportant, as fixing the exact epoch of
Boiardo's literary activity. At the court of Ferrara,
where the Count of Scandiano enjoyed the friendship of
Duke Borso and Duke Ercole, this bard of chivalry held
a position worthy of his noble rank and his great talents.
The princes of the house of Este employed him as
ambassador in missions of high trust and honour. He
also administered for them the government of Reggio
and Modena, their two chief Subject cities. As a ruler
he was celebrated for his clemency and for his indifference
to legal formalities.
Well versed in Greek and Latin literature, he trans-
THE REVIVAL OF VERNACULAR Z/TERATURE 271
lated into Italian Herodotus, parts of Xenophon, the His
literary
Golden A38 of Apuleius, and the A38 of Lucian. He works.
also versified Lucian’s Timon for the stage, and wrote
Latin poems of fair merit. His lyrics, addressed to
Antonia Caprara, prove that, like Lorenzo de' Medici, he
was capable of following the path of Petrarch without
falling into Petrarchistic mannerism. But his literary
fame depends less upon these minor works than on the
Orlando Innamorato, a masterpiece of inventive genius
which furnished Ariosto with the theme of the Orlando
Furioso. Without the Innamorato the Furioso is meaning-
less. The handling and structure of the romance, the
characters of the heroes and heroines, the conception of
love and arms as the double theme of romantic poetry,
the interpolation of novelle in the manner of Boccaccio,
and the magic machinery by which the poem is conducted
are due to the originality of Boiardo. Ariosto adopted
his plot, continued the story where he left it, and brought
it to a close ; SO that, taken together, both poems form
one gigantic narrative of about 100,000 lines, which
has for its subject the love and the marriage of Ruggiero
and Bradamante, mythical progenitors of the Estensi.
Yet because the style of Boiardo is rough and provincial,
while that of Ariosto is by all consent ‘divine,' Boiardo
has been almost forgotten by posterity.
N Ariosto's family was ancient and of honourable
station in the Duchy of Ferrara. His father, Nicolò,
held offices of trust under Ercole I., and in the year
1472 was made governor of Reggio, where he acquired
Ariosto.
} .
L^
272 THE REVIVAL OF VERNACULAR L/7 ERA 7TURE
property and married. His wife, Daria Maleguzzi, gave
birth at Reggio in 1474 to their first-born, Lodovico, the
poet. At Reggio the boy spent Seven years of childhood,
removing with his father in 1481 to Rovigo. His edu-
cation appears to have been carried on at Ferrara, where
he learnt Latin but no Greek. This ignorance of Greek
Jiterature placed him, like Machiavelli, somewhat at a dis-
l advantage among men of culture in an age that set great
store upon the knowledge of both ancient languages. He
was destined for alegal career, but, like Petrarch and Boc-
caccio, after spending some useless years in uncongenial
studies, Lodovico prevailed upon his father to allow him to
follow his strong bent for literature. In 1500 Nicolò died,
leaving a family of five sons and five daughters, with
property sufficient for the honour of his house but
Scarcely adequate to the needs of his numerous children.
Lodovico, therefore, found himself, at the age of
twenty-six, in the position of father to nine brothers
and Sisters, for whose education, start in life, and suit-
able settlement he was called upon to arrange. The
administration of his father's estate, and the cares thus
early thrust upon him, made the poet an exact man of
business, and brought him acquainted with real life
under its most serious aspects. He discharged his
duties with prudence and fidelity, managing by economy
to provide portions for his sisters and honourable
maintenance for his brothers out of their joint patri-
mony.
The first three years after his father's death were
THE REVIVAL OF VERNACULAR LITERATURE 273
spent by Ariosto in the neighbourhood of Reggio, and to
this period of his life we may perhaps refer some of the
love affairs celebrated in his Latin poems. He held the
captaincy of Canossa, a small sinecure involving no im-
portant duties, since the castle of Canossa was even in
those days a ruin. In 1503 he entered the service of
Cardinal Ippolito d’Este, with whom he remained until **
1517. He was placed upon the list of the cardinal’s extra-
Ordinary servants, to be employed in matters of confidence
and delicacy, involving frequent journeys to all parts of
Italy and ceremonial embassies. Ippolito urged him to
take Orders, with a view to his pecuniary advantage, but
Ariosto refused to enter a state of life for which he felt
no vocation. That Ippolito did not share the prevailing
enthusiasm of his age for literary culture seems pretty
clear, and he failed to discover the unique genius of the
man whom he had chosen for his confidential agent. It
was not until their final rupture, caused by Ariosto's
refusal to undertake the Hungarian expedition in his
master's train, that the true greatness of the author of
the Furioso was revealed. How should a dissolute and
ill-conditioned cardinal have discerned that a dreamy
poem in manuscript on the madness of Orlando would
live as long as the Æneid, or that the flattering lies of his
attendant would in after-ages turn the fierce glare of
criticism and celebrity upon the darkest corners of his
own history 2 We know, however, that he defrayed the
expenses of its publication, and reserved the right and
profits of its sale to Ariosto.
FIºs
official
€779age-
7ive?vts.
274 THE REVIVAL OF VERNACULAR LITERATURE.
His enjoy-
ment of
honours at
Ferrara.
Elis come-
dies pro-
duced at
Ferrara,
and Rome.
* The Orlando Furioso was conceived and begun in
the year 1505. It was sent to press in 1515. Giovanni
Mazzochi del Bondeno published it in April 1516. In
1518, having freed himself from Ippolito's bondage,
Ariosto entered the service of Duke Alfonso I. He
Occupied his own house in Ferrara ; and the Duke, who
recognised his great literary qualities and appreciated the
new lustre conferred upon his family by the publication Of
the Furioso, left him in the undisturbed possession of his
leisure. The next four years were probably the happiest
of Ariosto's life, for he had now at last Secured inde-
pendence and had entered upon the enjoyment of his
fame. The Medici of Florence and Rome, and the ducal
families of Urbino and Mantua, were pleased to number
him among their intimate friends, and he received
flattering acknowledgments of his poem from the most
illustrious men of Italy.
The few journeys he made at the request of Alfonso
carried him to Florence, the head-quarters of literary
and artistic activity. At home, the time he spared from
the revision of the Furioso was partly devoted to the
love affairs he carried on with jealous secrecy, and partly
to the Superintendence of the ducal theatre. The com-
position of comedies amused him from his boyhood to
his latest years. So early as 1493 he had accompanied
Ercole I. to Pavia in order to play before Lodovico
Sforza, and in the Same year he witnessed the famous
representation of the Mendºchmi at Ferrara. Some of
his earliest essays in literature were translations of Latin
THE REVIVAL OF VERNACULAR LITERATURE 275
comedies, now unfortunately lost. They were intended
for representation, and, as exercises in the playwright's
art, they strongly influenced his style. His own
Cassaria appeared for the first time at Ferrara in
1508; the Suppositi followed in 1509, and was repro-
duced at the Vatican in 1519. It took Leo's fancy so
much that he besought the author for another comedy.
Ariosto, in compliance with this request, completed the
Negromante, which he had already had in hand during
the previous ten years. The Lema was first represented
at Ferrara in 1528, and the Scolastica was left un-
finished at the poet’s death. What part Ariosto took in
the presentation of his comedies is uncertain; but it is
probable that he helped in their performance, besides
directing the stage and reciting the prologue. He thus
acquired a practical acquaintance with theatrical manage-
ment, and it was by his advice, and on plans furnished
by him, that Alfonso built the first permanent stage at
Ferrara in 1532. On the last day of that year, not long
after its erection, the theatre was burned down. These
dates are important, since they prove that Ariosto's con-
nection with the stage as actor, playwright, and manager
was continuous throughout his lifetime.
Ariosto's peaceful occupations at Ferrara were inter-
rupted early in 1522 by a strange episode in his career.
He was nominated Ducal Commissary for the government
of Garfagnana, a wild upland district stretching under
Monte Pellegrino almost across the Apennines, from
the Lucchese to the Modenese frontiers. Nothing but
FI's
official
banish-
nvent to
the count-
try.
T 2.
276 THE REVIVAL OF VERAVACULAR LITERATURE
|His re-
£7/777, to
Ferrara,
7marriage,
and death.
necessity would probably have induced Ariosto to quit
Ferrara for the intolerable seclusion of those barbarous
mountains, where it was his duty to issue edicts against
brigands, to see that the hangman did his duty, and to
sit in judgment daily upon suits that proved the savage
immorality of the entire population. The hopelessness
of the task might have been enough to break a sterner
heart than Ariosto's, and his loathing of his life at
Castelnovo found went in the most powerful of his
satires. He managed to endure this uncongenial
existence for three years, from February 20, 1522, till
June 1525, sustaining his spirits with correspondence
and composition, and varying the monotony of his life
by visits to Ferrara. It was during this time, probably,
that he composed the Cinque Centi.
The last eight years of his life were spent in great
tranquillity at Ferrara. About this time he married the
lady to whom for many years he had been tenderly
attached. She was the Florentine Alessandra Benucci,
widow of Tito Strozzi, whom he first saw at Florence in
the year 1513. The marriage was kept strictly Secret,
probably because the poet did not choose to relinquish
the income he derived from certain minor benefices.
Nor did it prove fruitful of offspring, for he left no
legitimate heirs. Between the year 1525, when he left
Garfagnana, and 1532, when his poem issued from the
press, he devoted himself with unceasing labour to its
revision and improvement. The edition of 1516 con-
sisted of forty cantos. That of 1532 contained forty-
TAE REVIVAL OF VERMACULAR LZZZRA TURAE 277
six, and the whole text had been subjected in the interval
to minute alterations. Not long after the publication of
the revised edition Ariosto's health gave way. His
constitution had never been robust, for he suffered
continually from a catarrh of the lungs, which made his
old life with Ippolito d’Este not only distasteful, but
dangerous. Towards the close of 1532 this complaint
took the form of consumption, which ended his days on
June 6, 1533.
Next to the Orlando Furioso Ariosto's Satires
have the highest value for the light they cast upon his
temperament and mode of feeling. Though they are
commonly called Satires, they rather deserve the name
Of Epistles: for While a satiric element gives a distinct
flavour to each of the seven poems, this is subordinated
to personal and familiar topics of correspondence. The
poet of the Orlando was not great in lyric verse. His
minor compositions show his mastery of simple and
perspicuous style; but the specific qualities of his best
Work, its colour and imagery and pointed humour, are
absent.
/ Of Boccaccio's legacy the most considerable portion,
º the One that bore the richest fruit, was the
Decameron. During the sixteenth century the Novella,
as he shaped it, continued to be a popular and widely-
practised form of literature. In Italy the keynote of the
Renaissance was struck by the Novella, as in England
by the drama. Nor is this predominance of what must
be reckoned a subordinate branch of fiction altogether
Eſºs
Satires.
T]he
Novella.
278 THE REVIVAL OF VERNACULAR LITERA 7TURE
singular ; for the Novella was in a special sense adapted
to the taste of a public, which, during the time of the
despots, grew up in Italy. Since the fourteenth century
the conditions of social life had undergone a thorough
revolution. Under the influence of dynastic rulers
stationed in great cities, merchants and manufacturers
rose to the level of the old nobility; and in common-
wealths like Florence the bourgeoisie gave their tone to
Society. At the same time the community thus formed
was separated from the people by the bar of humanistic
culture. Literature felt this social transformation. Its
products were shaped to suit the tastes of the middle
classes, and at the same time to amuse the leisure of the
aristocracy. The Novella was the natural outcome of
these circumstances. Its qualities and its defects alike
betray the ascendency of the bourgeois element.
The The term Novella requires definition, lest the thing
character . e e
of the in question should be confounded with our modern novel.
Novella.
Although they bear the same name, these species have
less in common than might be supposed. Both, indeed,
are narratives; but while the novel is a history extending
over a considerable space of time, embracing a compli-
cated tissue of events, and necessitating a study of
character, the Novella is invariably brief and sketchy.
>~ --T `-- --...-------~~"
It does not aim at presenting a detailed picture of human
life within certain artistically chosen limitations, but
confines itself to a striking situation, or tel anecdote
illustrative of some moral quality. This is shown by
the headings of the sections into which Italian Novellieri
THE ACA V/VA / OF VERNACULAR LITERATURE 279
divided their collections. We read such rubrics as the
following: ‘On the magnanimity of princes,’ ‘Concern-
ing those who have been fortunate in love,’ ‘Of Sudden
changes from prosperity to evil fortune,’ ‘The guiles of
women practised on their husbands.’ A theme is pro-
posed, and the Novelle are intended to exemplify it.
Furthermore, the Novelle were composed for the
amusement of mixed companies, who met together and
passed their time in conversation. All the Novellieri
pretend that their stories were originally recited and
then written down; nor is there the least doubt that in a
large majority of cases they were really read aloud or
improvised upon occasions similar to those invented by
their authors. These circumstances determined the
length and ruled the mechanism of the Novella. It
was impossible, within the short space of a spoken tale,
to attempt any minute analysis of character, Or to Weave
the meshes of a complicated plot. The narrator went
straight to his object, which was to arrest the attention,
Stimulate the curiosity, gratify the sensual instincts,
excite the laughter, or stir the tender emotions of his
audience by Some fantastic, voluptuous, comic, or pathetic
incident.
Matteo Bandello's life was itself a Novella. The
Scion of a noble house, early dedicated to the Order of
S. Dominic, but with the general of that order for his
uncle, he enjoyed rare opportunities of studying men and
women in all parts of Europe. His good abilities and
active mind enabled him to master the essentials of
They were
adapted to
recitation.
Bandello.
28o 7//E ACA V/VAZ OF VERNACULAR Z/7 FAA 7TURE.
Grazzini.
scholarship, and introduced him when at Mantua, where
a considerable portion of his manhood was passed, as
tutor to Lucrezia Gonzaga, one of the most fascinating
and learned women of his age. These privileges he put
to use by carrying on a courtly flirtation with his
interesting pupil, at the same time that he penned his
celebrated novels. Misfortunes overtook him in 1525,
when French and Spaniards contested the Duchy of
Milan; but after numerous adventures he found pro-
tection at the court of France. In 1550 Henry II.
conferred upon him the See of Agen, where he died
about ten years afterwards, when Europe was ringing
with the scandal of his too licentious tales. These tales
furnished the reformers with a weapon in their war
against the Church ; nor would it have been easy to
devise one better suited to their purpose. Even now it
moves astonishment to think that a monk should have
written, and a bishop should have published, the facetia.
with which Bandello's books are filled.
The author of Le Cene presents a marked contrast
to Bandello. Antonfrancesco Grazzini belonged to an
ancient and honourable family of Staggia in Waldelsa.
Born at Florence in 1503, he was matriculated into the
Speziali, and followed the profession of a druggist. The so-
briquet II Lasca, or the Roach, assumed by him as a mem-
ber of the Umidi, is the name by which he is best known.
Besides Novelle, he wrote comedies and poems, and
made the renowned collection of Canti Carnascialeschi.
He died in 1583 and was buried in S. Pier Maggiore.
7 HAZ RAE V/VAZ, OA' WEA/VA COZAA’ Z/7ZA'A TU/e E 281
Thus, while Bandello might claim to be a citizen of the
great World, reared in the ecclesiastical purple, and con-
versant with the roblest society of Northern Italy, Il
Lasca began life and ended it as a Florentine burgher.
His stories are written in the raciest Tuscan idiom, and
are redolent of the humour peculiar to Florence. If
Bandello appropriated the romantic element in Boccaccio,
Il Lasca chose his comic side for imitation. Nearly all
his novels turn on beffe and burle, similar to those sketched
in Sacchetti's anecdotes, or developed with greater detail
by Pulci and the anonymous author of Il Grasso and
Legmaiuolo. Still the specific note of Il Lasca's novels
is not pure fun. He combines obscenity with fierce
carnal cruelty and inhuman jesting, in a mixture that
speaks but ill for the taste of the time.
Agnolo. Firenzuola and Antonfrancesco Doni may
be mentioned among the more graceful of the Tuscan
novelists; and it will suffice to allude briefly to three
collections which in their day were highly popular.
These are I Proverbi of Antonio Cornazano, La Piacevoli
Notti of Straparola, and Giraldi's Hecatommithi. Corna-
Zano was a copious Writer both in Latin and Italian.
He passed his life at the courts of Francesco Sforza,
Bartolommeo Colleoni, and Ercole I. of Ferrara. One
of his earliest compositions was a Life of Christ. This
fact is not insignificant, as a sign of the conditions under
which literature was produced in the Renaissance. A
man who had gained reputation by a learned or religious
treatise ventured to extend it by jests of the broadest
Fire",-
2^lola and
Donvi.
Corma-
20,72. O.
282 THE REVIVA L OF VERNACULAR LITERA 7TURE
humour. The Proverbi, by which alone Cormazano's
name is now distinguished, are sixteen carefully wrought
stories, very droll but very dirty. Each illustrates a
common proverb, and pretends to relate the circum-
stances which gave it currency. The author opens one
tale with a simple statement : “From the deserts of the
Thebaid came to us that trite and much-used saying,
Better late than never, and this was how it happened.’
Having stated the theme, he enters on his narrative,
diverting attention by a series of absurdities which lead
to an unexpected climax. He concludes it thus: ‘The
Abbot answered : “It is not this that makes me weep,
but to think of my misfortune to have been so long with-
out discovering and commending so excellent a usage.”
“Father,” said the monk, “Better late than mever.””
There is considerable comic vigour in the working of
this motive. One sense of the ridiculous is stimulated
by a studied disproportion between the universality of
the proverb and the strangeness of the incidents invented
to account for it.
A- Straparola breaks ground in a different direction.
zola. The majority of his novels bear traces of their origin in
fairy stories. Much interest attaches to the Notti
Piacevoli, as the literary reproduction of a popular species
which the Venetian Gozzi afterwards rendered famous.
The element of bizarre fancy is remarkable in all these
tales; but the marvellous has been so mingled with the
facts of common life as to give each narrative the true
air of the conventional Novella.
THE RE V/VAL OF VERNACULAR L/7 ERATURE 283
On the score of style alone it would be difficult to ex-
plain the widespread popularity of Giraldi Cinthio's One
hundred and ten tales. The Hecatommithi are written
in a lumbering manner, and the stories are often lifeless.
Compared with the brilliancy of the Tuscan Novelle, the
point and sparkle of Le Ceme, the grace and gusto of
Sermini, or Firenzuola's golden fluency, the diction
of this noble Ferrarese is dull. Yet the Hecatommith?
was reprinted again and again, and translated into
several languages. In England, through Painter's
Palace of Pleasure, they obtained wide circulation, and
Supplied our best dramatists, including Shakespeare and
Fletcher, with hints for plays. If we put the point of
style aside, the vogue of Cinthio in Italy and Europe be-
comes at once intelligible. There is a massive force and
volume in his matter which proclaims him an author to
be reckoned with. The variety of scenes he represents,
the tragic gravity of many of his motives, his intimate
acquaintance with the manners and customs of a class
that never, fails to interest the vulgar, combined with
great Sagacity in Selecting and multiplying instances of
striking crime, stood him in the stead of finer art with
the Special public for whom Novelle were composed.
Compared even with Boccaccio, the prince of story-tellers,
Cinthio holds his own, not as a great dramatic or
descriptive Writer, but as one who has studied, analysed,
and digested the material of human action and passion
in a vast variety of modes. His work is more solid and
reflective than Bandello's ; more moralised than Il
Giraldi,
Cinthio.
284 7"HE A*E VI VAZ OF VERAVACULAR L/7 ERA 7TURE
The
Drama.
Trissimo.
Lasca's. The ethical tendency, both of the tales and the
discussions they occasion, is for the most part singularly
wholesome.
Contemporaneously with the romantic epic, the drama.
began to be a work of studied art in Italy. Boiardo, by
his Timone, and Poliziano, by his Orfeo, gave the earliest
specimens at Ferrara and Mantua of secular plays written
in the vulgar tongue. It is significant that the two
|poets who were mainly instrumental in effecting a revival
of Italian poetry should have tried their hands at two
Species of composition for the stage. In the Orfeo we
find a direct outgrowth from the Sacre Rappresentazioni.
