THE LIBRARY
OF
THE UNIVERSITY
OF CALIFORNIA
LOS ANGELES
GIFT OF
J. Lorenz Sporer
Engra v&t ty Joseph ro v/n -from, a 2
RENAISSANCE IN ITALY
ITALIAN LITERATURE
Jn Ctoo farts
BY
JOHN ADDINGTON SYMONDS
Author of
Studies of tkt Greek Petit," "Skttchet I'M Italy and Gr***," ctt.
"Questo provincia pare nata per risuscitare le cose morte.
come si ft visto della Poesia, dclla Pittura e delta Scultura."
MACH.: Arte delta Gutrra
PART I
NEW YORK
HENRY HOLT AND COMPANY
College
Library
PREFACE.
THIS work on the Renaissance in Italy, of which I now
give the last two volumes to the public, was designed
and executed on the plan of an essay or analytical
inquiry, rather than on that which is appropriate to a
continuous history. Each of its four parts the Age of
the Despots, the Revival of Learning, the Fine Arts, and
Italian Literature stood in my mind for a section ; each
chapter for a paragraph; each paragraph for a sentence.
At the same time, it was intended to make the first three
parts subsidiary and introductory to the fourth, for which
accordingly a wider space and a more minute method of
treatment were reserved. The first volume was meant to
explain the social and political conditions of Italy ; the
second to relate the exploration of the classical past which
those conditions necessitated, and which determined the
intellectual activity of the Italians ; the third to exhibit
the bias of this people toward figurative art, and briefly
to touch upon its various manifestations ; in order that,
finally, a correct point of view might be obtained for
judging of their national literature in its strength and
limitations. Literature must always prove the surest guide
to the investigator of a people's character at some decisive
vi PREFACE.
epoch. To literature, therefore, I felt that the plan of my
book allowed me to devote two volumes.
The subject of my inquiry rendered the method I have
described, not only natural but necessary. Yet there are
special disadvantages, to which progressive history is not
liable, in publishing a book of this sort by installments.
Readers of the earlier parts cannot form a just conception
of the scope and object of the whole. They cannot per-
ceive the relation of its several sections to each other, or
give the author credit for his exercise of judgment in the
marshaling and development of topics. They criticise each
portion independently, and desire a comprehensiveness in
parts which would have been injurious to the total scheme.
Furthermore, this kind of book sorely needs an Index, and
its plan renders a general Index, such as will be found at
the end of the last volume, more valuable than one made
separately for each part.
Of these disadvantages I have been rendered sensible
during the progress of publication through the last six
years. Yet I have gained some compensation in the fact
that the demand for a second edition of the first volume
has enabled me to make that portion of the work more
adequate.
With regard to authorities consulted in these two con-
cluding volumes, I have special pleasure in recording none
with only insignificant exceptions but Italian names.
The Italians have lately made vigorous strides in the direc-
tion of sound historical research and scientific literary
criticism. It is not too much to say that the labors of
PREFACE. Vll
this generation are rapidly creating a radical change in
the views hitherto accepted concerning the origins and
the development of Italian literature. Theories based on
rational investigation and philosophical study are displac-
ing the academical opinions of the last century. The
Italians are forming for themselves a just conception of
their past, at the same time that they are consolidating
their newly-gained political unity.
To dwell upon the works of Francesco de Sanctis and
Pasquale Villari is hardly necessary here. The former is
perhaps less illustrious by official dignity than by his elo-
quent Storia delta Letteratura Italiana. The latter has
gained European reputation as the biographer of Savon-
arola and Machiavelli, the historian of Florence at their
epoch. But English readers are probably not so familiar
with acute and accurate criticism of Giosue Carducci ;
with the erudition of Alessandro d' Ancona, and the volu-
minous history of the veteran Cesare Cantu ; with the
intelligence and facile pen of Adolfo Bartoli ; with the
philological researches of Napoleone Caix, and Francesco
Fiorentino's philosophical studies ; with Rajna's patient
labors in one branch of literary history, and Monaci's dis-
coveries in another; with the miscellaneous contributions
to scholarship and learning made by men like Comparetti,
Guasti, D' Ovidio, Rubieri, Milanesi, Campori, Passano,
Biagi, Pitre, Tigri, Vigo, Giudici, Fracassetti, Fanfani,
Bonghi, Grion, Mussafia, Morsolin, Del Lungo, Virgili.
While alluding thus briefly to students and writers, I
should be sorry to omit the names of those publishers
Viii PREFACE.
the Florentine Lemonnier, Barbara, Sansoni ; the Neapoli-
tan Morano ; the Palermitan Lauriel ; the Pisan Vico and
Nistri ; the Bolognese Romagnoli and Zanichelli through
whose spirited energy so many works of erudition have
seen the light.
I have mentioned names almost at random, passing
over (not through forgetfulness, but because space com-
pels me) many writers to whom I owe weighty obliga-
tions. The notes and references in these volumes will, I
trust, contain acknowledgment sufficient to atone for omis-
sions in this place.
Not a few of these distinguished men hold professorial
appointments ; and it is clear that they are forming stu-
dents in the great Italian cities, to continue and com-
plete their labors. Very much remains to be explored in
the field of Italian literary history. The future promises
a harvest of discovery scarcely less rich than that of the
last half-century. On many moot points we can at pres-
ent express but partial or provisional judgments. The
historian of the Renaissance must feel that his work,
when soundest, may be doomed to be superseded, and
when freshest, will ere long seem antiquated. So rapid
is the intellectual movement now taking place in Italy.
In conclusion, it remains for me to add that certain
passages in Chapter II. have been reproduced from an
article by me in the Quarterly Review, while some trans-
lations from Poliziano and Boiardo, together with portions
of the critical remarks upon those poets, were first pub-
lished, a few years since, in the Fortnightly Review. From
PREFACE. IX
the Fortnightly Review, again, I have extracted the trans-
lation of ten sonnets by Folgore da San Gemignano.
In quoting from Italian writers, in the course of this
literary history, I have found it best to follow no uniform
plan ; but, as each occasion demanded, I have given the
Italian text, or else an English version, or in some cases
both the original and a translation. To explain the mo-
tives for my decision in every particular, would involve
too much expenditure of space. I may, however, add that
the verse-translations in these volumes are all from my
pen, and have been made at various times for the special
purpose of this work.
DAVOS: March, 1881.
CONTENTS
OF
THE FIRST PART,
CHAPTER I.
THE ORIGINS.
PAGE
The period from 1300 to 1530 Its Division into Three Sub-Periods
Tardy Development of the Italian Language Latin and Roman
Memories Political Struggles and Legal Studies Conditions
of Latin Culture in Italy during the Middle Ages Want of
National Legends The Literatures of Langue d'Oc and Langue
d'Oi'l cultivated by Italians Franco-Italian Hybrid Provengal
Lyrics French Chansons de Geste Carolingian and Arthurian
Romances Formation of Italian Dialects Sicilian School of
Court Poets Frederick II. Problem of the Lingua Aulica
Forms of Poetry and Meters fixed General Character of the
Sicilian Style Rustic Latin and Modern Italian Superiority of
Tuscan The De Eloquio Plebeian Literature Moral Works
in Rhyme Emergence of Prose in the Thirteenth Century
Political Songs Popular Lyrics Religious Hymns Process of
Tuscanization Transference of the Literary Center from Sicily
to Tuscany Guittone of Arezzo Bolognese School Guide Gui-
nicelli King Enzio's Envoy to Tuscany Florentine Companies
of Pleasure Folgore de San Gemignano The Guelf City . . I
CHAPTER II.
THE TRIUMVIRATE.
Chivalrous Poetry Ideal of Chivalrous Love Bolognese Erudi-
tion New Meaning given to the Ideal Metaphysics of the
Florentine School of Lyrists Guido Cavalcanti Philosophical
Poems Popular Songs Cino of Pistoja Dante's Vita Nuova
Beatrice in the Convito and the Paradiso The Preparation
for the Divine Comedy in Literature Allegory The Divine
xi
Xll CONTENTS.
