THE RENAISSANCE THE REVIVAL OF LEARNING AND ART IN THE FOURTEENTH AND FIFTEENTH CENTURIES THE RENAISSANCE. THE REVIVAL OF LEARNING AND ART IN THE FOURTEENTH AND FIFTEENTH CENTURIES. BY PHILIP jSCHAFF, D.D., LL.D. Professor of Church History, Union Theological Seminary, N. Y. CHAPTER I. LITERATURE OF THE RENAISSANCE. See an alphabetical list of the Renaissance literature down to 1881 in Voigt's Wiederbelebung des class, Alterthums, II., 517-529 ; and a long list including the literature on the papacy of that period in Pastor's Geschichte der Papste (1886 sqq.), I., xxiv.-xlvi., and II., xxv.-xlvii. Geiger adds literary notices to his Renaissance und Humanismus (1882), pp. 564 sqq, I. ORIGINAL AUTHORITIES. L. A. Muratori (b. at Modena, 1672, librarian of the Ambrosian library at Milan, 1695, d. 1750): Rerum Italicarum Scriptores ab anno (era Christ, quingentesimo ad millesimum quingentesimum, Mediol., 1723-'$!, 25 vols., fol., with supplemental vols. (ab anno millesimo ad millesimum sexcentesimum), Florentise, 1748 and 1770, and Accessiones histories Faventina, Venet., 1771. In all, 31 parts. Tom. XV. contains an alphabetical list of the authors in this vast collection, some of whom belong to the Renaissance period. Girolamo Tiraboschi (a Jesuit, and librarian of the Duke of Modena, d. 1794) : Storia della Letteratura Italiana, Roma, i782-'85, 9 vols. in 13 parts, 4to. Vol. IX., pp. 125-366, contains the topical index. Vol. V. treats of Dante, Boccaccio, and Petrarca. Comp. also Vol. VI., P. I., pp. 155 sqq. (Scoprimento d'Antichita), and Vol. VI., P. II., pp. -2.\<)sqq. (Poesia Latina, etc.). The first edition appeared at Modena, i77i-'82, 13 vols., a new one at Milan, l822-'26, in 16 vols. The works of Dante, Petrarca, Boccaccio, Poggio, Valla, and ^Eneas Sylvius, see below. 4 The Renaissance, II. MODERN WORKS. Humphrey Hody (Prof, at Oxford) : De Greeds illustribus Lingua Gr and Ehrle : Historia Bibliotheca Ron. Pontificum turn Bonifatiance turn Avenionensis enarrata et illustrata, Rom., 1890 (the best, but goes down only to Martin V.). On the Greek MSS., two articles of Batifol : La Vaticane, in " Revue des questions historiques," Paris, 1889. Information is also given in the Prolegomena to the Bened. ed. of the Regestum dementis Papa V., vol. I., Rom., 1885. D. Greg. Palmieri, one of the sub-achivarians, gives a list of the papal Regesta from Innocent III. to Clement VIII. (i 198-1605) in Ad Vaticani Archivi Roman. Pontijicum Regesta Manductio, Rom., 1884, pp. xxviii. and 175. CHAPTER X. THE ITALIAN HUMANISTS OF THE FIFTEENTH CENTURY SALUTATO, MARSIGLIO, BRUNI, POGGIO, TRAVERSARI, FILELFO, VALLA. We add brief notices of the chief promoters of humanism in the first half of the fifteenth century. 1 Coluccio (i.e. Niccol6) Salutato (1330-1406), like Petrarca, the son of an exile from Florence, became apostolical secre- tary to Pope Urban V., and since 1375 Chancellor of the Republic of Florence. He wrote Latin eclogues and elegies, lives of Dante, Petrarca, and Boccaccio, a Latin version of the Divina Commedia, and an epic on the wars of Pyrrhus. He collected a library of six hundred volumes. He replaced the barbarous Latin of the Middle Ages by the classical Latin of the Augustan age. He was the first to acquire a collection of complete copies of Cicero's Letters, and accom- panied them with valuable glosses. The MS. is preserved in the Laurentian Library at Florence. He improved the text of Seneca, and contended that this philosopher could not have been the author of the tragedies ascribed to him. This was the beginning of literary criticism in philology. Luigi Marsiglio (1342-1394), a pupil of Petrarca (who pre- sented him with Augustin's Confessions as a weapon against the atheistic Averroists), was a priest and preacher of the Dominican order, an admired theological and classical scholar, and stood at the head of a free academy in Florence whose members met in the convent Santo Spirito to discuss the merits of classical literature and philosophy. He wrote 1 For further details in this section I refer chiefly to Tiraboschi, Voigt, Grego- rovius, and Geiger. 44 Italian Humanists of the Fifteenth Century. 45 little, but his hearers thought him a fountain of all knowl- edge. Giovanni Villani, the historian of Florence (1280-1348), was a merchant and held various political and diplomatic offices. He leaned to the Guelf party. He knew and es- teemed the ancient historians, but wrote in the Tuscan dialect. His Chronicle includes an account of the Papal jubilee in 1300, which he himself attended. He was im- pressed with the thought that Rome was declining and his native Florence rising, and ready for great things. He is not a critical or philosophical historian, but an agreeable narrator, and, in spite of apparent superficiality, he is trust- worthy in Florentine and other Italian events down to the plague of 1348. His brother, Matteo, continued the history to 1363, and his nephew, Filippo, to 1365.' Leonardo Bruni (1369-1444), a pupil of Chrysoloras, gives as an idea of the extraordinary sensation caused by the re- vival of the Greek language after a slumber of seven hundred years, and the rare opportunity afforded of acquiring it from such a teacher. Bruni left all his other studies for the language of Homer, Plato, and Demosthenes. He acquired great fame by his literary and political activity. He was papal secretary in Rome and for a time chancellor of Flor- ence, and wrote letters, orations, histories, philosophical essays, and translations from the Greek. He was a pious Catholic, deplored the schisms, and desired the reunion of Christendom. 2 Francesco Poggio Bracciolini (1380-1459) was secretary of Martin V., then of Nicolas V., and lived mostly in Florence and Rome. He was the best-known humanist of his day, famous for his licentious Facetice, and his letters. He had an unbounded passion for classical antiquity, and for literary con- troversy. He excelled chiefly in Latin, but knew also Greek and a little Hebrew. He was an enthusiastic book-hunter. He came to Constance as papal secretary, and made excur- 1 Istorie Florentine, in many editions, one of Milan, 1848, in seven volumes, another at Triest, 1858. 8 Leonardi Bruni Aretini Epislolte, ed. Mehus, Flor., 1742, 2 vols. 46 T/te Renaissance. sions to the neighboring Benedictine abbeys of Reichenau, Weingarten, and St. Gall, in search of old manuscripts. He found at St. Gall valuable books covered with dust, es- pecially a complete copy of Quintilian's Institutio, which he copied with his own hand in fifty-three days. In Cluny and other French convents, he discovered new orations of Cicero. He also visited Cologne, and " barbarous England," and translated several Greek authors. Although in the service of the Curia, during a momentous period for popes and anti-popes and reformatory councils, Poggio had no interest in ecclesiastical affairs and remained a layman in priestly garments. He detested and ridiculed the monks, and undermined respect for the church which supported him. In his Dialogue against Hypocrisy he gathered a number of scandalous stories of the tricks and frauds practised by monks in the name of religion. He wit- nessed the martyrdom of Jerome of Prague (1415), and described his heroic courage as being superior to that of Mutius Scavola in suffering his hand to be burned, and of Socrates in drinking the hemlock. He was warned to be more careful in praising heretics. He had keen wit, a bitter tongue, and loose habits. He lived with a concubine, who bore him fourteen children, and when reproached for it, he frivolously replied that he only imitated the common habit of the clergy. In 1433, at the age of fifty-four, he left his con- cubine and married a Florentine maiden of eighteen, by whom he had four children. His Facetitz, or jest-book, is a collec- tion of amusing and obscene stories which he and his friends in the Papal Chancery used to tell in leisure moments, and acquired immense popularity. 1 Ambrogio Traversari (1386-1439), General of the Camal- duensian order (since 1431), combined ascetic piety with interest in heathen literature, and daily associated with men of different views and habits. He collected 238 manuscripts in Venice. He translated from the Greek Fathers, and took a leading part in the discussions with the Orientals at the union 1 Opera Poggii, Basil., 1513, and other editions. Epistola Poggii Florentini, ed. Tonelli, Florence, 1832, '59, '61, 3 vols. Shepherd's Life of Poggio, Italian ed. enlarged by Tonelli, Florence, 1825, 2 vols. Italian Humanists of the Fifteenth Century. 47 Council of Ferrara. He was, perhaps, the first monk since the days of Jerome who learned a little Hebrew. There was in him a strange conflict between monastic humility and humanistic love of fame. He revered the Church Fathers, and yet liked to quote from profane authors. 1 Carlo Marsuppini, of Arezzo (hence called Carlo Aretino), belonged to the same circle, but was an open heathen, who died without confession and sacrament. He was neverthe- less highly esteemed as teacher and chancellor of Florence, and honorably buried in the church of Santa Croce (1463).* He astonished his pupils by quotations of classical authors from the rich stores of his memory. Nicolas V. called him to Rome as translator of Homer, but he remained in Flor- ence, a faithful adherent of the Medici. Francesco Filelfo, or Philelphus (1398-1481), was one of the first Latin and Greek scholars, and much admired and much hated by his contemporaries. He had a varied fortune during a long life. He visited Greece, married for his first wife the daughter of John Chrysoloras, returned to Italy with a rich supply of manuscripts, taught at Venice and Bologna for several years, and was Professor of eloquence and of Greek in the University of Florence, where he had as many as four hundred hearers of all ranks and nationalities, including two future popes (Nicolas V. and ^Eneas Sylvius). He made many enemies by his excessive self-assertion and poisonous tongue, and involved himself in scandalous literary feuds with Niccol6, Poggio, Traversari, and the Medici fam- ily. He joined the aristocratic faction which banished Cosimo de' Medici in 1433 ; but when the Medicean party triumphed in the next year, he retired to Siena and was ban- ished from Florentine territory. Cosimo afterwards tried to conciliate him through Traversari, but Filelfo proudly re- fused, writing to Traversari : " Cosimo uses the dagger and poison against me ; I use my talent and pen against him. I want not Cosimo's friendship, and despise his enmity." At last, however, after many changes of residence, he was recon- 1 Episloltz Ambrogii Traversarii, ed. Mehus, Flor., 1749. * A monument was also erected to his honor in the same church which is the pantheon of Florentine geniuses. Geiger gives an illustration of it, p. 98. 48 The Renaissance. ciled to the Medici family, and accepted in his old age an invitation from Lorenzo the Magnificent to the chair of Greek in Florence. Filelfo combined the worst and best features of the hu- manists. He was conceited, mean, and selfish. He thought himself equal if not superior to Virgil and Cicero. 1 He rivalled Poggio in malignity and indecency of satire and in- vective. He deemed no stipend equal to his merits. He was always begging or levying contributions on princes by his poetry, and yet kept several servants and six horses. He had, however, a family of twenty-four children from his three wives. He was ungrateful to his benefactors and treacherous to his friends. By his longevity he binds to- gether two generations before and after the invention of printing, and saw his numerous Latin and Greek poems, orations, fables, meditations, and epistles multiplied by the press. 4 Guarino of Verona (1370-1460), a pupil of Chrysoloras, visited Constantinople, taught Greek in several cities of Italy, and acted as one of the interpreters at the Council of Ferrara. He trained many young men, even from England and Hungary, and secured their esteem and gratitude. He was more free from envy, jealousy, bitterness, and im- moderate love of fame than most humanists of his age. He wrote a Greek and Latin Grammar for the use of his pupils, a number of translations, poems, and letters. Nicolas V. engaged him to translate Strabo's geography, and paid him a thousand scudi for two parts ; the third part Guarino sold to a gentleman of Venice after the pope's death (1455). Vittorino Rambaldoni da Feltre (1378-1446) wrote very little, but was the prince of schoolmasters who trained the character as well as the intellect. He taught many pupils 1 He thus sounds his praise : ' ' Quod si Virgilius superat me earminis ullis Laudibus, orator illo ego sum melior. Sin Tulli eloquio prastat facundia nostro, Versibus ille meis cedit ubique minor. Adde quod et lingua possum hcee prastare Pelasga, Et Latia. Talem quern mihi des alium ? " * His life has been written by Carlo de* Rosmini, Milan, 1808, 3 vols. Epistolee Filelfi, Venet., 1502 fol. Italian Humanists of the Fifteenth Century. 49 at Padua, Venice, and especially at Mantua. He was a strictly religious scholar in a half heathenish generation, and set a good example by chastity, temperance, and the ob. servance of all the devotions prescribed to priests and monks. ' His house," says Vespasian, his biographer, " was a sacristy, where good customs, acts, and words were treasured up." * Laurentius Valla (Lorenzo della Valle, 1406-1457) was the best Latinist and the most independent scholar of his age, and the pioneer of historical criticism. He taught the classical languages in the larger Italian cities, was secretary to Pope Nicolas V., and held several ecclesiastical benefices. His book on the Elegancies of the Latin Language served for a long time as the best guide of Latin composition. He had a skeptical mind, and delighted in paradoxes and in attacks upon current beliefs. He ventured to criticise and correct Jerome's Vulgate in his Annotations to the New Testament (published by Erasmus in 1505). He rejected Christ's Letter to King Abgar of Edessa, as a forgery. He doubted the apostolic origin of the Apostles' Creed. He exploded the hierarchical fable of the Donation of Constan- tine as " contradictory, impossible, stupid, barbarous, and ridiculous," and thereby undermined the temporal power of the papacy. No wonder that he excited the suspicion of the Inquisition ; but he escaped its grasp by the hypocritical profession that he believed as Mother Church believed.' 1 Comp. on him Geiger, p. 171 sqq., and the third edition of Burckhardt, pp. 213 sq., of the English translation, where Vittorino is described as "one of those men who devote their whole life to an object for which their natural gifts constitute a special vocation. He wrote almost nothing, and finally destroyed the few poems of his youth which he had long kept by him. He studied with unwearied industry ; he never sought after titles, which, like all outward distinc- tions, he scorned ; and he lived on terms of the closest friendship with teachers, companions, and pupils, whose good-will he knew how to preserve. He excelled in bodily no less than in mental exercises, was an admirable rider, dancer, and fencer ; wore the same clothes in winter as in summer ; walked in nothing but sandals, even during the severest frost ; and lived so that, till his old age, he was never ill. He so restrained his passions, his natural inclination to sensuality and anger, that he remained chaste his whole life through, and hardly ever hurt any one by a hard word. " 8 See my article on Laurentius Valla in the " Presbyterian and Reformed Re- view," for Jan., 1891. The works of Valla were published at Basel, 1540, and three new works from Vatican MSS. by Vahlen, Vienna, 1869. CHAPTER XI. THE GREEK HUMANISTS OF THE FIFTEENTH CENTURY. CHRYSOLORAS, PLETHON, BESSARION. In 1453 Constantinople fell into the hands of the Turks. The Cross was conquered by the Crescent, to rise again in God's own good time over a regenerate Orient. This event increased the emigration of Greek scholars to the West, but its influence on the promotion of Greek learn- ing has often been overrated. The more distinguished scholars, as Plethon and Bessarion, had previously settled in Italy ; and the great mass of Greek manuscripts likewise were imported by Italians and Greeks long before 1453. Upon the whole, the Greek immigrants played a part infe- rior to that of the Latin scholars whom we mentioned in the previous section. They were confined to the teaching of the Greek language and philosophy. They were watched with some jealousy by the Italians, and deemed deficient in taste and refinement. They may be compared to the Jewish Rabbis from whom Christian divines learned the elements of Hebrew, but little else. They seldom acquired a good knowledge of Latin and Italian, and became burdensome by their poverty and want of success. Guarino, Aurispa, Filelfo, and Valla surpassed them even in Greek scholarship. 1 I. Greek scholars who emigrated before the fall of Con- stantinople : Emanuel Chrysoloras, of Constantinople (1350-1415), was the first competent teacher of the Greek language Jn 1 Voigt, II., 124 : " Es ging mil den Griechen in demselben Grade abwarts, in wekhem die Kenntniss ihrer Sprache und Literatur unter den Italienern empor- stieg. Als sie in immer grosseren Schaaren und meistens als Bettler kamen, thlug die Ehrfurchl, mit welcher man An fangs diese Sprosslinge der homer- schen Heldengeschkchter und der alien Athener angestaunt, viillig urn." 50 Greek Humanists of the Fifteenth Century. 5 1 the West. He taught in Florence, Milan, Padua, Venice, and Rome ; and having conformed to the Latin Church, was taken as interpreter to the Council of Constance, where he died. He wrote the first Greek grammar (printed in 1484). The first Greek lexicon was prepared by a Carmelite monk, Giovanni Crastone, or Crestone, of Piacenza, and appeared in 1497. We have little conception of the difficulty of acquiring a book knowledge of that language without these elementary helps. Georgios Gemistos (1355-1450), called Plethon or Pletho, 1 a native of Byzantium, appeared with the Byzantine Empe- ror at the Council of Ferrara, in 1439, and favored the union of the two churches, but did not conform to Rome, like Bessarion, his pupil. He seems to have returned to the East, and died in extreme old age. He was a follower of Plato, and introduced a more accurate study of that philosopher into Western Europe. He wrote on the laws of Plato, and on the difference between Plato and Aristotle. His countrymen called him " the sage." The Italians listened reverently to " the second Plato " with silvery hair, as he explained to them the mysteries of philosophy with youthful enthusiasm. They admired his wisdom, his eloquence, and virtue. Cosimo de' Medici heard him often, and conceived the idea of a Platonic Academy in Florence. Plato was then comparatively un- known in Europe, while Aristotle in various forms had long ruled the scholastic philosophers. Pletho's philosophy, however, was not pure Platonism, which he knew only imperfectly, but a mystic theosophy derived from Porphyries, Jamblichos, and Proclos. It was veiled in allegorical language and surrounded by the nimbus of mystery.* 1 He assumed this name in Italy for its affinity in sound to Plato. S W. Gass : Gennadius und Pletho, Aristotelismus und Platonismus in der griechischen Kirche, Breslau, 1844, in two parts. Fritz Schultze : Georgius Gemisthos Plethon und seine reformatorischen Bestrebungen, Jena, 1874. Gen- nadius (Georgius Scholarius), who likewise attended the Union Council of Ferrara, at first favored the union, but on his return opposed it, as Patriarch of Constantinople, and prepared the orthodox confession of faith which bears his name. See Schaff, Creeds of Christendom, I., 46 sqq. 52 The Renaissance. Cardinal Bessarion (1403-1472), a native of Trebisond, studied at Constantinople under Pletho, was sent to the Union Council of Ferrara to represent the Eastern Church, as titular Bishop of Nicaea. 1 He boasted that he was re- garded in his home as a miracle of learning. He at first defended the creed of his Church, but afterwards accepted the Filioque, and the supremacy of the pope, and wrote books in justification of his conversion, for which the pope rewarded him with a pension of 600 scudi. He considered it as his mission to mediate between the two Churches. Eugenius promoted him to the dignity of a cardinal in 1439, an d Nicolas V. sent him as legate to Bologna, to restore the University. After the death of Nicolas he would have been elevated to the papal chair, if the cardinals had not, upon reflection, deemed it unwise to elect a neophyte with a Greek beard and bushy eyebrows.* He died at Ravenna. Bessarion was a philosophical theologian, like all Greeks, and took more interest in the metaphysical mystery of the eternal procession of the Spirit than the practical work of the Spirit upon the hearts of men. His importance consists in the advocacy of Platonism, and in his protecting care of unfortunate Greek scholars, to whom he generously devoted a good part of his income. He vindicated Plato against the charge of immorality and alleged hostility to orthodox doctrines, pointed to his belief in the creation and the immor- tality of the soul, quoted the favorable opinions of Basil, Augustin, and other ancient fathers, and represents him as a bridge from heathenism to Christianity. But he was also an admirer of Aristotle, and blamed Plethon for his violent opposition to that great philosopher. He was a Pope Nicolas in a smaller sphere, surrounded by a learned coterie. He collected at an expense of 15,000 ducats (Platina says 30,000) a library of 900 codices, and 300 printed books, and 1 Pius II. professed not to know whether that bishopric was small, or merely a name. 8 When the College of Cardinals was on the point of electing him pope, the Cardinal of Avignon roused the jealousy of the West by asking : ' ' Would ye have for a pope a Greek, a recent proselyte, a man with a beard? Is the Latin Church fallen so low, that it must have recourse to the Greeks ? " Greek Humanists of the Fifteenth Century. 