The form of the Florentine religious shows is adapted
with very little alteration to a pagan story. In substance
the Orfeo is a pastoral melodrama. With a tragic climax.
Boiardo, in the Timone, followed a different course. The
subject is borrowed from Lucian, who speaks the prologue,
as Gower prologises in the Pericles of Shakespeare. The
comedy aims at regularity of structure and is written in
terza rima.
The first regular Italian tragedy was the Sofonisba of
Gian Giorgio Trissino, finished in 1515, and six times
printed before the date of its first representation at Vicenza.
in 1562. Trissino was a man of immense erudition and
laborious intellect, who devoted himself to questions of
grammatical and literary accuracy, studying the critics
of antiquity with indefatigable diligence, and seeking to
establish canons for the regulation of correct Italian
composition. He was by no means deficient in Originality
THE REVIVAL OF VERNACULAR LITERATURE 285
of aim, and professed himself the pioneer of novelties in
poetry. Thus, besides innovating in the minor matter of
Orthography, he set himself to supply the deficiencies of
Italian literature by producing an epic in the heroic
style, and a tragedy that should compare with those of
Athens. The Italia Liberata and the Sofonisba, meri-
torious but lifeless exercises which lacked nothing but
the genius for poetry, were the result of these ambitious
theories. Without mentioning the essays of other
writers, it may be said that the failure of Italian tragedy
was inseparable from its artificial origin. It was the
conscious product of cultivated persons who aimed at
nothing nobler than the imitation of the ancients and
the observance of inapplicable rules.
Numerous scholars entered the lists in competition
with Trissino. Giovanni Rucellai produced his Rosmunda
almost contemporaneously with the Sofonisba, and it was
acted before Leo X. in the Rucellai gardens upon the
occasion of a papal visit to Florence. The chief merit of
Rosmunda is brevity. But it has the fatal fault of being
a story told in Scenes and dialogues—not an action
moving and expanding through a series of connected
incidents. His defects culminate in Speron Sperone's
Canace. The tale is horrible, and the situations show
how little of dramatic genius Sperone brought to bear
upon the hideous theme he had selected.
The humanistic influences of the fifteenth century
were scarcely less unpropitious to national comedy at its
outset than they had been to tragedy. We may note this
Rucellai.
Sperone. V
Their
comedics V
QU07'9.
originally
286 ZTA/AE A&AE VIVA L OF VERAWA CUMCA R Z/7'AºA'A TURAE
tº fact with regret, since it helped to deprive the Italians of
7,072 S. i
* a national theatre. We find that, at the close of that
century, it was common to recite the plays of Plautus
;
and Terence in their original language, though later on
they were translated into Italian for the amusement of
an audience unacquainted with ancient languages. The
transition from Latin to Italian comedy was effected
almost simultaneously by Bernardo Dovizio, Ariosto, and
Machiavelli. With regard to Dovizio, who was born at
Bibbiena in 1470, it is enough to say that his Colandra,
which raised him to a foremost place among the literary
men of Italy, was composed before his elevation to the
Dovizio.
dignity of cardinal, and was first performed at Urbino,
possibly in 1508. From Urbino the comedy passed through
all the courts of Italy, finding the highest favour at Rome,
where Leo more than once decreed its representation.
Leo’s Leo had an insatiable appetite for scenic shows.
patronage
of the
drama.
Comedies of the new Latinising style were his favourite
recreation. But he also invited the Sienese company of
the Rozzi, who only played farces, every year to Rome; nor
was he averse to even less artistic buffoonery, as may be
gathered from many of the stories told about him. In 1513
Leo opened a theatre upon the Capitol, and here in 1519,
surrounded with two thousand spectators, he witnessed
an exhibition of Ariosto's Suppositi. We have a de-
scription of the scene from the pen of an eye-witness,
who relates how the Pope sat at the entrance to the
gallery leading into the theatre, and admitted with his
benediction those whom he thought worthy of partaking
THE REVIVAL OF VERNACULAR LITERATURE 287
in the night's amusement. When the house was full,
he took his throne in the orchestra, and Sat, with eye-
glass in hand, to watch the play. Raphael had painted
the scenery, which is said to have been, and doubtless
was, extremely beautiful. Leo's behaviour Scandalised
the foreign ambassadors, who thought it indecorous that
a Pope should not only listen to the equivocal jests of the
prologue, but also laugh immoderately at them. As
usual, the inter-acts consisted of vocal and instrumental
concerts, with ballets on classical and allegorical subjects.
The mention of Leo's entertainment in 1519 intro-
duces the subject of Ariosto's plays. The Suppositi,
originally written in prose and afterwards versified by its
author, first appeared in 1509 at Ferrara. In the pre-
ceding year he exhibited the Cassaria, which, like the
Suppositi, was planned in prose and subsequently versified
in Sdrucciolo iambics. Not to mention others, it may be
remarked that the artistic merit of Ariosto's comedies is
the perfection of their structure. However involved the
intrigues may be, we experience no difficulty in following
them, so masterly is their development. The characters
are drawn with that ripe insight into human nature
which distinguished Ariosto. The Lena has the highest
value as a picture of Ferrarese society. We have good
reason to believe that it was founded on an actual in-
cident. It deserves to rank with Machiavelli’s Man-
dragola and Aretino's Cortigiana for the light it throws
on sixteenth-century customs. And the light is far
more natural, less lurid, less partial, than that which
Ariosto's
plays.
, *
.*
L^
288 THE RE VIVAL OF VERNACULAR LITERA TURAE
V
/Machia-
velli’s
comedies.
The
character
of Pietro
Aretino.
either Machiavelli or Aretino shed upon the vices of their
century.
Of Machiavelli we have two genuine comedies in
prose, the Mandragola and the Clizia, and two of doubtful
authenticity, called respectively Commedia in Prosa and
Commedia in Versi, besides a translation of the Andria.
In the comedy of Mandragola Machiavelli puts forth all
his strength. Sinister and repulsive as it may be to
modern tastes, its power is indubitable. More than any
plays of which mention has been made, more even than
Ariosto's Lena and Negromante, it detaches itself from
Latin precedents, and offers an unsophisticated view of
Florentine life from its author’s terrible point of con-
templation.
Something more must be said of Pietro Aretino
than that he completed the disengagement of Italian
from Latin comedy. He was remarkable in more ways
than as merely distinguished in Italian literature. Base
in character, coarse in mental fibre, unworthy to rank
among real artists, notwithstanding his undoubted genius,
Pietro Aretino was the typical ruffian of an age which
brought ruffianism to perfection, welcomed it when
successful, bowed to its insolence, and viewed it with
complacent toleration in the highest places of Church,
State, and letters. He was the condottiere of the pen in
a society which truckled to the Borgias. He incarnated
the dissolution of Italian culture. It is the condemnation
of Italy that we are forced to give this prominence to
Aretino. If we place Poliziano or Guicciardini, Bembo
THE REVIVAL OF VERNACULAR LITERATURE 289
or La Casa, Bandello or Firenzuola, Cellini or Berni,
Paolo Giovio or Lodovico Dolce—typical men of letters
chosen from the poets, journalists, historians, artists,
novel-writers—under the critical microscope, we find in
each and all of them a tincture of Pietro Aretino. It is
because he emphasises and brings into relief One master
element of the Renaissance.
As an author it was no vain boast that he trusted
only to nature and mother-wit. His intellectual dis-
tinction consisted precisely in this confidence and self-
reliance, at a moment when the literary World was given
Over to pedantic scruples and the formalities of academical
prescription. Writing without the fear of pedagogues
before his eyes—Seeking, as he says, relief, expression,
force, and brilliancy of phrase, he produced a manner
at Once singular and attractive, which turned to ridicule
the pretensions of the purists. He had the courage of
his personality, and stamped upon his style the very
form and pressure of himself. The originality of his
Ars Poetica took the World by surprise. His Italian
audience delighted in the sparkle of a style that gave
point to their common speech. Had Aretino been a
FI is merit
CLS Cſ)7,
author.
writer of genius Italy might now have owed to his
audacity and self-reliance the starting-point of national
dramatic art. He was on the right path, but he lacked
the skill to tread it. His comedies, loosely put together,
with no constructive vigour in their plots and no grasp
of psychology in their characters, are a series of power-
fully-written scenes, piquant dialogues, and effective
U
290 THE REVIVAL OF VERNACULAR LITERATURE
The
fecundity
but un-
origin-
ality of
the play-
wrights.
The re-
wersion,
from the
Catholic
to a 7tew
ideal of
life.
situations rather than comedies in the higher sense of
the word,
It would be difficult to render an account of the
comedies produced by the Italians in the sixteenth
century, or to catalogue their authors. A computation
has been made which reckons the plays known to
students at several thousands. In spite of this extra-
ordinary richness in comic literature, Italy cannot
boast of a great comedy. No poet arose to carry the
art onward from the point already reached when
Aretino left the stage. The neglect that fell on those
innumerable comedies was not wholly undeserved. It is
true that their scenes suggested brilliant episodes to
It is
true that the historian of manners finds in them an
Still they are
literary lucubrations rather than the spontaneous ex-
French and English playwrights of celebrity.
almost inexhaustible store of matter.
pression of a vivid nationality. Nor have they the
subordinate merit of dealing in a scientific spirit with
We miss the
original plots, the powerful modelling of character, the
the cardinal vices and follies of society.
philosophical insight, which would have reconciled us to
a Commedia erudita.
The transition from the middle ages to the Renaissance
was marked by a new ideal, which we have now to notice,
as it in no slight measure affected Italian literature.
The faiths and aspirations of Catholicism, whereof the
Divine Comedy remains the monument in art, began to
lose their hold on the imagination. The world beyond
THE REVIVAL OF VERNACULAR LITERATURE 291
the grave grew dim to mental vision, in proportion as
this world, through humanism rediscovered, claimed
daily more attention. Neither the expectation of
heavenly bliss nor the fear of purgatorial pain was felt
with that intense sincerity which inspired Dante's cantos
and Orcagna's frescoes. On both emotions the new
culture, appearing at One moment as a Solvent through
philosophical speculation, at another as a corrosive in
the sceptical and critical activity it stimulated, was act-
ing with destructive energy. Thus it happened that the
sensibilities of men athirst for some consoling fancy took
refuge in the dream of a past happy age. On one side
the ideal was purely literary, reflecting the artistic in-
stincts of a people enthusiastic for form, and affording \
scope for their imitative activity; but, on the other side, -
it corresponded to a deep and genuine Italian feeling.
That sympathy with rustic life, that love of nature
humanised by industry, that delight in the villa, the \
garden, the vineyard and the grove, which modern
Italians inherited from their Roman ancestors, gave
reality to what might otherwise have been but artificial.
Vespasiano's anecdotes of Cosimo de' Medici pruning his
own fruit-trees; Ficino's description of the village feasts
at Montevecchio ; Flamminio's picture of his Latin
farm ; Alberti's tenderness in gazing at the autumn
fields—all these have the ring of genuine emotion. For
men who felt like this, the Age of Gold was no mere
fiction and Arcady a land of possibilities.
What has been well called la voluttà idillica—the The Idyll.
U 2
292 THE REVIVAL OF VERAVACULAR LITERATURE
Sensuous sensibility to beauty, finding fit expression in
the idyll—formed a marked characteristic of Renaissance
art and literature. Boccaccio developed this idyllic
motive in all his works which dealt with the origins
of society. Poliziano and Lorenzo devoted their best
poetry to the praise of rural bliss, the happiness of Shep-
herd folk anterior to life in cities. The same theme
recurs in the Latin poems of the humanists. It pervades
the clergy, the ode, the Sonnet, and takes to itself the
chief honours of the drama. A literary Eldorado had
been discovered which was destined to attract explorers
through the next three centuries. Arcadia became the
wonder-world of noble youths and maidens, at Madrid
no less than at Ferrara, in Elizabeth's London and in
Marie Antoinette's Versailles. After engaging the genius
of Tasso and Guarini, Spenser and Sidney, it degenerated
into quaint conventionality. Companions of Turenne
and Marlborough told tales of pastoral love to maids of
honour near the throne. Frederick’s and Maria. Theresa’s
courtiers simpered and sighed like Dresden-chima Swains
and shepherdesses. Crooked sticks with ribbons at the
top were a fashionable appendage to red-heeled shoes and
powdered perukes. Few phenomena in history are more
curious than the prolonged prosperity and widespread
fascination of this Arcadian romance.
Samſudz- To Jacopo Sannazzaro belongs the glory of having
2017"O. first explored Arcadia, mapped out its borders, and called
it after his own name. He is the Columbus of this
visionary hemisphere. His ancestors claim to have been
THE REVIVAL OF VERNACULAR Z/7ZRA TURE 293
originally Spaniards, settled in a village of Pavia called
S. Nazzaro, whence they took their name. The poet's
immediate forefather was said to have followed Charles
of Durazzo in 1880 to the south of Italy, where he
received fiefs and lands in the Basilicata. Jacopo was
born at Naples in 1458, and, as a youth, made such
rapid progress in both Greek and Latin scholarship as
Soon to be found worthy of admission to Pontano's
academy. The friendship between the master and
pupil lasted without interruption up to the time of the
death of the former in 1503. Their Latin poems abound
in passages which testify to a strong mutual regard, and
the life-size effigies of both may still be seen together in
the church of Monte Oliveto at Naples. Distinction in
scholarship was, after the days of Alfonso the Magnani-
mous, a sure title to consideration at the Neapolitan
court. Sannazzaro attached himself to the person of
Frederick, the second son of Ferdinand I. ; and when this
prince succeeded to the throne he conferred upon the poet
a pension and the pleasant villa of Mergoglino between
the city and Posilippo. When Frederick was forced to
retire to France in 1501, Sannazzaro accompanied his
royal master into exile, only returning to Naples after
the ex-king's death. There Sannazzaro continued to
reside until his own death in 1530, after seeing the
destruction of his villa during the occupation of Naples
by the Imperial troops under the Prince of Orange. The
Arcadia was begun at Nocera in his youth, continued
during his residence in France, and finished on his return
294 THE RE VIVAL OF VERAVACULAR ZZTERA 7TURE
Pontano.
to Naples. The book blends autobiography and fable in
a narrative of very languid interest. Loose in construc-
tion and uncertain in aim, it lacks the clearness and
consistency of perfect art. And yet it is a masterpiece;
because its author, led by present instinct, contrived to
make it reflect one of the deepest and most permanent
emotions of his time. The whole pastoral ideal—the
yearning after a golden age, the beauty and pathos of
the country, the felicity of simple folk, the details of
rustic life, the charm of woods and gardens, the mythology
of Pan and Satyrs, of nymphs and fauns—all this is
expressed in a series of pictures idyllically graceful and
artistically felt. For English students the Arcadia has
a special interest, since it begot the longer and more
ambitious work of Sir Philip Sidney.
In Pontano, again, the Southern people found a voice
which, though it uttered a dead language—for his most
important contributions to Italian literature were in
Latin—expressed all their Sentiments. Though a native
of Coneto in Umbria, Pontano passed his life at Naples,
and became, if we may trust the evidence of his lyrics,
more Neapolitan than the Neapolitans. The cardinal
point in Pontano is the breadth of his feeling. He
touches the whole scale of natural emotions with equal
passion and sincerity. The love of the young man for
his sweetheart, the love of the husband for his bride, the
love of a father for his offspring, the love of a nurse for
her infant charge, find in his verse the same full sensuous
expression. His poems may be read with no less profit
THE REVIVAL OF VERNACULAR Z/TERATURE 295
for their pictures of Neapolitan life. He brings the
Baths of Baiae, unspoiled as yet by the eruption of Monte
Nuovo, vividly before us; the myrtle-groves and gardens
by the bay; the sailors stretched along the shore; the
youths and maidens flirting as they bathe or drink the
waters, their evening walks, their little dinners, their
assignations—all the round of pleasure in a place and
climate made for love. Or we watch the people at their
games, crowded together on those high-built carts,
rattling the tambourine and spurring the dancers of the
tarantella—as near to fauns and nymphs as humanity
may well be.
It is impossible in a limited space to render any
adequate account of the bucolic idylls, and we can well
afford to turn in silence from the common crowd of
eclogue writers. Yet one emerges from the rank and
file who deserves particular attention. Born at Modena
in 1489, Francesco Maria Molza stands foremost in his
own day among Scholars of ripe erudition and artists of
accomplished skill. His high birth, his genial conver-
sation, his loves and self-inflicted misfortunes, alike
brought him distinction, while his Ninfa Tiburina is still
the sweetest pastoral of the golden age. Yet the brilliance
of his literary fame, and the affection felt for him by men
of note in every part of Italy, will not distract attention
from the ignobility of his career. Faithless to his wife,
neglectful of his children, continually begging money
from his father, he passed his manhood in a series of
amours. The poem we have mentioned was composed
Molza.
* U 4
296 THE REVIVAL OF VERNACULAR LITERATURE
in honour of a Roman courtesan, so famous for her
beauty and fine breeding as to attract the sympathy of
even austere natures. When she died, the town went
into mourning and the streets echoed with elegiac lamen-
tations. It is curious that among Michael Angelo's
sonnets should be found one—not, however, of the best
—written upon this occasion. Between 1523 and 1525,
he passed two years in the Society of a more illustrious
companion—the beautiful and witty Camilla Gonzaga.
After again returning to Rome he shared in the miseries
of the sack, which made so doleful an impression on his
mind that, saddened for the time, he returned like the
prodigal to his home in Mantua. Rome, however, al-
though not destined to regain the Splendour she had lost,
shook off the dust and blood of 1527; and there were
competent observers who, like Aretino, thought her still
more reckless in vice than she had been before. Molza
could not long resist these attractions. We find him
there again in 1529, attached to the person of Cardinal
Ippolito de' Medici, and delighting the academies with
his wit. Two years afterwards his father and mother
died on successive days of August, and he celebrated
their deaths in one of the most lovely of his many sonnets.
But his ill life, and obstinate refusal to settle at Modena,
had disinherited him, and henceforth he lived upon his
son Camillo's bounty. At last, after suffering for some
years from a malady brought on by his dissolute course
of life, he crawled back to Modena, where he died in
February 1544, offering to the world, as his biographer
THE REVIVAL OF VERWACULAR LITERATURE 297
is careful to assure us, a rare example of Christian re-
signation and devotion. All the men of the Renaissance
died in the odour of piety.
We have now briefly traced the pastoral ideal from
its commencement in Boccaccio, through the Arcadia
of Sannazzaro and the Orfeo of Poliziano, up to the
point when it was destined soon to find its perfect form
in the Aminta and the Pastor Fido. Both Tasso
and Guarini lived beyond the chronological limits of
our survey. Yet we must give a passing notice to
two poems which combined the drama and the pas-
toral idyll in works of art no less characteristic of
the time than fruitful of results for European litera-
ture.
Torquato Tasso, born at Sorrento, in 1544, became,
at the age of eighteen, more famous than his father,
Bernardo, who, amid journeys, campaigns, and miscel-
laneous court duties, had produced sonnets, odes and
epithalamial hymns which placed him among the fore-
most lyrists of his time. Torquato, like so many youths
of good family, as we have seen, was educated for the
legal profession. He was soon, however, in the luxurious
court of Ferrara, at which we find him, in 1565,
in the suite of Cardinal Louis d’Este, able to follow
the bent of his genius. With regard to his play of
Aminta, it would be a mistake to suppose that, be-
cause the form of the Arcadian romance was artificial,
it could not lend itself to the presentation of real passion
when adapted to the theatre. Though Battista Guarini’s
The cul-
animation.
of pastoral
drama.
Tasso.
Guarini.
298 THE REVIVAL OF VERNACULAR Z/7ZRA 7TURE
The
classic
7model
thought
to be
essential.