MM
Comedy Petrarch's Position in Life His Conception of Hu-
manism Conception of Italy His Treatment of Chivalrous
Love Beatrice and Laura The Canzoniere Boccaccio, the
Florentine Bourgeois His Point of View His Abandonment
of the Chivalrous Standpoint His Devotion to Art Antici-
pates the Renaissance The Decameron Commedia Umana
Precursors of Boccaccio Novels Carmina Vagorum Plan of
the Book Its Moral Character The Visione Amoroso, Boccac-
cio's Descriptions The Teseide The Rime The Filocopo The
Filostrato The Ameto, Fiammetta, Ntnfale, Corbaccio Prose
before Boccaccio Fioretti di San Francesco and Decameron
compared Influence of Boccaccio over the Prose Style of the
Renaissance His Death Close of the Fourteenth Century
Sacchetti's Lament . . . 59
CHAPTER III.
THE TRANSITION.
The Church, Chivalry, the Nation The National Element in Ital-
ian Literature Florence Italy between 1373 and 1490 Re-
nascent Nationality Absorption in Scholarship Vernacular
Literature follows an Obscure Course Final Junction of the
Humanistic and Popular Currents Renascence of Italian The
Italian Temperament Importance of the Quattrocento Sac-
chetti's Novels Ser Giovanni's Pecorone Sacchetti's and Ser
Giovanni's Poetry Lyrics of the Villa and the Piazza Nicol6
Soldanieri Alesso Donati His Realistic Poems Followers of
Dante and Petrarch Political Poetry of the Guelfs and Ghibel-
lines Fazio degli Uberti Saviozzo da Siena Elegies on Dante
Sacchetti's Guelf Poems Advent of the Bourgeoisie Discour-
agement of the Age Fazio's Dittamondo Rome and Alvernia
Frezzi's Quadrireg-z'oDantesque Imitation Blending of Clas-
sical and Medieval Motives Matteo Palmieri's Citta di Vita
The Fate of Terza Rima Catherine of Siena Her Letters S.
Bernardino's Sermons Salutati's Letters Alessandra degli
Strozzi Florentine's Annalists Giov. Cavalcanti Corio's His-
tory of Milan Matarazzo's Chronicle of Perugia Masuccio and
his Novellino His Style and Genius Alberti Born in Exile
His Feeling for Italian Enthusiasm for the Roman Past The
Treatise on the Family Its Plan Digression on the Problem of
its Authorship Pandolfini or Alberti The Deiciarchia Tran-
quillita delV Animo Teogenio Alberti 's Religion Dedication
of the Treatise on Painting Minor Works in Prose on Love
CONTENTS. Xlll
PACK
Ecatomfila, Amz'rta, Deifiria, etc. Misogynism Novel of ippo-
lito and Leonora Alberti's Poetry Review of Alberti's Char-
acter and his Relation to the Age Francesco Colonna The
Hypnerotomachia Poltphili Its Style Its Importance as a
Work of the Transition A Romance of Art, Love, Humanism
The Allegory Polia Antiquity Relation of this Book to
Boccaccio and Valla It Foreshadows the Renaissance . .139
CHAPTER IV.
POPULAR SECULAR POETRY.
Separation between Cultivated Persons and the People Italian de-
spised by the Learned Contempt for Vernacular Literature
The Certamen Coronarium Literature of Instruction for the
Proletariate Growth of Italian Prose Abundance of Popular
Poetry The People in the Quattrocento take the Lead Quali-
ties of Italian Genius Arthurian and Carolingian Romances /
Realt di Francia Andrea of Berberino and his Works Numer-
ous Romances in Prose and Verse Positive Spirit Versified
Tales from Boccaccio Popular Legends Ginevra degli Almieri
Novel of // Grasso Histories in Verse Lamenti The Poets
of flfe People Cantatort in Banca Antonio Pucci His Ser-
mintesi Political Songs Satires Burchiello His Life and
Writings Dance-Songs Derived from Cultivated Literature, or
produced by the People Poliziano Love-Songs Rispetti and
Stornelli The Special Meaning of Strambottt Diffusion of this
Poetry over Italy Its Permanence Question of its Original
Home Intercommunication and Exchange of Dialects Incate-
nature and Rappresaglie Traveling in Medieval Italy The
Subject-Matter of this Poetry Deficiency in Ballad Elements
Canti Monferrini The Ballad of L . Awelenato and Lord
Ronald 234
CHAPTER V.
POPULAR RELIGIOUS POETRY.
The Thirteenth Century Outburst of Flagellant Fanaticism The
Battuti, Biancht, Discipltnati Acquire the name of Laudesi
Jacopone da Todi His Life His Hymns The Corrotto Fran-
ciscan Poetry Tresatti's Collection Grades of Spiritual Ecstasy
Lauds of the Confraternities Benivieni Feo Belcari and the
Florentine Hymn-writers Relation to Secular Dance-songs
' Origins of the Theater Italy had hardly any true Miracle Plays
Umbrian Divozioni The Laud becomes Dramatic Passion
XIV CONTENTS.
PAG*
Plays Medieval Properties The Stage in Church or in the
Oratory The Sacra Rappresentazione A Florentine Species
Fraternities for Boys Names of the Festa Theory of its Origin
Shows in Medieval Italy Pageants of S. John's Day at Flor-
ence Their Machinery Florentine Ingegnieri Forty-three
Plays in D' Ancona's Collection Their Authors The Prodigal
Son Elements of Farce Interludes and Music Three Classes
of Sacre Rappresentazioni Biblical Subjects Legends of Saints
Popular Novelle Conversion of the Magdalen Analysis of
Plays , 279
CHAPTER VI.
LORENZO DE' MEDICI AND POLIZIANO.
Period from 1470 to 1530 Methods of treating it By Chronology
By Places By Subjects Renascence of Italian At Florence,
Ferrara, Naples The New Italy Forty Years of Peace Lorenzo
de' Medici His Admiration for and Judgment of Italian Poetry
His Privileges as a Patron His Rime The Death of Simo-
netta Lucrezia Donati Lorenzo's Descriptive Power The
Selve The Ambra La Nencia I Beoni His Sacred Poems
Carnival and Dance Songs Carri and Trionfi Savonarola The
Mask of Penitence Leo X. in Florence, 1513 Pageant of the
Golden Age Angelo Poliziano His Place in Italian Literature
Le Stanze Treatment of the Octave Stanza Court Poetry
Mechanism and Adornment The Orfeo Orpheus, the Ideal of
the Cinque Cento Its Dramatic Qualities Chorus of Maenads
Poliziano's Love Poems Rispetti Florentine Love La Bella
Simonetta Study and Country Life 359
CHAPTER VII.
PULCI AND BOIARDO.
The Romantic Epic Its Plebeian Origin The Popular Poet's Stand-
point The Pulci Family The Carolingian Cycle Turpin
Chanson de Roland Historical Basis Growth of the Myth of
Roland Causes of its Popularity in Italy Burlesque Elements
The Morgante Maggiore Adventures in Paynimry Ronces-
valles Episodes introduced by the Poet Sources in Older Poems
The Treason of Gano Pulci's Characters His Artistic Pur-
pose His Levity and Humor Margutte Astarotte Pulci's
bourgeois Spirit Boiardo His Life Feudalism in Italy Boi-
ardo's Humor His Enthusiasm for Knighthood His Relation
CONTENTS. XV
PAGE
to Renaissance Art Plot of the Orlando Innamorato Angelica
Mechanism of the Poem Creation of Characters Orlando
and Rinaldo Ruggiero Lesser Heroes The Women Love
Friendship Courtesy Orlando and Agricane at Albracca
Natural Delineation of Passions Speed of Narration Style ofc,
Versification Classical and Medieval Legends The Punishment
of Rinaldo The Tale of Narcissus Treatment of Mythology
Treatment of Magic Fate of the Orlando Innamorato . . 425
CHAPTER VIII.
ARIOSTO.
Ancestry and Birth of Ariosto His Education His Father's Death
Life at Reggio Enters Ippolito d' Este's Service Character
of the Cardinal Court Life Composition and Publication of the
Furioso Quiet Life at Ferrara Comedies Governorship of
Garfagnana His Son Virginio Last Eight Years Death
Character and Habits The Satires Latin Elegies and Lyrics
Analysis of the Satires Ippolito's Service Choice of a Wife
Life at Court and Place-hunting Miseries at Garfagnana Vir-
ginio's Education Autobiographical and Satirical Elements
Ariosto's Philosophy of Life Minor Poems Alessandra Benucci
Ovidian Elegies Madrigals and Sonnets Ariosto's Concep-
tion of Love 493
APPENDICES.