53 gave it (in 1468) to the republic of Venice,- -a second Byzan- tium, where he first landed. It was, in Greek ecclesiastical and philosophical literature, the richest library in Europe, and furnished Aldo Manuzio with the material for his val- uable prints. 1 George of Trebisond or Trapezus (1395-1484) came to Italy about 1420, conformed to the papal church, taught eloquence and Aristotelian philosophy in Venice, and then at Rome, and was appointed an apostolic scribe by Nicolas V., who supported him liberally, but afterwards cooled down when he learned that George had taken some liberties in the translation of the Evangelical Preparation of Eusebius. He was a conceited, disputatious, and irascible man, and quarrelled with Valla, Poggio, Theodore of Gaza, Bessarion, and Perotti. Bessarion convicted him of 239 errors in his translation of Plato's Laws, whereupon Nicolas V. lost confidence in him and withdrew his patronage. He was twice driven from Rome, repaired to Naples, and then to Venice, where the Doge appointed him lecturer in the humanities at a salary of 150 ducats. He returned to Rome and ended his long and troubled life as prisoner in the Castle of St. Angelo. His chief work is a comparison of Aristotle and Plato, in favor of the former. Theodore of Gaza, the rival of George of Trapezus, was a native of Thessalonica, left for Italy in 1430, acquired a thorough knowledge of Latin, taught in Ferrara from 1440 to 1450, and then passed into the service of Pope Nicolas, after whose death he removed to Naples, and died in Cala- bria in 1476. He was a zealous Platonist, and translated several Greek works into Latin, and some works of Cicero into Greek. John Argyropulus, an Aristotelian philosopher and trans- lator, taught fifteen years with great success at Florence, and then at Rome, where Reuchlin heard him lecture on 1 Bessarionis Opera omnia in Migne's Patrol. Grceca, Tom. CLXI. See the literature in Voigt, II., 125, who mentions also Wolfgang von Goethe, Studien und Forschungen ilber das Leben und die Zeit des Cardinals Bessarion, 1871. Add Henri Vast, Le Cardinal Bessarion, e"tude sur la chre'tiente' et la renaissance vers le milieu du if siecle, Paris, 1878. 54 The Renaissance. Thucydides. He died about 1486, from excess in eating watermelons. II. The Greeks of the second emigration : John Andronicus Callistus taught Greek at Bologna in 1454, then at Rome in 1469, under the patronage of Bes- sarion, and took part in the disputes between the Platonists and Aristotelians ; afterwards he removed to Florence and last to France, in the hope of better wages. He is said to have read all the Greek authors, and imported six chests of manuscripts from Greece, but he produced nothing of im- portance. Constantine Lascaris, who belonged to a family of the highest rank in the Eastern empire, found a refuge at Milan. He gave instruction in the Greek language to Ippolita, the daughter of Francis Sforza, who married Alfonso, the son of King Ferdinand I. of Naples. He composed a Greek gram- mar for her, the first book printed in Greek. He moved, in 1470, to Messina, where he established a flourishing school, and died near the close of the century. Cardinal Bembo, of Venice, was one of his pupils. His son, John or Janus Lascaris (1445-1535), emigrated with him, studied at Padua, was employed by Lorenzo de' Medici to collect manuscripts in Greece, and superintended Greek printing in Florence. He accompanied Charles VIII. to France, and was sent by him as ambassador to his allies in Italy. In 1513 he was called by Leo X. to Rome, and opened there a Greek and Latin school. In 1 5 18 he returned to France and collected a library for Francis I. at Fontaine- bleau. He was a man of affairs, but wrote little. CHAPTER XII. THE SECOND PERIOD OF HUMANISM. AENEAS SYLVIUS. Muratori, III., Pars II., 970 sqq. Platina : Vita Pii If., in his " Vita Pontif. Rom." G. Voigt : Enea Silvio de" Piccolomini. als Papst Pius II. , und sein Zeitalter, Berlin, i856-'63, 3 vols. Pastor, /. c., II., 3-261, gives only his life as pope, and ignores his previous career. K. Hase : JEneas Silvius Piccolomini, in his " Rosenvorlesungen kirchengeschichtlichen Inhalts," Leipzig, 1880, pp. 56 sqq. Milman : History of Latin Christianity, Book XIII., chap. 76. Creighton: History of the Papacy, II. (1882), pp. 365 sqq. Zoepffel in Herzog, 2d ed., Vol. XII., 1-19 (with a full list of literature). The second period of humanism embraces the pontificates from Nicolas V. (1455) to Leo X. (1521). Calixtus III. and Paul II. were hostile, Innocent VIII. and Alexander VI. in- different, Pius II., Sixtus IV., Julius II., and Leo X. de- cidedly favorable, to the new learning. Pius II. was at the same time himself one of the most eminent scholars and fruitful writers before he became pope. Enea Silvio de' Piccolomini (^Eneas Sylvius) was born in 1405 the eldest of eighteen children, from a noble, but impoverished family of Siena and imbibed the spirit of hu- manism from his teacher, Filelfo, at Florence. His earlier life was that of an adventurer, a time-serving politician, a skilful diplomatist, a man of the world, and a brilliant but frivolous writer. He travelled extensively, served several masters, and was used in embassies by the emperor and the pope. He spent several years in Switzer- land and Germany, and visited also England and Scotland. He attended the reformatory Council of Basel as clerk, and advocated its interests against the papal party, but after- wards changed his views and was rewarded with the bishopric 55 56 The Renaissance. of Trieste (1447), a year after his ordination. In 1449 he became Bishop of Siena, in 1456 a cardinal, and in 1458 pope, assuming the name of Pius II. (with reference to the words of Virgil : " Sum pius sEneas " ). During his pontifi- cate of six years he labored to strengthen the papal power, in which he succeeded, and to rouse Europe against the Turks, in which he failed. He recanted, in the bull " Exe- crabilis," his former liberal principles, and condemned his writings, comparing himself to Saul, who had ignorantly persecuted the Church of God and the Holy See. He lived in great simplicity, was liberal to the poor, forgiving to his enemies, and loved the solitude of the country and quiet study. He died after a journey to Ancona, where he hoped to lead an expedition against the Sultan. " The warning hand of time," says Voigt, " wrought in him a kind of moral revolution which, however, did not express itself in religious depth for this was always foreign to his nature, nor in too sour morals, at which his friends would have laughed. He had luckily got rid of priestly ordination until an age of life when the sensual appetites needed not to be resisted, but were losing vitality and vigor." ^Eneas Sylvius was a voluminous writer. In his youth he composed several thousand lines of Latin epigrams, elegies, odes, lascivious love-poems, novels, and comedies, which have perished. His comedy, Chrisis, in the style of Ter- ence, moves among women of ill-repute, and is equal to the most lascivious productions of the humanists. 1 He wrote eloquent orations which fill three volumes, and over five hundred letters still extant. He defended the claims of a general council and its superiority over the papacy in his book De Basileensi Concilia, in his dialogues on the authority of Councils, and in a letter to the Emperor Frederick III. His most important works are historical and geographical, a history of Bohemia, a history of Frederick III., and a cos- 1 It is preserved in a manuscript at Prague, which Voigt has inspected. He says that this comedy " spiell unter Dirnen, Dirnenjagern und Kupplerinnen und iiberbietel weit an Unflath alle Leistungen seiner Vor ganger." Wiederhers- tellung des class. Alterth., II., 413 (Enea Silvio, II., 269). jEneas Sylvius. 57 mography, in which he gave the observations made during his extensive travels. When he became pope, he disappointed the humanists, who expected great favors. He was satisfied with his own reputation as an author, and did not need their assistance by patronizing them. 1 He increased, however, the number of abbreviators or writers of briefs. His old teacher, Fi- lelfo, forced out of him a pension of two hundred ducats, but was refused further favors, for which he took cruel' revenge by slandering his character. The pope preferred to bestow his bounties on an army of relations and friends from Siena, and spotted his reputation by a species of nepotism in which he was preceded by Calixtus III., and followed by many other popes. He continued, however, his literary labors, wrote orations, pompous briefs, autobiographal memoirs, and commentaries on his reign. Platina, who knew him personally, quotes a number of his wise and witty sentences, among which are the following: " Without virtue there is no true joy. Common men should value learning as silver, noblemen as gold, princes as jewels. Good physicians do not seek the money but the health of the sick. Great controversies are decided by the sword, and not by the laws. A citizen should look upon his family as subject to the city, the city to his country, his country to the world, and the world to God. The chief place with kings is slippery. As all rivers run into the sea, so do all vices into courts. Flatterers draw kings whither they please. Kings hearken to none more readily than to sycophants. The tongue of a flatterer is a king's greatest plague. Men ought to be presented to dignities, and not dignities to men. Some men had offices and did not deserve them ; whilst others deserved them and had them not. The burthen of a pope is heavy, but he was happy who bore it stoutly. An illiterate bishop is like an ass. Poor physicians kill the body, and ignorant priests the 1 Voigt says (II., 237) : " Er war selbst tin zu grosser Schriftsteller, urn tin rechter Macen zu sein" 58 The Renaissance. soul. A wandering monk is the devil's bond-slave. Virtue enriched the clergy, but vice made them poor. There was great reason for the prohibiting of priests to marry, but greater for allowing it again. 1 No treasure is preferable to a faithful friend. The use of wine has augmented the cares and the distempers of mankind." 1 This famous testimony against clerical celibacy was suggested by his own former experience, but was disregarded by his successors who preferred hierarchi- cal power to clerical purity. CHAPTER XIII. THE LAST POPES OF THE RENAISSANCE: PAUL II. AND PLATINA, SIXTUS IV., JULIUS II., AND LEO X. Under Paul II. (1464-1471) the humanists had hard times. He changed all the officials and dismissed several abbrevia- tors, among them Platina (1421-1481), one of the most learned men of his age, who disputed this right of the pope and threatened to appeal to the decision of the Rota and the princes of Europe. The pope put him in chains for treason, and brought him to unconditional surrender. Platina declared that the pope had- a right and was in duty bound to restrain and reprove the license of scholars, and promised hereafter to devote his strength to the promotion of the welfare of the Church. He was restored to favor by Sixtus IV., and made head-librarian of the Vatican at a salary of one hundred and twenty ducats a year, with three sub- librarians, who received only twelve ducats each, and were mere servants, though all of them learned men. Platina wrote, in elegant Latin, a valuable series of biog- raphies of the popes from the Apostle Peter to the death of Paul II. (68-1471), at the request of Sixtus (published at Venice in 1479). He use d freely the writings of his prede- cessors, but for the pontificates of Eugene IV., Nicolas V., Calixtus III., Pius II., and Paul II., he could draw on his own observation and experience. In his treatment of Paul II., he gives vent to personal hatred, but, upon the whole, he is impartial. 1 l De Vitis ac Gestis summorum Pontificum ad Sixtum IV. deductum. An English translation was published in 1685, and republished by Rev. W. Bend- ham, London (n. d.). Platina wrote also a Historia urbis Mantua, from the origin of the town to 1464. It is very rare. On his quarrel with the Pope, see Uoigt and Geiger (149 sqq.). 59 60 The Renaissance. Sixtus IV. (1471-1484) figures more prominently in the political history of Italy than in the Renaissance, but he increased the Vatican Library and Archives, transferred them to four new and beautiful halls, and appointed regular librarians (first Bussi, then Platina), with clerks and copy- ists. He had more passion for architecture than for lit- erature. He built the Sistine Chapel, which afterwards acquired such celebrity from the frescoes of Michel An- gelo, a great hospital, and other edifices of the city. He is the chief founder of the disgraceful system of papal nepotism. Innocent VIII. (1484-1492) and Alexander VI. (1492-1503) did nothing for letters or arts. Alexander and the Borgia family represent a renaissance of crime, which they practised as an art, with diabolical ability and energy. During their reign Florence took the place of Rome as a home of letters. Julius II. (1503-1513), a nephew of Sixtus IV., and Leo X. (1513-1521), a grandson of Lorenzo de' Medici, were not scholars themselves, like Pius II., but liberal patrons of architects, sculptors, and painters. Julius II. would rather be painted with a sword than a book in hand, as he said to Michel Angelo, but he admired splendid buildings and monuments. These two popes had the good sense and fortune to avail themselves of the greatest artistic geniuses of their age, who represent the culmination of the Renais- sance. Raphael immortalized their faces by several portraits, preserved in the galleries of Rome and Florence, which reflect not only the outward appearance but the inner life and character of these popes. The successors of Leo were absorbed in efforts to counter- act the Protestant Reformation. The barbarous sack of Rome in 1527 by the imperial troops was disastrous to literature and art, and deeply deplored by Melanchthon, who, nobly rising above sectarian controversy, said to his students at Wittenberg, when he heard of the savage out- rages committed by the Spanish and German soldiers : " Why should we not lament the fall of Rome, which is the common mother-city of all nations ? I, indeed, feel this calamity no The Last Popes of the Renaissance, 61 less than if it were my own native place. The robber hordes were not restrained by considerations of the dignity of the city, nor the remembrance of her services for the laws, sciences, and arts of the world. This is what we grieve over. Whatever be the sins of the pope, Rome should not be made to suffer." CHAPTER XIV. LORENZO THE MAGNIFICENT (1449-1492). Lorenzo il Magnifico : Opere, Firenze, 1825, 4 vols. ; his Poesie, ed. by Car- ducci, Firenze, 1859. Biographies by Fabroni (Pisa, 1784, 2 vols.), Roscoe (London, 1795, loth ed. 1851, and several translations), A. von Reumont (Leip- zig, 1874, 2 vols.), B. Buser (Leipzig, 1879). Albert Castelnau : Les Medicis, Paris, 1879, 2 vols. Lorenzo de' Medici, called il Magnifico, was the most liberal patron of literature in the second half of the fifteenth century. He was a worthy grandson of Cosimo, and ruled Florence till his death. He was well educated in Latin and Greek by Landino, Argyropulus, and Marsilio Ficino, a poet of no mean talent, an admirer of Plato, and a Maecenas of scholars and artists. His family life was reputable. He esteemed and loved his wife, though the marriage was one of convenience, and he liked to play with his children. He triumphed over the conspiracy of the Pazzi, who were in league with Pope Sixtus IV. He encouraged scholars and artists, among them Michel Angelo. But he was a bad manager, neglected the finances, and brought himself and the republic to the brink of bankruptcy in 1490. He mar- ried his daughter to the oldest illegitimate son of Pope Innocent VIII., and induced him to make his youngest son, Giovanni, a cardinal, though he was only thirteen. This boy became pope, as Leo X., and did his best to revive the fortunes of his family at the expense of the Church. Savonarola, the severe preacher of moral reform, regarded Lorenzo as an elegant worldling and enemy of the liberties of Florence. When called to his death-bed, he asked him whether he adhered to the true faith, whether he was willing 62 Lorenzo the Magnificent. 63 to return stolen property to the rightful owners and to lead a virtuous life, and whether he would restore the republic to its old state of freedom. Lorenzo assented to the first two questions, but made no reply to the third, and hence was refused absolution. This is the report of Count Pico, the first biographer of Savonarola, but it is contradicted by Poliziano, who knew Lorenzo intimately, and reports that Lorenzo asked and received the priestly blessing from Savonarola. 1 In less than three years after Lorenzo's death, Charles VIII. of France entered Florence, and made an end to the rule of the Medici for eighteen years, when they acquired a second supremacy, which soon became a hereditary monarchy and lasted two centures (1537-1/37). 'Villari {Savonarola, I., 136 and 154 sqq.) accepts the report of Pico and Burlamachi, but von Ranke and von Reumont (II., 417 and 442 sqq.} follow Poliziano. CHAPTER XV. THE PLATONIC ACADEMY IN FLORENCE. Fr. Schultze : Geschichte der Philosophic der Renaissance, Jena, 1874. The first volume treats of Plethon. Comp. the corresponding sections in the His- tories of Philosophy, by Ritter, Erdmann, Ueberweg, etc. The Platonic Academy was founded about 1469 by Cosimo de' Medici, patronized by Lorenzo, and embraced among its members the principal men of Florence and some strangers. It celebrated the birthday of Plato (November I3th) with a banquet and a discussion of his writings. It suffered an eclipse by the death of Lorenzo, Politian, and Picus, and the disasters which fell on the children of Lorenzo. It revived and dif- fused the knowledge of the sublime truths of Platonism, and then gave way to other academies in Florence of a more literary and social character. A controversy broke out between the Greeks of Italy on the merits of Plato and Aristotle. Theodore of Gaza opened on the side of Aristotle. Cardinal Bessarion replied with moderation. Next, George of Trebisond poured abuse on the Platonic philosophy and vented his spite against Bessa- rion, who replied in 1469. Pietro Pomponazzi (1462-1526), a popular teacher of the Aristotelian philosophy at Padua and Bologna, roused alarm by asserting that the immortality of the soul was not taught by Aristotle, and could not be proved by reason, but rested on the authority of the Church, which was sufficient. He thus made a distinction between philosophical truth and theological truth. 1 His book was sent to Bembo, the secretary of Leo X., and shielded from censure. But the fifth Lateran Council in 1512 (sess. 8) rejected that distinction as heretical. 1 Pomponatii liber de immortalitate animez. Bonon., 1516. 64 CHAPTER XVI. MARSILIO FICINO (1433-1499). The court of scholars by which Lorenzo the Magnificent was surrounded, and which adorned the Platonic Academy, embraced Poliziano or Politian (1454-1494), a brilliant pro- fessor of Greek and Latin eloquence in the university and one of the most gifted humanists ; Luigi Pulci (1432-1484), a poet and freethinker; Christoforo Landino (1434-1504), a commentator on Dante ; Marsilio Ficino (1433-1499) ; and Giovanni Pico della Mirandola (1463-1494). The last two represent the renaissance of Platonic philosophy and exerted most influence on the progress of thought in that age. Marsilio Ficino or Ficinus, the son of Cosimo's physician, was carefully educated by Cosimo de' Medici, and destined while yet a boy of six years to become a Platonic philoso- pher and follower of Plethon. He called Cosimo his second father to whom he owed the new birth. He was an ordained priest, rector of two churches, and canon of the cathedral of Florence, and eloquently preached the Platonic gospel to his " brethren in Plato." He translated the Orphic hymns, the Hermes Trismegistos, and some works of Plato and Plotinos, a colossal task for that age. He believed that the divine Plotinos had first revealed the theology of the divine Plato and " the mysteries of the ancients," and that these were consistent with Christianity. Yet he could not find in Plato's writings the mystery of the Trinity. He shared the general belief in astrology, and laid great stress on prophetic dreams. He wrote a defence of the Christian religion, which he regarded as the only true reli- gion, 1 and a work on the immortality of the soul, which he 1 De Religione Christiana, in thirty-eight chapters. 5 65 66 The Renaissance. proved with fifteen arguments against the Aristotelians. 1 He was an industrious student, fond of music and good company, but small, sickly, and kept poor by dishonest servants and avaricious relations. 1 Theologia Platenica de immortalitate animarum, in 18 books. See Marsili. Fidni Florentini insignis Philosophi Platonid Opera. Basel, 1561, 2 rols., fol. CHAPTER XVII. PICUS OF MIRANDOLA (1463-1494). The Theses of Pico de Mir. were printed at Rome 1486, and at Cologne 1619 ; his Opera, at Bologna, 1496, together with the works of hisnephew, John Francis Pico, Basel, 1572, and 1601. George Dreydorff : Das System des Joh. Pico von Mirandola und Concordia. Marburg, 1858. Geiger, 204 sqq^ Giovanni Pico della Mirandola. His Life, by his nephew, Giovanni Francesco Pico. Transl. from the Latin by Sir Thomas More (1510). Edited, with an Introd. and Notes, by J. M. Rigg. London (In " The Tudor Library," David Nutt), 1890. Giovanni Pico, count of Mirandola, in the Modenese territory, studied canon law, theology, philosophy, and the humanities in Ferrara ; he learned also Hebrew, Chaldee, and Arabic. 