Pastor Fido is the more carefully constructed plot of
the two, they both present a series of emotional situa-
tions, developed with refined art and expressed with lyrical
abundance. The rustic fable is but a veil through which
the everlasting lineaments of love are shown. Of the
music and beauty of these two dramas it is difficult to
speak. Before some masterpieces criticism bends in
silence. We cannot describe what must be felt. All
the melodies that had been growing through two
centuries in Italy are concentrated in their songs. The
idyllic voluptuousness which permeated literature and art
steeps their pictures in a golden glow. They complete
and close the Renaissance, bequeathing in a new species
of art its form and pressure to succeeding generations.
We have now seen that the awakened consciousness
of the Italic people showed itself first in the creation of a
learned literature, imitating as closely as possible in a dead
language the models recovered from ancient Rome. It
was not enough to appropriate the matter of the Latin
authors. Their form had to be assimilated and repro-
duced. These pioneers in Scholarship believed that the
vulgar tongue, with its divergent dialects, had ever been
and still remained incapable of higher culture. The
refined diction of Cicero and Virgil was for them a
separate and superior Speech, consecrated by infallible
precedent, and no less serviceable for modern than it had
been formerly for antique usage. Recovering the style
|
ſ the Augustan age, they thought they would possess an
nstrument of utterance adapted to their present needs
THE RAE VIVAL OF VERNACULAR LITERATURE 299
and correlated to the living language of the people, as it
had been in the age of Roman greatness.
With the cessation of the first enthusiasm for antique
culture, the claims of vernacular Italian came to be
recognised. No other modern nation had produced
masterpieces equal to those of Dante, Petrarch, and
Boccaccio. The self-esteem of the Italians could not
Suffer the exclusion of the Divine Comedy, the Can-
20miere, and the Decameron from the rank of classics.
Men of delicate perception, like Alberti and Lorenzo de'
Medici, felt that the honours of posterity would fall to
the share of those who cultivated and improved their
mother tongue. Thus the earlier position of the
humanists was recognised as false. Could not their
recent acquisitions be carried over to the account and
profit of the vernacular 2 A common Italian language,
based upon the Tuscan, but modified for general usage,
was now practised in accordance with the rules and
objects of the scholars. It was thus that the master-
pieces of cinque cento literature came into being—the
Orlando and the comedies of Ariosto, Machiavelli’s
histories and Sannazzaro's Arcadia, the Gerusalemme
of Tasso and Guarini's Pastor Fido—together with the
multitudinous and multifarious work of lesser crafts-
men in prose and verse.
It is dis-
carded for
a modern
form.
3OO
XIV
THE CATEIOLIC REACTION
C
G
º
#;"HE Papacy, after the ending of the schism
iššº and the settlement of Nicholas W. at Rome
in 1547, gradually tended to become an
Italian sovereignty. During the residence
of the Popes at Avignon, and the weakness of the Papal
See which followed in the period of the Councils (Pisa,
Constance, and Basle), it had lost its hold, not Only on
the immediate neighbourhood of Rome, but also on its out-
lying possessions in Umbria, the Marches of Ancona, and
the Exarchate of Ravenna. The great houses of Colonna
and Orsini asserted independence in their principalities.
Bologna and Perugia pretended to republican govern-
ments under the shadow of noble families, and all the
other great cities obeyed the rule of tyrants who were
practically their lords, though they bore the title of
Papal Vicars. It became the chief object of the Popes,
after they were freed from the pressing peril of general
councils, and were once more settled in their capital and
recognised as sovereigns by the European Powers, to
subdue their vassals and consolidate their provinces into
a homogeneous kingdom.

TAZAZ CA 7TA/OA./C A&AEACT/O AV 3OI
This plan was conceived and carried out by a succes-
sion of vigorous and unscrupulous Pontiffs—Sixtus IV.,
Alexander VI., Julius II., and Leo X.--throughout the
period of distracting foreign wars which agitated Italy.
They followed, for the most part, one line of policy,
which was to place the wealth and authority of the Holy
See at the disposal of their relations, Riarios, Della
Roveres, Borgias, and Medici. Their military delegates,
among whom the most efficient captain was the terrible
Cesare Borgia, had full power to crush the liberties of
cities, exterminate the dynasties of despots, and reduce
refractory districts to the Papal Sway. For these services
they were rewarded with ducal and princely titles, with the
administration of their conquests, and with the investiture
of fiefs as vassals of the Church. The profits, however,
of all these Schemes of egotistical rapacity accrued, not
to the relatives of the Pontiffs (none of whom, except the
Della Roveres in Urbino, founded at this period a dynasty),
but to the Holy See.
In the middle of the first half of the sixteenth century,
as we have seen, Spain, France, and Germany, with their
Swiss auxiliaries, made havoc of the fairest provinces and
cities of Italy. Clement VII., imprisoned in the castle
of S. Angelo, forced day and might to gaze upon his
capital in flames, and to hear the groans of his tortured
people, emerged the only vigorous Survivor of all the
greater states of the peninsula. Owing to their prostra-
tion, there was now no resistance possible to the Pope's
Secular Supremacy within the limits of his authorised
The a/m-
bitious
policy
of the
Papacy
The dis-
order of ,
Italy is to
the advant-
tage of
Clement
WII.
3O2 THE CA 7THOZMC A' EACT/OAy
His agree-
7ment with
Charles V.
dominion. The defeat of France, and the accession of
a Spanish monarch to the empire, guaranteed peace.
Venice had been stunned and mutilated by the League
of Cambray. Florence had been enslaved after the
battle of Ravenna. Milan had been relinquished, out-
worn and depopulated, to the nominal ascendency of an
impotent Sforza. Naples was a province of the Spanish
monarchy. The feudal vassals, and the subject cities of
the Holy See, had been ground and churned together by a
series of revolutions, unexampled even in the mediaeval
history of the Italian communes. If, therefore, the Pope
could come to terms with the King of Spain for the
partition of supreme authority in the peninsula, they
might henceforward share the mangled remains of the
Italian prey at peace together.
This is precisely what they resolved on doing. The
basis of their agreement was laid in the treaty of
VBarcelona in 1529. It was ratified and secured by the
treaty of Cambray in the same year. By the former of
these compacts Charles W. and Clement swore friend-
ship. Clement promised to Charles the Imperial crown
and the investiture of Naples. Charles agreed to re-
instate the Pope in Emilia, which had been seized from
Ferrara by Julius II. ; to procure the restoration of
Ravenna and Cervia from the Venetians; and to bestow
the hand of his natural daughter, Margaret of Austria,
on Clement's bastard nephew, Alessandro de' Medici, who
was already designated ruler of Florence. By the treaty
of Cambray Francis I. relinquished his claims on Italy,
7THE CA 7TA/O/C/C A&E A CTVOAV 3O3
receiving in exchange the possession of Burgundy. The
French allies, who were sacrificed on this occasion by
the most Christian to the most Catholic monarch, con-
sisted of the republics of Venice and Florence, the dukes
of Milan and Ferrara, the princely houses of Orsini and
Fregosi in Rome and Genoa, together with the Angevin
nobles in the realm of Naples. The Paia des Dames, as
this act of capitulation was called (since it had been
drawn up in private conclave by Louisa of Savoy and
Margaret of Austria, the mother and the aunt of the two
signatories), was a virtual acknowledgment of the fact
that French influence in Italy was at an end.
The surrender of Italy by Francis made it necessary
that Charles should put in order the vast estates to
which he now succeeded as sole master. He was, more-
over, Emperor Elect, and he judged this occasion good
for assuming the two crowns according to antique
custom. Consequently, in July 1529, he caused Andrea
Doria to meet him at Barcelona, crossed the Mediter-
ranean in a rough passage of fourteen days, landed at
Genoa on August 12, and proceeded by Piacenza, Parma,
and Modena to Bologna, where Clement was already
awaiting him. Charles had a body of two thousand
Spaniards quartered at Genoa, as well as strong garrisons
in the Milanese, and a force of about seven thousand
troops collected by the Prince of Orange from the débris
of the army which had plundered Rome. He took with
him as escort Some ten thousand men, counting horse
and infantry. The total, therefore, of the troops which
Charles V.
lands inv
Italy.
3O4 THE CA 7TA/O/L/C REACTYOAV
Ełis recep-
tion at
Genoa.
Ble makes
ſhis entry
into
Dologna.
obeyed his command in Italy might be computed at
about twenty-seven thousand, including Spanish cavalry
and foot, German landsknechts, and Italian mercenaries.
This large army, partly stationed in important posts of
defence, partly in movement, was sufficient to make
every word of his a law.
To greet the king on his arrival at Genoa, Clement
had deputed two ambassadors, the Cardinal Ercole
Gonzaga and Monsignore Gianmatteo Giberti, Bishop of
Werona. Gonzaga was destined to play a part of critical
importance in the Tridentine Council. Giberti had
made himself illustrious in the Church, by the adminis-
tration of his diocese on a system which anticipated the
coming ecclesiastical reforms. Three other men of high
distinction and of fateful future attended on their Im-
perial master. Of these the first was Cardinal Alessandro
Farnese, who succeeded Clement in the Papacy, opened
the Council of Trent, and added a new reigning family
to the Italian princes. The others were the Pope's
nephews, Alessandro de' Medici, Duke of Florence
designate, and his cousin the Cardinal Ippolito de'
Medici.
Great preparations meanwhile were being made in
Bologna. The municipality and nobles exerted their
utmost in these bad times to render the reception of the
Emperor worthy of the lustre which his residence and
coronation would confer on them. Gallant guests began
to flock into the city. Among these may be mentioned
the brilliant Isabella d'Este, sister of Duke Alfonso and
TAZAZ CA THO/L/C RAEA CTVOAV 3OS
mother of the reigning Marquis of Mantua. On Novem-
ber 3 came Andria Doria, with his relative the Cardinal
Girolamo of that name. About the same time Cardinal
Lorenzo Campeggi, Bishop of Bologna, returned from his
legation in England, where (the student of our history
will remember) he had been engaged on the question of
Henry VIII.'s divorce from Katharine of Aragon. Next
day Charles arrived outside the gate, and took up his
quarters in the rich convent of Certosa which now forms
the Campo Santo. He passed the night of the 4th there,
and on the following morning made his entry, in great
state, into the city.
Clement, Surrounded by a troop of prelates, was
seated to receive him on a platform raised before the
church of S. Petronio in the great piazza. The king
dismounted opposite the Papal throne, ascended the
steps beneath a canopy of gold and crimson, and knelt
to kiss the Pontiff's feet. When their eyes first met, it
was observed that both turned pale; for the memory of
Outraged Rome was on the minds of both ; and Caesar,
while he paid this homage to Christ's Vicar, had the load
of those long months of Suffering and insult on his con-
science. Clement bent down, and with streaming eyes
Saluted him upon the cheek. Then, when Charles was
still upon his knees, they exchanged a few set words
referring to the purpose of their meeting, and their
common desire for the pacification of Christendom,
After this the Emperor Elect arose, seated himself for a
while beside the Pope, and next at his invitation escorted
X
The 77veet-
ing of the
Pope and
Emperor.
306 THE CA 7THOL/C REACTIO/V
Charles V.
receives
the Iron,
Crown of
Italy.
him to the great portal of the church. On the way he
inquired after Clement’s health ; to which the Pope re-
plied somewhat significantly that, after leaving Rome, it
had steadily improved. He tempered this allusion to his
captivity, however, by adding that his eagerness to greet
his majesty had inspired him with more than wonted
strength and courage. At the doorway they parted ; and
the Emperor, having paid his devotion to the Sacrament
and kissed the altar, was conducted to the apartment pre-
pared for him in the Palazzo Pubblico.
Charles had come to assume the iron and the golden
crowns in Italy. He ought to have journeyed to Monza,
or to S. Ambrogio at Milan, for the first, and to the
Lateran in Rome for the second of these investitures.
An emperor of the Swabian house would have been
compelled by precedent and Superstition to observe this
form. By breaking the old rules, Charles notified the
disappearance of the mediaeval Order, and proclaimed new
political ideals to the world. When asked whether he
would not follow custom, and seek the Lombard crown
in Monza, he brutally replied that he was not wont to
run after crowns, but to have Crowns running after him.
He trampled no less on that still more venerable religio loci
which attached Imperial rights to Rome. Together with
this ancient piety, he swept the Holy Roman Empire
into the dust-heap of archaic Curiosities. The citizens
of Monza were bidden to Send the iron Crown to Bologna.
It arrived on February 20, 1530, and on the 22nd Charles
received it from the hands of Clement in the chapel of
the palace.
THE CA 7TA/O/L/C RAE ACT/O/V 3O7
February 24, which was the anniversary of Charles's
birthday, had been fixed for his coronation as Emperor
in S. Petronio. This church is one of the largest Gothic
buildings in Italy. Its façade occupies the Southern
side of the piazza. To the left of it is the Palazzo Pub-
blico, and in order to facilitate the passage of the Pope
and the Emperor from the palace to the cathedral a
bridge was constructed from an opening in the Hall of
the Ancients to the platform in front of the façade.
Clement was borne aloft by pontifical grooms in their
red liveries. He wore the tiara and a cope of state
fastened by Cellini’s famous stud, in which blazed the
Burgundian diamond of Charles the Bold. Charles
walked in royal robes, attended by the Count of Nassau
and Don Pietro di Toledo, the Viceroy of Naples, who
afterwards gave his name to the chief street in that city.
Before him went the Marquis of Montferrat, bearing the
sceptre; Philip, Duke of Bavaria, carrying the golden
Orb ; the Duke of Urbino with the sword, and the Duke
of Savoy holding the Imperial diadem. The day was
well-nigh over when, after a series of ceremonies during
which Charles was consecrated a Deacon, he at length
received the Imperial insignia from the Pope's hands.
Accipe gladium sanctum, Accipe virgam, Accipe pomum,
Accipe Sigmum gloride. As Clement pronounced these
sentences, he gave the Sword, the Sceptre, the globe and
the diadem, in succession, to the Emperor who knelt
before him. Charles bent and kissed the Papal feet.
He then rose and took his throne beside the Pope. It
His coro-
mation as
Emperor.
K 2
3O8 THE CA THO/L/C REACTIO/W
Society at
Bologma.
was placed two steps lower than that of Clement. The
ceremony of coronation and enthronisation being now
complete, Charles was proclaimed: Romanorum Imperator
semper augustus, mundi totius Dominus, universis
Dominis, universis Principibus et Populis semper vene-
randus. When mass was over, Pope and Emperor shook
hands. At the church door Charles held Clement’s
stirrup, and when the Pope had mounted he led his
palfrey for Some paces in sign of filial submission.
The few weeks which now remained before Charles
left Bologna were spent for the most part in jousts and
tournaments, visits to churches, and social entertain-
ments. Veronica Gambara threw her apartments open
to the numerous men of letters who crowded from all
parts of Italy to witness the ceremony of Charles's coro-
nation. This lady was widow of the late Lord of Cor-
reggio, and one of the two most illustrious women of the
time. She dwelt with princely state in the palace of the
Marsili; and here might be seen the poets Bembo and
Molza in conversation with witty Berni and stately
Trissino. There were also to be seen there Paolo Giovio
and Francesco Guicciardini, the chief historians of their
time, together with a host of literary and diplomatic
worthies attached to the courts of Urbino and Ferrara,
or attendant on the train of cardinals who, like Ippolito
de’ Medici, made a display of culture. Meanwhile the
Dowager Marchioness of Mantua and the Duchess of
Savoy entertained Italian and Spanish nobles with
masqued balls and carnival processions, in the Manzoli
THE CA 7THO/C/C A&AEA CT/OAV 309
and Pepoli palaces. What still remained to Italy of
Renaissance splendour, wit, and fashion, after the sack
of Rome and the prostration of her noblest cities, was
concentrated in this sunset blaze of festivity at Bologna.
Nor were the arts without illustrious representatives.
Francesco Mazzola, surnamed Il Parmigianino, before
whose altarpiece in his Roman studio the rough soldiers
of Bourbon's army were said to have lately knelt in
adoration, commemorated the hero of the day by painting
Charles attended by Fame who crowned his forehead,
while an infant Hercules handed him the globe. Titian,
too, was there, and received the honour of several sittings
from the Emperor. His life-sized portrait of Charles in
full armour, seated on a white war-horse, has perished ;
but it gave such satisfaction at the moment that the
fortunate master was made a knight and count palatine,
and appointed painter to the Emperor with a fixed
pension. From this assemblage of eminent persons We
notice the absence of Pietro Aretino. He was at the
moment out of favour with Clement VII. But, in-
dependently of this obstacle, he may well have thought
it imprudent to quit his Venetian retreat, and expose
himself to the resentment of so many princes whom he
had alternately loaded with false praises and bemired
with loathsome libels.
In the midst of this mirth-making there arrived
On March 20 an embassy from England, announcing
Henry VIII.'s resolve to divorce himself at any cost
from Katharine of Aragon. This may well have recalled
The Pope
Cúſ)
Emperor
Separate.
3 IO THE CA THO/LMC A&E ACTION
Florence
constitutes
itself a
Republic.
both Pope and Emperor to a sense of the gravity of
European affairs. The schism of England was now
imminent. Germany was distracted by Protestant re-
volution. The Imperial army was largely composed of
mutinous Lutherans. Some of these soldiers had even
dared to overthrow a colossal statue of Clement VII. at
Bologna. Nor were the gathering forces of revolutionary
Protestantism alone ominous. Though Soliman had
been repulsed before Vienna, the Turks were still ad-
vancing on the eastern borders of the empire. Their
fleets swept the Levantine waters, while the pirate
dynasties of Tunis and Algiers threatened the whole
Mediterranean coast with ruin. Charles, still uncertain
what part he should take in the disputes of Germany,
left Bologna for the Tyrol on March 23. Clement, on
the last day of the month, took his journey by Loreto to
Rome.
Florence alone had been excepted from the articles of
peace. When the news had arrived there, in 1527, that
Rome was in the hands of a Lutheran rabble, and that
the Pope remained imprisoned in the castle of S. Angelo,
the citizens proclaimed a Republic. The Grand Council
was reformed, and the Constitution was restored on the
basis of 1489; only the Gonfalonier was to be re-elected
at the expiration of each year. Nicolò Caponi, a man of
fervent piety and moderate political opinions, was the
first to hold the office. The new State hastened to form
an alliance with France, and Malatesta Baglioni was
appointed commander-in-chief with the support of
ZTAZA, CA 7TA/O J.A.C A&AEA CT/O AW 3 II
Stefano Colonna. These captains were both of them
men of considerable ability.
During the following year, after the arrival on the
scene of Charles W. the Florentines perceived that they
would have to sustain a siege. Accordingly they began
to put the city in a state for defence, by first destroying
the villas with their gardens in the immediate neigh-
bourhood of the walls. Outworks were thrown up ; the
most noticeable of these being the one, of great strength,
constructed by Michael Angelo on the height of S.
Miniato, which, from its command of the town, necessi-
tated its capture before an occupation could be attempted.
Machiavelli, who had died during the first days of the
new Republic, left behind him a scheme, as we have
already noticed, for constituting a national militia. The
male population who were fit to serve were immediately
enrolled in accordance with this plan, and for a whole
year the Florentines displayed the greatest energy in
developing the military resources at their command.
Unluckily they stood alone, receiving no support either
from France or the sister States of Italy, while the
Emperor declared his intention of giving them up as
rebellious subjects of the Pope.
At the end of August 1529 the Prince of Orange
moved from Rome at the head of the Imperial troops.
Although these had been considerably reduced in number
by debauchery and disease during the sack of Rome, they
still amounted with reinforcements to something like
twenty thousand men. The Prince began by securing
She pre-
pares for
a Siege.
The
Prince of
Orange
invests
Florence.
* X 4
3I 2 7TP/A2 CA ZTA/O/L/C A&AEA CT/OAV
Prancesco
Ferrucci.
the valley of the Arno, and subduing the principal towns
of the Florentine territory. He then encamped on the
plain of Rissoli, and concentrated his attack on the
fortification of S. Miniato.