No. I. Note on Italian Heroic Verse 523
No. II. Ten Sonnets translated from Folgore da San Gemignano . 526
No. III. Translations from Alesso Donati 531
No. IV. Jacopone's " Presepio," " Corrotto," and " Cantico dell'
Amore Superardente," translated into English Verse . 532
No. V. Passages translated from the " Morgante Maggiore " of
Pulci 543
No. VI. Translations of Elegiac Verses by Girolamo Benivieni and
Michelangelo Buonarroti 561
RENAISSANCE IN ITALY.
CHAPTER I.
THE ORIGINS.
The period from 130010 1530115 Division into Three Sub-Periods
Tardy Development of the Italian Language Latin and Roman
Memories Political Struggles and Legal Studies Conditions of
Latin Culture in Italy during the Middle Ages Want of National
Legends The Literatures of Langue d'Oc and Langue d'Oil cul-
tivated by Italians Franco-Italian Hybrid Provencal Lyrics French
Chansons de Geste Carolingian and Arthurian Romances Forma-
tion of Italian Dialects Sicilian School of Court Poets Frederick
II. Problem of the Lingua Autica Forms of Poetry and Meters
fixed General Character of the Sicilian Style Rustic Latin and
Modern Italian Superiority of Tuscan The De Eloquio Plebeian
Literature Moral Works in Rhyme Emergence of Prose in the
Thirteenth Century Political Songs Popular Lyrics Religious
Hymns Process of Tuscanization Transference of the Literary
Center from Sicily to Tuscany Guittone of Arezzo Bolognese
School Guido Guinicelli King Enzio's Envoy to Tuscany Floren-
tine Companies of Pleasure Folgore da San Gemignano The Guelf
City.
BETWEEN 1300, the date of Dante's vision, and 1530,
the date of the fall of Florence, the greatest work of
the Italians in art and literature was accomplished.
These two hundred and thirty years may be divided
into three nearly equal periods. The first ends with
Boccaccio's death in 1375. The second lasts until
the birth of Lorenzo de' Medici in 1448. The third
embraces the golden age of the Renaissance. In
the first period Italian literature was formed. In
2 RENAISSANCE IN ITALY.
the second intervened the studies of the humanists'
In the third, these studies were carried over to the
profit of the mother tongue. The first period ex-
tends over seventy-five years ; the second over
seventy-three ; the third over eighty-two. With the
first date, 1300, we may connect the jubilee of Boni-
face and the translation of the Papal See to Avignon
(1304) ; with the second, 1375, the formation of the
Albizzi oligarchy in Florence (1381) ; with the third,
1448, the capture of Constantinople (1453) ; and
with the fourth, 1530, the death of Ariosto (1533)
and the new direction given to the Papal policy by
the Sack of Rome (1527).
The chronological limits assigned to the Italian
Renaissance in the first volume of this work would
confine the history of literature to about eighty years
between 1453 and 1527 ; and it will be seen by refer-
ence to the foregoing paragraph that it would not
be impossible to isolate that span of time. In deal-
ing with Renaissance literature, it so happens that
strict boundaries can be better observed than in the
case of politics, fine arts, or learning. Yet to adhere
to this section of literary history without adverting
to the antecedent periods, would be to break the
chain of national development, which in the evolu-
tion of Italian language is even more important
than in any other branch of culture. If the renas-
cence of the arts must be traced from Cimabue and
Pisano, the spirit of the race, as it expressed itself
in modern speech, demands a still more retrogressive
survey, in order to render the account of its ultimate
results intelligible.
THREE PERIODS OF LITERATURE. 3
The first and most brilliant age of Italian literature
ended with Boccaccio, who traced the lines on which
the future labors of the nation were conducted. It
was succeeded by nearly a century of Greek and Latin
scholarship. To study the masterpieces of Dante and
Petrarch, or to practice their language, was thought
beneath the dignity of men like Valla, Poggio, or
Pontano. But toward the close of the fifteenth cen-
tury, chiefly through the influence of Lorenzo de'
Medici and his courtiers, a strong interest in the
mother-tongue revived. Therefore the vernacular
literature of the Renaissance, as compared with that of
the expiring middle ages, was itself a renascence or re-
vival. It reverted to the models furnished by Dante,
Petrarch, and Boccaccio, and combined them with the
classics, which had for so long a while eclipsed their
fame. Before proceeding to trace the course of the re-
vival, which forms the special subject of these volumes,
it will be needful to review the literature of the four-
teenth century, and to show under what forms that
literature survived among the people during the
classical enthusiasm of the fifteenth century. Only
by this antecedent investigation can the new direction
taken by the genius of the combined Italian nation,
after the decline of scholarship, be understood. Thus
the three sub-periods of the two hundred and thirty
years above described may be severally named the me-
dieval, the humanistic, and the renascent. To demon-
strate their connection and final explication is my pur-
pose in this last section of my work on the Renaissance.
In the development of a modern language Italy
showed less precocity than other European nations.
4 RENAISSANCE IN ITAL Y.
The causes of this tardiness are not far to seek.
Latin, the universal tongue of medieval culture, lay
closer to the dialects of the peninsula than to the
native speech of Celtic and Teutonic races, for whom
the official language of the Empire and the Church
always exhibited a foreign character. In Italy the
ancient speech of culture was at home : and nothing
had happened to weaken its supremacy. The literary
needs of the Italians were satisfied with Latin ; nor
did the genius of the new people make a vigorous
effort to fashion for itself a vehicle of utterance.
Traditions of Roman education lingered in the
Lombard cities, which boasted of secular schools,
where grammarians and rhetoricians taught their art
according to antique method, long after the culture
of the North had passed into the hands of ecclesias-
tics. 1 When Charlemagne sought to resuscitate
learning, he had recourse to these Italian teachers ;
and the importance of the distinction between
Italians and Franks or Germans, in this respect, was
felt so late as the eleventh century. Some verses in
the Panegyric addressed by Wippo to the Emperor
Henry III. brings the case so vividly before us that
it may be worth while to transcribe them here 8 :
Tune fac edictum per terram Teutonicorum,
Quilibet ut dives sibi natos instruat omnes.
1 See Giesebrecht, De Litter arum studiis apud Italos primtt medti
cevi seecuh's, Berolini, 1845, p. 15.
1 See Giesebrecht, op. cit. p. 19. Wippo recommends the Emperor
to compel his subjects to educate their sons in letters and law. tt was
by such studies that ancient Rome acquired her greatness. In Italy at
the present time, he says, all boys pass from the games of childhood into
schools. It is only the Teutons who think it idle or disgraceful for a
man to study unless he be intended for a clerical career.
ROMAN BIAS OF THE ITALIANS. 5
Litterulis, legemque suam persuadeat illis,
Ut, cum principibus placitandi venerit usus,
Quisque suis libris exemplum proferat illis.
Moribus his dudum vivebat Roma decenter:
His studiis tantos potuit vincire tyrannos.
Hoc servant Itali post prima crepundia cuncti;
Et sudare scholis mandatur tota juventus.
Solis Teutonicis vacuum vel turpe videtur,
Ut doceant aliquem nisi clericus accipiatur.
While the Italians thus continued the rhetorical and
legal studies of the ancients, they did not forget that
they were representatives and descendants of the
Romans. The Republic and the Empire were for
them the two most glorious epochs of their own his-
tory; and any attempt which they made to revive
either literature or art, was imitative of the past. They
were not in the position to take a new departure. No
popular epic, like the Niebelungen of the Teuton, the
Arthurian legend of the Celt, the Song of Roland of
the Frank, or the Spanish Cid, could have sprung
up on Italian soil. The material was wanting to a
race that knew its own antiquity. Even when an
Italian undertook a digest of the Tale of Troy or of
the Life of Alexander, he converted the metrical
romances of the middle ages into prose, obeying an
instinct which led him to regard the classical past
as part of his own history. 1 In like manner, the
recollection of a previous municipal organization in
the communes, together with the growing ideal of a
Roman Empire, which should restore Italy to her
place of sovereignty among the nations, proved seri-
ous obstacles to the unification of the people. We
1 See Adolf o Bartoli, Sloria del/a Letter atur a Italiana, vol. i. pp.
142-158, and p. 167, on Guido delle Colonne and Qualichino da Spoleto.
6 RENAISSANCE IN ITALY.
have already seen that this reversion of the popular
imagination to Rome may be reckoned among the
reasons why the victory of Legnano and the Peace of
Constance were comparatively fruitless. 1 Politically,
socially, and intellectually, the Italians persisted in a
dream of their Latin destiny, long after the feasibility
of realizing that vision had been destroyed, and when
the modern era had already formed itself upon a new
type in the federation of the younger races.