1 He was a precocious genius, but cut down be- fore he reached the prime of manhood. He came to Rome in his twenty-third year and published nine hundred theses on miscellaneous topics, in which he anticipated some Prot- estant views, such as that no image or cross should be adored, that the words " This is my body " must be understood sym- bolically (significative], not materially. He also maintained that the science of Magic and the Cabbala confirms the doc- trine of the trinity and the deity of Christ. These opinions roused suspicion, and thirteen of his theses were condemned by Innocent VIII. as heretical ; but as Pico submitted his judgment to that of the Church he was acquitted of heresy, and Alexander VI. cleared him of all new charges. 1 "Among all those who busied themselves with Hebrew in the fifteenth cen- tury, no one was of more importance than Pico della Mirandola. He was not satisfied with a knowledge of the Hebrew grammar and Scriptures, but pene- trated into the Jewish Cabbalah, and even made himself familiar with the literature of the Talmud. That such pursuits, though they may not have gone very far, were at all possible to him, he owed to his Jewish teachers." Burckhardt, 3d ed., pp. 198 sq. 67 68 The Renaissance. Pico was a man of rare endowments and erudition, and a sincere Christian of ascetic tendencies. He was admired as a miracle of erudition and wisdom. In the last years of his short life he devoted himself to the study of the Bible, and intended to preach Christ throughout the world. He is described by his nephew as " a handsome young man, tall, elastic, with brown hair, deep blue eyes, shining white teeth, showing in his whole personality a mixture of angelic gen- tleness, modest chastity, and refreshing benevolence, which delighted the eye and attracted the heart." Savonarola blamed him for not becoming a full monk, and thought he went to purgatory. His philosophy was a combination of Platonism and Aristo- telianism. He found the same system in the Cabbala and the Bible, which was a mistake. He had, of all humanists, the loftiest conception of the dignity and destiny of man. He appreciated the truth and science of all ages and nations, as well as that of classical antiquity, and found the highest truth in the Christian religion. He is the author of the famous sentence : Philoso- phia veritatem qucerit, theologia invenit, religio possidet. His principal writings are : De Ente et Uno, his Heptaplus (a commentary on the Mosaic account of the creation, from which he derived all the wisdom of the world by means of the sevenfold meaning of the words of the Bible), a treatise on astrology, which he opposed as a dangerous error, and an oration on the dignity of man (De dignitate hominis). In the last he maintained that God placed man in the midst of the world that he might the more easily study all that therein is, and endowed him with free will, by which he might degen- erate to a beast or rise to a godlike existence. Man alone is capable of indefinite development and growth, and bears in him the germs of a universal and eternal life. Pico bequeathed his estates of Mirandola and Concordia to his nephew, and his property to the poor. Pico had a decided influence on John Reuchlin, who saw him in 1490, and was persuaded by him of the immense wisdom hid in the Cabbala. He was also greatly admired Picus of Mirandola. 69 by Zwingli, who adopted some of his philosophical views and incorporated them in his " Commentary on the True and False Religion," and his tract on " Providence." His nephew, John Francis (Gianfrancesco) of Mirandola, was a friend and the first biographer of Savonarola (1503). 1 Comp. Ch. Siegwart, Ulrich Zwingli : der Charakter seiner Theologie mil besondcrer Rucksicht auf Picus von Mirandola (1855). Siegwart maintains that Zwingli's doctrine of God in the first chapter of his tract, De Providentia, is in part literally borrowed from Pico's tract, De Ente et Una, and that the fourth chapter is an abridged reproduction of the Oratio de hominis dignitate. We may add that Zwingli may have derived his figurative view of the words of the institution of the Lord's Supper from the same source. But M6rikofer, Zwingli, II., 508 sq., vindicates the originality of Zwingli. CHAPTER XVIII. BEMBO AND SADOLETO. Bembo : Opere (Lat. and Ital.), Venice, 1729, 4 vols., fol. Ersch and Gru- ber, VIII., 471. Wetzer and Welte, II., 296 Qrevised edition). Sadoletus : Opera omnia, Moguntise, 1607 ; Verona, 1737, 4 vols. Fiordi- bello : De Vita Joe. Sadoleti. Tiraboschi : VII., 300 sqq. The last distinguished humanists who already reach into the period of the Reformation, are Bembo and Sadoleto. Pietro Bembo (1470-1547), descended from a patrician family of Venice, was made by Leo X. one of his pri- vate secretaries, at an annual salary of three thousand scudi. After the death of Leo, he resided in Padua and derived a large income from his rich benefices. He expressed great surprise at the niggardliness of the German princes when he heard that such a scholar as Melanchthon received a con- temptible salary of two or three hundred guilders in Wittenberg. He had a large collection of books, manu- scripts, medals, and antiques. He was appointed historio- grapher of his native city, 1529, and librarian of St. Mark's. Being created a cardinal by Paul III. in 1539, he removed again to Rome. There he died in 1547, and was buried in the choir of the church of Santa Maria sopra Minerva. Bembo was an accomplished and amiable man of the world, like his master, Leo X. In his earlier years he had several love adventures, and lived for twenty-two years in open concubinage with the beautiful Morosina of Venice, who bore him two sons and a daughter. He lamented her death in Latin elegies. He was a friend and admirer of Lucrezia Borgia (the daughter of the ill-famed Alexander 70 Bembo and Sadoleto. 71 VL), Duchess of Ferrara, and dedicated to her his dialogues on love (gli Asolani), in which love is first praised as the source of the highest human happiness, then condemned as the source of human misery, and last represented as a step- ping-stone to divine love and its blessings. In later life he devoted himself to sacred studies and led a serious life. 1 Bembo was a most elegant Latinist, the beau ideal of a purist, in poetry and prose, but a slavish imitator of Cicero and Petrarca, without productive genius. His highest aim was classical correctness of style. He would have adorned the age of Augustus. t He wrote a history of Venice from 1487 to 1513, dialogues, poems, and essays. Giacopo Sadoleto (1477-1547) was born at Modena, educated at Ferrara and Rome, and acquired fame for his finished Latin style in -poetry and prose. His poem on the newly discovered Laocoon group was enthusiastically received. Leo X. made him his secretary, and in 1517 Bishop of Carpentras in the papal dominion of Avignon ; Clement VII. called him back to Rome : Paul III. created him a cardinal (1536). Sadoleto combined humanistic culture with enlightened Catholic churchmanship, and forms the connecting link be- tween humanism and the Roman counter-Reformation. In his early life he wrote love poetry on Imperia, a famous courtesan of Rome ; but as bishop he led an exemplary life, and in his conflict with Protestants he showed toler- ance and amiability as well as diplomatic adroitness. His object was to win them back by gentle persuasion. He ad- dressed an appeal to the Genevese during Calvin's absence in Strassburg, but Calvin defeated the attempt to alienate his flock (1539). One of his chief works is a commentary on the Epistle to the Romans, which was written in defence of the Roman Catholic view of justification, but did not altogether satisfy his own friends. In his " Consilium de emendanda Ecclesia " (1538), he admitted many abuses and proposed a reformation of the Church which he vainly hoped from the 1 " Er widmete seine Jugend der Liebe, die Zeit seiner mannlichen Kraft den Musen, und sein Alter der Religion." Geiger, p. 224. 72 The Renaissance. pope. Altogether he is one of the noblest characters of the Roman Church in his age. The papal counter-Reformation which arose towards the middle of the sixteenth century, sounded the death-knell of humanism, by charging it with immorality and irreligion. Giordano Bruno, one of the last representatives of the philo- sophical Renaissance, was condemned as a heretic by the Roman Inquisition and burned on the Campo de' Fiori in 1600, but his admirers erected a statue to him on the same spot in 1889 to the great annoyance of Pope Leo XIII. CHAPTER XIX. THE FINE ARTS. " Hcec est Italia diis sacra" Plinius. Giorgio Vasari (a painter and pupil of Michel Angelo, 1511-1574) : Le Vite dei fiu celebri Pittori, Scultori e Architetti, 1550 ; best edition by Gaetano Milanesi, with notes and comments, Firenze, i878-'8s, 9 vols. Small ed., Firenze, 1889. English translation by Mrs. Jonathan Foster, London, 1850- '52 ; new ed. 1878, 5 vols. in Bohn's " Standard Library." Vasari is the basis of most works in this department. Benvenuto Cellini (goldsmith and sculptor at Florence, 1500-' 70) : Vita scritta da lui medesino, Firenze, often printed and translated. An autobio- graphy which gives a lively picture of the life of an Italian artist of that period. German translation by Goethe ; English translation by Roscoe, and another by Symonds (London and New York, 1 890). Abate Luigi Lanzi (1732-1810) : The History of Painting in Italy, from the Period of the Revival of the Fine Arts to the End of the i8th Century. Transl. from the Italian by Thomas Roscoe. London, 1852 (in Bohn's Library), 3 vols. Fr. Th. Kugler (1808-1858) : Handbuch der Kunstgeschichte, Stuttgart, i84i-'42, 5th ed. 1872 ; also his Geschichte der Malerei, 1837, 3d ed., 1867, 2 vols. ; and Geschichte der Baukunst, i855-'73, continued by Burckhardt and Llibke, 5 vols. The Italian part of his History of Painting was translated by Lady Eastlake, with notes by Sir Charles L. Eastlake the other schools were ed. by Sir E. W. Head, 4th ed., London, 1874. Wilh. Ltibke: Kunstgeschichte, Stuttgart, loth ed., 1887; (fully illustrated Engl. trans, from the 7th ed. by Clarence Cook, New York, 1878, in 2 vols.); Gesch. der Renaissance in Frankreich, 2d ed., 1885 ; Gesch. der deutschen Re- naissance, 2d ed., 1882 ; RaffaeCs Leben und Werke, 1882 ; and other works. J. A. Crowe and G. B. Cavalcaselle : A New History of Painting in North Italy from the 2d to the i^th Century from new materials and recent researches in Italy and elsewhere. London, i864~'67. By the same : The Life and Times of Titian. London, 2d ed., 1881, 2 vols. (dedicated to the then Crown Prince of Germany and Prussia, afterwards Emperor Frederic III.). Mrs. Jameson and Lady Eastlake : The History of our Lord as exemplified in Works of Art. London, 3d ed., 1872, 2 vols. Mrs. Jameson : Legends of the Madonna as represented in the Fine Arts. London, 5th ed., 1872. By the same : Sacred and Legendary Art. London, ?th ed., 1874, 2 vols. By the 73 74 The Renaissance. same : Legends of the Monastic Orders as expressed in the Fine Arts. London, 5th ed., 1872. All these works are richly illustrated by etchings and wood- cuts. H. Taine : Lectures on Art (in French, Paris, 1865 and 1866). First Series : The Philosophy of Art. Second Series : Art in Italy, etc. Tansl. by John Durand. N. York, 1875. Also Taine's Italy, Rome, and Naples, and Italy, Florence, and Venice, translated by Durand. N. D'Anvers : An Elementary History of Art Architecture, Sculpture, Painting, Music. London and New York (Scribner & Welford), 2d ed., 1882. With 183 illustrations. A. Woltmann and K. Woermann : History of Ancient, Early Christian, and Mediceval Painting. Transl. from the German and ed. by Sidney Colvin. Lon- don and New York (Dodd, Mead, & Co.), 1880. Illustrated. Jacob Burckhardt (Prof, in Basel): Der Cicerone. Anleitung zum Genuss der Kunstwerke Italiens. Fifth ed., by W. Bode. Leipzig, 1884, 3 vols. Part I. contains Antiquity ; Part II., in 2 vols., the Middle Ages, and the Renaissance. John D. Champlin and Charles C. Perkins : Cyclopadia of Painters and Paintings. New York (Charles Scribner's Sons), iSSs-'S?, 4 vols. With more than 2,000 illustrations. An alphabetical bibliography in Vol. I., XIX.- XXXVI., "of a kind hitherto unattempted. " Bibliographic references to English, German, French, Italian, Spanish, Dutch, and Danish works are also appended to the chief articles. Eugene Miintz (conservateur de 1'Ecole nationale des Beaux-Arts in Paris) : Histoire de /' 'Art pendant la Renaissance. Paris (Hachette e C ie -, 1889 sqq., 5 vols. With numerous illustrations. The first three volumes are devoted to Italy, the fourth to France, the fifth to other countries. By the same : Les Arts it la cour des popes pendant le XV et le XVI f siecle. Paris, i878-*79. (A convenient Hand-book on Painters, Sculptors, Architects, Engravers, and their Works, with illustrations and monograms, by Clara Erskine Clement. Cambridge and New York, 1873, 2d ed. 1875, pp. 661.) The renaissance of classical learning was accompanied and followed by a renaissance of classical art. The former re- vealed the strength of the human mind, the latter the beauty of the human body illuminated by the soul. What the age of Nicolas V. was for the discovery of manuscripts the age of Julius II. was for the discovery of statues of antiquity. At the end of the fifteenth and the beginning of the six- teenth centuries the unsurpassed masterpieces of Greek sculpture such as the Laocoon group, the Apollo of the Belvedere, the torso of Hercules, all in the Belvedere of the Vatican Museum were dug from the dust, and revealed the Greek ideals of human beauty. It was a revelation indeed, and kindled an enthusiasm for similar achievements. The Fine Arts. 75 Then began those excavations and those robberies of tem- ples, palaces, and baths, in and around Rome, which enriched the priceless collections in the Vatican, the Lateran, and the Capitoline museums of that city. The extensive villa of the Emperor Hadrian, which covers some miles below Tivoli, and embraced a theatre, lyceum, temple, basilica, library, race-course, etc., furnished alone immense treasures of art. It was a remarkable coincidence that at the same time arose the greatest geniuses of Italian architecture, sculpture, and painting, who fully equalled those of ancient Greece and produced creations of beauty which are still and will ever be the admiration of the world. The revival of art, like that of poetry, originated in Flor- ence, which is justly called Firenze la bella, the City of Flowers, and the Flower of Cities, " the brightest star of star-bright Italy." She gave birth to an unusual number of geniuses, such as Dante and Giotto, Leonardo da Vinci and Michel Angelo, Cosimo and Lorenzo de' Medici, Machia- velli and Guicciardini, and possesses more treasures of art and greater reminiscences of history than any other city ex- cept Rome. There lived and labored the architects, painters, and sculptors of the earlier Renaissance. From Florence art wandered to Rome, and from there it spread over all Italy. Giotto was called to Rome by Boni- face VIII., Fra Giovanni by Nicolas V., Bramante, Michel Angelo, and Raphael by Julius II. We may distinguish two periods in the revival of art, as in that of letters. The first had its centre in Florence under the Medici, the second in Rome under Julius II. and Leo X. The first period extends from about 1300 to 1500, the second from 1500 to 1550. The Early Renaissance represents art on the road to perfection, the High Renaissance upon the 1 " Of all the fairest cities of the earth None is so fair as Florence. 'T is a gem Of purest ray ; and what a light broke forth, When it emerged from darkness ! Search within, Without ; all is enchantment ! 'T is the Past Contending with the Present ; and in turn Each has the mastery." ROGERS. 76 The Renaissance. pinnacle of perfection. Then followed the Later Renais- sance, which was a period of decline and degeneracy. The chief artists painters, sculptors, and architects of the Early Renaissance are Cimabue (1240-1302), " the father of modern painting " ; Giotto (1276-1337), his greater pupil, the friend of Dante, and author of wonderful frescoes in Santa Croce, in the Chapel of the Bargello, and in Santa Maria Novella; Ghiberti (1376-1455), the designer of the bronze reliefs ha the Baptistery of St. Giovanni in Florence which Michel Angelo pronounced " worthy to be the gates of Paradise " ; Brunelleschi (13771444), the rearer of the dome of the Cathedral of Santa Maria del Fiore in Florence; Donatello (1383-1466), the sculptor, who subordinated ideal beauty to real nature ; Fra Giovanni Angelico da Fiesole (1387-1455), who painted saints and angels on his knees; Tomaso di San Giovanni, called Masaccio i.e., Slovenly Tom (1400-1443), the author of the frescoes in the chapel of St. Peter, in the church of Santa Maria del Carmine, at Florence, which are remarkable for precision in drawing, softness, and harmony of coloring, and which almost approach the perfection of Raphael and Titian '; Bramante (1444-1514), one of the chief architects of St. Peter's ; Perugino of Umbria (1446-1524), the teacher of Raphael. The greatest artists of the High Renaissance are Leonardo da Vinci (1452-1519); Fra Bartolommeo (1469-1517), the friend and admirer of Savonarola ; Raphael or Raffaello Sanzio d' Urbino (1483-1520); Michel Angelo Buonarroti (1475-1564); Correggio(i493-i534); Giorgione (1478-1511); Titian (1477-1 576) all Italians. With them may be worthily associated Albrecht Diirer (1471-1528), the engraver and painter of Nurnberg, whom Raphael admired as an extra- ordinary genius. It is remarkable that these artists should have flourished 1 Taine (Led. on Art, Second Series, p. n) calls Masaccio " an all but finished artist, a solitary originator who instinctively sees beyond his age, an unrecog- nized precursor who is without followers, whose sepulchre even bears no in- scription, who lived poor and alone, and whose precocious greatness is to be comprehended only half a century later." The Fine Arts. 77 within the same generation, from about 1490 to 1520. Most of them stood in personal relations, yet each had his own individuality and cultivated it to the highest degree of per- fection that has been reached so far. And what a variety of gifts were combined in Leonardo da Vinci and Michel Angelo, who excelled alike as architects, sculptors, painters, and poets ! The former was besides a chemist, engineer, mu- sician, merchant, and profound thinker, and is, not unjustly, called, on his monument at Milan, " the restorer of the arts and sciences." His mural picture of the Last Supper in S. Maria delle Grazie in Milan (from the years 1495 to 1498), best known by the engraving of Raphael Morghen, in spite of its defaced and repainted condition, is a marvellous repro- duction of one of the sublimest events, adapted to the monks seated around their refectory table (instead of the reclining posture on couches), and every head is a study. Taine classes Michel Angelo, with Dante, Shakespeare, and Beethoven, among the four great men in the world of art and literature " who are exalted to such a degree above all others as to seem to belong to another race and to be possessed by the soul of a fallen deity, struggling irresistibly after a world disproportionate to our own, always suffering and combating, always toiling and tempestuous, devoting itself in solitude to erecting before men colossi as ungovern- able, as vigorous, and as sadly sublime as its own insatiable and impotent desire." ' And he calls Leonardo da Vinci " the precocious originator of all modern wonders and ideas, a subtle and universal genius, an isolated and insatiate in- vestigator, who pushes his divinations beyond his own age until he sometimes reaches our own." ' 1 Italy, Rome, and Naples (N. York, 1877), p. 186. 9 Lectures on Art, I., 16. Lubke (Hist, of Art, II., 28o^.)says : " Leonardo da Vinci was one of those rare beings in whom Nature loves to unite all con- ceivable human perfections, strikingly handsome, and at the same time of a dignified presence, and of an almost incredible degree of bodily strength ; while mentally he possessed such various endowments as are hardly ever united in a single person," etc. CHAPTER XX. THE RELIGIOUS CHARACTER OF THE ART OF THE RE- NAISSANCE. The golden age of Italian art preceded the Reformation, and synchronized with its earliest phase, but had no connec- tion with it whatever. (The first great German painters, Albrecht Diirer and Lucas Kranach, make an exception.) Raphael was born only a few months before Luther and Zwin- gli, but died before he had reached mid-life, and before the burning of the pope's bull. Michel Angelo was older than the Reformers, and long outlived them ; he finished the " Last Judgment," in the Sixtine Chapel, in 1541 ; he under- took, when already seventy years old, in 1 546, when Luther died, the superintendence of St. Peter's, and created the model of the cupola. But that greatest and most magnificent church of Chris- tendom, " which stands alone of temples old or altars new," is both the shame and the glory of the papacy, for it was largely built from the proceeds of the sale of indulgences, which roused the moral indignation of the North and kindled the flame of the Reformation. The art of the Renaissance blends the glorification of mediaeval Catholicism with the charms of classical pagan- ism, the history of the Bible with the mythology of Greece and Rome. The Catholic type of piety is shown in the preponderance of the pictures of the Madonna who carries the infant Saviour on her arms, as if she were the chief object of worship, though the real intention was to set forth the mystery of the incarnation. The earlier painters of the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries were more simple, chaste, 78 Religious Character of the A rt of the Renaissance. 