The siege and defence dragged on for eight months,
while outside the walls one hero was found in the person
of Francesco Ferrucci. He had learned the art of war
under the brilliant and adventurous captain Giovanni de'
Medici of the Black Bands. Commissioned to serve the
interests of the Republic in the way he thought best,
Ferrucci collected all the men he could, and instituted a
harassing system of guerilla Warfare. His first notice-
able success was the capture of Wolterra; after which,
having by this time enrolled upwards of three thousand
men, he made a raid upon the mountains of Pistoja.
But Ferrucci's exploits had roused the serious alarm of
the Imperialists. He was surrounded by an overwhelm-
ing force in the little village of Gavignana, and fell
fighting in the streets, together with two thousand of
his men. This happened on August 2.
Within the walls there existed two elements of
weakness. One was the discord which prevailed among
the citizens. They had for a long Series of years been
divided by several factions. One of them favoured the
Medici, another Savonarola, a third desired an oligarchy,
a fourth demanded a strictly democratic constitution.
In these circumstances it was unfortunate that a new
Gonfalonier had to be elected every year, for the political
disagreements of the city came into more unwholesome,
TA/F CA THO/L/C RAE ACT/O/V 3I 3
prominence on each of these occasions. The other
element of weakness, which proved fatal, was the dis-
loyalty of the general. On receiving news of the defeat
and death of Ferrucci, Baglioni, who had never ceased
to correspond with the enemy, began to negotiate in
earnest, and on August 13 he obliged the citizens to
capitulate, without obtaining sufficient guarantees for
the Security of their persons and property. Conse-
Quently, the return of the Medici to power was followed
by a series of executions, banishments, and confiscations,
in which the animosity of the Pope was conspicuous.
Alessandro de' Medici took up his residence there in
July 1531, and held the State by the help of Spanish
mercenaries under the command of Alessandro Vitelli.
When he was murdered by a cousin in 1537, having
previously poisoned the Cardinal Ippolito, who was with
him at Bologna, Cosimo de' Medici, the Scion of another
branch of the ruling family, was appointed duke.
Charles W. recognised his title, and Cosimo soon showed
his determination to be master in his own duchy. He
crushed the exiled party of Filippo Strozzi, who
attempted a revolution in the State, exterminated its
leaders, and contrived to rid himself of the powerful
adherents who had placed him on the throne. But he
remained a subservient, though not very Willing, ally of
Spain, and subsequently profited by this policy. In
1557 Philip II. conceded to him the Sienese territory,
reserving only its forts, and in 1569 Cosimo obtained
the title of Grand Duke of Tuscany from Pope Pius V.
3I4 THE CA 7TP/O LIC A&E A CT/OAV
Spain
and Rome
profit by
further
changes.
The cities
still the
centres of
literature
and art.
This title was confirmed by the Empire to his son
Francesco in 1575.
Thus the republics of Florence and Siena were
extinguished. The Grand Duchy of Tuscany became
an Italian power of the first magnitude, devoted to the
absolute principles of Spanish and papal sovereignty.
The further changes which took place in Italy after the
year 1530 turned equally to the profit of Spain and
Rome. These were principally the creation of the
Duchy of Parma for the Farnese (1545–1559); the
resumption of Ferrara by the Papacy in 1597, which
reduced the house of Este to the smaller fiefs of Modena,
and Reggio ; the acquisition of Montferrat by Mantua
in 1536; the cession of Saluzzo to Savoy in 1598, and
the absorption of Urbino into the Papal domains in
1631.
The intellectual and social life of the Italians, though
much reduced in vigour, continued, as formerly, to be
concentrated in cities marked by distinct local qualities,
and boastful of their ancient glories. The courts of
Ferrara and Urbino remained centres for literary and
artistic coteries. Rome early assumed novel airs of
piety, and external conformity to austere patterns
became the fashion. Yet the Papal capital did not
wholly cease to be the resort of students and of artists.
The universities maintained themselves in a respectable
position—far different, indeed, from that which they had
held in the last century, yet not ignoble. Much was
being learned on many lines of study divergent from
THE CATHOLIC REACTION 3I 5
those prescribed by earlier humanists. Padua, in par-
ticular, distinguished itself for medical researches.
This was the flourishing time, moreover, of academies,
in which, notwithstanding nonsense talked and foolish
tastes indulged, some solid work was done for literature
and Science. The names of Cimento, Della Crusca, and
Palazzo Vernio, at Florence, remind us of not unim-
portant labours in physics, in the analysis of language,
and in the formation of a new dramatic style of music.
At the same time the resurgence of popular literature,
and the creation of popular theatrical types, were further
symptoms of an unimpaired vitality. It is as though
the Italian nation, Suffocated by Spanish etiquette
and poisoned by Jesuitical duplicity, sought to expand
healthy lungs in pure and unimpeded air, indulging in
dialectical niceties, and immortalising street jokes by the
genius of masqued comedy.
We have to observe, however, that at this epoch
Catholic Christianity showed signs of re-awakening.
The Reformation called forth a new and sincere spirit
in the Latin Church ; new antagonisms were evoked,
and new efforts after self-preservation had to be made
by the Papal hierarchy. At first sight we may wonder
that the race which had shone with such incomparable
lustre from Dante to Ariosto, and which had done so
much to create modern culture for Europe, should so
quietly have accepted a retrogressive revolution. Yet,
when we look closer, this is not surprising. The Italians
were fatigued with creation, bewildered by the complexity
The awa-
kening of
Catholi-
cism.
316 THE CA THOL/C REACTION
There
were still
SO77te StarS
shiming
of the
Remais-
SO/?? C6.
of their discoveries, uncertain as to the immediate course
before them. The Renaissance had been mainly the
Work of a select few. It had transformed society with-
out permeating the masses of the people. Was it
Strange that the majority should reflect that, after all,
the old ways are the best ? This led them to approve
the Catholic revival. Was it strange that, after long,
distracting, aimless wars, they should hail peace at any
price? This lent popular sanction to the Spanish
hegemony, in spite of its obvious drawbacks.
It must not be supposed that the change we have
indicated passed rapidly over the Italian spirit. When
Paul III. Succeeded Clement on the Papal throne in
1534, Some of the giants of the Renaissance still sur-
vived, and much of their great work was yet to be
accomplished. Michael Angelo had neither painted the
Last Judgment nor planned the cupola which crowns
S. Peter's. Cellini had not cast his Perseus for the
Loggia de' Lanzi, nor had Palladio raised San Giorgio
from the Sea at Venice. Pietro Aretino still Swaggered
in lordly insolence ; and though Machiavelli was dead,
the ‘silver histories’ of Guicciardini remained to be
written. Bandello, Giraldi, and Il Lasca had not pub-
lished their Novelle, nor had Cecchi given the last touch
to Florentine comedy. It was chiefly at Venice, which
preserved the ancient forms of her oligarchical indepen-
dence, that the grand style of the Renaissance continued
to flourish. Titian was in his prime; the stars of
Tintoretto and Veronese had scarcely risen above the
TAZA, CA 7TA/OAZC A&EA CTVOA/ 3 I7
horizon. Sansovino was still producing masterpieces of
picturesque beauty in architecture.
Meanwhile, the new spirit began to manifest itself *
in the foundation of orders and institutions tending to Theatines.
purification of Church discipline. The most notable of (~
these was the order of Theatines, established by Thiene
and Caraffa. Its object was to improve the secular
priesthood, with a view to which end seminaries were
opened for the education of priests, who took monastic
vows, and devoted themselves to special observance of
their clerical duties, as preachers, administrators of
the Sacraments, visitors of the poor and sick.
If we compare the spirit indicated by these efforts The
- Inquisi-
in the first half of the sixteenth century with that of tion and
e 4 gº * . e the Order
the earlier Renaissance, it will be evident that the of the
ſº tº gº g Jesuits.
Italians were ready for religious change. They sink,
| _2^
however, into insignificance beside two Spanish institu- ~
tions which about the same period added their weight
and influence to the Catholic revival. These were the
Inquisition and the Jesuit Order. Paul III. empowered
Caraffa in 1542 to re-establish the Inquisition in Rome
upon a new basis, resembling that of the Spanish Holy
Office, and he sanctioned and confirmed the Company of
Jesus between the years 1540 and 1543. The establish-
ment of the Inquisition gave vast disciplinary powers to
the Church at the moment when the Council of Trent
fixed her dogmas, and proclaimed the absolute authority
of the Popes. At the same time, the Jesuits, devoted
by their founder in blind obedience to the service of the
3.18 ZTHAE CA 7THO/CAC REACTYOAV
Paſul III.
His large
eacperi-
€70,062.
Papacy, penetrated Italy, Spain, France, Germany, and
the transatlantic colonies.
Alessandro Farnese, whom we have been speaking of
as Paul III., was born in 1468 of an ancient but decayed
family in the neighbourhood of Bolsena, and received a
humanistic education, according to the taste of the
earlier Renaissance. He studied literature with Pom-
ponius Laetus in the Roman Academy, and frequented
the gardens of Lorenzo de' Medici at Florence. While
still a young man of twenty-five, he was raised to the
cardinalate by Alexander VI. This advancement he
owed to the influence of his sister Giulia, surnamed
La Bella, who was then the Borgia’s mistress. It is
characteristic of an epoch during which the bold tra-
ditions of the fifteenth century still lingered, that the
undraped statue of this Giulia (representing Vanity)
was carved for the basement of Paul III.'s monument
in the choir of S. Peter's. Both as a patron of the arts
and as an elegant scholar in the Latin and Italian lan-
guages, Alessandro showed throughout his life the effects
of his early training.
Before his elevation to the Papacy, Paul had lived
through the reigns of Julius II., Leo X., Adrian WI., and
Clement VII. The pupil of Pomponius Laetus, the
creature of Roderigo Borgia, the representative of
Italian manners and culture before the age of foreign
invasion had changed the face of Italy, he was called at
the age of sixty-six to steer the ship of the Church
through troubled waters and in very altered circum-
THE CA THO/C/C REACTIO/V 3 I9
stances. He had witnessed the rise and progress of
Protestant revolt in Germany. He had observed the
stirrings of a new and sincere spirit of religious gravity,
an earnest desire for ecclesiastical reform in his own
country. He had watched the duel between France and
Spain, during the course of which his predecessors,
Alexander VI. and Julius II., restored the secular
authority of Rome. He had seen that authority hum-
bled to the dust in 1527, and miraculously rehabilitated
at Bologna in 1530. Finally, he had assisted at the
coronation of Charles W.; and when he took the reins
of power into his hands, he was well aware with what a
formidable force he had to cope in the great Emperor.
The cardinals whom Paul promoted on his accession
included the chief of those men who strove in vain for a
concordat between Rome and Reformation ; it also in-
cluded the man who stamped Rome with the impress of
the counter-Reformation. Yet Caraffa would not have
had the fulcrum needed for this decisive exertion of
power, had it not been for another act of Paul’s reign.
This was the convening of the Council of Trent. Paul’s
attitude towards the Council, which he summoned with
reluctance, which he frustrated as far as in him lay, and
the final outcome of which he was far from anticipating,
illustrates in a most decisive manner his destiny as Pope
of the transition.
Paul died on November 10, 1549. Passing over the
short and uneventful reigns of Julius III. and Marcello
II., in May 1555 the Cardinal Giovanni Pietro Carafa
PHis mea-
Sures to
stem the
Reforma-
tion.
Paul TV.
32O THE CA THO/L/C REACTYOAV
was elected, with the title of Paul IV. He sprang from
a high and puissant family of Naples. He was a man of
fierce, impulsive, and uncompromising temper, animated
by two ruling passions—burning hatred of the Spaniards
who were trampling on his native land, and ecclesiastical
ambition intensified by rigid Catholic orthodoxy. The
first act of his reign was a vain effort to expel the
Spaniards from Italy by resorting to the old device of
Prench assistance. The abdication of Charles W. had
placed Philip II. On the throne of Spain, and the settle-
ment whereby the Imperial crown passed to his brother
Terdinand had substituted a feeble for a powerful
Emperor. But Philip's disengagement from the cares
of Germany left him more at liberty to maintain his
preponderance in Southern Europe. It was fortunate
for Paul TV. that Philip was a bigoted Catholic and a
superstitiously obedient son of the Church. These two
potentates, who began to reign in the same year, were
destined, after the settlement of their early quarrel, to
lead and Organise the Catholic counter-Reformation.
The Duke of Guise, at the Pope's request, marched a
French army into Italy. Paul raised a body of mer-
cenaries who were chiefly German Protestants, and
opened negotiations with Soliman, entreating the Turk
to make a descent on Sicily by Sea. Into such a
fanatically false position was the chief of Christendom,
the most catholic of all the Pontiffs, driven by his jealous
patriotism.
The Duke of Alva put the forces at his disposal in
TA/A2 CA THO/C/C A&AEA CTVOAV 32 I
the Two Sicilies into motion, and advanced to meet the
Duke of Guise. But, while the campaign dragged on,
Philip won the decisive battle of S. Quentin. The Guise
hurried back to France, and Alva marched unresisted
upon Rome. There was no reason why the Eternal
City should not have been subjected to another siege and
sack. The will was certainly not wanting in Alva to
humiliate the Pope, who never spoke of Spaniards but as
renegade Jews, Marrani, heretics, and personifications
of pride. Philip, however, wrote reminding his general
that the date of his birth (1527) was that of Rome's
calamity, and vowing that he would not signalise the
first year of his reign by inflicting fresh miseries upon
the capital of Christendom. Alva Was Ordered to make
peace on terms both honourable and advantageous to his
Holiness. Consequently, when Alva entered Rome in
peaceful pomp, he did homage for his master to the Pope,
who was generously Willing to absolve him for his past
offences. Paul IV. publicly exulted in the abasement of
his conquerors, declaring that it would teach kings in
future the obedience they owed to the head of the Church.
But Alva did not conceal his discontent. It would have
been better, he said, to have sent the Pope to sue for
peace and pardon at Brussels, than to allow him to
obtain the one and grant the other on these terms.
Paul now turned his attention, with the fiery passion
that distinguished him, to the reformation of ecclesiastical
abuses. On his accession he had published a Bull
declaring that this would be a principal object of his
Y
Philip II.
of Spain,
refuses to
take ad-
wantage
of his suc-
C0SS,
The Pope
turns to
Toot out
clerical
abuses.
322 *
THE CA THO/C/C REACTYOAV
reign. Nor had he in the midst of other occupations
forgotten his engagement. A congregation specially ap-
pointed for examining, classifying, and remedying such
abuses had been established. It was divided into three
committees, consisting of eight cardinals, fifteen pre-
lates, and fifty men of learning. At the same time the
Inquisition was vigorously maintained. Paul extended
its jurisdiction, empowered it to use torture, and was
constant in his attendance on its meetings and ‘acts of
faith.” But now that his plans for the expulsion of the
Spaniards had failed, and his nephews had been hurled
for misconduct from the high positions to which he had
raised them, an exercise of justice which spoke well for
his sincerity, there remained no other interest to distract
his mind. Every day witnessed the promulgation of
Some new edict touching monastic discipline, Simony,
Sale of offices, Church ritual, performance of clerical
duties, and appointment to ecclesiastical dignities. It
was his favourite boast that there would be no need
of a council to restore the Church to purity, since he
was doing it. And, indeed, his measures formed the
nucleus of the Tridentine decrees upon this topic in the
final sessions of the council. Under this government
Rome assumed an air of exemplary behaviour which
struck foreigners with mute astonishment. Cardinals
were compelled to preach in their Basilicas. The Pope
himself, who was vain of his eloquence, preached.
Gravity of manners, external signs of piety, a composed
and contrite face, Ostentation of Orthodoxy by frequent con-
fession and attendance at the mass, became fashionable.
THE CA THO/L/C REACTION 323
The successor of Paul IV. was a man of very different
Quality and antecedents. Giovanni Angelo Medici sprang
not from the Florentine house of Medici, but from an
obscure Lombard stem. Paul III. observed him, took
him into favour, and advanced him to the cardinalate. He
was hated by Paul IV., who drove him away from Rome.
It is probable that this antipathy constituted something
to his elevation to the Papacy, when he assumed the
title of Pius IV. Of humble origin, a jurist and a
worldling, pacific in his policy, devoted to Spanish
interests, cautious and conciliatory in the conduct of
affairs, ignorant of theology and indifferent to niceties
of discipline, he was at all points the exact opposite of
the fiery Neapolitan noble, the inquisitor and fanatic, the
haughty trampler upon kings, the armed antagonist of
Alva, the brusque impulsive autocrat, the purist of
orthodoxy, who preceded him. His trusted counsellor
was Cardinal Morone, whom Paul had thrown into the
dungeons of the Inquisition on a charge of favour-
ing Lutheran opinions, and who was liberated by the
rabble in their fury. This was in itself significant of the
new régime which now began in Rome. Morone, like his
master, understood that the Church could best be guided
by diplomacy and acts of peace. The two together
brought the Council of Trent to that conclusion which
left an undisputed Sovereignty in theological and eccle-
siastical affairs to the Papacy. It would have been im-
possible for a man of Caraffa's stamp to achieve what
these Sagacious temporisers and adroit managers effected.
Pºſs TV,
Y 2
324 THE CATHO/L/C REACTIO/V
Płis con-
ciliatory
policy.
His pru-
dence
Without advancing the same arrogant claims to
spiritual supremacy as Paul had made, Pius was by no
means a feeble pontiff. He knew that the temper of the
times demanded wise concessions; but he also knew how
to win through these concessions the reality of power.
It was he who initiated and firmly followed the policy of
alliance between the Papacy and the Catholic sovereigns.
Instead of asserting the interests of the Church in
antagonism to secular potentates, he undertook to prove
that their interests were identical. Militant Protestantism
threatened the civil no less than the ecclesiastical order.
The episcopacy attempted to liberate itself from mon-
archical and pontifical authority alike. Pius proposed
to the autocrats of Europe a compact for mutual defence,
divesting the Holy See of some of its privileges, but
requiring in return the recognition of its ecclesiastical
absolutism. In all difficult negotiations he was wont to
depend upon himself, treating his counsellors as agents
rather than as peers, and holding the threads of diplo-
macy in his own hands. Thus he was able to transact
business as a sovereign with sovereigns, and came to
terms with them by means of personal correspondence.
The reconstruction of Catholic Christendom, which took
visible shape in the decrees of the Tridentine Council,
was actually settled in the courts of Spain, Austria,
France, and Rome. The Fathers of the Council were
chiefly the mouthpieces of royal and papal cabinets.
Pius IV. was greatly assisted in his work by circum-
stances of which he knew how to avail himself. Had it
THE CA 7THO/C/C A&E A CT/O/V 325
not been for the renewed spiritual activity of Catholicism, obtains
he might not have been able to carry that work through. Support.
He took no interest in theology, and felt no sympathy for
the Inquisition. But he prudently left that institution
alone to pursue its function of policing the ecclesiastical
realm. The Jesuits rendered him important assistance
by propagating their doctrine of passive obedience to
Rome. Spain supported him with the massive strength
of a nation Catholic to the core ; and his own indepen-
dence, as a prudent man of business, uninfluenced by
bigoted prejudices or partialities for any sect, enabled
him to manipulate all resources at his disposal for the
main object of uniting Catholicism and securing Papal
Supremacy.
Soon after the election of Pius the state of Europe made The de.
the calling of a general council indispensable. Paul’s º: ºr.
impolitic pretensions had finally alienated England from ſº
the Roman Church. Scotland was on the point of de-
claring herself Protestant. The Huguenots were grow-
ing stronger every year in France, the Queen Mother,
Catherine de' Medici, being at that time inclined to
favour them. The Confession of Augsburg had long
been recognised in Germany. The whole of Scandinavia,
with Denmark, was lost to Catholicism. The Low
Countries, in spite of Philip, Alva, and the Inquisition,
remained intractable. Bohemia, Hungary, and Poland
were alienated and ripe for open schism. The tenets of
Zwingli had taken root in German Switzerland. Calvin
was gaining ground in the French Cantons. Geneva
326 THE CA 7THO/L/C REACTYOAV
Council
of Trent
Teopened.
had become a stationary fortress, the stronghold of
belligerent reformers, whence heresy sent forth its mis-
sionaries, and promulgated subversive doctrines through
the medium of an ever active press. In 1559 the outlook
for the Church was very gloomy: no one could predict
whether a general council might not increase her difficul-
ties by weakening the Papal power, and Sowing further
seeds of discord among her few faithful adherents.