Of hardly less importance, as negative influences,
were the failure of feudalism to take firm hold upon
Italian soil, and the defect of its ideal, chivalry. The
literature of trouveres, troubadours, and minne-
singers grew up and flourished in the castles of the
North ; nor was it until the Italians, under the sway
of the Hohenstauffen princes, possessed something
analogous to a Provengal Court, that the right condi-
tions for the development of literary art in the ver-
nacular were attained. From this point of view
Dante's phrase of lingua aulica,.\.Q express the dialect
of culture, is both scientific and significant. It will
further appear in the course of this chapter that the
earliest dawn of Italian literature can be traced to those
minor Courts of Piedmont and the Trevisian Marches,
where the people borrowed the forms of feudal society
more sympathetically than elsewhere in Italy.
It must moreover be remembered that during the
eleventh and twelfth centuries the force of the Italian
people was concentrated upon two great political
struggles, the contest of the Church with the Empire,
and the War of Lombard Independence. In the
1 See above, vol. \. Age of the Despots, 2nd ed. chap. 2.
TARDY GROWTH OF ITALIAN LANGUAGE. ^
prosecution of these quarrels, the Italians lost sight
of letters, art, theology. They became a race of
statesmen and jurists. Their greatest divines and
metaphysicians wandered northward into France
and England. Their most favored university, that
of Bologna, acquired a world-famed reputation as a
school of jurisprudence. Legal studies and political
activity occupied the attention of their ablest men.
It would be difficult to overrate the magnitude of
the work done during these two centuries. In the
course of them, the Italians gave final form to the
organism of the Papacy, which must be regarded as
a product of their constructive genius. They de-
veloped Republican governments of differing types
in each of their great cities, and made, for the first
time since the foundation of the Empire, the name
of People sovereign. They resuscitated Roman law,
and reorganized the commerce of the Mediterranean.
Remaining loyal to the Empire as an idea, they
shook off the yoke of the German Csesars ; and
while the Papacy was their own handiwork, they,
alone of European nations, viewed it politically rather
than religiously, and so weakened it as to prepare
the way for the Babylonian captivity at Avignon.
Thus, through the people's familiarity with Latin;
through the survival of Roman grammar schools and
the memory of Roman local institutions ; through a
paramount and all-pervading enthusiasm for the
Roman past ; through the lack of new legendary
and epical material ; through the failure of feudalism,
and through the political ferment attending on the
Wars of Investment and Independence, the Italians
RENAISSANCE IN ITALY.
were slow to produce a modern language and a litera-
ture of modern type. They came late into the field ;
and when they took their place at last, their language
presented a striking parallel to their political condi-
tion. As they failed to acquire a solid nationality,
but remained split up into petty States, united by a
Pan-Italic sentiment ; so they failed to form a com-
mon speech. The written Italian of the future was
used in its integrity by no one province ; each district
clinging to its dialect with obstinate pride. 1 Yet,
though the race was tardy in literary development,
and though the tongue of Ariosto has never become
so thoroughly Italian as that of Shakspere is English
or that of Moliere is French ; still, on their first ap-
pearance, the Italian masters proved themselves at
once capable of work maturer and more monumental
than any which had been produced in modern Europe.
Their education during two centuries of strife was
not without effect. The conditions of burghership
in their free communes, the stirring of their political
energies, the liberty of their popolo, and the keen
sense of reality developed by their legal studies, pre-
pared men like Dante and Guido Cavalcanti for
solving the problems of art in a resolute, mature and
manly spirit, fully conscious of the aim before them,
and self-possessed in the assurance of adult faculties.
In the first, or, as it may be termed, the Latin
1 The Italians did not even begin to reflect upon their lingua volgare
until the special characters and temperaments of their chief States had
been fixed and formed. In other words, their social and political develop-
ment far anticipated their literary evolution. There remained no center
from which the vulgar tongue could radiate, absorbing local dialects.
Each State was itself a center, perpetuating dialect.
MEDIEVAL ITALIAN SCHOLARSHIP. 9
period of medieval culture, there was not much to dis-
tinguish the Italians from the rest of Europe. Those
Lombard schools, of which mention has already
been made, did indeed maintain the traditions of
decadent classical education more alive than among
the peoples of the North. Better Latin, and particu-
larly more fluent Latin verse, was written during the
dark ages in Italy than elsewhere. 1 Still it does not
appear that the whole credit of medieval Latin
hymnology, and of its curious counterpart, the songs
of the wandering students, should be attributed to the
Italians. While we can refer the Dies Ira, Lauda
Sion, Pange Lingua and Stabat Mater with tolerable
certainty to Italian poets ; while there is abundant
internal evidence to prove that some of the best
Carmina Burana were composed in Italy and under
Italian influences; yet Paris, the focus of theological
and ecclesiastical learning, as Bologna was the center
of legal studies, must be regarded as the headquarters
of that literary movement which gave the rhyming
hexameters of Bernard of Morlas and the lyrics of the
Goliardi to Europe. 2 It seems clear that we cannot
ascribe to the Italians of the twelfth and thirteenth
centuries any superiority in the use of Latin over the
school of France. Their previous vantage-ground
had been lost in the political distractions of their
country. At the same time, they were the first jurists
1 See Du MeVil, Potsies Populaires Latines anterteurts au douzieme
Sihle, Paris, 1843.
1 Regarding the authorship of Latin hymns see the notes in Mone's
Hymni Latzni Medii sEvi, Friburgi Brisgoviae, 1853, 3 vols. For the
French origin of Carmina Burana see Die lateinischen Vagantenlieder
der Mittelalters, von Oscar Hubatsch, Gorlitz, 1870.
10 RENAISSANCE IN ITALY.
and the hardiest, if not the most philosophical, free-
thinkers of Europe.
This is a point which demands at least a passing
notice. Their practical studies, and the example of
an emperor at war with Christendom, helped to form
a sect of epicureans in Italy, for whom nothing sanc-
tioned by ecclesiastical authority was sacred. To
these pioneers of modern incredulity Dante assigned
not the least striking Cantos of the Inferno. Their
appearance in the thirteenth century, during the
ascendancy of Latin culture, before the people had
acquired a language, is one of the first manifestations
of a national bias toward positive modes of thought
and feeling, which we recognize alike in Boccaccio
and Ariosto, Machiavelli and Guicciardini, Pompon-
azzi and the speculators of the South Italian School.
It was the quality, in fact, which fitted the Italians for
their work in the Renaissance. As metaphysicians,
in the stricter sense of that word, they have been
surpassed by Northern races. Their religious sense
has never been so vivid, nor their opposition to
established creeds so earnest. But throughout
modern history their great men have manifested a
practical and negative good sense, worldly in its
moral tone, impervious to pietistic influences, antago-
nistic to mysticism, contented with concrete reality,
which has distinguished them from the more fervent,
boyish, sanguine, and imaginative enthusiasts of
Northern Europe. We are tempted to speculate
whether, as they were the heirs of ancient civility
and grew up among the ruins of Roman greatness,
so they were born spiritually old and disillusioned.
ROMAN MEMORIES. II
Another point which distinguished the Italians in
this Latin period of their literature, was the absence of
the legendary or myth-making faculty. It is not
merely that they formed no epic, and gave birth to no
great Saga; but they accepted the fabulous matter,
transmitted to them from other nations, in a prosaic
and positive spirit. This does not imply that they
exercised a critical faculty, or passed judgment on the
products of the medieval fancy. On the contrary,
they took legend for fact, and treated it as the
material of history. Hector, Alexander, and Attila
were stripped of their romantic environments, and pre-
sented in the cold prose of a digest, as persons whose acts
could be sententiously narrated. This attitude of the
Italians toward the Saga is by no means insignificant.
When their poets came to treat Arthurian or Carol-
ingian fables in the epics of Orlando, they appre-
hended them in the same positive spirit, adding ele-
ments of irony and satire.
For the rest, the Italians shared with other nations
the common stock of medieval literature Chronicles,
Encyclopaedias, Epitomes, Moralizations, Histories in
verse, Rhetorical Summaries, and prose abstracts of
Universal History the meager debris and detritus of
the huge moraines carried down by extinct classic
glaciers. It is not needful to dwell upon this aspect
of the national culture, since it presents no specific
features. What is most to our purpose, is to note
the affectionate remembrance of Rome and Roman
worthies, which endured in each great town. The
people, as distinguished from the feudal nobility, were
and ever felt themselves to be the heirs of the old
12 RENAISSANCE IN ITALY.
Roman population. Therefore the soldiers on guard
against the Huns at Modena in 924, sang in their
barbarous Latin verse of Hector and the Capitol 1 :
Dum Hector vigil exstitit in TroYa,
Non earn cepit fraudulenta Gratia:
Prima quiete dormiente TroYa,
Laxavit Sinon fallax claustra perfida . . .