79 and devout than those of the sixteenth, who reached a higher distinction as artists. They are related to each other in point of spirituality as Dante is related to Boccaccio, and Beatrice to Fiammetta. The classical models perfected the form, but corrupted the morals. The holiest of the painters of the early Renaissance is Fra Beato Angelico da Fiesole, who produced his works as acts of worship and charity. 1 There is an innocent association of Christianity with heathenism. In the Roman catacombs, Christ is repre- sented as Apollo with the sheep on his shoulder, or as Orpheus charming the animals with the music of the gospel. The Sibyls, as unconscious prophets of heathenism, are placed side by side with the Hebrew prophets, by Michel Angelo, in the Sixtine Chapel, as David and the Sibyl are coupled in the judgment hymn of Thomas a Celano. But now the immoralities of the Greek mythology were brought into rivalry with the biblical history and the Catho- lic mythology of saints and martyrs. Heavenly beauty and earthly sensuality meet side by side, and the latter often overshadows the former. The same illustrious painters " seem to take up one task or the other the disrobed woman whom they called Venus, or the type of highest and tenderest womanhood in the mother of their Saviour with equal readiness, but to achieve the former with far more satisfactory success." a The Italian picture-galleries which best 1 Vasari says of Fra Giovanni that "he might have lived in the world with the utmost ease and comfort . . . but he chose, nevertheless, in the hope of ensuring the peace and quiet of his life and of promoting the salvation of his soul, to enter the order of the preaching friars [in 1407] ; for although it is certain that we may serve God in all conditions, yet, to some, it appears that they can more effectually secure their salvation in the cloister than in the world ; and this purpose is doubtless successful as regards a man of good and upright purpose ; but the contrary as certainly happens to him who becomes a monk from less worthy motives, and who is sure to render himself truly misera- ble." Pope Nicolas V. offered him the bishopric of Florence, but Fra Giovanni declined it, and recommended Fra Antonio, who was most eminent for learning and piety, and was canonized by Adrian VI. * Hawthorne, in his Marble Faun (or Transformation), which contains some choice descriptions of Rome and Roman art. See Vol. II. , Ch, XII. 8o The Renaissance. represent the Renaissance period, are mostly made up of Madonnas, Magdalens, Crucifixions, Noli-Me-Tangeres, Saint Sebastians, and other legendary saints, contrasted with Venuses, Ledas, and other mythological nudities. Titian's Magdalen (in the Pitti Gallery) exhibits in one per- son the voluptuous woman with exposed breasts and flowing locks, and the penitent saint looking up to heaven. The first great painters of Germany, Albrecht Durer (1471-1528), Lucas Kranach (1472-1553), and Hans Holbein (14951543), are free from this heathen element, and show the influence of the Reformation which went back to Christianity pure and simple. German art was less beautiful, but more profound ; less idolatrous, but more religious ; less classical, but more spiritual than the more distinguished con- temporary art of Italy. The beautiful, the true, and the good are equally from God, and they are intended for each other, as a harmonious whole ; but are often separated by the sin and weakness of man. CHAPTER XXI. RAPHAEL (1483-1520). J. Passavant : Raphael von Urbino und sein Vaier Giovanni Santi. Leipzig, i839-'s6, 3 vols. (Improved French edition by Paul Lacroix, Paris, 1860.) E. FOrster : Raphael. Leipzig, i867-'68, 2 vols. Ruland : The Works of Raphael, London, 1876. Anton Sprenger : Raffael und Michelangelo. Mil Ilustrationen. Leipzig, 1878, 4 ; ad ed., 1883, in 2 vols., 8. It is a part of Robert Dohme : Kunst und Kunstler des Mittelalters und der Neuzeit. W. Lttbke : Rafael's Leben und Werke. Dresden, 1881. E. Miintz : Raphael, sa vie, son ceuvre etson temps. Paris, 1881. Crowe and Cavalcaselle : Raphael, his Life and Works. London, 1882 (German transl., Leipzig, 1883). Minghetti : Raffaello. German ed., Breslau, 1887. Herman Grimm : Das Leben Raphaels, 2d ed., Berlin, 1886. Vasari begins his Vita di Raffaello da Urbino with a rever- ent recognition of the sovereign bounty of Providence which " sometimes is pleased to accumulate the infinite riches of its treasures on the head of one sole favorite, showering on him all those rare gifts and graces which are more commonly distributed among a larger number of individuals and ac- corded at long intervals of time only." This truth is strikingly illustrated in the works both of Raphael and Michel Angelo. They stand out in the history of the Renaissance, so rich in genius of the first order, as the highest peaks, the one unsurpassed for grace and loveli- ness, the other for majesty and force. Michel Angelo ex- hibits the stern severity of the Old Testament, Raphael, the sweetness of the New. " The law was given by Moses ; grace and truth came by Jesus Christ." They labored in close proximity in the Vatican, Raphael in the Stanze and Loggie, Michel Angelo in the Sixtine Chapel. Their pupils quarrelled among themselves, and depreciated the rival of their master ; 6 81 82 The Renaissance. but the masters rose above the jealousy of small minds. They form a noble pair, like Schiller and Goethe among modern poets. Raphael has been called the Shakespeare among painters for the variety of characters in which his own is lost. His Disputa and School of Athens are a history of theology and philosophy as embodied in their leading representatives, and each head is a distinct individuality. He resembles also Mozart in the precocity of his genius, the shortness of his life, and the number, sweetness, harmony, and perennial charm of his productions. Goethe, in describing the picture of St. Cecilia in Bologna, says that Raphael's predecessors have erected the pyramid, but that he put the last stone on the top, and that no other can stand above or beside him. His brief life of thirty-seven years was one continued study of preparation and execution, and gave to the world over twelve hundred pictures and drawings, which are scattered all over the civilized globe. Among these there is not one indifferent piece, while many are such master-works as never have been, and probably never will be, surpassed. His Ma- donna di San Sisto is the perfection of Madonna pictures : his Transfiguration is the perfection of pictures of Christ. They are the highest triumphs of Christian art. We know little of the private life of Raphael. " He lived, he loved, he worked, he died young." ' He was an amiable .and lovely character, free from envy and jealousy, modest, magnanimous, patient of criticism, as anxious to learn as to teach, always ready to assist poor artists, in one word, a per- fect gentleman. 2 He seemed to have descended from a higher world. Vasari says that he combined so many rare gifts that he might be called a mortal god rather than simply a man. His mind lived in a perpetual springtide. He was all beauty inside and outside. His beautiful soul shone from his countenance. The portraits, which present him as an infant, 1 ' ' Seine Geschichte ist in den vier Begriffen enthalten : leben, lieben, arbeiten undjung sterben. " Grimm, p. 87. 2 Vasari calls him la gentiltzza siessa, which Grimm translates in half-English : ' ' durch und durch ein Gentleman. " Raphael. 83 youth, and man, are as characteristic and impressive as Giotto's Dante, and Guido Reni's Beatrice Cenci : once seen, they can never be forgotten. Such purity, delicacy, and sweetness seem to be angelic rather than human. " His heavenly face the mirror of his mind, His mind a temple for all lovely things To flock to, and inhabit." Raphael was, like Goethe, singularly favored by fortune. He was free from the ordinary trials of artists poverty, humiliation, and neglect. He lived like a prince in a palace near the Vatican and had a villa outside of the Porta del Popolo. When he went to the Vatican he was surrounded by a host of admirers. He was papal chamberlain and had the choice between a cardinal's hat and the marriage of a niece of Cardinal Bibbiena, with a dowry of three thousand gold crowns. But he put off the marriage from year to year, and preferred the dangerous freedom of single life. 1 1 Like other artists in a corrupt age, he deemed it no sin to keep a mistress. This is the only dark spot on his character. The fact rests on the contemporary testimony of his admirer, Vasari. He says (in his Vita di Raffaello, chapter 24) that Raphael was a "persona molto amoroso, e affezionata alle donne, e di continuo presto at servigi loro," and intimates (chapter 27) that sensual indulgence was the cause of his last sickness. When Raphael felt death approaching he "as a good Christian dismissed his beloved from his house (come cristiano, mando I'amata sua fuor di casa), and made a decent provision for her support. . . . Then, after humbly confessing his sins, he finished the course of his life on the same day on which he was born, which was Good Friday, 37 years of age. His soul, we may believe, as it beautified the world with art, adorned heaven with itself. . . . O happy and blessed soul, everybody loves to speak of thee, praises thy achievements, and admires every one of thy drawings." The " Forarina," so-called, in the Barberini palace in Rome, bears Raphael's own name on the bracelet. We have from him four erotic sonnets which describe " the enchanting deception of love." Grimm gives them at the end of his Raphael (pp. 500 sqq.~), and says of them in his work on Michelangelo (I., 367 sq.) : " Es steckt ein ganzer Roman darin. Alle vier haben denselben In/ialt : leidenschaftliche Erinnerung an das Gliick, das in den Armen einer Frau gefunden ward, zu der die Ruckkehr unmoglich ist. Die Resignation, die Sehnsucht die ihn erftillt, die Wonne, mit der er dann ivieder die Stunden sick zuruckritft, als sie kam, tief in der Nackt, und sein -war, sind in seine Verse fiineingeflossen. . . . Kein einziges der Gedichte Michelangelo's enthalt so gliiJiende Leidenschaft. . . . Es ist von vielen Frauen die Rede, die Raphael liebte, aber von alien wird nichts vieiter gesagt, als dass sie lebten, und dass sie seine Geliebte waren." 84 The Renaissance. He visited Florence soon after the burning of Savonarola, learned from his friend Fra Bartolommeo to esteem him, and gave to this moral reformer, as well as to Dante, a place among the great teachers of the Church in his grand fresco of the Theologia in the Stanze of the Vatican. His best works are devoted to religious characters and events. He painted the love adventures of Amor and Psyche in the Villa Farnesina with consummate skill, but also the history of the Bible in the Loggie of the Vati- can. His numerous Madonnas the Madonna di San Sisto at Dresden, the Madonna di Foligno in the Vatican, the Madonna della Sedia in the Pitti Gallery, the Belle Jardi- niere in Paris, etc. represent an unique type of female beauty and loveliness which combines the purity of the virgin with the tenderness of the mother. Not one of them is a portrait. They perform no signs and wonders, but they elevate and edify men of taste and culture. They represent an ideal Catholicism which worships the infant Saviour through the Virgin-Mother. 1 The last, the greatest, and the purest work of Raphael is the Transfiguration. While engaged on it he died, on Good Friday, his birthday. It was suspended over his coffin and carried to the church of the Pantheon, where his remains re- pose in his chosen spot near those of his betrothed bride, Maria di Bibbiena. In that picture we behold the divinest figure that ever appeared on earth, soaring high in the air, with arms outspread, in garments of transparent light, adored by Moses on the right hand and by Elijah on the left, who represent the Old Covenant of law and promise. The three favorite disciples are lying on the ground unable to face the dazzling splendor from heaven. Beneath this celestial scene we see, in striking contrast, the epileptic boy with rolling eyes, distorted features, and spasmodic limbs, held by his agonized father and supported by his sister ; while the mother appeals to the nine disciples with im- ploring look, as if to say : Ye must call down your Master, 1 See Grimm's admirable description of Raphael's Madonnas, pp. 414 sy$., and Gruyer, Les vierges de Raphael, Paris, 1869, 3 vols. Raphael. 85 the Healer of all diseases. In connecting the two scenes the painter followed the narrative of the Gospels (Matt. xvii. : 1-14; Mark ix. : 2-14; Luke ix. : 28-37). The connection is significant and repeated in Christian experience. Descend- ing from the Mount of Transfiguration, we are confronted with the misery of earth, but prepared to lift it up to heaven. Goethe wondered that any one could doubt the unity of the picture : the upper and lower parts cannot be separated be- neath is suffering that craves for help, above is actual power and grace sufficient to heal all misery. " Earth has no sorrow that heaven cannot heal." CHAPTER XXII. MICHEL ANGELO AND VITTORIA COLONNA. I. Older biographies by his pupils, Vasari and of M. Angelo Condivi. G. Mi- lanesi : Lettere di M. Angelo Bztonarroti, Florence, 1875 (in celebration of the fourth centenary of his birth). A. Gotti : Vila di Michel Angelo, Florence, 1875, 2 vols. Hermann Grimm : Leben Michelangelo 's, Berlin, 1860 ; 5th. ed. 1879, 2 vols. (The English translation by Fanny Eliz. Bunnet, London, 1865, reprinted in Boston, I2th ed., 1882, in 2 vols., was made from the second ed.) The fifth edition has superseded the earlier editions, as it is partly rewrit- ten with the use of the papers of the Archivio Buonarroti at Florence, published by Milanesi. Springer : Raffael und Michelangelo, 2d ed., 1883. For an estimate of his works, Burckhardt's Cicerone, 5th ed., 1884. II. Vittoria Colonna (Marchesana di Pescara) : Rime e Lettere, first printed at Parma, 1538, then again and again ; best ed. by Pietro Ercole Visconti, Rome, 1840. H. Roscoe : Victoria Colonna, Her Life and Poems, London, 1868, 2 vols. Guisseppe Campori : Vittoria Colonna, Modena, 1876. Ad. von Reumont : Vittoria Colonna, vita, fede e poesia nel secolo decimosesto, Torino, 1883 (also in German). Ferrero e Miiller : Carteggio di Vittoria Col., Marchesa di Pescara. Torino, 1889 (with bibliography, pp. xxviii.-xxxii.), Ch. XIV. of Grimm's Michelangelo, II., 288-332. A German translation of her poems by Bertha Arndts, Schaffhausen, 1858, 2 vols. Michel Angelo Buonarroti (1475-1564) was ten years older than Raphael, and survived him forty-four years. He drew the inspiration for his sculptures and pictures from the Old Testament, from Dante, and from Savonarola. He praised Dante in two sublime sonnets, and would have preferred that poet's exile and fame to the most fortunate lot. He heard Savonarola's thrilling sermons against wickedness and vice, and witnessed his martyrdom in the Piazza della Sig- noria on the yth of April, 1498. His greatest works are the statues of Moses (in S. Pietro in Vincoli), of David (in Flor- ence), the Pieta (in St. Peter's), the picture of the Last Judg- ment (in the Sixtine Chapel), and the cupola of St. Peter's, 86 Michel A ngelo. 87 " That vast and wondrous dome, To which Diana's marvel was a cell, Christ's mighty shrine above his martyr's tomb." l The Pieta, a marble group representing the Virgin Mary holding the crucified Saviour in her arms, raised him suddenly to the rank of the first sculptor of Italy. It excites the deepest emotions of sympathy with the grief of the mother, as does the Stabat Mater in poetry." His works have colossal proportions, and refuse to be judged by ordinary rules. His Moses (which was intended for a sepulchral monument of the warlike Pope Julius II., in St. Peter's), is a superhuman figure of commanding majesty and dignity, and looks like a mighty warrior ready to break the tables of the law in fierce indignation against the worship of the golden calf. His Last Judgment, on the altar wall of the Sixtine Chapel, reflects Dante's Inferno, and represents Christ as an angry Jupiter who thunders his curse on the wicked and sends them into the eternal fire prepared for the devil and his servants. There is no trace in it of that mercy which shall say to the righteous on his right hand : " Come, ye blessed of my Father, inherit the kingdom prepared for you from the foundation of the world." It is indeed impossible for any artist to unite in one figure the impartial justice and infinite mercy of the Judge of mankind. But the former was the dominant conception of the Middle Ages, and un- derlies the inimitable Dies irce of Thomas a Celano. 1 1 With these well-known lines of Byron may be coupled those of Schiller : " Und ein zweiter Himmel in den Himmel Steigl Sanct Peter's wundersamer Dom." 8 Comp. Grimm's admirable description of the Pieta, I., 186 sqq. 3 Mrs. Jameson (The History of our Lord as exemplified in Works of Art, II., 408), says : " Michael Angelo's conception of the Divine Judge may be con- sidered the ne plus ultra of all that is most opposed to the Christian's idea, for even the dignity of a pagan deity is lost in the muscular vehemence of the fig- ure." Grimm (II., 224) judges almost as severely. " Unbeschreiblich befrem- dend ist der Anblick, den der Christus des jungsten Gerichts bietet. . . . Dock, wenn cin jungsles Gericht gemalt iverden sollte mil ewiger Verdammniss, und Christtis als der Richter, der sie ausspricht, ivie konnle er anders erscheinen als in sole her Furcktbarkeit ? " 88 The Renaissance. Michel Angelo carried a great soul in an unattractive body, and had, in consequence of an early injury, a disfigured nose. He lived in patriarchal simplicity, like a monk, solitary and alone, without wife or children. He called art his bride, and his works his children. Vasari and Condivi both bear witness to his spotless morality. He was not contaminated by contact with a licentious court. He deplored the corrup- tions of the papacy. " For Rome still slays and sells Christ at the court, Where paths are closed to virtue's fair increase." ' At the age of sixty he found one woman, pure, proud, and noble as himself. She became to him almost as dear as Beat- rice was to Dante, and Laura to Petrarca. That woman was Vittoria Colonna (1490-1547), the widow of the Marquis of Pescara. He met her in 1534, when she was forty-four years of age and living in retirement, half a nun, devoting her time to the memory of her husband, to literature, poetry, and religion. She had no children. She was the most gifted and cultivated lady of Italy, and the greatest Italian poetess. Her virtue and piety are preserved in her poems and letters, and shine with double lustre in contrast with the prevailing corruption in high society, clerical and secular. She represents the best type of the Italian Renaissance in its approach to the spirit of the evangelical Reformation. She fell in with that semi-Protestant movement which began to show itself even in Rome towards the middle of the six- teenth century, but was soon suppressed by the papal coun- ter-Reformation. She was intimate with cardinals Sadoleto, Contarini, Morone, Reginald Pole (afterwards Archbishop of Canterbury), the poet Flaminio, and others who sincerely desired religious reform within the Roman Church. She associated with the two most distinguished Italian converts to Protestantism, Pietro Martire Vermigli of Florence, a Calvinistic theologian, and Bernardino Ochino of Siena, the eloquent general of the Capuchins, who fled from the Inqui- sition to Switzerland (1542). She corresponded with like- 1 See his sonnets Signer, se vero t, and Qua si fa elmi, translated by Symonds, in The Fine Arts, p. 516. Michel Angela. go minded and highly accomplished ladies, as Giulia Gonzaga, the childless widow of the Duke Vespasian Colonna, who was praised by Ariosto for her beauty, as a goddess descended from heaven, Renata, Duchess of Ferrara, the friend of John Calvin (since 1536), and Margaret, Queen of Navarre, who protected Protestant refugees and was denounced as a heretic by the Sorbonne (I533). 