The council was opened again at Trent, by Cardinal
Gonzaga and three others, on January 15, 1562. In
spite of its inauspicious commencement, Pius declared
the council a general council, and that it should be
recognised as a continuation of that council which had
been held in the same town in 1545. This rendered the
co-operation of Protestants impossible, since they would
have been compelled to accept the earlier dogmatic re-
solutions of the Fathers. Fresh and fresh difficulties and
discussions arose, until Pius adhered to two important
lines of policy, the energetic pursuit of which speedily
brought the council to a peaceful termination. These
were to meet the demand for a searching reformation
of the Church with cheerful acquiescence, but to oppose
a counter-demand that the secular states in all their
ecclesiastical relations should at the same time be re-
formed. The latter would imply a threat of alienating
patronage and revenue from the princes; and his refusal
indicated plainly that the tiara and the crowns had in-
terests in common. He sought to develop the diplomatic
system upon which he had already tentatively entered.
ZTAIAE CA 7THO/C/C REACT/O/V 327
The council terminated in December with an act of ſº
submission which placed all its decrees at the pleasure of *
the Papal sanction. Pius was wise enough to pass and Papacy.
ratify the decrees of the Tridentine Fathers by a Bull
dated on December 26, 1563, reserving to the Papal
sovereign the sole right of interpreting them in doubtful
or disputed cases. This he could well afford to do ; for
not an article had been penned without his concurrence,
and not a stipulation had been made without a previous
understanding with the Catholic powers. The very
terms, moreover, by which his ratification was conveyed
Secured his supremacy, and conferred upon his successors
and himself the privileges of a court of ultimate appeal.
At no previous period in the history of the Church had so
wide, so undefined, and so unlimited an authority been
accorded to the See of Rome.
The personal qualities of Carlo Borromeo were of grave Pius V.
importance in the election of a successor to his uncle.
He had ruled the Church during the last years of Pius IV.,
and the newly-appointed cardinals were his dependents.
Had he attempted to exert his power for his own election,
he might have met with opposition. He chose to use it
for what he considered the deepest Catholic interests.
This unselfishness led to the selection of a man, Michele
Ghislieri, whose antecedents rendered him formidable to
the still corrupt members of the Roman hierarchy, but
whose character was precisely of the stamp required for
giving Solidity to the new phase on which the Church had
entered. As Pius IV. had been the exact opposite to
328 THE CA THOL/C REACT/OAV
The rigour
of his
adminis-
tration.
Paul IV., so Pius W. was a complete contrast to Pius IV.
He had passed the best years of his life as chief of the
Inquisition. Devoted to theology and to religious exer-
cises, he lacked the legal and mundane faculties of his
predecessor. But these were no longer necessary. What
Was now required was a Pope who should, by personal
example and rigid discipline, impress Rome with the
principles of Orthodoxy and reform. Carlo Borromeo,
Self-conscious, perhaps, of the political incapacity which
others noticed in him, and fervently zealous for the
Catholic revival, devolved this duty on Michele Ghislieri,
who completed the work of his two predecessors.
Pius V. embodied in himself those ascetic virtues
which Carlo Borromeo and the Jesuits were determined
to propagate throughout the Catholic World. He never
missed a day's attendance on the prescribed services of
the Church, said frequent masses, fasted at regular in-
tervals, and continued to wear the coarse woollen shirt
which formed a part of his friar's costume. In his piety
there was no hypocrisy. The people saw streams of
tears pouring from the eyes of the Pontiff bowed in
ecstasy before the Host. A rigid reformation of the
churches, monasteries, and clergy was immediately set
on foot throughout the Papal States. Monks and nuns
complained that austerities were expected from them
which were not included in the rules to which they vowed
obedience. The severity of the Inquisition was aug-
mented, and the Index. Eacpurgatorius began to exercise
a stricter jurisdiction over books. The Pope spent half
THE CA 7TA/O/L/C A&AEA CTYO/V 329
his time at the Holy Office, inquiring into cases of heresy
of ten or twenty years' standing. From Florence he
caused Carnesecchi to be dragged to Rome and burned ;
from Venice the refugee Guido Zanetti of Fano was
delivered over to his tender mercies; and the excellent
Carranza, Archbishop of Toledo, was sent from Spain
to be condemned to death before the Roman tribunal.
Criminal "justice, meanwhile, was administered with
greater purity; and the composition of crimes for money,
if not wholly abolished, was moderated. In the colla-
tion to bishoprics and other benefices, the same Spirit of
equity appeared ; for Pius inquired scrupulously into
the character and fitness of aspirants after office.
While Pius V., lean, wasted, with sunken eyes and
snow-white hair, looking ten years older than he really
was, lived this exemplary monastic life upon the Papal
throne, he ruled Catholic Christendom more absolutely
than any of his predecessors. As the Papacy recognised
its dependence on the Sovereigns, so the sovereigns in
their turn perceived that religious conformity was the
best safeguard of their secular authority. Therefore the
Catholic States subscribed, one after the other, to the
Tridentine profession of faith, and adopted one system
in matters of Church discipline. A new Breviary and a
new Missal were published with the Papal sanction.
Seminaries were established for the education of eccle-
siastics, and the Jesuits laboured in their propa-
ganda. The Inquisition and the Congregation of the
Index redoubled their efforts to stamp out heresy by
The
Catholic
States
Support
him.
33O THE CA 7TA/OAAC A&E A CT/OAV
The
progress
of know-
ledge
arrested.
Giodano
Bruno.
fire and iron, and by the suppression or mutilation of
books.
Under these circumstances the humanistic and artistic
impulses of the Renaissance reached the point of ex-
haustion; the printing presses, which had been so
numerous and active at Venice, were suddenly reduced
to less than half their number ; classical studies lan-
guished at the Universities; and, what was still more
serious, the philosophical speculations, which had been
begun with ardour in the prime of the Renaissance,
received a fatal check, just at the very moment when
the versatile Italian genius seemed to be upon the point
of contributing a new metaphysic to Europe. Of those
who fell in the intellectual revolt against ecclesiastical
authority and tradition, there were none of clearer vision,
or of greater intrepidity as a Writer, than the One we
select to illustrate the perils attending this encounter
with the reactionary forces which the Church was so
well disposed and so able to array against those who
fell. -
Giodano Bruno was born in 1548 at Nola, an an-
cient Greek city close to Naples. His parents, though
people of Some condition, were poor ; and this circum-
stance may probably account for his entering the mon-
astery of the Dominicans at Naples before he had com-
pleted his fifteenth year. Even in his boyhood, and after
he had received priest’s orders at the age of twenty-four,
he showed a want of prudence in his intercourse with his
superiors. Some speculative doubts about the meta-
THE CATHOLIC REACTION 33 I
physics of the Trinity led him into such danger with the
Inquisition that he took flight, made his way to Rome,
and obtained admittance at the monastery of Santa
Maria sopra Minerva. News soon reached him that the
prosecution begun at Naples was being transferred to
the metropolis. This implied so serious a danger that
there was no other resource open to him but to fling away
his monk’s habit, and to quit the city in this comparative
disguise,
We must pass briefly over the many years which
Bruno now spent in Wandering from city to city, through
the North of Italy to Geneva, where he naturally found
no resting-place, for he had an even fiercer antipathy for
dissenting than for Orthodox bigotry. In 1577 we find
him at Toulouse, lecturing, and obtaining the degree of
Doctor in Philosophy with a readership in the University.
This post he held for two years, and them, without ap-
parent reason, moved on to Paris, where he remained for
four years under the favourable notice of Henri III., who,
on Bruno's departure for England, supplied him with
introductions to the French Ambassador in London,
Michel de Castelnau. In the house and in the suite of
this excellent man, Bruno passed two years of domestic
and industrious ease, during which some of his most
important Works were published. Besides metaphysical
subjects, we have animated pictures of the unsavoury
condition of the streets of London and the rough manners
of the lower classes in the time of Elizabeth. He is
hardly more complimentary to the ‘pedants and ignorant
Pſis wann-
derings
lead him.
to Eng-
land.
332 THE CA THOLYC REACTION
He falls
into the
hands of
the Inqui-
sition.
professors of the old learning' whom he encountered in
a visit to Oxford. Of his own appearance, now in his
thirty-seventh year, we gather that he was a man of
middling height, spare figure, and of olive complexion,
wearing a short chesnut-coloured beard. He spoke with
vivacity and copious rhetoric, aiming rather at force
than at purity of diction, indulging in trenchant meta-
phors to adumbrate recondite thoughts, passing from
grotesque images to impassioned flights of declamation,
blending acute arguments and pungent satires with
grave mystical discourses. The impression of originality
produced by his familiar conversation rendered him agree-
able to princes. \
His Wanderings, to be soon now terminated, led him
again through Paris to Wittenberg and other places in
Germany, and in the spring of 1590 he took shelter in a
Carmelite monastery at Frankfort-on-the-Main, where he
lived on terms of intimacy with the printers Wechel and
Fischer and other men of learning, and where nothing
in the way of persecution arose to disturb him. But in
an evil hour he accepted an invitation to visit Venice
from Giovanni Mocenigo, who belonged to one of the
most illustrious of the still surviving noble families of
that city. The long line of their palaces on the Grand
Canal, and the One especially in which Lord Byron
lodged, has impressed the mind of every tourist. This
Mocenigo was a man verging on middle life, super-
stitious, Subservient to his priest, but alive in a furtive
way to perilous ideas. A book of Bruno's, perhaps the
THE CA THO/C/C RA2A CTVO/W 333
De Monade, had fallen in his way, and he seems to have
imagined that Bruno might teach him occult Science, or
direct him on a royal road to knowledge. He was soon
undeceived with regard to this, and in his suspicious
discontent began to regard Bruno as an impostor who,
instead of furnishing the wares for which he bargained,
put him off with declamations on the nature of the
universe. What was worse, he became convinced that
this charlatan was an obstimate heretic. Under these
circumstances, ‘induced by the obligation of his con-
Science and by Order of his confessor,’ he on May 23,
1592, denounced his guest to the Inquisition.
Bruno appeared before his judges on May 29. His
examination continued at intervals from this date till
July 30. His depositions consist for the most part of an
autobiographical statement which he Volunteered, and
of a frank elucidation of his philosophical doctrines in
their relation to Orthodox belief. Over and over again
he relies for his defence upon the old distinction between
philosophy and faith, claiming to have advocated views
as a thinker which he did not hold as a Christian. At
the very end of his examination, he placed himself in the
hands of his judges, ‘confessing his errors with a Willing
mind,” acknowledging that he had ‘erred and strayed
from the Church,” begging for such castigation as should
not ‘bring public dishonour on the Sacred robe which he
had worn,' and promising to ‘show a noteworthy reform,
and to recompense the Scandal he had caused by edifica-
tion at least equal in magnitude.”
His trial.
334 THE CATHO/C/C REACTIO/W
EI is sen-
tence and
death.
We do not behold him again till he enters once more
the Minerva at Rome to receive his death sentence on
Feb. 9, 1600, after enduring seven years of imprisonment.
What happened in the interval is almost a blank. On that
day he was brought before the Holy Office at S. Maria
sopra Minerva. In the presence of assembled cardinals,
theologians, and civil magistrates, his heresies were first
recited. Then he was excommunicated and degraded
from his priestly and monastic offices. Lastly, he was
handed over to the Secular arm, ‘to be punished with
all clemency and without effusion of blood.’ Thereupon
Bruno uttered the significant and memorable words :
* Peradventure ye pronounce this sentence on me with a
greater fear than I receive it.' They were the last words
he spoke in public. He was removed to the state prison,
where he remained eight days, in order that he might
have time to repent. But he continued obdurate. Being
an apostate priest and a relapsed heretic, he could hope
for no remission of his sentence. Therefore, on Feb. 17,
he marched to a certain and horrible death. The stake
was set up on the Campo di Fiora. Just before the pile
was set on fire, they offered him the crucifix. He turned
his face from it in stern disdain. It was not Christ, but
his own soul, wherein he believed the Deity resided, that
sustained Bruno at the Supreme moment. No cry, no
groan, escaped his lips. Kepler, who had conceived a
high opinion of Bruno's speculations, and pointed him
out to Galileo as the man who had divined the infinity of
Solar systems in their correlation to one infinite order of
THE CA THO/L/C REACTWO/V 335
the universe, though not an eye-witness, informed his
correspondent Brenger that Bruno ‘bore his agonising
death with fortitude, abiding by the asseveration that all
religions are vain, and that God identifies Himself with
the world, circumference and centre.’ -
As a personality, endowed with singular energy and
remarkable independence, Bruno towers eminent among
the powerful characters of that age So rich in in-
dividualities. The two currents of Renaissance curiosity,
which had produced criticism and naturalism, met and
blended in his intellect. As a thinker, his chief merit
was to have perceived the true bearings of the Copernican
discovery. He saw that the substitution of the helio-
centric for the former geocentric theory of our system
destroyed at one blow large portions of the Christian
mythology. In other speculations he anticipated to a
large extent the philosophies of Descartes, Spinoza,
Leibnitz, Hegel, and the most recent conclusions of
natural Science. In his treatment of theology and ethics
he was no less original and prophetic. It is obvious that
he regarded no one creed as final, no sacred book as
exclusively inspired, no single race as chosen, no teacher
or founder of a faith as divine, no Church as privileged
with Salvation.
The pontificates of Paul IV., Pius IV., and Pius W.,
differing as they did in very important details, had
achieved a solid triumph for reformed Catholicism, of
which both the diplomatical and the ascetic parties in
the Church, Jesuits and Theatines, were eager to take
His philo-
sophical
ºviews.
Catholi-
cism.
gains inv
strength.
336 THE CA THO/L/C A&E ACTIO/V
Gregory
XIII.
advantage. A new spirit in the Roman polity prevailed,
upon the reality of which its future force depended ; and
the men who embodied this spirit had no mind to relax
their hold on its administration. After the death of
Pius W. they had to deal with a Pope who resembled his
penultimate predecessor, Pius IV., more than the last
pontiff.
Ugo Buoncompagno, the Scion of a bourgeois family
Settled in Bologna, began his career as a jurist. He took
orders in middle life, was promoted to the cardinalate,
and attained the Supreme honour of the Holy See in
1572. He was a good companion, easy of access, genial
in manners, remarkable for the facility with which he
cast off care and gave himself to Sanguine expectations.
In an earlier period of Church history he might have
reproduced the Papacy of Paul II. or Innocent VIII. As
it was, Gregory XIII. fell at once under the potent
influence of Jesuit directors. His confessor, the Spanish
Francesco da Toledo, impressed upon him the necessity
of following the footsteps of Paul IV. and Pius W. It
was made plain that he must conform to the new ten-
dencies of the Catholic Church ; and in his neophyte's
Zeal he determined to outdo his predecessors. The ex-
ample of Pius W. was not only imitated but surpassed.
Gregory XIII. celebrated three masses a week, built
churches, and enforced parochial obedience throughout
his capital. The Jesuits in his reign attained to the
maximum of their wealth and influence.
It was noticed that the mode of life in Rome during
THE CA THO/L/C REACT/O AW 337
the reign of Gregory XIII. struck a just balance between #.º
license and austerity, and that general satisfaction per- gives to
vaded society. Outside the city this contentment did not *:::.."
prevail. Gregory threw his States into disorder by *
reviving obsolete rights of the Church on lands mortgaged
or granted with obscure titles. The petty barons rose
in revolt, armed their peasants, formented factions in the
country towns, and filled the land with brigands. Under
the leadership of men like Alfonso Piccolomini and
Roberto Malatesta, these marauding bands assumed the
proportion of armies. The neighbouring Italian States
—Tuscany, Venice, Naples, Parma, all of whom had
found the Pope arbitrary and aggressive in his dealings
with them—encouraged the bandits by offering them an
asylum and refusing to co-operate with Gregory for their
reduction.
His successor, Sixtus W., found the whole Papal Sirius V.
tº ſº tº tº e tº; tts the
dominion in confusion. It was impossible to collect the #º.
e 21/007?,
taxes. Life and property were nowhere safe. By a àtion.
tº * f tº cism.
series of Savage enactments and stern acts of justice,
Sixtus swept the brigands from his States. He then
applied his powerful will to the collection of money and
the improvement of his provinces. Encouragement was
extended not only to agriculture, but also to industries
and manufactures. The country towns obtained wise
financial concessions, and the unpopular resumption of
lapsed lands and fiefs was discontinued. Roads and
bridges throughout the States of the Church were repaired.
Rome meanwhile began to assume her present aspect by
Z.
338 THE CATHO/CJC A&EACTYOAV
various architectural undertakings, and fresh water was
brought into the city by the famous Acqua Felice. Sixtus
loved building, but he was no lover of antiquity. For
pagan monuments of art he showed a monastic animosity,
dispersing or mutilating the statues of the Vatican and
Capitol; turning a Minerva into an image of the Faith
by putting a cross in her hand; surmounting the columns
of Trajan and Antonine with figures of Peter and Paul;
destroying the Septizonium of Severus and wishing to
lay sacrilegious hands on Caecilia Metella's tomb. To
mediaeval relics he was hardly less indifferent. The old
buildings of the Lateran were thrown down to make *
room for the heavy modern palace. But, to atone in
some measure for these acts of vandalism, Sixtus placed
the cupola upon S. Peter's, and raised the obelisk in the
great piazza which was destined to be circled with
Bernini’s colonnades. This obelisk he topped with a
cross. Christian inscriptions, signalising the triumph of
the Pontiff over infidel emperors, the victory of Calvary
over Olympus, the Superiority of Rome's Saints and
martyrs to Rome's old deities and heroes, left no doubt
that what remained of the Imperial city had been sub-
dued to Christ and purged of paganism. Nothing was
more absent from the mind of Sixtus than any attempt
to reconcile Ancient and Modern. He was bent on pro-
claiming the ultimate triumph of Catholicism, not only
over antiquity, but also over the Renaissance.
Spottiswoode & Co. Printers, Wew-street Square, London.
IN ID E X
ACADEMY, the Florentine : Machia-
velli’s Discorsi delivered there,
155
Academy of Jovianus Pontanus at
Naples, 202
Academy of the Palazzo Vernio, 315
Academy of Pomponius Laetus at
Rome, 195
Academy, Roman : its members tor-
tured by Paul II., 62
Adriano of Corneto, Cardinal :
alleged connection with the death
of Alexander VI., 81
Adrian VI., Pope : elected by poli-
tical intrigue, 88; his simplicity
of life and horror at Roman im-
morality, , ib. ; ineffectual efforts
at reform, 89
Alberti, Leo Battista : many-sided
genius: Latin poet, musician,
painter, architect, 180; his comedy
Philodoacius published as an
antique by ‘Lepidus Comicus,’ ib.;
his work as an architect, 221
Albertinelli, Mariotto, painter, 247
Albizzi, Rinaldo degli, 163
Aldi, the, printers, 10
Alexander, a Greek scholar, 11
Alexander III., Pope, 25
Alexander VI. (Roderigo Borgia),
Pope : his external attractions,
72; destroyed the factions of
Colonna and Orsini, 73; laid real
basis for Papal temporal power,
ib.; traffic with Sultan Bajazet
against Italian princes, ib. ; the
tunic worn by Christ part of the
Pope's reward for the murder of
Prince Djem, 74; Alexander
establishes the censorship of the
press, 75; he was grossly immoral,
but not gluttonous, ib. ; paternal
ambition for his children : their
alliances. 76; murder of his son,
the Duke of Gandia, 77; Alexander
devotes himself to building up the
fortunes of his son Cesare, 79 ;
alliance with Louis XII. of France,
with the vision of an Italian
Sovereignty, ib. ; atrocity of his
conquests in Italy, 80; assassina-
tions, murders and bribery, by
Alexander and Cesare, ib.; the
promotion of his family his sole
consideration, ib.; his mysterious
death, 81; his interposition in
Florentine affairs against Savona-
rola, 107
Alfonso the Magnanimous, of Aragon
and Sicily, 124 sq.