Vigili voce avis anser Candida
Fugavit Gallos ex arce Romulea
Pro qua virtute facta est argentea,
Et a Romanis adorata ut Dea.
The Tuscan women told tales of Troy and Catiline
and Julius Caesar 2 :
L'altra, traendo alia rocca la chioma,
Favoleggiava con la sua famiglia
De* Troiani e di Fiesole e di Roma.
A rhyming chronicler of Pisa compared the battles
of the burghers against the Saracens with the Punic
wars. The tomb of Virgil at Naples was an object
for pilgrimage, and one of the few spots round which
a group of local legends clustered. The memory of
Livy added luster to Padua, and Mussato boasted that
her walls, like those of Troy, her mother-city, were
sacrosanct. The memory of the Plinies ennobled
Como, that of Ovid gave glory to Sulmona, that of
Tully to Arpino. Florence clung to the mutilated
statue of Mars upon her bridge with almost super-
stitious reverence, as proof of Roman origin; while Siena
adopted for her ensign the she-wolf and the Roman
twins. Pagan customs survived, and were jealously
maintained in the central and southern provinces; and
the name of the Republic sufficed to stir Arnold's
i Du Meril, op. tit. p. 268. Dante, Ptiradiso, xv.
FRENCH AND PRC VENIAL LITERATURE. 13
revolution in Rome, long before the days of Rienzi.
To the mighty German potentate, King Frederick
Barbarossa, attended with his Northern chivalry, a
handful of Romans dared to say: "Thou wast a
stranger; I, the City, gave thee civic rights. Thou
earnest from transalpine regions; I have conferred on
thee the principality." l It would be easy to multiply
these instances. Enough, however, has been said to
show that through the gloom of medieval history, be-
fore humanism had begun to dawn, and while the other
nations were creating legends and popular epics, Italy
maintained a dim but tenacious sense of her Roman
past. This consciousness has here to be insisted on,
not merely because it stood in the way of mythopceic
activity, but because it found full and proper satis-
faction in that Revival of Learning which decided the
Renaissance.
While the Italians were fighting the Wars of
Investiture and Independence, two literatures had
arisen in the country which we now call France. Two
languages, the langue (foe and the langue (toll, gave
birth to two separate species of poetry. The master-
product of the latter was the Song of Roland, which,
together with the after-birth of Arthurian romance,
flooded Europe with narratives, embodying in a more
or less epical form the ideals, enthusiasms, and social
creed of Chivalry. The former, cultivated in the
southern provinces that border on the Mediterranean,
yielded a refined and courtly fashion of lyrical verse,
which took the form of love-songs, battle-songs, and
satires, and which is now known as Provencal litera-
See Age of the Despots, p. 65.
14 RENAISSANCE IN ITALY.
ture. The influence of feudal culture, communicated
through these two distinct but closely connected
channels, was soon felt in Italy. The second phase of
Italian development has been called Lombard, because
it was chiefly in the north of the peninsula that the
motive force derived from France was active. Yet if
we regard the matter of this new literature, rather
than its geographical distribution, we shall more
correctly designate it by the title Franco-Italian. In
the first or Latin period, the Italians used an ancient
language. They now adopted not only the forms but
also the speech of the people from whom they received
their literary impulse. It is probable that the Lombard
dialects were still too rough to be accommodated to
the new French style. The cultivated classes were
familiar with Latin, and had felt no need of raising the
vernacular above the bare necessities of intercourse.
But the superior social development of the French
courts and castles must be reckoned the main reason
why their language was acclimatized in Italy together
with their literature. Just as the Germans before the
age of Herder adopted polite culture, together with the
French tongue, ready-made from France, so now the
Lombard nobles, bordering by the Riviera upon
Provence, borrowed poetry, together with its diction,
from the valley of the Rhone. Passing along the
Genoese coast, crossing the Cottian Alps, and following
the valley of the Po, the languages of France and
Provence diffused themselves throughout the North of
Italy. With the La/ngne d'oil came the Chansons-de
.Geste of the Carolingian Cycle and the romances of
the Arthurian legend. With the langue cToc came
FRANCO-ITALIAN PERIOD. 15
the various forms of troubadour lyrir. Without dis-
placing the local dialects, these imported languages
were used and spoken purely by the nobles; while a
hybrid, known as franco- Italian r sprang up for the
common people who listened to the tales of Roland
and Rinaldo on the market-place. The district in
which the whole mass of this foreign literature seems
to have flourished most at first, was the Trevisan
March, stretching from the Adige, along the Po,
beyond the Brenta and past Venice, to the base of the
Friulian Alps. The Marches of Treviso were long
known as La Marca Amoroso, or Gioiosa, epithets
which strongly recall the Provencal phrases of Joie
and Gai Saber, and which are familiar to English
readers of Sir Thomas Mallory in the name of Lance-
lot's castle, Joyous Gard. Exactly to define the
period of Trevisan culture would be difficult. It is
probable that it began to flourish about the end of the
twelfth, and declined in the middle of the thirteenth
century. Dante alludes to it in a famous- passage of
the furgatory^'.
In sul paese ch' Adige e Po riga,
Solea valore e cortesia trovarsi
Prima che Federigo avesse briga.
There are many traces of advanced French
civilization in this district, among which may be
mentioned the exhibition of Miracle Plays upon the
French type at Civitale in the years 1298 and 1304,
and the Castello d" Amore at Treviso described by
Rolandini in the year 1214. Yet, though the Tre-
visan Marches were the nucleus of this Gallicizing
i xvl. 115.
1 6 RENAISSANCE IN ITALY.
fashion, the use of French and Provencal spread widely
through the North and down into the center of Italy.
Numerous manuscripts in the langue d'cftl attest the
popularity of the Arthurian romances throughout
Lombardy, and we know that in Umbria S. Francis
first composed poetry in French. 1 It was in French,
again, that Brunette Latini wrote his Tesoro. So late
as the middle of the fourteenth century this habit had
not died out. Dante in the Convito thought it neces-
sary to stigmatize " those men of perverse mind in
Italy who commend the vulgar tongue of foreigners
and depreciate their own."
We have seen that the language and the matter
of this imported literature were twofold; and we can
distinguish two distinct currents, after its reception
into Italy. The Provencal lyric, as was natural,
attracted the attention of the nobles; and since
feudalism had a stronger hold upon the valley of the
Po than on any other district, Lombardy became
the chief home of this poetry. Not to mention the
numerous Provencal singers who sought fortune and
adventure in northern Italy, about twenty-five Italians,
using the langue d'oc, may be numbered between the
Marchese Alberto Malaspina, who held Lunigiana about
1 204, and the Maestro Ferrara, who lived at the Court
of Azzo VII. of Este. 2 These were for the most part
courtiers and imperial feudatories; and only two were
Tuscans. The person of one of them, Sordello, is
familiar to every reader of the Purgatory.
' See D'Ancona, Poesia Popolart, p. II, note.
* See Carducci, Dello Svolgimento delta Letteratura National*,
p. 29.
ARTHURIAN AND CAROLINGIAN ROMANCE, i;
The second tide of influence passed from North-
ern France together with the epics of chivalry. But its
operation was not so simple as that of the Provengal lyric.
We can trace for instance a marked difference between
the effect produced by the Chansons de Geste and that
of the Arthurian tales. The latter seem to have been
appropriated by the nobles, while the former found
acceptance with the people. Nor was this unnatural.
At the opening of the twelfth century the Carolingian
Cycle had begun to lose its vogue among the polished
aristocracy of France. That uncompromising history
of warfare hardly suited a society which had developed
the courtesy and the romance of chivalry. It repre-
sented the manners of an antecedent age of feudalism.
Therefore the tales of the Round Table arose to
satisfy the needs of knights and ladies, whose thoughts
were turned to love, the chase, the tournament, and
errantry. The Arthurian myth idealized their newer
and more refined type of feudal civility. It was upon
the material of this romantic Epic that the nobles of
North Italy fastened with the greatest eagerness. No
one has forgotten how the tragedy of Lancelot and
Guinevere proved, in a later day, the ruin of
Francesca and her lover. 1 The people, on the other
hand, took livelier interest in the songs of Roland and
Charlemagne. The Chansons de Geste formed the
stock in trade of those Cantatores Francigenarum>
who crowded the streets and squares of Lombard
cities. 2 The exchange of courtesies and refined send-
1 Romagnoli has reprinted some specimens of the fllustre et Farnosa
Historia di Lancillotlo del Lago, Bologna, 1862.