1 These cultivated men and women tasted the marrow of the gospel, forgiveness of sin and peace of conscience through the all-sufficient grace of Christ ; in other words, the Pauline doctrine of justification by faith, which created such a commotion in the sixteenth century as never before or since. " Omnia sunt possibilia credenti" wrote Vittoria to Michel Angelo, " only believe and the thing takes place." About the year 1 540, a remarkable little book on The Benefit of Christ's Death, was published in Venice and circulated in several editions and thousands of copies throughout Italy. It is an echo of Luther's writings on justification by faith, and sets forth in the language of Paul, clearly and forcibly the misery of man's sinfulness, the deliverance from the curse of the law by Christ, the nature and effect of faith, and the union of the soul with Christ." This book was publicly 1 Grimm says of Vittoria Colonna (II., 310) : " Sie stand mit an der Spitze der Partei, der die Zukunft zu gehoren schien. Hatten Hire Freunde den Er- folg fur sich gehabt, Vittoria' s Name wttrde -von noch grosser em Glanze heute umgeben sein. Sie, Renata von Ferrara und Margareta von Navarra, alle drei durch Freundschaft verbunden und in fortwahrendem Verkehr, bildeten das Triumvirat von Frauen, unter dessen Anfuhrung das game gebildete Ital- ien damals in den Kampfging. Polo oder Contarini htitten nur, wozu sie beide Aussicht hatten, nach Paul's Tode zut hdchsten Wiirde gehngen diirfen, und der Sieg ware errungen geioesen" 2 The following passages may serve as specimens : " O great unkindness ! O thing abominable ! that we, who profess ourselves Christians, and hear that the Son of God hath taken all our sins upon him, and washed them out with his precious blood, suffering himself to be fastened to the cross for our sakes, should nevertheless act as though we would justify ourselves, and purchase forgiveness of our sins by our own works ; as if the deserts, righteousness, and bloodshed of Jesus Christ were not enough to do it, unless we came to add our works and righteousness ; which are altogether defiled and spotted with self-love, self- liking, self-profit, and a thousand other vanities, for which we have need to crave pardon at God's hand, rather than reward. Neither do we think of the 90 The Renaissance. burnt at Naples in 1553. It was formerly attributed to Aonio Paleario of Siena, but is now known to have pro- ceeded from a pupil of the Spaniard Juan de Valdes, who resided in Rome and Naples. He translated the Greek Testament into Spanish, spread commentaries and evangeli- cal tracts in Italy, and died in 1 541. He was a twin brother of Alfonso de Valds, who accompanied the Emperor Charles V. to the Diet of Worms, and the Diet of Augsburg, and died 1532.' threatenings which St. Paul useth to the Galatians who, having been deceived by false preachers, believed not that the justification by faith was sufficient of itself, but went about still to be made righteous by the law. Unto whom St. Paul saith, ' Jesus Christ will profit you nothing that justify yourselves by the law ; ye are fallen away from grace ; for we through the Spirit by faith wait for the hope of righteousness." The writer, however, insists on the inseparable connection between faith and good works. " Now are we come to the end of our purpose, wherein our chief intent hath been (according to our small power) to magnify the wonderful benefit which the Christian man hath received by Jesus Christ crucified, and to show that faith of herself alone justifieth, that is to wit, that God receiveth and holdeth them for righteous who believe stead- fastly that Christ hath made full amends for their sins ; howbeit, that, as light cannot be separated from fire, which of itself burneth and devoureth all things, even so good works cannot be separated from faith, which alone by itself justifieth. And this holy doctrine (which exalteth Jesus Christ, and represseth, abateth the pride of man) hath been and always will be rejected, and fought against by such Christians as have Jewish minds. But happy is he who, following the example of St. Paul, spoileth himself of his own righteousness, and would have none other righteousness than that which is of Jesus Christ, wherewith if he be clothed and apparelled, he may most assuredly appear before God, and shall receive his blessing and the heritage of heaven and earth with his only Son Jesus Christ our Lord ; to whom be all honor, praise, and glory, from this time forth for evermore. Amen." 1 Leopold von Ranke traced the tract in the Acts of the Inquisition to a monk of San Severino, in Naples, a pupil of Valdes. Die r omischen Papste, I., 91 sq. (8th ed.) Benrath discovered the name, Don Benedetto of Mantova. Flaminio of Imola, a friend of Valdes and Vermigli, gave the book its final shape. See Benrath in Brieger's " Zeitschrift der Kirchengeschichte," Leipzig, i, 575-596 (1877); an article of Ed. Bohmer on Valdes in Herzog*, XVI., 276-291, and his book Spanish Reformers, Strassburg and London (1874), Vol I., 63 sqq. Bohmer states that there are in the imperial library of Vienna two Italian copies (one of 1546, another without date) of the Trattato utilissimo del beneficio di Giesu Christo crocifisso, verso i Christiani. The English edition, which was republished by the London Religious Tract Society, and by Gould and Lincoln in Boston (1860), was copied from a French version, 4th ed., London, 1638. Michel Angelo and Viitoria Colonna. 91 In 1 542 the reaction began with the establishment of the Inquisition and the activity of the Order of the Jesuits, and in a few years crushed the Reformation in Italy except in the Italian portions of the Orisons. Vittoria Colonna did not escape the suspicion of the Inquisition and the watchfulness of the spies of Caraffa. She had to submit to the power of the reaction, and retired to Viterbo, where she gathered a few friends around her, and kept up a correspondence with Michel Angelo. She delivered Ochino's letter and defence for his flight, which he sent to her as an old friend, to Rome, and declared that she would not write an answer unless commanded to do so. Twenty years after her death, a noble Florentine was con- demned to the flames in Rome, because, among other crimes, he had belonged to her circle. Michel Angelo concentrated upon this noble lady all the pent-up forces of his love, and exchanged with her letters and poems. She addressed him as the " unique master Michelangelo and most particular friend." * He admired her piety as much as her literary culture. He was himself not far from the spirit of evangelical religion ; and had he lived in Germany he might have come as near to it as Albrecht Diirer. The years of his friendship with Vittoria Colonna were the happiest of his life. His sonnets addressed to her burn with the fire of youth in old age. Her death in February, 1547, nearly upset his mind, as we learn from his pupil, Condivi. He stood at her bedside and kissed her hand. He regretted afterwards that he had not kissed her brow or cheek. He outlived her seventeen years. His last work in marble was the unfinished Pieta, in the Duomo of Florence ; his last design a picture of the Cruci- fixion. In his last poems he takes farewell of the fleeting pleasures of life, turns to God as the only reality, and finds in the crucified Saviour his only comfort. This is the core of the evangelical doctrine of justification rightly under- stood. i " Unico maestro Michelangelo e mio singularissimo amico." 92 The Renaissance. " Freed from a burden sore and grievous band, Dear Lord, and from this wearying world untied, Like a frail bark I turn me to Thy side, As from a fierce storm to a tranquil land. Thy thorns, Thy nails, and either bleeding hand, With Thy mild, gentle, piteous face, provide Promise of help and mercies multiplied, And hope that yet my soul secure may stand. ' ' Let not Thy holy eyes be just to see My evil past, Thy chastened ears to hear, And stretch the arm of judgment to my crime ; Let Thy blood only lave and succor me, Yielding more perfect pardon, better cheer, As older still I grow with lengthening time." * The day of Michel Angelo's death was the day of Galileo Galilei's birth in Florence. The golden age of art had passed, the age of science was at hand. When the fruit is ripe it begins to decay. But a thing of beauty remains " a joy for ever." The great artists of the Renaissance belong not to Italy alone, but to the world and to all ages. 1 See the sonnets, translated by Syinonds, The Fine Arts, p. 527 sq. CHAPTER XXIII. THE REVIVAL OF PAGANISM IN ITALY. The revival of classical literature and art carried in it the danger of a revival of heathenism in religion and morality. The worship of classical forms led to the worship of classical ideas. Some humanists and artists combined culture with Christian faith and devoted their genius to the cause of truth and virtue ; but the majority silently or openly sacrificed to the gods of Greece and Rome rather than to the God of the Bible. The dazzling glory of classical antiquity obscured the humble beauty of Christianity. The pagan tendency showed itself in the slavish imitation of classical forms. The Ciceronian style superseded the ecclesiastical and biblical style. Bembo advised Sadoleto to " avoid the Epistles of Paul, lest the barbarous style of the Apostle should spoil his taste." Parents substituted mythological names for those of saints in christening their children. Vernacular proper names were turned into Latin and Greek. The scholars of the North adopted this childish fashion. Thus we have Capnion for Reuchlin (from Ranch, smoke), Desiderius Erasmus (Erasmios) for Gerhard, Me- lanchthon for Schwarzerd, Camerarius for Kammermeister, Oecolampadius for Hausschein, Lupulus for Wolflein, Va- dianus for Watt, Glareanus for Loreti (of Glarus), Biblian- der for Buchmann, Comander for Dorfmann. Hutten, Luther, Zwingli, Cranmer, and Knox, who were more patriotic, ad- hered to their vernacular names. A more serious change was the paganizing of sacred terms and the substitution of mythological for Christian ideas. The saints became Pii or Dea ; their statues, simulacra 93 94 The Renaissance. sancta Deorum ; Peter and Paul, Dii titular es Roma or Sane- tits Romulus and S. Remus ; the nuns, Virgines Vestales ; the departed souls of the righteous, Manes pit ; heaven, Olym- pus ; the Cardinal, an augur, and the College of Cardinals, Senatus sacer ; the Pope, Pontifex Maximus, and his thun- ders, Dirce ; Providence, Fatum or Fortuna ; and God, Jupi- ter Optimus Maximus ! Erasmus had a more intelligent appreciation of Ciceronian Latinity than Bembo, and pro- tested against such absurd pedantry as characterized human- ism in its dotage. The gates of Dante's Paradise, which were formerly shut even to Homer and Virgil, to Plato and Aristotle, were now thrown open to the beloved heathen, and their Christian suc- cessors welcomed them to honored seats in the realm of glory. Even Erasmus recognized a sort of divine inspiration in the ancient classics, and was tempted to pray : " Sancte Socrates, or a pro nobis ! " As to religion, the majority of humanists and artists of the Renaissance were either entirely indifferent, or they outwardly conformed to the tradition and ceremonial of the Roman Catholic Church, while inwardly they leaned to skepticism, heresy, and infidelity. Some of the most frivolous were serv- ants of the pope and members of the clerical order. We find in the age of the Renaissance the same unnatural com- bination of a nominal Catholicism with real irreligion as among the educated classes in the Latin races of to-day. Religion is deemed good enough for women and children : but men have a substitute for it in education and culture. Indifferentism or infidelity in days of health and wealth ; confession and absolution in sickness and on the death-bed. Machiavelli died with the consolations of the Church which he undermined in his writings. Dante was a devout Catho- lic, though very bold in his censures of the popes; Petrarca combined love of Cicero with love of St. Augustin, and com- plained that some of his contemporaries considered high cul- ture incompatible with the Christian profession ; Traversari strictly observed the rules of his monastic order ; Manetti, Leonardo Bruni, Vittorino da Feltre, Marsilio Ficino, Sado- The Revival of Paganism in Italy. 95 leto, Vittoria Colonna, Reuchlin, Erasmus, were Christian believers. But Poggio, Filelfo, Valla, and the majority of humanists cared little or nothing for religion, and yet were not serious enough to investigate the truth, nor independent enough to run the risk of an open rupture with orthodoxy, which would have subjected them to the Inquisition and death at the stake. 1 Humanism was substituted for Christi- anity, the worship of art and eloquence for reverence to truth and holiness. Homer was " the unknown God," and Cicero the chief patron saint of the Renaissance. The liberal scholars of Bologna and Padua denied the immortality of the soul, and the Lateran Council of 1512 found it necessary to proclaim it as an article of faith. The weakest point in the humanists was their lack of serious morality, which can never be separated from religion. They were the natural enemies of the monks, who as a class hated learning, boasted of superior piety, made a display of their proud humility, and yet constantly quarrelled with each other. Boccaccio and the novelists selected monks and nuns as heroes and heroines of their obscene tales. Poggio, Filelfo, Valla, Erasmus, and the writers of the Epistola Virorum Obscurorum chastised with caustic irony and satire the hypocrisy and vices of the monks, and they could do so without impunity ; for the monks were not the Church. But the humanists were blind to the self-denying virtues of monasticism. Their own moral code was more pagan than Christian. They resembled the Sophists of Greece in arro- 1 Voigt (II., 213) : " Keiner der Humanisten hat sich o/en und prineipiell gegen Christenthum oder Kirche zu erkldren gewagt. Auch vor dogmatischen Abweichungen schiltzte sie ihre Gleichgilltigkeit gegen alle Kirchenlehre und Theologie. Selbst Valla stellte seine verketzeiten Behauptungen mehr nur auf, urn seine pfdffischen Feinde zu argern, nicht urn ihrer sebst witten. Auch waren diese literarischen Helden viel zu sekr Hoflinge, urn gegen die convention- ellen Formen der Kirche Stellung zu nehmen. Aber trots dem war der Kreis ihrer Gedanken und Ideale ein grundlich anderer ah der kirchliche und chnst- liche Im Stillen und im Verkehr mit einander wucherte das hetdmsche Wesen, und im besten Fall ersetzte eine stoische Ethik die Gebote der Religion Im Ganzen war der Humanismus zweifelks ein geborener Feind der 'Kirche, der ihre Grundlagen unterhohlte, den Pafstthum und Prdlatur , eine gefdhrliche Schlange am Busen hcgten." gfc The Renaissance. gance, vanity, and want of principle and dignity. They were full of envy and jealousy, and in their disgraceful per- sonal quarrels they spared no epithet of abuse. In their admiration for the culture and virtues of the ancient Greeks and Romans, they excused and imitated, or even surpassed, their faults and vices. They usually professed the Stoic morality, which comes nearest to the Christian standard, but is compatible with in- ordinate pride, ambition, and haughty contempt of the uncultured multitude. They cared for the appearance, rather than the substance of virtue. Machiavelli, the brilliant Flor- entine politician and historian, a worshipper of ability and power, and admirer of Caesar Borgia that master in the art of vice, built upon the basis of the Renaissance a political system of absolute egotism ; yet he demands of the prince that he shall guard the appearance of five virtues to deceive the ignorant. 1 Under the cover of Stoicism many humanists indulged in a refined Epicureanism. The writings of the humanists abound in offences against morality and decency. Poggio was already seventy years of age when he published his filthy Facetice, which appeared twenty-six times in print before 1500, and in three Italian translations. 2 Filelfo's epigrams, De Jocis et Seriis, are de- clared by Rosmini, his biographer, to contain " horrible ob- scenities and expressions from the streets and the brothels." Beccadelli and Aretino openly preached the emancipation of the flesh, and were not ashamed to embellish and glorify licentiousness in brilliant verses, for which they received the homage of princes and prelates. The Hermaphroditus of the former was furiously attacked by the monks in the pulpit, but applauded by the humanists. Pietro Aretino (1492-1557), the most obscene poet of Italy, was called il divino Aretino, honored by Charles V., Francis I., and Clem- 1 The principles of his Principe are fully discussed by Villari in his velli, II., 403-473, and by Symonds, Age of the Despots, Ch. VI. (p. 306 sqq.). 8 Burckhardt says (p. 273) : " Poggio's works contain dirt enough to create a prejudice against the whole class and these ' Opera Poggii' were just those most frequently printed on the north, as well as the south, side of the Alps." The Revival of Paganism in Italy. 97 ent VII., and dared even to aspire to a cardinal's hat, but found a miserable end.' There was nothing in the principles of the humanists to prevent the practice of licentiousness. With some honorable exceptions, they had no scruples about keeping mistresses, or violating the vow of chastity. The law of sacerdotal celibacy is responsible for a great deal of sexual immorality, but affords only a partial excuse. Boccaccio's Decamerone re- veals and palliates the wide extent of sexual offences among priests and monks. In no century were so many decrees passed by councils against the concubinage of the clergy as in the fourteenth and fifteenth. There is reason to believe that the unnatural vice to which the Greeks gave their name, reappeared among some of the humanists ; for they not unfrequently charged each other with it." Among the artists of the Renaissance we find, as well as among the humanists, some pure and saintly men, like Fra Giovanni and Fra Bartolommeo ; but, as a class, they were no better than the scholars, and, if possible, even more lax in regard to sexual license. 3 1 He published lascivious Sonetti lussuriosi and pornographic Ragionamenti, but also pious romances. He furnished the text to a series of obscene pictures of Giulio Romano. See Mazzuchelli, Vita di Pietro Aretino, Padua, 1741, and Symonds, Hal. Lit., II., 383 sqq. Reumont (Hist, of Rome, III., Part II., 367) calls Aretino "die Schandsdule der Literatur." 9 Voigt, II. , 471 : " Es ist kdn Z-weifel, dass auchjene geschlechtliche Verir- rung, zu deren Bezeichnung das Volk der Griechen seinen Namen leiht, in Italien wahrend des 15. Jahrh. nicht nur in einzelnen Fallen und im scheuen Dunkel sick regie, sondern hier und dort wie cine moralische Pest herrschte, . . . Neapel, Florenz und Siena werden als die Hauptsitze aller Schwel- gerei und der unnaturlichen Laster bezeichnet. 3 Speaking of the Italian artists of that period, Mrs. Jameson says : " There prevailed with this pagan taste in literature and art a general laxity of morals, a license of conduct, and a disregard of all sacred things such as had never, even in the darkest ages of barbarism, been known in Italy. The papal chair was during that period filled by two popes, the perfidious and cruel Sixtus IV., and the more detestable Alexander VI. (the infamous Borgia). Florence, meantime, under the sway of Lorenzo and his sons, became one of the most magnificent, but also one of the most dissolute of cities. "Memoirs of Early Italian Painters, new ed., London (J. Murray) 1868, p. 154- Comp. Gnmm s Michelangelo, I., 114 sqq. 7 CHAPTER XXIV. THE STATE OF MORALS IN ROME. The moral corruption centred in Rome and spread its poisonous influence over all Italy, and even beyond the Alps. The popes of the Renaissance from Nicolas V. to Leo X., were successors of Maecenas rather than of St. Peter, and one of them was equal to Caiaphas among the high priests of Israel. They were intolerant of open heresy, but not of open immorality and secret infidelity. Alexander VI. caused the death of Savonarola, the moral 'reformer, while he him- self committed the boldest crimes. Leo X. condemned Luther, while he himself doubted the truth of Christianity. Immorality did not debar from promotion to the highest dignities. The popes maintained in the hierarchical interest the laws of sacerdotal celibacy, but allowed them to be broken by prelates in their confidence and employ. Pius II. (i458-'64) was a great scholar, but held immoral connections in his youth and early manhood, and frivolously shielded his illegitimate offspring by an appeal to David and Solomon. Sixtus IV. (i47i-'84) was a great builder, but also a shameless promoter of nepotism. He sanctioned the con- spiracy of the Pazzi against the Medici. He felt no scruple in taxing and thereby legalizing houses of prostitution for the increase of the revenues of the Curia. In 1490 (that is, before the appearance of syphilis) there were in Rome no less than 6,800 public prostitutes, an enormous number in proportion to the population. 1 All parts of Italy and Spain 1 Infessura, in Eccard, Scriplores, II., 1997, quoted by Burckhardt, Die Cul- tur der Renaissance, p. 316 (p. 400 of the English translation). He adds : " The public women only, not the kept women are meant." 98 The State of Morals in Rome. 99 contributed to the number of courtesans. They lived in greater splendor in Rome than the hetasrae in Athens, and bore classical names, such as Diana, Lucrezia, Camilla, Giulia, Costanza, Imperia, Beatrice. They were accompanied on their promenades and walks to the church by poets, counts, and prelates, but usually concluded their gilded misery in hospitals after their beauty had faded away. 1 Innocent VIII. (i484-'92) brought into the Vatican several bastard sons and daughters by different women, and was sarcastically called " the guilty father of Rome." 5 He practised nepotism without restraint, and revoked an order of the papal Vicar which forbade clergymen and laymen to keep concubines. " Avarice, venality, sloth, and the ascen- dency of base favorites made his reign loathsome without the blaze and splendor of the scandals of his fiery predeces- sor. 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 conven- ience of the criminal: 150 ducats of the tax were to be poured into the papal treasury ; the surplus fell to Fran- ceschetto, the pope's son. . . . This traffic filled the Campagna with brigands and assassins. ... In the city itself more than two hundred persons were publicly assassinated with impunity during the last months of the pope's life." ' Alexander VI. (1492-1 503), the infamous Roderigo Borgia, surpassed all his predecessors in wickedness. He is the Nero among the popes. He combined the talents and vices of his native Spain with those of Italy. He was handsome, impos- ing, eloquent, brilliant, temperate in eating, affable, and per- ' Von Reumont, Gesch. der Stadt Rom., III., P. II., 461 sjf. Aretino who was at home in this company, embellished it with consummate poetic skill. Symonds remarks (Revival of Learning, p. 406) : " At Rome virtuous women had no place ; but Phryne lived again in the person of Impena. 8 " Octo Nocens genuit pueros totidemque puellas >, Nunc merito poterit dicer e Roma patrem" Symonds, Age of the Despots, p. 403 *. A Roman who had killed two of his own daughters bought pardon for 800 ducats. ioo The Renaissance. suasive, but a slave to ambition, avarice, and sensuality, and utterly unscrupulous in the choice of means for the gratifica- tion of these towering passions. His contemporaries believed him capable of any crime, even that of incest with his beautiful daughter Lucrezia, which, however, is probably unfounded. 