Alfonso II. of Naples (son of Ferdi-
nand I.); his strange character,
126; died in a monastery, ib.
Allegri, Antonio: one of the four
greatest artists, 248
Alva, Duke of, 320
Ambrogini, Benedetto,
Poliziano, 181
Ammanati, Bartolommeo, sculptor,
236
Angelico, Fra, painter, 242
Antonio di San Gallo, architect,
224
Amziani,
cities, 29
Apulia, republic of, 16
Aquileia, patriarchate of, 19
Arabs, the : debt of Europe to them
for the conservation and trans-
mission of Greek thought, 133;
their influence on architecture in
Sicily, 216
father of
magistrates in Italian
A A
34O
MAVAOA. Y.
Asti, Charles VIII. at, 118
Aurispa, Giovanni : spent his early
life at Constantinople, 212; his
school at Ferrara, ib.
Averrhoes, Averrhoists, freethinkers
Arcadian romance, Italian, 292 sqq.
Architecture, Italian : characteristic
diversity of Italian communities
displayed in their buildings, 215 ;
the geology of different districts
often determined the styles of
architecture, 216 ; influence of
commerce or of conquest, ib. ;
Romanesque style, ib. ; ill suc-
domestic architecture, 218 ; muni-
cipal buildings, 218 sq.; work of
Arnolfo del Cambio, 219; date of
the Renaissance of architecture :
Brunelleschi’s work, 220 ; Al-
berti's, 221 ; Bramante, 222 ;
Raphael as architect, 223; Jacopo
Samsovino's buildings at Venice,
{b. ; Michael Angelo as architect,
224 ; decadence, 225
Aretino, Carlo (Marsuppini): sketch
of his career, 168; his prodigious
memory, 169
Aretino, Lionardo, Florentine histo-
rian, 193
Aretino, Pietro : typical ruffian in an
age of ruffianism, 288 ; his merit as
an author, 289; his Ars Poetica, ib.
Ariosto, Lodovico : facts of his life,
271 sqq.; in the service of Cardinal
Ippolito d’ Este, and, later, of
Duke Alfonso I. (Ferrara), 273
sq.; the Orlando Furioso, 274;
his comedies produced at Ferrara
and Rome, ib. ; official banishment
to the country, 275 ; return to
Ferrara, marriage, and death, 276;
his Satires, 277; account of his
plays, 287
Aristotle, first printed edition of, 10
Arnold of Brescia, 26
Arnolfo del Cambio, architect : his
works in Florence, 219
Arrabbiati, nickname of the oppo-
nents of both Savonarola and the
Medici, 107
Arti, the, in Italian cities, 34
Arts : degeneracy of the plastic arts
in the Middle Ages, 7 ; change
wrought in them by the Renais-
sance, ib. ; their share in the
emancipation of the intellect, 214;
predominance of art in the Italian
genius, ib. ; Italian architecture
varied with the locality, 215. See
also Architecture ; Sculpture ;
Painting.
Baccio della Porta.
cess of Gothic, 2.17; growth of
of the fourteenth century, 140
BACCIO D' AGNoLo, architect, 224
See Barto-
lommeo, Fra.
Bacon, Roger, 5, 12
Bagliomi, Malatesta, 313
Baglioni, the (Perugia), 123
Bagnolo, Peace of, 64
Baily (Bailo, Consul-General)
Constantinople, 204
Bajazet, Sultan : his relations with
Alexander VI., 73 sq.
Bandello, Matteo, Novelliere :
life, 279 sq.
Bandinelli, Baccio, sculptor, 236
Bandini, Bernardo, assassin of Giu-
liano de' Medici, 65 sq.
Baptistery, Florence, the bronze
gates of, 230
Barbaro, Francesco, 211
Barbavara, Francesco, paramour of
Gian Galeazzo’s wife, 46
Barcelona, Treaty of (1529), 302
Bargello, Florentine prison, 152
Baroccio, Federigo, painter, 257
Bartolommeo, Fra (Bartolommeo di
Paolo del Fattorino, or Baccio
della Porta): his profile of Savo-
narola as S. Peter Martyr, 101;
his work as an artist, 247
Barzizza, Gasparino da : cultivator of
the art of letter-writing, 142
Basaiti, Marco, painter, 251
Beaujeu, Anne de, sister of Charles
VIII., 115
Beccadelli, Antonio; his early life,
197; wide circulation of his ele-
gies called Hermaphroditus, ib.;
crowned poet by Emperor Sigis-
mund, ib.; the book condemned
by the Church, 198; the author
grows rich and honoured, ib.
Beccafumi, Domenico, painter, 259
Begio, Maffeo, poet, 188
Bellini, Jacopo, Gentile,
Giovanni, painters, 250 Sqq.
Beltraffio, Giovanni Antonio, painter,
254
Belvedere gallery, the, walled up by
Adrian VI., 89
Benevento, duchy of, 16 sq.
of
his
and
JAW/OAX
34 I
Benozzo Gozzoli, painter, 242
Benucci, Alessandra, wife of Ariosto,
276
Berengar, the last Italian king, 18
Bernardo Fiorentino, architect, 221
Bessarion, Cardinal: originally a
member of the Greek Church, 193;
his palace at Rome the meeting-
place of scholars of all nations, ib.
IBianchi, Italian faction, 148
Biji, nickname of friends of the
Medici at Florence, 107
Biondo, Flavio : patronised by
Eugenius IV., 188; his prodigious
learning, ib., not duly appreciated
by his contemporaries, 189
Bishops, Italian; on the side of the
people in their first struggles for
independence, 20
Bissolo, painter, 251
Boabdil, 127
Boccaccio, Giovanni; his conversion
from commerce to literature, 137;
friendship with Petrarch, 138;
influence on vernacular literature,
ib. ; at the court of Robert of
Anjou, 196; the first and most
brilliant age of Italian literature
ended with him, 262; his contempt
for chivalrous romance, 266; his
desire to fuse classic and mediaeval
modes of thought and style, 267
Boccaccio (Ferrarese ambassador),
on Alexander VI., 75
Boiardo, Matteo Maria, Count of
Scandiano ; his life, 270; his
Orlando Immamorato and other
works, 271
Bologna : the vicissitudes of, 45,
123; the mustering of Italian
princes there for Charles W.’s
coronation, 304 sqq.
Bookseller, the first modern, 213
Borgia, Cesare, son of Alexander
VI. : made Cardinal and Bishop
of Valentia, 76; his abominable
character, 78 sq.; created Duke of
Valence and married to Charlotte
of Navarre, 79 ; atrocities in the
conquest of Italian cities, 80; his
end, 81 sq.
Borgia, Giovanni, son (or grandson)
of Alexander VI. : received duke-
doms of Nepi and Camerino, 76
Borgia, Isabella, 71
Borgia, Lucrezia,
Alexander VI., 76
daughter of
Borromeo, Carlo : his influence in
the election of Pius V., 327
Borso, Duke (Ferrara), 207
Botticelli, Sandro, painter, 243
Bourbon, Constable, killed at assault
on Rome (1527), 90
Bramante: his work as an architect,
222; propagators of his influence,
223
Brera, the, Milan, 255
Brescia: Savonarola at,
storming of, 103
Briçonnet, Bishop of St. Malo, 80,
124
Brigands, armed bands of, in Italy
(1572), 337
Bronzino, Angelo, painter, 258
Brunelleschi, Filippo : his visit to
Rome in 1403 the date of the
Renaissance in architecture, 220 ;
his buildings, 220 sq.
Bruni, Lionardo : his humble origin,
166; fame as a Latinist, 167; his
literary work, ib., honoured with
a public funeral after the manner
of the ancients,’ and with a
monument, 168
Bruno, Giordano ; his early life,
330; Wanderings through Europe,
331; falls into the hands of the
Inquisition, 332; his trial, 333;
sentence and execution, 334 ; his
philosophical views, 335 ---
Buonarroti, Michael Angelo, 83, 87;
work as an architect, 224 sq.;
position as an artist, 248; founded
no school, but his influence lasted,
256
Burchard, master of ceremonies to
Alexander VI. : his account of the
murder of the Duke of Gandia, 77 ;
of the amusements of the Pope
and his children, 79 ; of the death
of Alexander, 81
Buti, Lucrezia, mother of Filippino
Lippi, 243
Byzantium: its yoke shaken off by
Rome, 16
98 ; the
CABBALA, the, Pico della Miramdola’s
ardent study of, 179
Calabria, republic of, 16
Calabria, Duke of, afterwards Ferdi-
namd I. of Naples, 123, 125; his
cruelty and avarice, 125
Caldora, 124 *
Calixtus III. (Alfonzo Borgia), Pope,
A A 2
342
AVD Aº X
59 ; his aversion to
studies, 194
Cambray, League of, S4
Cambray, Treaty of (the Paia, des
Dames), 302 sq.
Campeggi, Cardinal,
Bologna, 305
Campi family, the, Cremona, 260
Campo Santo, Pisa, 227
Canale, Carlo, 75
Can Grande della Scala, 44
Camossa, House of, 21
Camtori da Piazza :
Banca, 265, 26S
Capitano del Popolo: magistrate
chosen during conflicts of Guelfs
and Ghibellines, 34
Capponi, Niccolò, the Gonfalonier
(Florence), 113, 159, 310
Caracci, the, painters, 257
Caravaggio, battle of, 49
Carducci, Francesco, 113
Carmagnuola, 55
Carmesecchi : burned by the Roman
Inquisition, 329
Carolingian Cycle : its original ma-
terial not congenial to Italians,
265 sq.; how it came to take hold
on popular fancy, 266 sq.; Pulci's
treatment, 268; Boiardo’s, 269
Carpaccio, Vittore, painter, 251 Sq.
Carranza, Archbishop of Toledo:
condemned to death by the Inqui-
sition, 329
Carrara, John of Ravenna chancellor
of, 139
Carroccio, the, instituted by Arch-
bishop Heribert, 23
Casal Maggiore, Venetian fleet burnt
at, 49
Castelnau, Michel de, protector of
Giordano Bruno in London, 331
Castruccio Castracane, 40
Catanei, Wannozza, mistress
Alexander VI., 75, 78
Catena, Vincenzo, painter, 251
Catholicism, the awakening of, by
the Reformation, 315 sqq.; gains
in strength, 335
Cellini, Benvenuto: his work, 237
Cendrata, Taddea, wife of Guarino
da Verona, 211
Certosa of Pavia, the, 43
Cesare da Sesto, painter, 254
Cette, Bishop of, poisoned by the
Borgias, 80
Charles the Great: crowned Emperor
classical
Bishop of
Cantori da
of
at Rome, 17; forms a Frankish
kingdom in Italy, ib.
Charles W., of Spain : his compact
with Clement VII., 302; Emperor
Elect: his journey to Bologna,
303; his reception there, 304; meet-
ing with Clement, 305; his coro-
nation, 306 sqq.; the events that
followed, 308 sqq.
| Charles VIII. of France: his
accession, 115; character, ib. ;
rejecting Margaret, daughter of
|
Emperor Maximilian, he marries
Anne of Brittany, 116; how he
prepared for the invasion of Italy,
ib.; mixed feelings of Italians at
his approach, 117; advance into
Lombardy, ib. ; details of his
army, 118; the appeals made to
Charles's heart, ib.; the Medici
ejected, 119 ; his entry into Flor-
ence, 120 ; accepts a ransom to
quit it, 121; progress to Rome a
continued triumph, 122; his army
in the Eternal City, 123; entry
into Naples, 127; league formed
against him : his retreat to Asti,
128; battle of the Taro, 129;
dilatory return to France, ib. ;
treaty of Vercelli, 130; the effect
of his raid upon Italy, 130 Sq.
Chrysoloras, John (brother
Manuel), 204
Chrysoloras, Manuel, Professor of
Greek in the University of Flor-
ence, 142
Chrysoloras, Theodora, daughter of
John), wife of Filelfo, 205; her
death, 207
Church, the : its old
against literature, 132
Churches: Duomo, Florence, 219,
221 ; Duomo, Milan, 43 ; Duomo,
Orvieto, 228; Duomo, Siena, 227,
231; of Monte Oliveto, Naples,
293; Orsammichele, Florence,
219, 230; S. Andrea, Mantua,
221 ; S. Andrea, Pistoja, 227;
S.Chiara, Naples, 238; S. Clemente,
Rome, 239; S. Croce, I'lorence,
219 ; S. Donato, Arezzo, 227;
S. Francesco, Assisi, 217, 228;
S. Francesco, Rimini, 221; S. Lo-
renzo, Florence, 225; S. Lorenzo,
Rome, 220 ; S. Marco, Florence,
99, 111; S. Maria della Consola-
zione, Todi, 222; S. Maria delle
of
contest,
º
AVDAX
343
Grazie, Varallo, 255; S. Maria del
Popolo, Rome, 223; S. Maria in
Via Lata, Rome, 72 ; S. Maria
Novella, Florence, 229, 237, 245;
S. Maria Sopra Minerva, Rome,
331, 334; S. Maurizio Maggiore,
Milan, 255 ; S. Miniato, Florence,
216 ; S. Peter's, Rome, 58, 223,
225; S. Petronio, Bologna, 231,
305, 307; S. Spirito, Florence, 221,
224 ; S. Trinità, Florence, 245
Cimabue, painter, 237
Cima da Conegliano, painter, 251
Cinthio, Giraldi: his Hecatomanithi
supplied our best dramatists with
hints for plays, 283
Cione, Benci di, architect, 229
Ciriaco of Ancona, 242
Cities, Italian: remained the centres
of literature and art, 314
Civitale, Matteo, sculptor, 234
Clarence, Duke of (son of Edward
III.), married Violante, daughter
of Galeazzo Visconti, 41
Classics, the, enthusiasm for, kindled
by the Renaissance, 8 ; the task
of the critics and philologers, 9;
work of printers, 10
Clement II., Pope, 23
Clement VII. (Medici), Pope; weak
and vacillating rule, 89; the Pope
friendless, 90; the ‘army of
Frundsberg’: the sack of Rome
(1527), 90; a prisoner in S. Angelo,
301; compact with Charles W.
and its results (see Charles V.)
Colledni, Bartolommeo, the statue
of, 233
Colonna, Cardinal, 71
Columbus: used the compass for
his voyage to America, 12
Comedies, Italian ; originally only
translations, 285
Comines, Philip de, on the character
of Charles VIII. of France, 115
Commune, the, meaning of, 21, 34
Compagnacci, young Florentime op-
ponents of Savomarola, 109, 111
Compagnia della Misericordia, at
Borgo San Sepolcro, 240
Compagni, Dino : interest of his
Chronicle apart from the doubt
thrown upon its authenticity, 148
Compass, the, discovery of, 12
Consiglio del Popolo; C.
Parte ; C. del Commune, 34
Constance, Peace of, 25
della.
t
|
Consuls of Italian cities, position of,
28 sq.
Consuls, Roman: confirmed by Greek
Emperor, 14
Copernicus, 12
Cordegliaghi, painter, 251
Cormazano, Antonio, author of I
Proverbº, 281
Corniole, Giovanni della : his in-
taglio portrait of Savonarola, 101
Coronation of Charles W. at Bologna,
307
Correggio, painter, 257
Council of Florence (transferred from
Ferrara), for union between Greek
and Latin Churches, 173
Counter-Reformation, the Catholic :
organised by Paul IV. and Philip
W., 320
Credenza, the, meaning of, 21, 34
Credi, Lorenzo di: a pupil
Verocchio, 232
Cremona : its school of painting, 260
Crime and vice in Italy, 51
Crivelli, Crivello, painter, 251
Of
DAMASUs II., Pope, 23
Daniele da Volterra, painter, 256
Dante: initiated the movement of
the modern intellect, 134; estimate
of his prose writings, 146; his
ideal of a monarchy, 147
Decembrio, Piero Candido; his
sketch of the habits and vices of a
tyrant (Filippo Maria Visconti),204
De Croce, Giorgio, 75
Della Crusca, 315
Della Torre, the family of, 39
Despots, the : the nature of their
rule, 36; effect on character of
the people, 37; how it was
maintained, ib., general character
of the despots, 38; the Wisconti,
39 sqq.; the Scala family, 44; the
tyranny of Gian Galeazzo Visconti,
45; its collapse, 46; degeneration
of despotic families, ib. ; career of
Francesco Sforza, 48 sqq.; tragic
fate of his successors, 50 ; pre-
valence of crime and vice, 51;
influence of the Renaissance even
on tyrants: Sigismondo Pandolfo
Malatesta, 52; Frederick, Duke
of Urbino, 53
Djem, Prince, brother of Sultan
Bajazet: said to have been
poisoned by Alexander VI., 74
344
M.VDA.Y
Domenico, Fra,
Savonarola, 111
Domenico Veneziano, painter, 240
Domestic architecture in Italy, 218
Donatello, sculptor, 231 sq.
Doni, Antomfrancesco, novelist, 281
Doria, Amdrea, 303, 305
Doria, Cardinal Girolamo, 305
Dosso Dossi, painter, 260
Dovizio, Bernardo, author
Colandra, 286
Drama, Italian : its beginnings, 284
Duccio di Buominsegna, painter, 238
executed with
of the
EPISTOLOGRAPHY as a branch of ele-
gaut literature, 142
Erasmus, as a humanist, 11
Eremitani, the, at Padua, 241
Este, House of, 21: gaiety and
splendour of their court at Ferrara,
93 ; liberality towards scholars
and humanism, 210
Este, Beatrice d’, 40
Este, Ercole d’, Duke of Ferrara :
motives for desiring French inva-
sion, 117
Este, Cardinal Ippolito d’: defrayed
the expenses of the publication of
the Orlando Furioso, 273
Este, Isabella d’, 304
Este, Lionello d’, pupil of Guarino
da Verona : one of the best
Scholars of his age, 211
Eugenius IV., Pope, 60 ; shares in
the literary life of Florence, 172
sq.; causes of his flight from
Rome, 188
Europe, state of, in 1530, 310, 325
Exarchate, the, 15, 17
Ezzelino da Romano ; vicar of Fred-
erick II. in North Italy, 29; his
barbarous cruelties, 30 sq.
FALCONETTo, Giovanni Maria, archi-
tect, 224
Farnese, Giulia (La Bella) : mistress
of Alexander VI., 75; her statue
(as Vanity) on Paul III.'s monu-
ment, 318
Farnesina, Villa, Rome, 223, 259
Feltre, Vittorino da (surname Ram-
baldoni): early career, 209; a
Schoolmaster : modern character
of his mode of education, ib. ;
praiseworthy life, ib. ; died penni-
less, ib.
Ferdinand the Catholic : the price
of his neutrality towards Charles
VIII., 116 ; joins the League of
Venice against him, 127
Ferdinand II. of Naples (son of Al-
fonso II.): flies from Naples at the
approach of Charles VIII., 127
Ferrara : court life at, 93; ramked
among the high schools of human-
isia, 210 sqq.
Ferrºri, Gaudenzio, painter, 255
Perrucci, Francesco, 312
Feudalism, German, rise of in Italy, 19
|Ficino, Marsilio : early study of
Greek, 175 ; an earnest Christian,
ib. ; his Platonic works, 175 sq.
Fiesole, Abbey of : foundation of its
library, 164
Filelfo, Francesco : birth and early
career, 204 ; at Constantinople,
ib. ; marries Theodora, Chryso-
loras, 205 ; his vast classical
knowledge, ib. ; successive engage-
ments, Venice, Bologna, ib. ; his
feuds at Florence, 206 ; retires to
Siena, ib. ; life at Milan, 207 ;
honour shown him at various
courts, ib. ; ill success at Rome,
208 ; death at Florence, ib.
Firenzuola, Agnolo, novelist, 281
Florence, vicissitudes of, 65, 70; the
time of Savonarola, 93 sqq.; ejec-
tion of the Medici, 119 ; entry of
Charles VIII., 121 ; the city ran-
somed, 122; constitutes itself a re-
public, 310 ; siege of 1530, 311 ;
capitulation, and consequent ex-
tinction of the republic, 313
Florentine historians, the.