1 Muratori in Antiq. Ital. Diss. xxx. p. 351, quotes a decree of the
Bolognese Commune, dated 1288, to the effect that Cantatores Francige
1 8 RENAISSANCE IN ITALY.
ments between a Tristram and Iseult or a Lancelot
and Guinevere must naturally have been less attractive
to a rude populace than narratives of battle with the
Infidel, and Roland's horn, and Gano's treason, and
Rinaldo's quarrels with his liege. In the Arthurian
Cycle names and places alike Avalon, Camelot,
Winchester, Gawain, Galahaut were distant and
ill-adapted to Italian ears. 1 The whole tissue of the
romance, moreover, was imaginative. The Carol-
ingian Cycle, on the contrary, introduced personages
with a good right to be considered historical, and
dwelt upon familiar names and traditional ideas. We
are not, therefore, surprised to find that this Epic took
a strong hold on the popular imagination, and so
penetrated the Italian race as to assume a new form
on Italian soil, while the Arthurian romance survived
as a pastime of the upper classes, and underwent no
important metamorphosis at their hands. In the
course of this volume, I shall have to show how, when
Italian literature emerged again from the people
after nearly a century of neglect, it was the trans-
formed tale of Charlemagne and Roland which
supplied the Italian nation with its master-works of
epic poetry the Morgante and the two Orlandos.
The Lombard, or rather the Franco -Italian period
narum in plateis Communis omnino morari non possint. They had
become a public nuisance and impeded traffic.
1 In the Cento Novelle there are several Arthurian stories. The ru-
brics of one or two will suffice to show how the names were Italianized.
Qui con fa come la damigella di Sciitot moriper amore di Lanciallotto de
Lac. Nov. Ixxxii. Qui conta delta reina Isotta e di m. Tristano dt
Leonis. Nov. Ixv. In the Historic di Lancillotto, cited above, Sir Kay
becomes Keux; Gawain is Gauuati. In the Ta-vola Ritonda, Morderette
stands for Mordred, Rando di Benoiche for Ban of Ben wick, Lotto d'Or
%ania for Lot of Orkcney
FRANCO-ITALIAN HYBRID. 19
is marked by the adoption of a foreign language and
foreign fashions. Literature at this stage was exotic
and artificial; but the legacy transmitted to the future
was of vast importance. On the one side, the courtly
rhymers who versified in the Provencal dialect, be-
queathed to Sicily and Tuscany the chivalrous lyric of
love, which was destined to take its final and fairest
form from Dante and Petrarch. On the other hand,
the populace who listened to the Song of Roland on
the market-place, prepared the necessary conditions
for a specific and eminently characteristic product of
Italian genius. Without a national epic, the Italians
were forced to borrow from the French. But what
they borrowed, they transmuted not merely adding
new material, like the tale of Gano's treason and the
fiction of Orlando's birth at Sutri, but importing their
own spirit, positive, ironical and incredulous, into the
substance of the legend.
In the course of Italianizing the tale of Roland, the
native dialects made their first effort to assume a
literary form. We possess sufficient MS. evidence to
prove that the Franco-Italian language of the songs
recited to the Lombard townsfolk, was composed by
the adaptation of local modes ol speech to French
originals. The process was not one of pure transla-
tion. The dialects were not fit for such performance.
It may rather be described as the attempt of the dia-
lects to acquire capacity for studied expression. With
French poems before them, the popular rhapsodes
introduced dialectical phrases, substituted words, and,
where this was possible, modified the style in favor
of the dialect they wished to use. French still pre-
20 RENAISSANCE IN ITALY.
dominated. But the hybrid was of such a nature that
a transition from this mixed jargon to the dialect,
presented in a literary shape, was imminent.
There is sufficient ground for presuming that the
Italian dialects triumphed simultaneously in all parts
of the peninsula about the middle of the thirteenth
century. 1 This presumption is founded partly on the
quotations from dialectical poetry furnished by Dante
in the De Eloquio, which prove a wide-spread literary
activity; partly on fragments recovered from sources
which can be referred to the second half of the century.
The peculiar problems offered by the conditions of
poetry at Frederick II.'s Court, though these are open
to many contradictory solutions, render the presump
tion more than probable. It is difficult to understand
the third or Sicilian period of literature without hypo-
thesizing an antecedent stage of vulgar poetry pro-
duced in local dialects. But, owing to the scarcity of
documents, no positive facts regarding the date and
mode of their emergence can be adduced. We have
on this point to deal with matters of delicate conjec-
ture and minute inference; and though it might seem
logical to introduce at once a discussion on the growth
of the Italian language, and its relation to the dialects
which were undoubtedly spoken before they were
committed to writing, special reasons induce me to
defer this topic for the present.
While the North of Italy was deriving the literature
both of its cultivated classes and of the people from
France, a new and still more important phase of evolu-
1 See Adolfo Bartoli, Storia della Letter atur a Italiana, vol. ii. chapters
til., iv., v., vi., for a minute inquiry into this early dialectical literature
COURT OF FREDERICK II. 21
tion was preparing in the South. Both Dante and
Petrarch recognize the Sicilian poets as the first to
cultivate the vulgar tongue with any measure of success,
and to raise it to the dignity of a literary language. In
this opinion they not only uttered the tradition of
their age, but were also without doubt historically
correct. Whatever view may be adopted concerning
the formation of the lingua illustre, or polished Italian,
from the dialectical elements already employed in
local kinds of poetry, there is no disputing the im-
portance of the Sicilian epoch. We cannot fix precise
dates for its duration. Yet, roughly speaking, it may
be said to have begun in 1166, when troubadours of
some distinction gathered round the person of the
Norman king, William II., at Palermo, and to have
ended in 1266, when Manfred was killed at the battle
of Benevento. It culminated during the reign of
the Emperor Frederick II. (i2io-i25o), who was
himself skilled in Latin and the vulgar tongues of
France and Italy, and who drew to his court men dis-
tinguished for their abilities in science and literature.
Dante called Frederick, Cherico grande. The author
of the Cento Novelle described him as veramente
specchio del mondo in parlare et in costumi, and spoke
of his capital as the resort of la gente eft avea bontadc
. . . sonatori, trovatori, e belli favellatori, uomini d arti,
giostratori, schermitori, d? ogni maniera gente. 1 The
portrait drawn of him by Salimbene in his contem-
porary Chronicle, though highly unfavorable to the
schismatic enemy of Holy Church, proves that his
i Cento Novelle, Milano, 1825, Nov. ti. and xxi.
22 RENAISSANCE IN ITALY.
repute was great in Italy as a patron of letters and
himself a poet of no mean pretensions. 1
It is impossible in these pages to inquire into the
views of this great ruler for the resuscitation of culture
in Italy, which, had he not been thwarted in his policy
by the Church, might have anticipated the Renaissance
by two centuries. Yet the opinion may be hazarded
that the cultivation of Italian as a literary language
was due in no small measure to the forethought and
deliberate intention of an Emperor, who preferred his
southern to his northern provinces. Unlike the
Lombard nobles, Frederick, while adopting Provencal
literature, gave it Italian utterance. This seems to
indicate both purpose and prevision on his part
Wishing to found an Italian dynasty, and to acclima-
tize the civilization of Provence in his southern capitals,
he was careful to promote purely Italian studies.
There can at any rate be no doubt that during his
reign and under his influence very considerable pro-
gress was made towards fixing the diction and the
forms of poetry. He found dialects, not merely
spoken, but already adapted to poetical expression, in
more than one district of Italy. From these districts
the most eminent artists flocked to his Court. It was
there that a common type of speech was formed,
which, when the burghers of Central Italy began to
emulate the versifiers of Palermo, furnished them with
an established style.