1 He had five children by the adulterous Rosa Vannozza, and used his power for their aggrandizement. He also had carnal intercourse with Giulia Farnese, surnamed La Bella, the titular wife of Orsino Orsini. He turned the Vatican into an Oriental harem. He had bought the papal tiara by bribing the cardinals, who had bought their hats with gold and were ready to sell their votes to the highest bidder. He abundantly repaid himself for the outlay. He sold the highest dignities for enormous sums. Twelve cardinals' hats were put up at auction in a single day. He created eigh- teen Spanish cardinals, five of whom belonged to the house of Borgia. He gave rise to the saymg: "Alexander sells the keys, the altars, Christ. Well, he bought them ; so he has a right to sell them." A Carmelite dared to preach against simony in 1494, but was soon found murdered in his bed, with twenty wounds. After fattening his prelates, he poisoned them. Onufrio Panvinio, the official epitomizer of the history of the popes, mentions three cardinals, Orsini, Ferrerio, and Michiel, whom Alexander sent to the sleep of death. 2 The same writer says that he would have put all the other rich cardinals and prelates out of the way to get their property, had he not, in the midst of his great plans for his son, been struck down by death.* His second son, 1 Lucrezia bore a good character after her third marriage to Alfonso d'Este, Crown Prince of Ferrara, and gave herself much to acts of devotion and charity, as well as to the patronage of letters. She wore a Spanish costume and was saluted by Spanish buffoons at her entrance to Ferrara. Her first marriage was dissolved by the pope ; the second ended with the murder of her husband by her brother Cesare, who was also charged with incest. See Gregorovius, Lucrezia Borgia, Stuttgart, 3d ed., 1876, 2 vols. 2 Epitome Pontificum, p. 359, quoted by Burckhardt, 116, note. 3 Contin. Platinee, p. 341. Burckhardt adds to this quotation (p. 117): " And what might not Csesar have achieved if, at the moment when his father died, he had not himself been laid upon a sick-bed ! What a conclave would that have been, in which, armed with all his weapons, he had extorted his elec- The State of Morals in Rome, 101 Caesar, who was made an archbishop and cardinal, and aimed, with his father's consent, at succession to the papal chair with a view to secularize the estates of the Church, fully equalled him in genius for crime. He killed, in true Spanish fashion, six wild bulls in an enclosed court, murdered his brother, his brother-in-law, and other relatives and courtiers, and used to wander about in the dark with his guards to gratify his insane thirst for blood. The Vene- tian ambassador, Paolo Capello, reported, in the year 1500, that " every night four or five murdered men were discovered, bishops, prelates, and others, so that all Rome was trembling for fear of being destroyed by the Duke (Caesar)." When caution was necessary, the Borgias made use of a white powder which had a pleasant taste and did its work slowly but surely. By an accidental taste of the poisoned cup Alexander died of the same powder which he and his son had prepared for a rieh cardinal. Caesar got sick also, but survived four years. According to another account, they were attacked by a malignant fever during the meal ; while the pope's physician ascribed his death to apoplexy. The legend says that the devil carried off his soul, which he had sold to him for the papacy. Alexander treated with the Sultan of Turkey for making war upon "the most Christian" king of France (Charles VIII.), and divided the American continent, discovered by Columbus, between Spain and Portugal, by virtue of his apostolic power ! * tion from a college whose numbers he had judiciously reduced by poison and this at a time when there was no French army at hand ! In pursuing such an hypothesis the imagination loses itself in an abyss." 1 Much has been written of late on this pope, partly with the apologetic aim of denying or whitewashing his almost incredible crimes, by Cerri(i878),Ollivier (1870), Nemec (1879), Leonetti (1880), Clement (1882). H6fler (1888), Yriarte (1889), and others. I add the description of the nearly contemporary Italian historian, Guicciardini (Storia Fiorentina, ch. 27, as translated by Symonds, p 603 sq ) "So died Tope Alexander, at the height of glory and prosperity ; about whom it must be known that he was a man of the utmost power and o great judgment and spirit, as his actions and behavior showed. But as his fii accession to the papacy was foul and shameful, seeing he had bought with gc so high a station, in like manner his government disagreed not with U IO2 The Renaissance. The Vatican during that period has been compared to the court of the worst emperors of heathen Rome, with the ex- foundation. There were in him, and in full measure, all vices both of flesh and spirit ; nor could there be imagined in the ordering of the Church a rule so bad but that he put it into working. He was most sensual toward both sexes, keeping publicly women and boys, but more especially toward women (fu hisstiriosissimo nell' uno e nell' altro sesso, tenendo publicamente femine e garzoni, ma piu ancora ne lie femine) \. and so far did he exceed all measure that public opinion judged he knew Madonna Lucrezia, his own daughter, toward whom he bore a most tender and boundless love. He was exceedingly avari- cious, not in keeping what he had acquired, but in getting new wealth : and where he saw a way toward drawing money, he had no respect whatever ; in his days were sold as at auction all benefices, dispensations, pardons, bishop- rics, cardinalships, and all court dignities : unto which matters he had appointed two or three men privy to his thought, exceeding prudent, who let them out to the highest bidder. He caused tha death by poison of many cardinals and prelates, even among his intimates, those namely whom he noted to be rich in benefices and understood to have hoarded much, with the view of seizing on their wealth. His cruelty was great, seeing that by his directions many were put to violent death ; nor was the ingratitude less with which he caused the ruin of the Sforzeschi and Colonnesi, by whose favor he acquired the papacy. There was in him no religion, no keeping of his troth : he promised all things liberally, but stood to nought but what was useful to himself : no care for justice, since in his days Rome was like a den of thieves and murderers : his ambition was boundless, and such that it grew in the same measure as his state increased : nevertheless, his sins meeting with no due punishment in this world, he was to the last of his days most prosperous. While young and still almost a boy, having Calixtus for his uncle, he was made cardinal and then vice- chancellor : in which high place he continued till his papacy, with great revenue, good fame, and peace. Having become pope, he made Cesare, his bastard son and bishop of Pampeluna, a cardinal, against the ordinances and decrees of the Church, which forbid the making of a bastard cardinal even with the pope's dispensation, wherefore he brought proof by false witnesses that he was born in wedlock. Afterwards he made him a layman and took away the cardinal's dignity from him, and turned his mind to making a realm ; wherein he fared far better than he purposed, and, beginning with Rome, after undoing the Orsini, Colonnesi, Savelli, and those barons who were wont to be held in fear by former popes, he was more full master of Rome than ever had been any pope before. With the greatest ease he got the lordships of Romagna, the March, and the Duchy ; and having made a most fair and powerful state, the Floren- tines held him in much fear, the Venetians in jealousy, and the king of France in esteem. Then having got together a fine army, he showed how great was the might of a pontiff when he hath a valiant general and one in whom he can place faith. At last he grew to that point that he was counted the balance in the war of France and Spain. In one word he was more evil and more lucky than ever for many ages perad venture had been any pope before." The State of Morals in Rome. 103 ception that the places of married ladies were occupied by concubines. The girls of higher society were kept in strict seclusion; but adulteries and assassinations from jealousy were fearfully frequent. 1 It is characteristic of the reign of the Borgias that the sudden death of any distinguished man usually suggested the suspicion of poisoning. 3 No stain attached to illegiti- mate birth whether from maidens or wives. Deception was expected from everybody, and only that deceiver was de- spised who allowed himself to be deceived by another. Revenge (bella vendetta) was regarded as praiseworthy, when practised for the purpose of teaching caution. There have been bad priests in all ages ; but it will be difficult to find one who was gradually driven by passion from crime to crime till he came to be the head of a band of robbers. And yet such a monster lived in Italy during the pontificate of Alexander VI. 3 1 Burckhardt (p. 443) quotes from Bandello, the novelist, who died 1506 : " Nowadays we see a woman poison her husband to gratify her lusts, thinking that a widow may do whatever she desires. Another, fearing the discovery of an illicit amour, has her husband murdered by her lover. And though fathers, brothers, and husbands arise to extirpate the shame with poison, with the sword, and by every other means, women still continue to follow their passions, careless of their honor and their lives." Another time, in a milder strain, he exclaims : " Would that we were not daily forced to hear that one man has murdered his wife because he suspected her of infidelity ; that another has killed his daughter, on account of a secret marriage ; that a third has caused his sister to be mur- dered, because she would not marry as he wished ! It is great cruelty that we claim the right to do whatever we list, and will not suffer women to do the same. " 2 This was the case also in other Italian cities at that time. " The Sforzas, the Aragonese monarchs, the Republic of Venice, and, later on, the agents of Charles V., resorted to murder as one of the instruments of their power when- ever it suited their purpose. The imagination of the people at last became so accustomed to facts of this kind, that the death of any powerful man was seldom or never attributed to natural causes. . . . There may be some truth in the story of that terrible white powder used by the Borgias, which did its work at the end of a definite period." Burckhardt, p. 451. Grimm makes the same re- mark (Mick. Ang., I., 114) : " Kein bedeutender Mann [start} damals, dessen Tod nicht zu dem Geriichte einer Vergiftung Anlass gab." 3 Burckhardt relates his story, p. 449 ( from the Diario Ferrarese in Murat., XXIV., 312) : " On August 12, 1495, the priest Don Niccolo de' Pelegati of IO4 The Renaissance. Julius II. (i5O3-'i3) was a great improvement upon Alex- ander, but he, too, cared more for the temporal than the spiritual interests of the papacy. He represents the reign of Mars after that of Venus. He devoted his time, with brilliant success, to war, diplomacy, and art. He bent all his energy upon the consolidation of the temporal power of the papacy at the expense of Italy. He encouraged Raphael and Michel Angelo, and began the new Church of St. Peter. He suffered from that Gallic disease which is the result of unlawful indulgence, so that he could not cross his feet for adoration on Good Friday. 1 Leo X. (i5i3-'2i), the last and most prodigal Renaissance pope, entered upon his office with the determination " to en- joy the papacy which God had given him." z And he carried it out. He was free from gross vices, as far as known, but ut- terly worldly, a cultivated heathen, a good-natured follower of Epicurus. His remark about " the profitable fable of Christ " is probably a myth, but it characterizes the skeptical atmos- phere around him. He attended mass in the morning, and the theatre in the evening. He kept an extravagant table, wasted the treasury of the curia, and accumulated an enor- mous debt, for the payment of which the very jewels of his tiara were pledged. He was immoderately fond of the chase, of comedy, and jests. He kept one hundred grooms for the service of his stable. His love of buffoonery, says Roscoe, his admirer, "was carried to such an extent that his courtiers and attendants could not more effectually obtain Figarolo was shut up in an iron cage outside the tower of San Giuliano at Ferrara. He had twice celebrated mass ; the first time he had the same day committed murder, but afterwards received absolution at Rome ; he then killed four people and married two wives, with whom he travelled about. He afterwards took part in many assassinations, violated women, carried others away by force, plundered far and wide, and infested the territory of Ferrara with a band of followers in uniform, extorting food and shelter by every sort of vio- lence. When we think of what all this implies, the mass of guilt on the head of this one man is something tremendous." 1 His master of ceremonies assigns as the reason (as quoted by Roscoe), ' ' quia totus erat ex morbo Gallico alterosus." 4 " Godiamoci il papato, poichl Dio ce ? ha dato" he said to his brother Giuliano after his election. The State of Morals in Rome. 105 his favor than by introducing to him such persons as, by their eccentricity, perversity, or imbecility of mind, were likely to exercise his mirth." On one occasion a harlequin monk furnished the mirth at table by his extraordinary voracity in swallowing a pigeon whole, and consuming forty eggs and twenty capons in succession. And this was the pope who condemned Martin Luther for heresy, and would have burned him at the stake, if Frederick of Saxony had delivered him to Rome. What would have been the fate of our Saviour, if he had reap- peared and hurled his fearful denunciations at the Pharisees and Sadducees who then sat in Moses' seat ? I add a few general testimonies of the ablest, unprejudiced writers on the period of the Renaissance. Machiavelli, a shrewd and cool observer of men and things, a skeptic, and even an admirer of Caesar Borgia, makes this remarkable statement : " The Italians are irre- ligious and corrupt above others, because the Church and her representatives set us the worst example." He asserts, moreover, that, " in proportion as we approach nearer the Roman Church, we find less piety," and that, " owing to the evil example of the papal court, Italy has lost all piety and all religion, whence follow infinite troubles and dis- orders ; for, as religion implies all good, so its absence implies the contrary." l He makes the papacy responsible for the divisions in Italy, and this charge is confirmed by the irreconcilable hostility of the latest popes to Italian unity and independence. Guicciardini, who was secretary and vice-gerent of the Medicean popes, makes another start- ling confession in his " Aphorisms " (1529) : " My position at the court of several popes has compelled me to desire their aggrandizement for the sake of my own profit. Other- wise I should have loved Martin Luther like myself not that I might break loose from the laws which Christianity, as it is usually understood and explained, lays upon us, but that I might see that horde of villains (questa caterva di 1 Discorsi, Lib. I., cap. 12. Comp. cap. 55 : " Italy is more corrupt than all other countries ; then come the French and the Spaniards." io6 The Renaissance, scellerati) reduced within due limits, and forced to live either without vices or without power." We have even the contemporary testimony of a pope, Adrian VI., a Dutchman, who was elected after Leo X., as a reforming pope, but who reigned less than two years (from January 9, 1522, to September 14, 1523), and was followed by another Medici (Clement VII.). He admitted through his legate, Francesco Chieregati, at the Diet of Niirnberg, March, 1522, " that for some time many abominations, abuses, and violations of rights have taken place in the Holy See ; and that all things have been perverted into bad. From the head the corruption has passed to the limbs, from the pope to the prelates ; we have all gone astray, there is none that doeth good, no, not one." ' Passing to modern historians, Gregorovius says, of the age of Leo X., in the eighth volume of his " History of the City of Rome : " The richest intellectual life blos- somed in a swamp of vices." ! According to Burckhardt, the rights of marriage were more often and more deliberately trampled under foot in Italy than anywhere else, and at the 1 Opere inedite, Vol. I. ; Ricordi, No. 28. Quoted by Burckhardt, p. 464, and by Symonds, Age of the Despots, 452 sq. Symonds adds : " These utterances are all the more remarkable, because they do not proceed from the deep sense of holiness which animated reformers like Savonarola." 2 Raynaldus, ad ann., 1522 (AnnaL, Tom. XI., 363) ; Schaff, Church History, VI., 393 sq. 3 Geschichte der Stadt Rom, VIII., 282 : " Das reichste geistige Leben bluhte hier [in Rome] im Sump f der Laster." In Vol. VII., 411, he says: " Begier nach Macht und Genuss war der Trieb jener Zeit, wo die Lehre Epicures das Christenthum bezwungen hatte. Die wolliistige Natur erscheint fast in jedem hervorragenden Menschen jener Epochs, und Alexander VI. iiber Kam Rom als einen moralischen Sumpf. . . . Jene Zeit ertrug und veriibte das Furchtbare als ware es Natur. Wir Menschen von heute fassen das Kaum. Die Borgia stellten die Renaissance des Verbrechens dar, wie es die Zeit des Tiberius und anderer Kaiser gesehen hatte. Sie besassen den kilhnsten Muth dazu, aber das Verbrechen selbst wurde unter ihren Handen zum Kunstwerk. Diesistes, warum Machiavelli, der politische Naturforscher seiner Zeit, einen Ccesar Borgia bewundert hat. Gold war das Idol, vor dem sich alles beugte. Durch Gold stitg Alexander VI. auf den Thron, mit ihm behauptete er ihn, und gewann er fur Ccesar Lander. Er that auch nur was seine Vorgdnger gethan, wenn er jedes Amt,jede Gunst, jedes Recht und Un- recht feil hot. Nur that er diess in grosseren Dimensionen." The State of Morals in Rome. 107 middle of the sixteenth century Italy was in a moral crisis, out of which the best men saw no escape. 1 In the opinion of Symonds, who wrote seven volumes on the Renaissance, it is " almost impossible to overestimate the moral corruption of Rome at the beginning of the sixteenth century." " The chiefs of the Church with cynical effrontery violated every tradition of Christ and the Apostles, so that the example of Rome was in some sense the justification of fraud, violence, lust, filthy living, and ungodliness to the whole nation.'" " Never," says Dr. Woolsey, " had vice shown itself in such frightful forms since Christianity had appeared among men, and nowhere was its sway more fearfully great than in the very heart and centre of religion." 4 Yet Rome was no worse than Genoa, Venice, Naples, Florence, and Paris : she was only more dangerous in pro- portion to her power and influence. Everywhere we find an unnatural divorce of religion and morality. The mass of the people were sunk in ignorance and superstition ; while the intellectual aristocracy of the Church and the State gave the lie to their Christian profession by heathen practices. We make these statements and collect these witnesses, not from any hatred to the Roman Church, which we honor as the Alma Mater of the Middle Ages, but in deference to the truth of history. And this is the period which modern ultramontane his- torians, in their zeal for the honor of the papacy, would fain make us believe was the golden age of the Church ; while the Reformation is condemned by them as an apostasy from Christianity and the mother of all evils of modern times ! The Reformation, on the contrary, saved the Church from a relapse into heathenism and infidelity. Without the Prot- estant Reformation there would have been no Roman counter-Reformation. 1 See his chapter on the fall of the humanists in the sixteenth century, pp. 272 sqq. ; and on their morality, 431 sqq. 2 Revival of Learning, p. 406. 3 Age of the Despots, p. 447. 4 On the Revival of Letters, in the " New Englander" for 1865, p. 669. io8 The Renaissance. When Erasmus, in 1506, visited literary and artistic Rome as a renowned and idolized scholar, he was delighted with her culture and refinement, her freedom of discourse, her large style of life, the honeyed conversation of her scholars, and all her works of art, which only Lethe could efface from his memory ; but he admits in another letter that abomina- ble blasphemies were uttered unpunished even by priestly lips connected with the papal court. 1 When Luther, in 1510, visited holy Rome, as an humble and obscure monk, climbing up the Scala Santa on his knees with a protesting conscience, he was shocked by the prevailing worldliness, frivolity, and ill-disguised infidelity, and he afterwards de- clared that he would not take a thousand guilders for that experience which prepared him for his crusade against the Roman Babylon. 2 The moral corruption of Rome and Italy in the later half of the fifteenth century and the early part of the sixteenth is the best justification of the Protestant Reformation. 1 Epist. ad Augustinum Eugubinum (Opera, ed. Cleric. III., II., p. 1382) : "Al ego Romce his auribus audivi quosdam abominandis blasphemiis debacchantes in Christum et in illius Apostolos, idque mullis mecum attdientibus, et quidem impune. Ibidem multos novi, qui commemorabant, se dicta Jwrrenda audisse a quibusdam sacerdotibus, aulae Pontijicice ministris, idque in ipsa Missa, tarn dare, utea vox ad multorum aures pervenerit. " In another letter he expresses the fear that the revival of classical literature might lead to a revival of heathenism, and a revival of Hebrew learning to a revival of Judaism (III., I, p. 189). 