FIistorians.
Fonte Gaja, Siena, 231
Pontius, Bartholomaeus, 9
Fornovo, battle of, 129
Francesco da Carrara, 45
Francesco da Toledo, Spanish con-
fessor of Gregory XIII., 336
Francesco di Giorgio, architect, 221
Francia, Francesco (Raibolini),
painter, 247
Franciabigio, painter, 258
Francis I. and the Treaty of Cam-
bray, 302
Franks, the ; subdue the Lombards
in Italy, 17; Lombard provinces
formed into a Frankish kingdom
by Charles the Great, ib.; its de-
velopment, 18; superseded by Su-
zerainty to the German Otho I., 19
See
AVDAX
345
Frateschi, nickname of followers of
Savonarola, 107
Frederick Barbarossa, Emperor : his
war with the Lombard cities, 25;
the burghers as a third power
between him and the Church, 26;
Outcome of their contest with him,
27; he establishes the office of
Podestd., 28
Frederick II., Emperor : unites the
Empire and the kingdom of the
Two Sicilies, 29; his warfare with
the Church, ib.; the cruelties of
his representative, Ezzelino da
Romano, 29 sqq.
Free-burghs, Italian : their origin,
19 sq.; development of their form
of government, 20; details of their
constitution, 21 ; influence of
Milan on their struggles, 22;
privileges granted by Gregory VII.,
23; rivalry of cities, 25
Froben (printer), 10
Frundsberg, the so-called army of, 90
GAETA, 15
Gandia, Duke of, son of Alexander
VI., 76; his murder, 77 sq.
Garofalo, Benvenuto, painter, 259
Genoa : growth into power, 15, 18
Gentile da Fabriano, painter, 242
German feudalism in Italy, 19
Ghiberti, Lorenzo di Cino, sculptor,
230
Ghirlandajo, Domenico, painter, 244
Giacomo della Quercia, sculptor, 230
Giam Bologna, sculptor, 237
Giannotti, Donato, historian, 159
Giano della Bella, revolution of, 148
Giberti, Bishop of Verona, 304
Gioja of Naples, the discoverer of
the compass, 12
Giorgione, painter, 252
Giotto (Surname Bondone), painter:
his works and his school, 238
Giovio, Paolo, on the death of Alex-
ander VI., 81
Giuliano da Sam Gallo, 61
Giulio Romano: Work as an archi-
tect, 223; as a painter, 256
Giustiniani, Venetian ambassador,
on the death of Alexander VI., Sl
Gonzaga, Camilla, 296
Gonzaga, Elisabetta, Duchess of
Urbino, 55
Gonzaga, Cardinal Ercole, 304
Gonzaga, Marchese Gian Francesco
(Mantua), 209
Gonzaga, Marchese Lodovico (Man-
tua), 207
Gonzaga, Lucrezia, 280
Gothic architecture, ill success of
in Italy, 217; notable churches
and municipal buildings in that
style, ib.
Gran Consiglio, the, meaning of,
21, 34
Grand Duke of Tuscany: title
granted by Pius W. to Cosimo de'
Medici, 313
Greek Empire: its fall gave an
impulse to the new order, 6
Gregory the Great, organisation of
Roman hierarchy by, 16
Gregory VI., Pope, 23
Gregory VII. (Hildebrand), Pope :
his contest with the Empire, 24
Gregory XIII. (Ugo Buoncompagno),
Pope : character and policy, 336;
efforts against brigands, 337
Gritti, Doge Andrea, 236
Grocin, a pupil of Poliziano, 183
Guarini, Battista, author of the
Pastor Fido, 297
Guarino da Verona : studied Greek
at Constantinople, 210; return to
Italy, ib. ; manner of life at Fer-
rara, 211; great reputation as a
teacher and disciplinarian, ib.
Gucci (or Duccio), Agostino di,
sculptor: work in terra cotta, 233
Guelfs and Ghibellines: origin of
the parties, 31 ; depth of their
party feeling as shown in trivial
details, 32 sq.; the final issue of
their conflicts, 34
Guicciardini, Francesco: on the
character of Alexander VI., 73 ;
on that Pope's death, 82; descrip-
tion of the character of Charles
VIII. of France, 115; account of
the early life of Guicciardini, 156 ;
his many public engagements, 157;
adherent of the Medici, ib. ; death,
158; his works, ib.
Guido da Siena, painter, 238
Guise, Duke of, 321
Gunpowder : revolutionised the art
of war, 12
Gurk, Cardinal of, 82
HADRIAN, Cardinal, S5
346
JAWADAEX
Hecatommithi, the, of Giraldi Cin-
thio : their wide reputation, 283
Henry VII. of England : relations
with Charles VIII., 116
Henry VIII.'s divorce, 305, 309
Heribert, Archbishop (Milan), the
protagonist of the episcopal
revolution against feudalism, 22
Hildebrand. See Gregory VII.
Historians, the Florentime : the
interest and value of their works,
144; the Chronicle written by the
three Villami, 145; their writings
compared with Dante's prose
works, 146; the Chronicle of Dino
Compagni : its interest apart from
the question of its authenticity,
147 sq.; the historians of 1494–
1537, 149 ; Machiavelli, 150 sqq.;
Guicciardini, 156 sqq.; Nardi,
Nerli, Giannotti, Varchi, Segni,
Pitti, 159 ; a comparison of the
various styles of these writers,
160 ; value of their works to the
student, 161
Hohenstauffen, the House of, warfare
of the Popes against, 29
Holy Roman Empire, the, 306
Homer, first printed edition of, 10
| Humanism, history of, in Milan,
Mantua, and Ferrara, 203 Sqq.
Huns, the, 19
Hutten, Von : on Leo X.’s ‘financial
speculation,’ 85 -
IDYLLIC literature, Italian, 291 sqq.
Ilaria del Carretto, tolmb of, at Lucca,
231
Il Lasca (Antonfrancesco Grazzini),
writer of Novelle, comedies and
poems, 280 sq.
Il Parmigianino (Francesco Mazzolo),
painter, 257
Il Sodoma (Giovanni Antonio Bazzi,
or Razzi), painter, 259
Indeſc Earpurgatorius, 328 Sqq.
Indulgences, sale of, 51, 87
Infessura, Stefano, 70
Innocent VIII. (Giambattista Cibo),
Pope : his breach of oaths made
on his election, 69 ; publicly ac-
knowledges his seven children, ib.;
establishes a bank for the sale of
pardons, ib. ; foundation of
Medicean interest in Rome, 70;
boys sacrificed to attempt to pro-
long his life, ib.
Jovianus Pontanus :
Inquisition, the, in Rome, 317, 328
sq.; in Spain, 317
Iron crown of Lombardy, the, 306
Isabella, daughter of King John of
France, married to Giam Galeazzo
Wisconti, 41
Isabella of Aragom, wife of Giam
Galeazzo Sforza, 119
Italy: the, cradle of the Renaissance,
8, 10, 12; the beginning of modern
Italian history: the Goths, 14 ;
Lombard conquest: disintegrating
effect, 15; compact between Charles
the Great and the Pope, 17 ;
southern Italy comes under the
Papal sway, 21 ; condition of
Italian States in the fifteenth cen-
tury, 36 sqq. ; changes in the
condition of its States (1530–60),
313 sq.
JESUITs, the : foundation of, 317; their
work for the Papacy, 325
founded an
Academy at Naples, 202 ; cha-
racter of his writings, ib.
Jubilee of 1450, 58 -
‘Julia, daughter of Claudius,’ legend
of, 8
Julius II. (Giuliano della Rovere),
Pope : as Cardinal opposed the
election of Alexander VI., 72 ; as
Pope, one of the greatest figures
of the Renaissance, 83; the saviour
of the Papacy and the curse of
Italy: the Pontefice terribile, 84
Justinian, 15
KEPLER: on the death of Giordano
Bruno, 334
LAGOONs of Venice, 43
Landino, Cristoforo : teacher of
Lorenzo de’ Medici, 179; devoted
himself to scholarship, ib. ; his
lectures on Petrarch, commentaries
on Dante, and Camaldolese Dis-
cussions, 180
Laurentian Library, Florence: partly
formed from the libraries of S.
Marco, of Fiesole, and of Cosimo
de’ Medici, 165
Leagues: of Pavia and of Milan, 25;
Italian, 55; of Venice, against
Charles VIII., 127
Learning, the Revival of : the
Church's position in the Middle
JAWADAX
347
Ages towards literature, 132; the
classical tradition, lost by the
Romance nations, preserved by
the Moslems, 133; Dante initiated
the movement of the modern in-
tellect, 134; Petrarch the apostle
of Scholarship, ib. ; the impetus
he gave to liberal studies, 136; his
followers : Boccaccio, 137; his
influence on vernacular literature,
138; John of Ravenna (Malpa-
ghino), 139; Luigi Marsigli, 140;
Coluccio de' Salutati, 141; Gas-
parino da Barzizza, ib. ; Manuel
Chrysoloras : his work in intro-
ducing Greek literature, 142
Legnano, Imperial forces defeated
at, 25
Lenzuoli (Borgia), Roderigo.
Aleaxander VI.
Leo the Isaurian, 16
Leo III., Pope : crowns Charles the
Great Emperor at Rome, 17; their
Compact, ib.
Leo IX., Pope, 24
Leo X. (de’ Medici) Pope : the epi-
curean philosopher as Primate of
Christendom, 84; his reckless
expenditure and the mischief it
Wrought to the City and the
Church, 85; measures for recoup-
ment, b. ; his sumptuous mode of
life, followed by Roman society,
86; Leo contrasted with Julius II.,
ib., he was unconscious of the
magnitude of Luther's movement,
87; his sudden death, and the
difficulty of choosing a successor,
£b.; his patromage of the drama, 285
Library of S. Mark, Venice, 224
Library of Urbino : its collection of
Greek and Latin authors, 54
Library of the Vatican, 191, 195
Linacre, a pupil of Poliziano, 183
Lippi, Fra Filippo and Filippino,
painters, 243
Literary society at Florence : life at
Florence favourable to culture,
162; blending of politics and in-
tellectual progress, 163; zeal for
learning shown by Cosimo de'
Medici, ib. ; collection of MSS.,
coins, &c., 164; patronage of art,
ib. ; institution of public libraries,
$b. ; his literary coterie, 165;
Niccolò de' Niccoli, ib. ; Liomardo
Bruni, 166; Carlo Aretino, 16S ;
See
Matteo Palmieri, 169; Giannozzo
Mametti, 170; Ambrogio Traver-
sari, 171; Eugenius IV. (Pope), Em-
peror John Palaeologus, Gemistos
Plethon, 172 sq.; Piero de’ Medici,
(Il Gottoso), 173; literary patron-
age of Lorenzo de’ Medici, 174;
his entourage : Ficino, 175; Pico
della. Mirandola, 176; Landino,
179; Leo Battista Alberti, 180;
Scala, 181; Poliziano, 181
Lombard architecture, 215
Lombards : establish kingdom of
Pavia, 15 ; disintegrating effect of
their conquest, ib. ; their princes
join the Catholic communion, 16;
obtain possession of Ravenna, 17;
subdued by Charles the Great, ib.;
their kingdom ultimately merged
in the Empire, 18
Longinus, Lance of, sent to Innocent
VIII. by the Sultan, 74
Lorenzetti, Ambrogio and Pietro,
painters, 239
Lotto, Lorenzo, painter, 260
Louisa of Savoy, 303
Louis (of Bavaria), Emperor, 39
Louis XI. of France, 50, 114
Louis XII. of France (successor of
Charles VIII.): alliance with
Alexander VI., 79 ; with Ferdi-
mand the Catholic against Naples,
81; his petty intrigues, 131
Luini, Bernardino, painter, 255
Luther, 11, 87 sqq., lll
MACHIAVELLI, Niccolò : his birth and
ancestry, 150; his official occupa-
tions, ib. ; plan for an improved
military system, 151; imprisoned,
tortured, and released, lä2 ; the
treatise De Principatibus (or
Principe), offered to Lorenzo the
Magnificent, 153 ; the ethics of
that work, 154; its reception in
Florence, ib. ; his lectures in the
Florentime Academy, lê5 ; his
views of Warfare, ib. ; the Istorie
Fiorentime, ib. ; his death and
character, 156; his plays, 2S8
Machiavelli, Pietro, son of Niccolò,
156
Madama, Villa, Rome, 223
Maime, Count of (1481), 114
Majamo, Benedetto da, architect, 222,
234
Malatesta, Gismondo Pandolfo, 207
348
JAVADAE.Y
Malatesta, Roberto, brigand, 337
Malatesta, Sigismondo Pandolfo,
Lord of Rimini, 52
Maleguzzi, Daria, mother of Ariosto,
272
Malpaghino, Giovanni (called Gio-
vanni da Ravenna), Petrarch's
secretary, 139
Mandorlato quarries of Veroma, 216
Manetti, Giannozzo : his early life,
170 ; Greek, Latin, and Hebrew
studies, ib. ; translated the Psalms
from Hebrew, ib. ; his public
offices, 170 ; translated the New
Testament, 171
Manfredi, Astone, Lord of Faenza,
murdered by the Borgias, 80
Mansueti, painter, 251
Mantegna, Andrea, 241
Marches (territorial divisions), 18 sq.
Marescotti, the, S0
Margaret of Austria, 302 sq.
Mariano da Genezzano, Fra, 98, 104
Marignano, fortress of, 45
Marradi, Gaspare Mariscotti da, 264
Marrano (= apostate Moor), 118, 125
Marsigli, Luigi: urged by Petrarch
to write against the Averrhoists,
140; learned society founded by
him in S. Spirito, Florence, ib.
Marsuppini, Carlo. See Aretino,
Carlo
Martini, Simone, painter, 239
Masaccio, painter, 239
Masters in painting, the four greatest,
248
Matarazzo, 9
Maximilian, Emperor: cause of his
resentment against Charles VIII.,
116; joins the League of Venice
against him, 125
Mechanical inventions which aided
the work of the Renaissance, 11
Medicean library, the, 164
Medici, Alessandro de’: defended
by Guicciardini before Charles W.,
158 sq. w
Medici, Catherine de’, 325
Medici, Cosimo de’ (Pater Patria):
a collector of MSS., coins and
inscriptions, 164: institutes public
libraries, ib.; his palace a centre
for literary and philosophical
society, 165; his entourage of men
of letters, 165 sqq.
Medici, Giovanni de', 70
Medici, Giuliano de', 66
Medici, Lorenzo de’ (Il Magnifico):
type of the pagan spirit of the
Renaissance, 97; recalls Savona-
rola to Florence, 99; resents the
influence of the monk, 103; con-
duct towards him, 104; scene at
his deathbed, 105; surpassed his
grandfather (Cosimo) in literary
patromage, 174; the scholars who
formed his entourage, 174 sqq.
Medici, Piero de’, successor to
Lorenzo : surrendered the Tuscan
fortresses to the French, 105, 119 ;
expelled from their city by the
Florentimes, 119 ; in a sort of
captivity at Venice, 120
Melozzo da Forli, painter, 240
Melzi, Francesco, painter, 254
Middle Ages, the, life in, 3, 5; de-
generation of the plastic arts, 7 ;
state of scholarship, during, 132
Michelozzo, architect, 222
Milan, vicissitudes of, 19, 22, 25, 39,
41, 46, 48 sq.; distinguished
scholars attracted to it, 203 sqq.
Militia, national, in Florence, 151
Mino da Fiesole (or di Giovanni),
sculptor, 61, 234 sq.
Mirandola, Giovanni Pico della : on
Savonarola’s oratory, 102; his
talents and personal attractions
176; the dignity of his life, 177;
he acquired the Omme scibile of
his century, ib.; his powerful
memory, ib.; the famous 900
theses maintained by him at Rome,
178; charged with heresy, but
pardoned, ib., his conception of
the unity of knowledge, ib.; the
exposition of his theory inter-
rupted by early death, 179
Mocenigo, Giovanni, 332
Molza, Francesco Maria, author of
the Ninfa Tiburina, 295; his
dissolute career, 296
Monte Cavallo, the horses of, 61
Monte Oliveto, Siena, 259
Montepulciano, 181
Montesecco, Giambattista, 65
Montespertoli, the : ancestors of
Machiavelli, 150
Montferrat, House of, 21
Monticello, castle of, 71
Monza, 306
Morone, Cardinal, 323
Moroni, Giovanni Battista, painter,
260
JAV/OAZ X
349
Municipal buildings of Italy, 217 sq.
Musteus, first printed edition of, 213
NANTIPORTO, 9
Naples, men of letters at : scholars
held here a position different from
both those of Florence and those
at Rome, 196; Petrarch and
Boccaccio favoured by Robert of
Anjou, üb. ; Alfonso of Aragon's
patronage of students, 197;
Antonio Beccadelli, ib.; Lorenzo
Valla, 198; Academy of Jovianus
Pontanus, 201
Napoleone della Torre, 39
Nardi, Jacopo, historian, 159 sq.
Nº. invited Lombards into Italy,
1
Nelli, Francesco, 156
Neri, Italian faction, 148
Nerli, Filippo, Florentine historian,
82, 159, 161
Niccoli, Niccolò de' : invited Manuel
Chrysoloras to Florence, 142; left
his collection of MSS. for the
benefit of scholars, 164; high
opinion entertained of his literary
judgment, 165; his position that
of literary dictator, 166; generosity
and devotion to the cause of
culture, ib.
Nicholas II., Pope, 24
Nicholas W. (Tommaso Parentucelli),
Pope : his early life and education,
189 ; tutor to children of Rinaldo
degli Albizzi and of Palla degli
Strozzi, ib.; among the scholars
around Cosimo de’ Medici, 190;
ecclesiastical promotion : bishop
and cardinal, ib. ; elected Pope,
£b.; founded the Vatican Library,
191; profuse liberality towards
Scholars, ib. (See also pp. 57 sqq.)
Nino di Gallura, 40
Nobles, Italian : contests with the
free-burghs, 20 sqq.; loss of autho-
rity, 27
Norman conquests in South Italy,
22; influence on architecture, 216
Novella, the : form of literature
especially favoured by the Italians,
265; character of the Novella,
278; adapted for recitation, 279 ;
distinguished Novellieri, 279 sqq.
ODOACER: foundation of his king-
dom, 14
Oggiono, Marco d’, painter, 254
Orange, Prince of (1530), 303, 311
Orcagna (Andrea Arcagnuolo di
Cione), goldsmith, painter, poet,
architect, 229
Oriental style of architecture on
Italian coasts, 216
Orleans, Duke of, 128, 129
Orleans, House of: lay claims to the
Duchy of Milan, 48
Orsini, Cardinal, 71
Orsini, Clarice degli, wife of Lorenzo
de’ Medici, 174
Orsini, Orsino, 75
Ostro-Gothic occupation of Italy, 14
Otho I. : crowned Emperor at Rome,
18; assumes title of King of Italy,
ib.; his concessions to the bishops,
19; remodels the country in the
interest of the German Empire, 20
Otranto, descent of Turks on, 67
PACCHLA, Girolamo del, painter, 259
Padua : Ezzelino da Romano's cruel-
ties there, 30 sq.
Painting: at first employed as an
aid to religion, 237; process of
secularisation, ib., Cimabue's
Madonna, ib.; Giotto’s work, 238;
the Sienese school, ib. ; pioneers
of Renaissance painting, 239; the
Paduan school: Squarcione, Man-
tegna, 241; masters uninfluenced
by humanistic studies, 242; Lippi,
Botticelli, 243 ; Piero di Cosimo,
Ghirlandajo, 244: culmination of
Renaissance art, 245; Perugino,
Raphael, 246; Pinturicchio, Fran-
cia, Fra Bartolommeo, 247; the
four greatest masters, 248; the
Venetian school, 249 ; Lionardo
da Vinci and his pupils, 254;
influence of Michael Angelo on
artists, 256; manneristic imitators
of Correggio, 257; Del Sarto and
his followers, 258; Siena, long
inactive, receives a fresh impulse,
259; Ferrarese painters, ib. ;
Cremona, 260 ; a period of de-
cadence in art, 260
Paia des. Dames, La, 302 sq.