How the lingua aulica came into being admits of
much debate. But we may, I think, maintain that the
fundamental dialect from which it sprang was Sicilian,
1 Chronica Fr. Salimbene Parmensis, ord. min., Parmae, 1857, p. 166.
FORMATION OF LANGUAGE AND METERS. 23
purified by comparison with Provencal and Latin, and
largely modified by Apulian elements. The difficulty
of understanding the problem is in part removed when
we remember the variety of representatives from noble
towns of Italy who met in Frederick's circle, the tenden-
cies of a dialect to refine itself when it assumes a
literary form, and the continuous influences of Court-
life in common. Italians gathered round the person
of the sovereign at Palermo from their native cities,
must in ordinary courtesy have abandoned the crudi-
ties of their respective idioms. This sacrifice could
not but have been reciprocal; and since Provencal was
not spoken to the exclusion of the mother-tongue, a
generic Italian had here the best chance of develop-
ment. That this generic or Court Italian was at root
Sicilian, we have substantial reasons to believe; but
that it exactly resembled the Sicilian of to-day, which
does not greatly differ from extant documents of
thirteenth and fourteenth century Sicilian dialect, seems
too crude a supposition. 1 Unfortunately, our evidence
upon this point is singularly scanty. Few poems of
the Sicilian period, as will appear in the sequel, have
descended to us in their primitive form.
Not only was a common language instituted in the
Court of Frederick; but the metrical forms of subse-
quent Italian poetry were either fixed or suggested by
the practice of these early versifiers. Few subjects
1 See the Cronache Siciliane, Bologna, Romagnoli, 1865, the first ot
which bears upon its opening paragraph the date 1358. Sicilian, it may
be said in passing, presents close dialectical resemblance to Tuscan.
Even the superficial alteration of the Sicilian u and / into the Tuscan o
and e (e. g. secundu and putiri into secondo and potere} effaces the most
obvious differences.
24 RENAISSANCE IN ITALY.
are involved in darker obscurity than the history of
meters the creation of rhythmical structures whereby
one national literature distinguishes itself from another. 1
Just as each writer who can claim an individual style
seems to possess his own rhythm, his peculiar tune, to
which his sentences are cadenced, so each nation ap-
propriates and adheres to its own meter. The Italian
^endecasyllabic, the French Alexandrian, the English
heroic iambic, are obvious examples. This selection of
a characteristic meter, and the essays through which
the race arrives at its perfection, seem to imply some
instinct, planted within the deeps of national person-
ality, whereof the laws have not been formulated.
When we speak of the genius of a language, we do
but personify this instinct, which appears to exercise
itself at an early period of national development, leav
ing for subsequent centuries the task of refining and
completing what had been projected at the outset.
Therefore, nothing very distinct can be asserted about
the origin of the hendecasyllable iambic line, which
marks Italian poetry. 2 Yet it certainly appears among
1 The Italians wavered long between several metrical systems, before
they finally adopted the hendecasyllabic line, vi'hich became the conse-
crated rhythm of serious poetry. Carducci, in his treatise Intorno ad
alcune Rime (Imola, Galeati, 1876), pp. 81-89, mav ^ e profitably con-
sulted with regard to early Italian Alexandrines. He points out tha'
Ciullo's Tenzone:
Rosa fresc* aulentissima c* appar* in ver* 1* estate:
and the Ballata of the Comari:
Pur bi' del vin, comadr' e no lo temperare:
together with numerous compositions ot the Northern Lombard school
(Milan and Verona), are written in Alexandrines. In the Lombardo-
Sicilian age of Italian literature, before Bologna acted as an intermediate
to Florence, this meter bid fair to become acclimatized. But the Tuscan
genius determined decisively for the hendecasyllabic.
2 See the Appendix to this chapter on Italian hemlecasyllables.
ITALO- PROVENCAL STYLE. 25
the early specimens of the Sicilian period. The rhym-
ing system of the octave stanza may possibly be traced
in Ciullo d'Alcamo's tenzonc between the lover and his
mistress; though it still needed a century of elabora-
tion at the hands of popular rispetti- writers, to present
it in completed form to Boccaccio's muse. 1 This poem
is Alexandrine in rhythm. Terza rima seems to be
suggested by the sonnet of the Sparviere / while a
perfect sonnet, differing very little either in structure or
in diction from the type of Petrarch's, is supplied in
Piero delle Vigne's Peroccht amore. At the same time
the highwrought structure of the Canzone, destined to
play so triumphant a part during the whole period of
the trecento, receives its essential outlines from the
rhymers of this age, especially from Jacopo da Lentino
and Guido delle Colonne.
Though the forms and language of Sicilian poetry
decided the destinies of Italian, the substance of this
literature was far from being national. Under its
Italian garb, it was no less an exotic than the Pro-
vengal and French compositions of the Lombard
period. After running a brilliant course in Provence,
the poetry of chivalrous love was now declining to its
decadence. It had ceased to be the spontaneous expres-
sion of a dominant ideal, and had degenerated into a
pastime for dilettanti. Its style had become conven-
tional; its phrases fixed. The visionary science upon
which it was based, had to be studied in codes of doc-
trine and repeated with pedantic precision. Frederick
' See Carducci, Cantilene, etc. (Pisa, 1871), pp. 58-60, for thirteenth-
century rispetti illustrating the Sicilian form of the Octave Stanza and
its transformation to the Tuscan tvoe.
6 RENAISSANCE IN ITALY.
and his courtiers received it at the point of its extinc
tion. They adhered as closely as possible to tradi-
tional forms, imitated time-honored models, and con-
fined their efforts to the reproduction of the old art in
a new vehicle of language. Therefore, vernacular
Italian poetry in this first stage of its existence pre-
sents the curious spectacle of literature decrepit in the
cradle, hampered with the euphuism of an exhausted
manner before it could move freely, and taught to
frame conceits and cold antitheses before it learned to
lisp.
Such, in general, may be said to have been the
character of the Sicilian or Italo- Pro venial style. Yet
a careful student of these Canzoni, Serventesi, and
Tenzoni, will discover much that is both natural and
graceful, much that is elevated in thought, much again
that belongs to the crude sensuousness of Southern tem-
perament. There is an unmistakable blending of the
Provengal tradition with indigenous realism, especially
in such compositions as the Lament of Odo delle
Colonne, the Lament of Ruggieri Pugliese, and the
Tenzone of Ciullo d'Alcamo. 1 We can trace a double
current of inspiration: the one passing downward from
the learned writers of the Court, the judges, notaries,
and men of state, who followed Provengal tradition;
the other upward from the people, who rhymed as
nature taught them: both mingling in the composi-
tions of those more genial poets, who were able to
1 The poetry of this period will be found in Trucchi, Poesie Inedite,
Prato, 1846; Poeti del Primo Secolo, Firenze, 1816; Raccolta di Rime
Antiche Toscane, Palermo, Assenzio, 1817; and in a critical edition of
the Codex Vaticanus 3793, Le Antiche Rime Volgari, per cura di A
d* Ancona c D. Comparetti, Bologna, Romagnoli, 1875.
CLOSE OF THE SICILIAN PERIOD. ^^
infuse reality into the labored form of their adoption.
What might have been the destiny of Italian literature,
if the Suabian House had maintained its hold on the
Two Sicilies, and this process of fusion had been
completed at Naples or Palermo, cannot even be
surmised.
Our knowledge of the earliest Italo- Pro venial po-
etry is vague, owing to lack of genuine Sicilian mon-
uments. We can only trace faint indications of a pro-
gress toward greater freedom and more spontaneous
inspiration, as the " courtly makers " yielded to the
singers of the people. The battle of Benevento ex-
tinguished at one blow both the hopes of the Suabian
dynasty and the development of Sicilian poetry.
When Manfred's body had been borne naked on a
donkey from the battle-field to his nameless grave,
amid the cries of Chi compra Manfredif a foreign
troubadour, Amerigo di Peguilhan, composed his la-
ment, bidding the serventese pass through all lands and
over every sea to find the man who knew where
Arthur dwelt and when he would return. Arthur was
dead, and would never come again. Chivalry and
feudalism had held their brief and feeble sway in Italy,
and that was over. Neither in Lombardy among the
castles, nor in Sicily within the Court, throbbed the
real life of the Italian nation. That life was in the
Communes. It beat in the heart of the people
especially of that people , who had made nobility a
crime beside the Arno, and had outlawed the Scio-
perati from their City of the Flower. What the
Suabian princes gave to Italy was the beginning of a
common language. It remained for Tuscany to stamp
28 RENAISSANCE IN ITALY.
that language with her image and superscription, to
fix it in its integrity for all future ages, and to render
it the vehicle of stateliest science and consummate
art.