2 He heard that priests said over the bread and wine in the mass : ' ' Pants es, pants manebis ; -vinum es, vinum manebis." A priest near him dispatched his own mass in the most hurried manner, and told him, " passa, passa, have done, send her Son soon home again to our Lady." Walch, Luther's Werke, XIV., 1509 ; Mathesius, Life of Luther, p. 6. This agrees well with the admission of Erasmus quoted in the preceding note. CHAPTER XXV. THE ART OF PRINTING. Mich. Maittaire : Annales Typographici ab arlis invents originis ad aim. cum appendice ad ann. 1664 (Hagse Comit., IJKJ-^S, 3 torn, in 5 vols., 4; the first torn, rewritten, Amsterdam, 1733). C. A. Schaab : Geschichte der Erfin- dung der Buchdruckerkunst, Mainz, i83o-'3i, 3 vols. K. Falkenstein : Ge- sc hie hie der Buchdruckerkunst, Leipzig, 1840, 2d ed., 1856. Dupont : Histoire de r imprimerie , Paris, 3d ed., 1869. Humphrey: The History of the Art of Printing, London, 1867. Theo. L. De Vinne : The Invention of Printing, New York, 1876, 2d ed., 1878. K. Faulmann : Illustrirte Geschichte der Buch- druckerkunst, Wien, 1882. Antonius von der Linde : Geschichte der Erfindung der Btichdruckerkunst, Berlin, 1886, 3 large vols. Comp. also Fr. Kapp : Ge- schichte des deutschen Buchhandels, Leipzig, 1 886 ; Janssen : Geschichte des deutschen Volkes, I., 9-20. On the technical part, see the Dictionary of Typography, London, 3d ed., 1875, and an elaborate art. in Encyc. Brit., gth ed., vol. xxiii., 681-710. The word typographus (according to Encyc. Brit., XXIII., 681), was first used in 1488 by P. Stephanus Dulcinius Scalae, and in 1498 by Erasmus ; the word typographia occurs first in 1520. Typography, or the art of using movable metallic types for indicating thought, is the most useful invention of mod- ern times, and marks an epoch in the history of civilization. It preserves, multiplies, and cheapens books, and facilitates the collection of public and private libraries. It is the art- preserving art, and protects the world against a relapse into barbarism. It gives to the freedom of man a two-edged sword for good and evil, for truth and falsehood. Before this invention, books were exceedingly dear and accessible only to a few. A bookseller of Milan demanded 14 sequins for a copy of 19 of Cicero's Familiar Letters. Poggio bought a Bible without the Psalms for 25 gold guild- ers, and offered it to Pope Nicolas V. for 40. He sold to Beccadelli a copy of Livy, transcribed by himself, for 120 sequins, and bought with them a piece of real estate in 109 no The Renaissance. Florence. He sold to Prince Leonello of Este the Letters of St. Jerome for 100 gold guilders ; another copy was acquired by Nicolas V. for 45 gold guilders. 1 But after this inven- tion, every scholar could acquire a little library and consult it at leisure, with much more ease than manuscripts. Printing lessened the importance of living teachers, but increased the number of scholars and authors. Formerly Northern students had to travel to Bologna or Paris to hear a distinguished lecturer ; now they could study at home. Typography is a German invention, and was first fully made available for the general public by the German and Swiss Reformation which gave wings to thoughts and words." The real inventor of this art was John Gensfleisch, called Gutenberg, of Mainz on the Rhine (1397-1468), who in con- nection with John Fust or Faust (d. 1466) and his son-in-law, Peter Schoffer (d. 1502), printed the first books. He con- cluded a contract with Fust, a rich citizen of Mainz, who lent him 800 gold guilders at 6 per cent., Aug. 22, 1450, for the establishment of an office. Schoffer aided him in the mechanical art of casting type. In 1452 they began to print the Latin Bible (Biblia Latina Vulgata), which, after great difficulties, was completed at the end of 1455 in two folios of 324 and 317 leaves, but without date or name of place. It is called the Mazarine Bible. Only a few copies remain. The first printed book which bears date, place, and name 1 Quoted by Voigt, I.e., I., 404 sqq., from Poggio, Filelfo, etc. * The controversy about the person and nationality of the inventor and the place of invention resembles the rival claims of seven cities to be the birthplace of Homer. Mainz, Strassburg, Bamberg, Feltre, and Haarlem contend for the honor. The writer in the " Enc. Brit.," decides with Dutch authorities in favor of Laurens Janszoon Coster at Haarlem, 1445. But his claim has been effectually disproved by A. von der Linde (Die Haarlemsche Coster- Legende, 1870, and Gutenberg : Geschichteund Erdichtung aus den Quellen nach- gewiesen, Stuttgart, 1878), who shows that Coster was a tallow chandler and innkeeper and left Haarlem 1483, and that the first book of Haarlem, entitled "Datleiden Jesu" dates from 1485, and was printed by Jacob Bellaert. The best authorities agree on Gutenberg. Jacob Wimpheling wrote in 1507 (as quoted by Janssen, I., 9) : " Of no art can we Germans be more proud than of the art of printing, which made us the intellectual bearers of the doctrines of Chris- tianity, of all divine and earthly sciences, and thus benefactors of the whole race." The A rt of Printing. ill of printers, is a Psalterium, issued by Fust and Schoffer, August 14, 1457. It is printed in large missal types on fine parchment in folio, and is admired as a masterpiece of typography. 1 Then followed from the same firm the splen- did Biblia Sacra Latina, 1462, printed from entirely new types of Schoffer, in two folios of 242 and 239 leaves in double columns. It is the Latin Vulgate of Jerome and presents the current text of the i$th century. There were in all 97 editions of the Latin Bible printed between 1455 and 1500 (16 in Germany, 10 in Basel, 9in France, and 28 in Italy)/ There were also no less than 17 editions of the Ger- man Bible printed between 1462 and 1522 (twelve years before Luther completed his version in 1534, which far outshone the old version). 1 The destruction of the printing establishment of Fust and Schoffer, October 27, 1462, and the consequent dispersion of the pupils of Gutenberg occasioned the spread of the art throughout a great part of Europe. Before the close of the fifteenth century, we find printing-presses in Bamberg, 1455 (or 1456); Strassburg, 1460 (1471); Cologne, 1465; Augs- burg, 1468; Niirnberg, 1473; Rostock, 1476; Basel, 1479; Leipzig, 1481 ; also in Ulm, Reutlingen, Heidelberg, Lu- beck, Paris, Lyons, Copenhagen, Stockholm, Prague, Haar- lem, Antwerp, and the leading cities of Italy, Spain, and Portugal. William Caxton (1412-1492), who learned his trade in the Low Countries, introduced the art into Eng- land in 1474. The number of known printers, mostly of German extraction, before 1 500, exceeds one thousand. 4 Among the most eminent and learned printers and pub- 1 The first date is said to occur in the letters of indulgence issued in 1454 by Nicolas V. in behalf of the kingdom of Cyprus ; but these letters seem to have been printed at Frankfort and Lttbeck. See " Enc. Brit.," XXIII., 684. * Reuss (Geschichte der heil. Schriften N. Ts., 6th ed. 1887, p. 545) says : " Kein Buck ist in der Zeit unmittdbar nach des Erfindung des Bilcherdrucks haufiger gedruckt warden als die lateinische Bibel, bis 1520 ilber 100 Mai. . . Ge-wiss ist, dass mehrere undatirte Ausgaben den Anfang machen. . . . Du dllesten Drucke sind ausserdem [i. e. ausser^ von Mainz} van Strassburg, Basel. Erst 1471 auch ausser Deutschland." See Schaff, Church Hist., VI., 343, 35L * Falkenslein gives a list of them, I.e., 383-393- H2 The Renaissance. lishers were Anton Koburger (or Koberger), of Niirnberg, the king of printers, who employed over a hundred workmen ; John Amerbach and John Froben, in Basel, who were in close friendship with Erasmus ; Froschauer, in Zurich, who pub- lished the writings of Zwingli and the Swiss Bible ; the Stephens family (Etienne), in Paris, which died out in 1598 ; the families of Blaen, Plantin, and Elzevir, in the Nether- lands ; and of Aldus Manutius, in Venice (down to Aldus Manutius II., who died October 28, 1597). These publishers were as much interested in the diffusion of sound knowledge as in the mechanical and financial part of their profession. Italy deserves the merit of having embellished and per- fected the art. The first printing establishments were founded by Germans in the Benedictine abbey of Subiaco and at Rome (" in cedibus Petri de Maximis "), 1465 and 1467, by two Germans, Pannartz and Schweinheim. Then fol- lowed Milan, 1469 ; Foligno, 1470 ; Verona, 1470 ; Bologna, 1471 ; Ferrara, 1471 ; Florence, 1471 ; Naples, Pavia, Parma, Padua, Brescia, Genoa, Turin, etc. The most splendid Italian printing establishment was founded by Aldus Ma- nutius (Aldo Manuzio), in Venice, 1488. The Aldine editions of the Greek and Roman classics (many of them editiones principes) are still highly prized for correctness and beauty. Before the year 150x3 there appeared over eight thousand books in Italy, more than one third of them (nearly three thousand) in Venice. They included most of the Latin authors, with or without commentaries, the works of Dante, Petrarca, Boccaccio, Filelfo, Bruni, Valla, and other humanists, and of Christian fathers, as Lactantius, Augustin, and Jerome. The first Greek book, the grammar of Constantine Laskaris, was printed at Milan, 1476 (1477), and reprinted at Venice, 1494 ; then followed the lexicon of Crastone, 1478. The first ancient Greek work printed was ^Esop's Fables, with a translation, between 1476 and 1480, at Milan. Homer's works appeared at Florence, in 1488 ; Aristotle at Venice, 1495. The Latin Bible was printed repeatedly, in whole or in part ; also several editions of the German Bible ; but it was not till 1516 that the first The A rt of Printing, \ \ 3 edition of the Greek Testament was published, and then in the Swiss city of Basel, not in Italy. The Italian humanists had not sufficient interest in the Bible. NOTES. It is estimated that, before the year 1500, there were in existence forty-two printing-presses, in as many cities, at which at least 16,000 volumes were printed. Placing the average edition of those days at 500 copies, the total number of copies would be over 8,000,000. The copies still extant are comparatively few. They are called incunabula, or cradle-books. The Vatican Library has probably the richest collection of the first printed works. I examined there a most beautifully written descriptive Catalogue Codicum Saculo XV., impressorum qui in Bibliotheca Vaticana Roma; adser- vantur, by Aloys. Zappelli, Presby. et Scriptor Latinus, begun 1853, finished 1868, in 3 large vols. fol. The first work mentioned is Durandi Guil. Rationale Divinorum Officiorum, Moguntise, 1459 ; the second, Biblia Mo- guntina, 1462, 2 vols., Mogunt., 1465. Then follow Ciceronis Officia, Mo- gunt., 1465; Lactantii Divin. Institutionum libri VII.; Bonifadi VIII. Liber Sextus Decretalium, Mogunt., 1465 ; Augustini De Civitate Dei libri XXII., sine loco, 1467 ; Ciceronis Epistolce Familiares, Rom., 1467 ; dementis V. Constitutiones, Mogunt., 1467 ; Augustini Opuscula varia, Mogunt., 1467; Meditationes Vita et Passionis D. N. Jesu Ckristi, Augustas, 1468 ; Jusliniani Imperaloris Institutionum libri IV., Mogunt., 1468; Hieronymi Presb. Traclatus et Epistola, Rom., 1468; Lactantii Div. Instit., etc., Rom., 1468; Augustini De Civitate Dei, Rom., 1468 ; Apuleji Metamorphoseos libri XI., Rom., 1469 ; Gellii Auli Noctes Attics, Rom., 1469 ; Bessarionis Card. Sabini, Adversus calumniatorem Platonis libri V., Rom., sine anno (against Georgius Trapezuntius) ; Livii Titi Historiarum Romanarum Decades III., Rom., sine anno; Ciceronis Epistola Fam., Venetiis, 1469; Lucani Pharsalia, Rom., 1469, etc., etc. This catalogue may be regarded as a fair specimen of the taste of that age, and the value set upon books. From the indexes at the close of the third vol- ume, it would appear that the favorite authors, during the first half century of typography, were, among the ancient classics : Cicero, Virgil, Horace, Ovid, Livy, Tacitus, Pliny, Aristotle, and Plutarch ; among the Christian fathers and mediaeval divines : Augustin (De Civit. Dei), Lactantius (Inst. div.), Jer- ome, Gregory I., Chrysostom (Homilies), Eusebius (Church History and Chron- icle), Thomas Aquinas ( Summa Theol.), Nicolaus de Lyra (Glossa), Gratian (Decretum), Durandus (Rationale Offic.), Jac. Voragine (Legenda Aurea) ; among the humanists : Poggio, Filelfo, Valla (De Eleg. Lat. ling.), ^Eneas Sylvius (Pius II.), Leonard. Aretinus, Theod. Gaza, Georgius Trapezuntius ; oi Italian authors : Petrarca, Boccaccio, Dante, and Savonarola. The Union Theological Seminary in New York has probably the largest lection of incunabula in America, namely, four hundred and thirty titles pn, between A.D. 1460 and 1510. They are a part of the Leander van E uy. 13 114 The Renaissance. which originally belonged to the Benedictine monastery of Marienwerder, in the diocese of Paderborn (one of the bishoprics founded by Charlemagne after his Saxon conquests), and began to be collected at the time of the Reformation. After the confiscation of the monastery, in 1803, it came into the hands of the librarian, the priest Leander van Ess, Dr. of theology and of the canon law (d. Oct. 13, 1847), and numbered, with his additions, 6,000 separate works, in 13,000 volumes. It was offered for sale ten years before his death for the sum of 11,000 florins, and bought, at the suggestion of Dr. Edward Robinson, by the directors of the Seminary in 1837. See the Schaff-Herzog Encyclopedia, I., 760, and especially the account by Prof. T. F. Crane, of Cornell University, in Dr. Prentiss' work, The Union Theol. Seminary in the City of New York, etc.. New York (Anson D. F. Randolph & Co.), 1889, pp. 101-107. Among the incunabula of this invaluable library are the following works, printed at Cologne, Nttrnberg, Basel, Leipzig, Mainz, Venice : ^Egidius, Commentaries on Aristotle, 1482 and 1488 ; Albertus Magnus, Compendium, printed at Ulm, without date, and a volume of his Sermones. Albert of Padua, Sermones, in the edition of 1480 ; Petrarca, De Vita Solitaria, 1496. Twenty-one titles of Anselm, published before 1500 ; four of Aristotle, sixteen of Augustin, sixteen of Bonaventura, five editions of the Rationale of Durandus, all previous to 1500 ; the Etymologies of Isidore, of Seville, 1483 ; Thomas a Kempis' Imitation of Christ, in the edition of 1487 ; five editions of the Sentences of Peter the Lombard, four of which appeared in four consecutive years, beginning with 1486, at Basel ; Ludolph's Vita Christi, three editions, beginning with 1474 ; Lyra's Postilla, 1477 ; and another early copy without date. Sc^la Cceli, 1480 ; Speculum Exemplorum, 1485. Jacobus de Voragine, thirteen entries in the list. Of Bibles, Testaments, missals, breviaries, and works on theology there are too many to mention. There are eight Latin Bibles before 1500, the fourth and ninth German Bibles, 1470 and 1483 ; the first Low-Dutch Bible of 1480, the Greek Bible of 1526, and the first and sec- ond editions of the Hebrew Bible of 1518 and 1521. Koburger's fourth Latin Bible, of 1478, is one of the most clearly printed books now in the Library. CHAPTER XXVI. THE REVIVAL OF LETTERS IN GERMANY. I. K. Hagen : Deutschlands literarische und religiose Verhaltnisse im Kef or- mations-Zeitalter, Erlangen, i84i-'44 3 vols., 2d ed., Frankfurt, 1868. Job. Janssen : Geschichte des deutschen Volkes beim Ausgang des Mittalters, Freiburg, i. B., 1876 sqq., the 1st vol., gth ed., 1883, pp. 55-135. Comp. his alphab. list of books XXVII. XLIV. A. Horawitz : Zur Geschichte des deutschen Hu- manismus und der deutschen Historiographie, Hannover, 1875. Ch. Schmidt: Histoire litteraire de T Alsace a la fin du XVI. siecle, Paris, 1879, 2 vols. L. Geiger : Renaissance u. Humanismus in Italien u. Deutschland, Berlin, 1882, pp. 323-580. II. Monographs by Kampschulte on the University of Erfurt (1860) ; Spach on Brant and Murner (1866); Strauss on Ulrich von Hutten (1858, 4th ed. 1876) ; Ulmann on Franz von Sickingen (1876) ; Horawitz on Beatus Rhenanus (1872); Plitt on Truttvetter (1876); Binder on Charitas Pirkheimer (1878); Krause on Eoban Hesse, or Hessus (1879, 2 vols.) ; Hartfelder on Celtes (1881) ; Schneegans on Abt Trithemius (1882) ; Drews on Pirkheimer (1887) ; Fritzsche on Glareanus (1890) ; Reindell on Luther, Crotus, and Hutten (1890). On Ulrich von Hutten, see Schaff, Church Hist., Vol. VI., 196 sqq. ; on Pirkhei- mer, ibid. , 434 sqq. ; on Reuchlin and Erasmus, the lit. in the next two sections. The humanistic culture of Italy prepared for the ruder but more vigorous nations of the North the possibilities of great intellectual and moral achievements. It served the same purpose as the old classical literature. The Italians looked down upon the northern nations as barbarians, and despised them for their ignorance, rudeness, and intemperance in eating and drinking. They were far superior to them in temperance, urbanity, and refinement, but inferior in physical and moral energy. When ^neas Sylvius, the first apostle of humanism in Germany, lived at the court of the dull and phlegmatic Emperor Frederick III. (who ruled from 1440 to 1492), he found that the German princes and nobles cared more for horses and dogs than poets "5 1 1 6 The Renaissance. and scholars, and loved their wine cellars better than the muses ; while the professors of the universities were lost in a labyrinth of barren scholasticism. Campanus, a witty poet of the papal court, who was sent as legate to the Diet of Regensburg by Paul II., and made Bishop of Teramo by Pius II., abuses Germany for its filth, cold climate, pov- erty, sour wine, and miserable fare ; he laments his unhappy nose which had to smell every thing, and praised his ears which understood nothing. J3ut in less than a generation there arose scholars in Ger- many and Holland equal in learning and influence to those of Italy. The Germans learned humanism from Italy, but they invented the printing-press, which gave wings to litera- ture, and they produced the Reformation, which opened the modern era of history. Humanism in Germany may be dated from the invention of the printing-press ; but its flourishing period did not begin till the close of the fifteenth century, and lasted only till about 1520, when it was absorbed by the more popular and powerful religious movement of the Reformation, as Italian humanism was superseded by the papal counter- Reformation. The chief impulse came from Italy. The patronage of the popes, who stood in correspondence with all the bishops and princes of Christendom, promoted and sanc- tioned the revival of classical learning and art. Young scholars and artists travelled to Venice, Florence, and Rome, and caught the inspiration of the new era. An enthusiasm for the study of the ancient languages and literature was kindled not only among the Latin races in France, Spain, Portugal, but also in Germany, Holland, Hungary, and Poland. The revival of classical antiquity prepared the way for a revival of primitive Christianity from the fountain of the Greek Testament. This was the case in Germany, where humanism entered into the service of religious progress. Luther availed himself of the aid of Ulrich von Hutten and Erasmus in opposing existing abuses, but went far deeper The Revival of Letters in Germany. \ \ 7 into the spirit of the gospel, which was his moving power. Melanchthon utilized Greek scholarship for the advance of biblical theology. Zwingli and GEcolampadius did the same in Switzerland. Humanism took its inspiration from the classics, the Reformation from the New Testament. The supremacy of literature gave way to the supremacy of religion. 1 The University of Erfurt, where Luther studied, was the principal seat of humanism in Germany. Heidelberg, Frei- burg, Tubingen, Vienna, followed. In German Switzerland, the University of Basel, founded by the humanistic Pope Pius II. in 1460, was the centre of progressive learning through the residence of Erasmus, Glareanus, Amerbach (John and his three sons, Basilius, Bruno, and Bonifacius), and the enterprising publisher Frobenius. The flourishing classical school of Schlettstadt in Alsace should also be mentioned. The cities of Strassburg, Niirnberg, Augsburg, and Basel had the most prosperous printing establishments. Among the few princely patrons of scholars must be men- tioned the Emperor Maximilian I. (1459-1519), Frederick the Wise of Saxony (1463-1525), and Archbishop Albrecht of Mainz (1490-1545). The leaders of the new learning were Rudolph Agricola (1443-1485), John Reuchlin (i455~i5 22 )> Erasmus (1466- 1536), Ulrich von Hutten (1488-1523), Jakob Wimpheling (1450-1528), Sebastian Brant (i4$7- l $ 2l )> Thomas Murner (1475-1537), Bernhard Adelmann (1457-1 523), Conrad Celtes (1459-1508), lodocus Truttvetter, the teacher of Luther (1460-1519), Ulrich Zasius (1461-1535), Joh. Trithemius (1462-1516), Conrad Peutinger (1465-1547), Hermann von Busch (1468-1534), Willibald Pirkheimer (1470-1528), and his highly gifted sister Charitas (1464-1532), Conrad Muti- anus Rufus (1471-1526), Heinrich Bebel (1472-1518), Joh. 1 Voigt (II. 317): "Der deutsche Humanismus und dtr italienischt haben vieles gemeinsam, aber in einem Punkte -weichen tie auffdllig aus cinandcr : die Frucht der klassischtn Studien -war in Italien ein religioser Indiferentismus , ja tin heimlicher Krieg der Unglaubigkeil gegen Glauben und Kir c he ; in Deuttch- landdagegen er-weckten sie gerade tine neue Regsamkeit auf den Gebuten Theologie und des kirchlicJun Lebens" n8 The Renaissance. Cuspinianus (1473-1529), Joh. Aventinus (1477-1534), Cro- tus Rubeanus (1480-1540), Georg Spalatin (1484-1545), Joa- chim Vadianus (1484-1551), Beatus Rhenanus (1485-1547), Glareanus or Loriti of Glarus (1488-1563), Eoban Hesse or Hessus (1488-1540), Bonifacius Amerbach (1495-1562). All these scholars were Germans, except Vadianus, Amerbach, and Glareanus, who were German Swiss, and Erasmus, the most eminent of them, who was a Dutchman by birth, but a cosmopolitan in spirit, and lived mostly in Basel. The German humanists were less brilliant and elegant, but on the whole more serious and religious than their Italian predecessors and contemporaries, if we except Ulrich von Hutten and Celtes (the erotic poet), who equalled them in frivolity and licentiousness. Their reign was limited to a brief period of about thirty years. The humanists spoke and wrote mostly in a foreign language which was intelligible only to scholars. Luther roused the heart and conscience of the people in their vernacular tongue. His German Bible, German sermons, and German hymns were far more effective than all the Latin orations, epistles, and poems of the humanists. For a while the cause of learn- ing suffered, and the fears of Erasmus were realized ; but, after the lapse of two hundred and fifty years of Protestant history, humanism and a refined paganism were revived under a higher and more permanent form in the classical litera- ture of Germany. Klopstock, Lessing, Herder, Schiller, and Goethe were Protestants as to freedom of thought, and champions of modern culture. And yet humanism was a necessary preparatory school for the Reformation. Luther and Melanchthon, Zwingli and CEcolampadius, Calvin and Beza could never have done their work without a good knowledge of the languages of the Bible, which they obtained from the humanists. Reuchlin and Erasmus were the pathfinders of biblical learning, the venerabiles inceptores of Protestant research. They remained and died in the Roman Church, in which they were born ; but they undermined its influence by attack- ing its prevailing abuses and superstitions, and prepared am- The Revival of Letters in Germany. 