Palaeologus, John, Emperor, 173
Palazzo : Borgia, Rome, 71; Corner,
Venice, 224; Ducale, Venice, 224,
249 ; Farmese, Rome, 225; Pan-
dolfini, Rome, 223; Pienza, 221 ;
Pitti, Florence, 221 sq., 252; Pub-
JAWDEX
318; measures to stem the Re-
formation, 319
Paul IV. (Giovanni Pietro Caraffa),
Pope: his character, 320; organises
with Philip II, the Catholic
counter-Reformation, ib. ; endea-
vour to reform clerical abuses, 321
Pavia, kingdom of, 15 sq.; develop-
ment under Frankish kings, 18
Pazzi conspiracy, the, 65
Pazzi, Francesco de’, 65
Peace of Comstance, 25
Pentapolis, the, 15, 17
Perugino, Pietro, 232; his work, 246
Peruzzi, Baldassare : work as an
architect, 223; as a painter, 259
Petrarch : the inaugurator of the
humanistic impulse of the 15th
century, 134 sqq.; a friend of
IRobert of Amjou, 196
Petrucci, Antonio, 206
Petrucci, Cardinal: his conspiracy
against Leo X., 85
Philip II., successor of Charles W. :
quarrel and reconciliation with
Paul IV., 320
depopulated by
Milanese, 47
Piagmomi, followers of Savomarola.
107, 160
Piccino, 55
Piccolomini, Alfonso, leader of bri-
gands, 337
Piero di Cosimo, painter, 244
the
blico, Siena, 218; della Ragione,
Vicenza, 226 ; Riccardi, Florence,
218, 222; Rucellai, 221; della
Sigmoria, Florence, 219 ; Strozzi,
Florence, 222 ; del Te, Mantua,
223, 256; Vecchio, Florence, 219 ;
Vendramini-Calergi, 224; Vidoni,
Rome, 223
Palazzo Vermio, Academy, 815
Palazzo del Popolo distinguished
from Palazzo del Commune, 21
Palladio, Andrea, architect, 225
Palleschi, the Medicean faction, 160
Palmieri, Matteo, 169 sq.
Papacy, the : beginnings of its
power, 16 sqq.; southern Italy
comes under its sway, 21 ; con-
dition of the Papacy between 1447
and 1527, 56; paradoxical char-
acter of the Popes, 57; work of
Securing their temporal jurisdiction
begun by Nicholas W., ib. ; careers
and characters of various Popes
of the Renaissance period, 59 sqq.;
after the ending of the schism
(1547), the Papacy tended to
become an Italian sovereignty,
300 ; methods of the ambitious
policy of the Riarios, Della Roveres,
Borgias, and Medici, 301 ; Clement
VII. the only vigorous survivor
after the havoc culminating in the
Sack of Rome, ib. ; his compact
with Charles V., and its con-
sequences, 302; the meeting of
the Pope and the Emperor, 305;
Clement bestows the iron crown
on Charles at Bologna, 306 sq.;
changes which turned to the profit
of Rome, 314 ; new efforts after
self-preservation made by the
Papal hierarchy, 315; reasons
for summoning a Council, 325;
gains to the Papacy by the
decisions at Trent, 327 -
Paper, from cotton and from rags,
the first manufacture of, 12
Parlamento, the, meaning of, 21
Parliament, the first, in Italy, 23
Parma : created a duchy, 314
Paul II. (Pietro Barbi), Pope : his
early life, 60 ; vulgar love of show,
61; patronage of art, ib. ; prosecu-
tion of the Platonists, 62; death,
63
Paul III. (Alessandro Farnese), Pope:
early life and large experience,
Piacenza :
Piero della Francesca, painter, 240
Pietra serena (stone of the Apen-
nines), 216
Pinturicchio, Bernardo, painter, 246
Pippin, King, invited by Stephen II.
to conquer Italy, 17
Pisa, vicissitudes of, 15, 18, 45, 119
Pisano, Andrea (da Pontadera), 228
Pisano, Giovanni (son of Niccola),
227
Pisano, Niccola, architect and sculp-
tor: from him dates the dawn of
the aesthetical Renaissance, 226 ;
his chief works, 227 *
Pitti, Jacopo, historian, 159 sq.
Pius II. (AEneas Sylvius Piccolomini),
Pope : contrast between his life
before and after his election to
the Papacy, 59; grounds for re-
specting him as Pope, 60 ; high
position among the humanists,
194 -
| Pius III., Pope, 83
AVZ) EX
35 I
Pius IV. (Giovanni Angelo Medici),
Pope : character, 323; manage-
ment of the Council of Trent, ib. ;
conciliatory policy and prudence
gain him supporters, 324 sq.
Pius V. (Michele Ghislieri), Pope:
character, 327; rigour of his ad-
ministration, 328; the Catholic
States support him, 329; used the
Inquisition and the Indea. Eac-
purgatorius with severity, ib. ; the
progress of knowledge arrested, 330
Platina, historian of the Popes, 62
Plato, first printed edition of, 10
Platonic Academy, Florence, 165
Platonists, Italian, prosecution of, by
Paul II., 62
Plethon, Gemistos, 173
Podestà (magistrate): instituted by
Frederick Barbarossa, 28 ; his
position modified during the con-
flicts of Guelfs and Ghibellines, 33
Poggio Fiorentino (Gian Francesco
Poggio Bracciolini) : birth and
early life, 191; in the service of
the Roman Curia, but refused to
take orders, 192 ; he embraced
the whole range of contemporary
studies, ib. ; his eloquence and
power of invective, 193; con-
tinued Lionardo Aretino’s History
of the Florentime Republic, iD.
Poliziano, Angelo (surname Am-
brogini); his description of Pico
della Mirandola, 176; Poliziano’s
parentage and early youth, 181;
precocity of his genius, 182; his
translation of part of Homer, ib. ;
his remarkable scholarship, ib. ;
he wrote Latim as if it were a
living language, ib. ; success as a
professor, 183; his personal ap-
pearance, ib. ; his regard for
Lorenzo de’ Medici, 184; Latin
monody on Lorenzo's death, ib.;
the gloomy circumstances of his
own death, 184 sq.
Pomponius Laetus, Julius : bastard
son of one of the Sanseverini, 195;
confined his studies to Latin, ib. ;
frugal life, ib.; founded an Aca-
demy for the study of Latin
antiquities, ib.
Pontanus; his idyllic poems, 294 sq.
Pontormo, Jacopo, painter, 258
Pontremoli, burnt by Charles VIII.,
12S
Popolo, the, meaning of, 21, 34
Porcari, Stefano, conspiracy of,
against Nicholas W., 58, 62
Portogallo, Cardinal di, 234
Portugal, immigration of Spanish
Jews into, 68
Prato, the sack of, 103
Printing: as an art, 12 ; check of
work by the operations of the
Inquisition, 330
Priori, magistrates in Italian cities,
29, 34
Pulci, Luigi : his character, 268;
his Morgante Maggiore, 269
RAMBALDONI, Bruto de’, 209
Raphael : painted Savonarola among
the Doctors of the Church, 112 ;
his work as an architect, 223;
position as an artist, 248 ; no in-
spiration descended from him to
his followers, 256
Ravenna : seat of Theodoric's king-
dom, 14; did not come under
Lombard domination, 15
Ravenna, Giovanni da. See Malpa-
ghino.
Reformation, the : the correlative of
the Renaissance, 11
Renaissance, the : various definitions
of the term, 1 ; a mental evolution,
3; conditions required for it, 4;
signs of its advent,5; it was the libe-
ration of thereason from a dungeon,
6; gave fresh inspiration in art, 7 ;
kindled enthusiasm for classical
knowledge, S.; work and methods of
critics, philologers, and painters,
9 ; the Renaissance encouraged
theological criticism, 10 ; gave
fresh impetus to science : me-
chanical inventions, 11; Italy the
first Organiser of the modern
spirit, 12 ; the conditions of the
Renaissance evolved under the
rule of despots, 36 ; it reached
maturity in an age of crime and
vice, 51 ; its productive energy
displayed by the raid of Charles
VIII., 130; its work through lite-
rature (see Learning, Revival of),
and through art (see Arts)
René of Anjou, King (1474), 114
Rettori, magistrates in Italian cities,
29
Reuchlin, a pupil of Poliziano, 183
Riario, Cardinal, S5
352
JAVADAEX
Riario, Girolamo, 64 sq.
Ripamonti, on the fate of the suc-
cessors of Francesco Sforza, 50
Robbia, Luca della : his work as
sculptor, 233; invented glazed
earthenware, ib.
Romanesque architecture, 215 Sq.
Romantic Epic, the, in Italy, 266
Romanino, Girolamo, painter, 260
Rome, men of letters at : neither in
letters mor in art had Rome any
real life of her own, 186; opening
for scholars there, ib.; her intel-
lectual stimulus came from Flo-
rence, 187; Flavio Biondo’s work
in Rome, 188 sq.; work of Nicho-
las W., 191; Jorenzo Walla, Piero
Candido Decembrio, ib. ; Poggio
Fiorentino, ib. ; Cardinal Bes-
sarion, 193; the fortunes of
Roman scholarship varied with
the tastes of each succeeding Pope,
193 sq.; Academy of Pomponius
Lætus, 195
Rosselli, Cosimo, painter, 247
Rossellino, Antonio, sculptor, 234 .
Rossellino, Bernardino, sculptor, 168
Tosso de' Rossi, painter, 258
Rovere, Giuliano della, Cardinal.
See Julius II.
Pucellai Gardens, Florence, 155, 161
Rucellai, Giovanni, tragedian, 285
SA cr; Rappr Es ENTAzro NI, the, 284
Salaino, Andrea, painter, 254
Salutati, Coluccio de’, 141
Salvestro, Fra, 111
Salviati, Archbishop of Pisa, 65 sq.
Sancia, Donna, daughter of Alfonso
of Aragon, 76 .
Santa Casa, Loreto, 235
. Casciano, Machiavelli's farm, 152
Gemignano, Savonarola at, 98
. Giorgio Maggiore, Venice, 164
. Marco, Florence, library of, 164
. Miniato, Florence, 152
. Peter, Knightly Order of, 85
. Peter’s, Basilica of, 83, 87
. Quentin, battle of, 321
Sanmicheli, Michaele, 224
Sannazzaro, Jacopo : the first ex-
plorer of ‘Arcadia, 292; his life,
293; his Arcadia, 293 sq.
Sansovino, Andrea Contucci
sculptor, 235
Sansovino, Jacopo, architect, 223
da,
Sanudo : on Alexander VI., S1
Sarto, Andrea del, painter, 257 sq.
Sarzana, Tommaso da (afterwards
Nicholas W.) 163
Savonarola : his history not to be
dissociated from that of the Re-
naissance, 92; his early life at
Ferrara, 93; religious tendency
of his studies, 94; inclination to
a monastic life, ib., joins the
Dominican order: his account of
his motives, 95; failure of his
early preaching, 96; judging the
classical revival by its fruits, he
conceives a spiritual resurrection
for his country, 97; unappreciated
by Lorenzo de' Medici, ib.; his
success at Brescia: his Apocalyptic
warnings, 98 ; the turning-point
of his life : his first sermon at S.
Mark’s (1490), 99; the main topic
of his prophetic discourses: for
the wickedness of Italy a judg-
ment was imminent, 100; his
personal appearance, 101; his
thrilling oratory, 102; description
of his denunciations, 103; ex-
amples of the realisations of his
prophecies, ib. ; made Prior of
San Marco, 104; opposition to
Lorenzo, ib.; Savonarola at
Lorenzo’s deathbed, 105; his
efforts to rouse the spirit of the
Florentimes, ib. ; reconstitutes the
State after the expulsion of the
Medici, 106; the changed state of
the city, ib. ; a reaction, 107;
Savonarola suspended from
preaching by Alexander VI., ib. ;
his fiery denunciations in Lent
1496, 108; his position becoming
dangerous in Florence, 109; de-
posed by the Signory, ib., his
letters of justification, ib. ; letter
to Alexander VI., 110 ; the
challenge to ordeal by fire, ib. ;
imprisonment and torture, 111;
his execution, ib.; his last words,
112 ; the honours paid to his
memory, ib.; estimate of his work,
112 sq.
Saxethus, Franciscus, 9
Scala family: rise into power, 44
Scala, Bartolommeo, 181
Scala d’Oro, Venice, 236
Science : impetus given to it by the
Renaissance, 11
JAWDAS X
353
Sculpture: the handmaid of archi-
tecture, 226 ; school of Niccola
Pisano, 226 sq.; the Cathedral of
Orvieto, 228; Orcagna's work as
a sculptor, 229; work in bronze,
230; Della Quercia, ib. ; Dona-
tello, 231; Verocchio, 232; Luca
della Robbia, 233: his contem-
poraries, 234; faults of the mid-
Renaissance period, 235; Andrea
da, Sansovino, 235; Bandinelli
and Ammanati, 236 ; Cellini and
Gian Bologna, 237
Scuola di S. Marco (or Campo di S.
Zanipolo), Venice, 233
Scuola di S. Rocco, Venice, 224
Sebastian del Piombo, painter, 256
Segnatura, the Camera della, 112
Segni, Bernardo, Florentine his-
torian, 159
Serfs, the emancipation of, 27
Sermoneta, Duke of, 76
Settignano, Desiderio da, 168, 235
Sforza, Ascanio, Cardinal, 71, 124
Sforza, Francesco : how he obtained
the dukedom of Milan, 48 sqq.
Sforza, Lodovico (Il Moro), Lord of
Mirandola, 109; determines to get
back the Duchy of Milan, 116;
invites the French into Italy, 117;
poisons his nephew, Gian Gale-
azzo, 119 ; joins the League of
Venice against Charles, 128 ; con-
firmed in possession of his duchy
by treaty of Vercelli, 130
Siena : its school of painting, 238,
259; extinction of the republic
(1557), 313
Signorelli, Luca, painter, 240
Sigmoria, college of the, 29, 34
Sixtus IV. (Francesco della Rovere),
Pope : his nepotism, 63 ; his
public and private infamy, 64;
promotes desolating wars, ib. ;
sanctions the Pazzi Conjuration
against the Medici, 65; the Inqui-
sition founded under his auspices,
67; his religious obliquity, 68 ; he
opened the Vaticam Library to the
public, 195
Sixtus W. : development of the
Papacy in his reign, 337 sq.
Society, literary : at Florence, 162
sqq.; at Rome, 186 sqq.; at Naples,
196 sqq.; in Milan, &c., 203 sqq.
Soderini, Cardinal, 85
Soderini, Piero, 152
Spoleto, duchy of, 16 sq., 18
Stephani, the (printers), 10
Stephen II. (Pope) : invites Pippin
to the conquest of Italy, 17
Stephen X., Pope, 24
Straparola, Francesco, 282
Squarcia, Giramo (huntsman to Gian
Maria Visconti): his cruelty, 47
Squarcione, Francesco, painter, 241
Squillace, Duke of, son of Alex-
ander VI., 76
Subbiaco, Abbey of, 71
Swiss mercenaries, 84
TARO, battle of the, 129
Tasso, Torquato, 297
Tatti, Jacopo, sculptor, 235
Telescope : used by Copernicus, 12 .
Tesiras (Portuguese), a pupil of Poli-
ziano, 183
Theatines: institution of the, 317
Theodoric : effects of exclusion of
Rome from his conquest, 14, 17
Thiene, Gaetano di, 317
Tintoretto, 253
Titian : his relation to the Venetian
school is like that of Raphael to
the rest of Italy, 253
Tragedies, Italian : artificial, 285
Traversari, Ambrogio : Manetti's
master in Greek, 171 sq.
Trent, Council of, 304, 317, 322 sq.,
326 sq.
Trissino, Gian Giorgio: his Sofonisba
the first regular Italian tragedy,
2S4
Two Sicilies, Kingdom, 29, 203
Tuscan Romanesque, 216
UGOLINo DA SIENA, painter, 230
University of Pavia, 43
Urbino, Duchy of, 53
Urbino, Frederick, Duke of, 53 sqq.
WALLA, Lorenzo: birth and early life,
199; supreme authority on Latin
style, ib.; attacks on the Papacy :
the treatise on Constantime’s
Domation, ib. ; brought before the
Inquisition, 200; delivered by
Alfonso of Aragon, 201; appointed
to an office in Rome by Nicho'as
W., ib.: quarrels with Poggio, ib.
Vasari, Giorgio, 244
Varani, the, S0
Warchi, Benedetto, Florentine his-
toriam, 154, 159, 160, 264
354
MAZOAE_Y
Vasona, Bishop of, 111
Vatican, the, rise of, 58, 68, 191
Vaucluse, Petrarch at, 135
Venetian school of painting, 249 Sqq.
Venice, vicissitudes of, 15, 18, 49, 83
Venusti, Marcello, painter, 256
Vernacular literature, revival of :
the age of Boccaccio followed by
nearly a century of Greek and
Latin scholarship, 262; disuse of
the vernacular by scholars, 263;
contempt in which they held it,
264; the work of restoration :
popular forms of literature, 265;
the public interest in romantic
tales inspired the poets, 266 ; their
endeavour to put antique subjects
into modern dress, 267 ; Pulci's
elimination of classical admixture
from popular romances, 268;
Boiardo's method, 269 ; his work
carried on by Ariosto, 271 ; the
Novella a favoured form of litera-
ture, 277 ; form and object of
Novelle, 279; distinguished Novel-
lieri, 279 sqq.; the Drama as a
work of studied art, 284 ; Italian
tragedy of artificial origin, 285;
comedies were originally trans-
lations, 286; Ariosto's plays, 287;
the Italian of Pietro Aretino, 289;
playwrights prolific, but not
original, 290; the reversion from
the Catholic to a new ideal of life,
290 sq.; la voluttà idillica, 291;
Arcadian romance, 292; bucolic
idylls, 295; culmination of pas-
toral drama : Tasso and Guarini,
297 ; the classic model once
thought essential, discarded for a
modern form, 298 sq.
Verocchio, Andrea, goldsmith, pain-
ter, and worker in bronze, 232
Vespasiano da Bisticci, 169, 193 sq.;
his Lives of Illustrious Mem, 212;
last of mediaeval scribes, and first
of modern booksellers, ib. ; know-
ledge of books and of scholars,
213
Victor II., Pope, 24
Villami, Giovanni, 137; his Chronicle,
145 sq.
Vinci, Lionardo da : a pupil of
Verocchio, 232; his position as
an artist, 248, 251 ; left but little
finished work, but his spirit con-
tinued to live in Lombardy, 254
Virgil, first printed edition of, 10
Virginio, Captain-General of Ara-
gonese army, 123
Wisconti, House of, 30, 39, 46
Wisconti, Azzo, 40
Visconti, Bernabo, 41, 43
Wisconti, Catherine, 46
Visconti, Filippo Maria, 47 sq.
Wisconti, Galeazzo, son of Matteo,
39; grandson of Matteo, 41
Wisconti, Gian Galeazzo : married
to Isabella of France, 41; murders
his uncle (Bernabo) and becomes
sole Lord of the Visconti heirship,
43 ; his character and public
works, ib. ; employment of condot-
tieri, 44; schemes against the
Scala dynasty, ib.; his death, 45;
collapse of his tyranny, 46
Wisconti, Gian Maria, 46 sq.
Visconti, Giovanni, Archbishop, 40
Wisconti, Lucchino, 40
Wisconti, Marco, 40
Visconti, Matteo (Il Grande), 39
Visconti, Otho, Archbishop, 39
Wisconti, Valentina, 48
Wisconti, Violante, 41
Vitelleschi, Cardinal, 199
Vitelli, Alessandro, 313
Vitelli, the, strangled by Cesare
Borgia, 80
Vivarini, the, painters, 250
ZANE, Paolo, 210
Zanetti, Guido, 329
Zecca, the, Venice, 236
Zeno, Greek Emperor, 14
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