1 19 munition for the battles of the Reformers. Both were equally necessary, Reuchlin first, with his mystic vein and enthu- siasm for Oriental wisdom, Erasmus next, with his ironic and rationalistic genius and enthusiasm for Hellenic learning. Ulrich von Hutten called them " the two eyes of Germany." CHAPTER XXVII. JOHN REUCHLIN AND HEBREW LEARNING. Reuchlin's Brief wee hsel. Ed. by L. Geiger, Tubingen, 1875. Monographs on Reuchlin by Mayerhof, Berlin, 1830 ; Lamey, Pforzheim, 1855 ; L. Geiger, Leipzig, 1871 (comp. his Renaissance, p. 504 sgg.) ; Hora- witz, Wien, 1877. See also Klvipfel in Herzog*, xii., pp. 715-724. On Reuchlin's conflict with the Dominicans of Cologne and Hutten's part in it, see D. F. Strauss, Ulrich vcm Hutten, 4th ed. (1878), pp. 132-164 ; and Booking in Hutteni Operum Supplem., Tom. II., 55-156. John Reuchlin (1455-1522) or Capnion, 1 called "the Phenix of Germany," was born in Pforzheim in the Palati- nate, studied at Schlettstadt, Freiburg, Paris, Basel, Orleans, Florence, and Rome. He learned Greek from native Greeks, Hebrew from John Wessel and from Jewish rabbis in Ger- many and Italy. He bought many Hebrew and rabbinical books, and marked the time and place to remind him of the happiness of their first acquaintance. He was a lawyer by profession, practised law in Stuttgart, and always called himself Legum Doctor ; but in later years he delivered lec- tures on Greek and Hebrew in the universities of Heidelberg, Ingolstadt, and Tubingen. In Ingolstadt he had a salary of 200 guilders as professor, and lectured in the largest hall before 300 students. He recommended Melanchthon, his grand-nephew, as professor of Greek in the University of Wittenberg, and thus unconsciously secured him for the Reformation. He revered, as he said, St. Jerome as an angel, he honored Nicolaus Lyra as a teacher; but he worshipped truth alone as divine. Reuchlin was at home in almost all the branches of the 'From H.ditviov (i.e., little smoke), the Greek equivalent for Reuchlin (the diminutive of Rauch, smoke). Hermolaus Barbarus thus hellenized him. 120 John Reuchlin and Hebrew Learning. 121 learning of his age, but especially in Greek and Hebrew. He wrote a Latin dictionary and a Greek grammar. He was the pioneer of Hebrew learning among Christians, at least in Germany, and furnished the key to the understanding of the Old Testament. In 1506 he published his Hebrew grammar and dictionary, which became a text-book for Christian scholars. 1 The print- ing of Hebrew books had begun in Italy in 1475. A chair for Hebrew was founded at Bologna in 1488, and another at Rome in 1514. Hebrew manuscripts were collected and became a valued treasure in large libraries. But very few could make use of them at that time. Reuchlin studied also the philosophy of the Greeks, the Neo-Platonic and Pythagorean mysticism, and the Jewish Cabbala, and found in them a well of hidden wisdom. He acknowledged in this rare branch of learning his gratitude to Giovanni Pico della Mirandola, whom he called " the wise count," and " the greatest scholar of the age." He pub- lished the results of his studies in two works one De Verbo mirifico, which appeared at Basel in 1494, and passed through eight editions ; and one De Arte Cabbalistica, printed in 1517. " The wonder-working word " is the tetragrammaton IHVH (fYliT), the unpronounceable name for God, which is worshipped by the celestials, feared by the infernals, and kissed by the soul of the universe. The name Jesu (Ihsvh) is only an enlargement of Ihvh by the letter s. The Jehovah- and Jesus-name is the connecting link between God and man, the infinite and the finite. Thus the mystic tradition of the Jews is a confirmation of the Christian doctrine of the Trinity and the Divinity of Christ. Reuchlin saw in every name, in every letter, in every number of the Old Testament a profound meaning. In the three letters 1 Rttdimenta lingua; Hebraica. It is based upon David Kimchi, but is the first Hebrew grammar written by a Christian. He proudly concluded the work with the words of Horace : "Stat [Exegi] monumentum are perennius." He in- troduced many technical terms which are still in use. He also explained the difficult theory of Hebrew accentuation, in De accenlibus et orthographia lingua Hebraic*, 1518. Comp. Geiger, Das Studium der hebrdischen Sprache in Deutschlandvom Ende des i$ten bis zur Mitte des itten Jahrh., Breslau, 1870, 122 The Renaissance. of the creative word bara, Gen. i : i, he found the mystery of the Trinity ; in one verse of Exodus, seventy-two inex- pressible names of God; in Prov. 30: 31, a prophecy that Frederick the Wise, of Saxony, shall become emperor of Germany after the death of Maximilian (which was not fulfilled). We may smile at these fantastic vagaries ; but they stimu- lated and deepened the zeal for the hidden wisdom of the Orient, which he called forth from the grave. CHAPTER XXVIII. THE SEMITIC CONTROVERSY. A PRELUDE TO THE REFOR- MATION. Reuchlin's interest in the Jews and in rabbinical litera- ture involved him in a controversy with the monks, which spread over all Europe. It was a Culturkampf, or a conflict of progressive culture with mediaeval obscurantism and anti- Semitic fanaticism. It was a prelude to the Theses-contro- versy of Luther. But in this case the attack came from the monks, and Reuchlin was on the defensive. John Pfefferkorn, a baptized Jew of Cologne (1469-1522), proved his zeal for the Christian faith by a series of bitter attacks upon his former co-religionists. 1 He secured from the Emperor Maximilian I., in 1509, permission to burn all the rabbinical writings on account of their blasphemies against Christ. The execution was opposed by the Archbishop of Mayence. Several universities, Reuchlin, and Jakob von Hoogstraten or Hochstraten, papal Inquisitor at Cologne (1460-1527), were consulted. Cologne, Mayence, and Hoog- straten advised the burning, Erfurt and Heidelberg, sug- gested further investigation, Reuchlin, in a clear, discrimi- nating, wise, and tolerant judgment, decided against burning.* He wished to preserve, besides the Hebrew Scriptures, which were exempt from burning as a matter of course, the Tal- mud, the Cabbala, the biblical glosses and commentaries, the prayer and hymn books, and all philosophical and secular writings, of the Jews ; but the Nizahon and the Toledoth 'In books entitled : Judenspiegel ; Judenbeichte ; Osternbuch ; Judenfeind, -. "Rathschlag, ob man den Juden alle ihre Bticher nehmtn, ablhun und ver- brennen soil" Stuttgart, Nov. 6, 1510. 123 124 The Renaissance. Jeshu might, after due examination and legal decision, be destroyed, because they contained blasphemies against Christ, his mother, and the apostles. In conclusion he ad- vises the emperor to order every university in Germany to establish two chairs of Hebrew for ten years. Pfefferkorn attacked him violently in his Handspiegel (Hand Mirror), which he industriously sold, with the help of his wife, at the fair in Frankfurt, 1511.' Reuchlin an- swered in his Augenspiegel (Spectacles) in the same year. Pfefferkorn appeared again on the arena with his Brandspie- gel (Burning Glass), and secured an imperial mandate to the magistrate of Frankfurt to prevent the sale of the Augenspie- gel. Reuchlin took up the pen in self-defence (1513), and, forgetting his dignity, called his calumniators " biting dogs," " raving wolves," " foxes," " hogs," " horses," and " asses," and " children of the devil." Erasmus and Pirkheimer thought that he ought not to have immortalized such a monster as Pfefferkorn, or to have done it with more moderation. The theological faculty of Cologne, which consisted mostly of Dominicans, sided with the anti-Jewish intolerance, and denounced forty-three sentences of Reuchlin as heretical (1513). The Paris University likewise condemned him (1514). He was cited before the tribunal of the Inquisition by Hoogstraten, but he appealed to the pope. Hoogstraten had the satisfaction to see the Augenspiegel publicly burnt at Cologne, February 10, 1514, as a book that smacked of heresy, was friendly to the Jews, irreverent to the holy doctrine of the Church, and scandalous. When Pope Leo X. received the appeal, he appointed a commission at Speier. This commission cleared Reuchlin of the charge of heresy, and condemned Hoogstraten to silence and the payment of the costs, amounting to 1 1 1 guilders of Rhenish gold (April 24, 1514). But the indomitable Hoogstraten, well provided with money, proceeded to Rome, and through the influence of Sylvester Prierias, the Master 1 He called Reuchlin a Judengonner, Ohrenblaser, Stubenstencker, Beutelfe- ger, Hinterschiitzen, Seitenstecher, etc., and charged him with having taken bribes from the Jews. The Semitic Controversy. 125 of the Sacred Palace (who came out in 1517 as a champion against Luther), he secured, after a long delay, a papal an- nullation of the Speier decision and a condemnation of Reuchlin to the payment of costs and to eternal silence (June 23, 1520). Reuchlin appealed a papa male informato ad papam melius informandum without success, but was left undisturbed. He had too much respect for the Church and the papacy, and was too old to rebel. He showed no sympathy with the Refor- mation, which in the meantime had broken out at Witten- berg. He even turned away from Melanchthon, his grand- nephew, to whom he had already bequeathed his library, and cancelled the bequest. He prevented, however, Dr. Eck, during his brief sojourn at Ingolstadt, from burning the writings of Luther. He closed his labors as professor of Greek and Hebrew in the University of Tubingen, and died at Stuttgart, June 30, 1522, at the age of sixty-seven years and four months. By the papal decision of 1520 the obscurantism of the Dominicans had obtained a temporary triumph ; but in the meantime the spirit of reform had already seized the helm of progress. This is evident from the large number of pamphlets and letters in favor of Reuchlin which appeared between 1509 and 1522 on this controversy. He prepared a collection of testimonies of Erasmus, Hutten, Mutian, Peu- tinger, Pirkheimer, Busch, Vadian, Glarean, Melanchthon, CEcolampadius, Hedio, etc., in all forty-three names of eminent scholars who were classed as Reuchlinists. 1 1 Clarorum [in the second edition, Illustrium] VirorumEpistola hebraica, gracce et latins ad lo, Reuchlinum, etc., 1514 ; new ed. 1519. CHAPTER XXIX. THE EPISTLES OF OBSCURE MEN, AND THE TRIUMPH OF REUCHLIN. Among the writings of the Reuchlinists against the oppo- nents of the new learning, the Epistol CHAPTER XXX. ERASMUS AND THE GREEK TESTAMENT. The literature on Erasmus and his relation to the Reformation see in Schaff's Church History, Vol. VI., 399 and 421 sqq. What Reuchlin did for Hebrew learning, Erasmus, who was twelve years younger, accomplished for the more im- portant cause of Greek learning. He established the Greek pronunciation which goes by his name ; he edited and trans- lated Greek classics and Church fathers, and made them familiar to Northern scholars ; and he furnished the key to the critical study of the Greek Testament, the Magna Charta of Christianity. Desiderius Erasmus of Rotterdam (1466-1536) was the prince of humanists and the most influential and useful scholar of his age. He ruled with undisputed sway as mon- arch of the realm of letters in the sixteenth, as Petrarca did in the fourteenth, and Voltaire in the eighteenth century. He combined brilliant genius with classical and biblical learning, keen wit, and elegant taste. He rarely wrote a dull line. He travelled extensively in the Netherlands, France, England, Italy, Germany, and settled at last in Switzerland, where he felt most at home with his publishers and congenial scholars. He was a genuine cosmopolitan, and stood in correspondence with scholars of all countries, who consulted him as an oracle. His books had the popularity and circulation of modern novels, especially his Praise of Folly (1510), and his Familiar Colloquies (15 19).' Erasmus stands between the Middle Ages and modern times, and belongs as much to the history of Protestantism as to the history of Catholicism, yet wholly to neither. In 1 See an account of his works in Schaff's Church History, Vol. VI., 415-421. 128 Erasmus and the Greek Testament. 129 some respects he anticipated modern rationalism. He re- sembles Laurentius Valla, his forerunner in biblical and his- torical criticism. He was a leading factor in the emancipa- tion of the mind of Europe from the bondage of ignorance and superstition, and a lifeless formalism in religion. He came in direct contact with the Reformation, first in a friendly, then in a hostile spirit. " He laid the egg which Luther hatched " ; but he disowned the chicken. He desired a reformation by gradual education and gentle persuasion within the old Church ; but he disapproved of the violent measures of Luther and Zwingli, and feared that they would do much harm to the cause of learning and refined culture, which he had more at heart than religion. He never in- tended to separate from Rome any more than his English friends John Colet and Thomas More. He thought it better to endure corruption than to run the risk of schism and rebellion. He believed in gentle medicine, but shrank from the operations of surgery. Erasmus lived in scholarly simplicity, observed a strict diet, and carefully nursed his frail body ; but suffered never- theless much from the stone and gout. His moral character was above reproach, but he lacked courage, freely indulged in cutting satire, was morbidly sensitive and vain, and spoiled by flattery. He was ordained to the priesthood, and re- mained unmarried, but had no parish or public office, and preferred independence. He was offered a cardinal's hat, but declined it. He lived on the income from his books, which in those days was very small, and on presents and ir- regular pensions from patrons to whom he had dedicated his works. Since 1516 he had the title of counsellor of King Charles of Spain, with an annuity of four hundred guilders. He died without priest or sacrament, but invoking the mercy of Jesus, and was buried in the Protestant cathedral of Basel. He bequeathed his property of seven thousand ducats, precious gifts, and books to Professor Bomfacms Amerbach and other literary friends. 1 ' His will is preserved in the University Library of Basel, and has been pub- lished by Dr. Sieber, the librarian (Da* Testament des Erasmus vom *, Jan 9 130 The Renaissance. Erasmus was essentially a scholar and an illuminator within the Catholic Church. In this character his services were invaluable. He was a man of thought, not of action. The library was his sanctuary. He was ambitious of praise, but not of wealth or rank. He would rather work for a month at expounding St. Paul, he said, than waste a day in quarrelling. He loved the comfort of his quiet study and the company of his books above all the pleasures and treas- ures of the world. He promoted classical, patristic, and biblical studies, and made them serviceable to a revival of Christian life. His most important and useful work was the publication of the Greek Testament. The first edition appeared in 1516 at Basel, just one year before the publication of the Ninety- Five Theses of Luther at Wittenberg. It contains the Greek text in one column and his own Latin version in the other (224 folio pages), and his suggestive Annotations (672 pages in all). 1 It was hurried through the press in order to anticipate the publication of the New Testament of the Complutensian Poly- glot, which was actually printed in 1514, but did not appear till 1520 after receiving the papal imprimatur. Erasmus did not even take the trouble of copying the codices, but sent them, with numerous marginal corrections, to the printer.* 1527); together with the Inventarium iiber die Hinterlassenscha.fi des Erasmus vom 22 jfuli, 1536 (Basel, 1889). The inventory contains a list of his furniture, wardrobe, napkins, nightcaps, cushions, goblets, silver vessels, gold rings, and money (722 gold guilders, 900 gold crowns, etc.). His library is conditionally offered to " Herr von Lasko," the nobleman and Reformer of Poland, for 200 guilders f" soverr er die ivill haben" ). Erasmus left three wills, 1527, 1535, and 1536 ; the last is dated five months before his death and superseded the others. In the will of 1527 he had made provision for a complete edition of his works by Froben and directed that 1500 copies be printed, and that twenty, as ' ' author's copies, " be sent to the Archbishop of Canterbury, the Bishops of London, Lincoln, and Rochester, Sir Thomas More, and other friends. 1 See a fac-simile of the first and last pages in Schaff's Companion to the Greek Testament, third edition (1888), pp. 532 and 533. 1 " Prcecipitatum fuit verius quam editum," says Erasmus himself in the Preface. The second edition also contains several pages of errors, some of which have affected Luther's version. The third edition first inserts the spurious passage of the three heavenly witnesses (i John 5 : 7) from the Codex Montforiianus of the sixteenth century. Erasmus and the Greek Testament. 131 He used for the first edition three manuscripts of the twelfth century, which are still preserved in the University Library of Basel, and retain the marginal notes of Erasmus and the red lines of the printer to indicate the corresponding pages of the printed edition. The first manuscript contains the four Gospels, 1 the second the Acts and Epistles.' The manuscript of the Apocalypse was borrowed from Reuchlin, and disappeared, but was rediscovered, in 1861, by Dr. Delitzsch in the library of (Ettingen-Wallerstein at May- hingen, Bavaria. 3 It was defective on the last leaf, and supplemented by Erasmus, who translated the last six verses from the Latin Vulgate into indifferent Greek, for he was a better Latinist than Hellenist. Erasmus might have used an older and better MS. of the Gospels, an uncial of the eighth century, called E (Basileensis), which belonged to the Ordo Praedicatorum, and was transferred to the Uni- versity Library in 1559, but either was not known as to its value, or could not be secured for the purpose from the Dominicans. 4 Erasmus had a religious and practical as well as philologi- cal and critical interest in this edition of the New Testament in its original language. He expressed in the Preface the wish that the theologians might study Christianity from its fountain-head, and that the Scriptures might be translated into every tongue and put into the hands of every reader, to give strength and comfort to the husbandman at his plough, to the weaver at his shuttle, to the traveller on his journey. 1 Marked " Quatuor Evangelic Grace, Sec. XII. Cod. Praedicatorum (Grace. 7)-" s Marked " Acta el Epistolcz Catholics et Paulina, Sec. XII. Codex Amer- bach (Greece 9)." These two codices were rebound, and, in the process, some marginal corrections were cut off. 'See Franz Delitzsch, Handschriftliche Funde, Heft. I. Die Entstellungen des Textes des Apokalypse, nachgewiesen aus dem verhren geglaubten Codex Rettchlins. Leipzig, 1861. 4 The last is the conjecture of the present librarian, Dr. Sieber, who kindly showed me again all three MSS. on my last visit to Basel in July, 1890. Codex Basileensis was compared by Mill, Wetstein, Tischendorf (1843), MUller, Tregelles (1846), and Gregory (1882). See Gregory's Prolegomena N. T. Gr., I., 372 sqq. 132 The Renaissance. His notes and paraphrases on the New Testament (except the Apocalypse) were translated into English, and a copy given to every parish. Zwingli, an enthusiastic admirer of Erasmus, copied the Pauline Epistles from the first Greek edition with his own hand in the convent at Einsiedeln, in 1 5 16. From the second edition of 1519, Luther prepared his German translation in the Wartburg, 1522, and Tyndale his English version, 1525.' Thus the New Testament in the vernacular became the chief promoter of the Reformation in Germany, Switzerland, and Great Britain. 1 Erasmus published in all five editions of the Greek Testament 1516, 1519, 1522, 1527, and 1535. Besides, more than thirty unauthorized reprints ap- peared in Venice, Strassburg, Basel, Paris, etc. He made several improvements, but his entire apparatus never exceeded eight MSS. The fourth and the fifth editions are the basis of the textus receptus, which ruled supreme till the time of Lachmann and Tregelles. See Schaff, I.e., p. 231 sg. University of California SOUTHERN REGIONAL LIBRARY FACILITY 405 Hilgard Avenue, Los Angeles, CA 90024-1388 Return this material to the library from which it was borrowed. A 000 227 429 8