The question of the origin of the Italian language
pertains rather to philology than to the history of
culture. 1 Yet I cannot pass it wholly by in silence,
since it was raised at an early period by the founders
of Italian literature, who occupied themselves with
singular sagacity concerning the relations of the
literary to the dialectical forms of speech. Dante's
De Eloquio, though based on unscientific principles of
analysis, opened a discussion which exercised the
acutest intellects of the sixteenth century.
During the whole Roman period, it is certain that
literary Latin differed in important respects from the
vulgar, rustic or domestic, language. Thus while a
Roman gentleman would have said habeo pulchrum
equum, his groom probably expressed the same
thought in words like these: ego habeo unum bellum
caballum. Between a graffito scribbled on the wall of
some old Roman building Alexander unum animal
est, for instance and one now chalked in the same
district, Alessandro 2 un animale, there is hardly as
much difference as between a literary Latin sentence
and either of these rustic epigrams; while the use of
such intensitives as multum and bene, to express the
1 The most important modern works upon this subject are three Es-
says by Napoleone Caix, Saggio sulla Storia della Lingua e dci Dia-
letti d' Italia, Parma, 1872; Studi di Etimologia Italiana c Romanza,
Firenze, 1878; Le Origini della Lingua Poetica Italiana, Firenze, 1880.
D'Ovidio's Essay on the De Eloquio in his Saggi- Critici, Napoli, 1878,
may also be consulted with advantage.
RUSTIC AND LITERARY LATIN. 39
superlative degree, indicate in vulgar Latin the pres-
ence of a principle alien to literary Latin but sympa-
thetic to modern speech. The vulgar or rustic Latin
continued, side by side with its literary counterpart,
throughout the middle ages, forming in the first cen-
turies of imperial decline the common speech of the
Romance peoples, and gradually assuming those
specific forms which determined the French, Spanish,
and Italian types. There is little doubt that, could we
possess ourselves of sufficient documents, we should
be able to trace the stages in this process. Both
literary and vulgar Latin suffered transformation the
former declining in purity, variety, and vigor; the
latter diverging dialectically into the constituents of the
three grand families of modern Latin. But the meta-
morphosis was not of the same nature in both cases.
While the literary language had been fixed, arrested,
and delivered over to death, the vulgar tongue re-
tained a vivid and assimilative life, capable of biologi-
cal transmutation. French, Spanish, and Italian are
modes of its existence continued under laws of organic
variety and change.
It would be unscientific to suppose that rustic
Latin, even in the most flourishing period of the
Roman Empire, was identical in all provinces. From
the first it must have held within itself the principles
of differentiation. And when we consider the varying
conditions of soil, climate, ethnological admixture and
political development in the several regions of the
Roman world, together with the divers influences of
contiguous or invasive races, we shall form some
notion of the process by which the three languages in
$0 RENAISSANCE IN ITALY
question branched off from the common stock of rustic
Latin.
The same laws of differentiation hold good with
regard to the dialects in each of these new languages.
It is improbable that absolutely the same vulgar Latin
was at any epoch spoken in two remote districts of the
same province on the Tuscan sea-coast, for example,
and on the banks of Padus. Even when the Roman
empire used one language, intelligible from the ^Egean
to the German Ocean, the Italic districts must have
differed in their local vernacular. Again, the same
conditions (climatic, ethnological, political, and so
forth) which helped to determine the generic distinc-
tions of French, Spanish, and Italian, determined also
the specific distinctions of one Italian dialect from
another. Those of the north-west, for instance, in-
clined to Gallic, and those of the north-east to Illyrian
idiom. Those of Lombardy in general exhibit a mix-
ture of German words. Those of Sicily and the
south approximate more to a Spanish type, and share
the effects of Greek and Arab occupation. The
dialects of the center, especially the Tuscan, show
marked superiority both in grammatical form and pho-
netic purity over the more disintegrated and corrupted
idioms of north and south. It might be suggested
that Tuscan, being less modified by foreign contact,
continued the natural life of the old rustic Latin
according to laws of unimpeded self-development.
But, however we may attempt to explain this prob-
lem, the fact remains that, while the Italian dialects
present affinities which show them to be of one lin-
guistic family, it is Tuscan that completes and inter-
DIFFERENTIATION OF DIALECTS. 3
prets them collectively. Tuscan stands to Italian in
the same relation as Castilian to Spanish, or the speech
of the He de France to French. It is a dialect, but a
dialect that realized the bent and striving of the lan-
guage. We find it difficult to feel, far more to state,
what qualities in a dialect and in the people of the
district who use it, render one idiom more adapted
to literary usage, more characteristic of the language
it helps to constitute, more plastic and expressive of
national peculiarities, than those around it. But the
fact is certain that this superiority in Tuscan was
early recognized l ; and that too without any political
advantages in favor of its triumph. Boniface VIII.
unconsciously expressed, perhaps, the truth, when
he called the Florentines z7 quinto elemento. It was
something spiritually quintessential, something com-
plementary to the sister dialects, which caused the
success of Tuscan.
Thus, while literary Latin, though dying and
almost dead, was taught in the grammar schools
and used by learned men, the rustic Latin in the
thirteenth century had disappeared. But this disap-
pearance was not death. It was transformation. The
group of dialects which represented the new phase in
its existence, shared such common qualities as proved
them to have had original affinity; and fitted them for
being recognized as a single family. The position,
therefore, of the Italians at the close of the thirteenth
1 " Lingua Tusca magis apta est ad literam sive literaturam quam
aliae linguae, et ideo magis est communis et intelligibilis." Antonio da
Tempo, born about 1275, says this in his Treatise on Italian Poetry, re
cently printed by Giusto Grion, Bologna, Romagnoli, 1869. See p. 17
of that worJi
32 RENAISSANCE IN ITALY.
century with regard to language, was this. They
possessed the classic Latin authors in a bad state of
preservation, and studied a few of them with some
minuteness, basing their own learned style upon the
imitation of Virgil and Ovid, Cicero, Boethius, and the
rhetoricians of the lower empire. But at home, in
their families, upon the market-place, and in the
prosecution of business, they talked the local dialects,
each of which was more or less remotely representative
of the ancient vulgar Latin. However these dialects
might differ, they formed in combination a new lan-
guage, distinct from the parent stock of Rustic Latin,
and equally distinct from French and Spanish. l
Whatever difficulty an Italian of Calabria or Friuli
might have felt in understanding the Divine Comedy,
he would have recognized an element in its diction
which defined it from French or Spanish, and marked
it out as proper to his mother-tongue. If this was
true of the refined type of Tuscan used by a great
master, it was no less true of dialectical compositions
selected for the express purpose of exhibiting their
rudeness. Dante clearly expected contemporary
readers not only to interpret, but to appreciate the
shades of greater and lesser nicety in the examples he
culled from Roman, Apulian, Florentine and other
vernacular literatures. This expectation proves that
he felt himself to be dealing with a group of dialects
which, taken collectively, formed a common idiom.
i This fact was recognized by Dante. He speaks of the languages of
Si, Oil. and Oc, meaning Italian, French, and Spanish. De Eloquio, lib.
i. cap. 8. Dante points out their differences, but does not neglect then
community of origin.
WANT OF A CAPITAL. 33
In these circumstances it was the problem of writers,
at the close of the thirteenth century, to construct
the ideal vulgar tongue, to discover its capacities
for noble utterance, to refine it for artistic usage
by the omission of cruder elements existing in each
dialect, and to select from those store-houses of living
speech the phrases which appeared well suited to
graceful utterance. The desideratum, to use Dante's
words, was " that illustrious, cardinal, courtly, curial
mother- tongue, proper to each Italian State, special to
none, whereby the local idioms of every city are to be
measured, weighed, and compared." l Dante saw that
this selection of a literary language from the fresh
shoots sent up by the antique vulgar Latin stock could
best be accomplished in a capital or Court, the meet-
ing-place of learned people and polished intelligences.
But such a metropolis of culture, corresponding to
Elizabeth's London or the Paris of Louis XIV.,
was ever wanting in Italy. " We have no Court," he
says: " and yet the members that should compose a
Court are not absent." 2 He refers to men of education
and good manners, upon whom, in the absence of a
local center of refinement, fell the duty of reforming
the vernacular. The peculiar conditions of Italy, as
he described them, were destined to subsist through-
out the next two centuries and a half, when men
of learning, taking Tuscan as their standard, sought
by practice and example to form a national language.
The self-consciousness of the Italians front to front
with this problem, as revealed to us in the pages
of the De Eloquio, and the decision with which
i De Vulg. Eloq. i. 16. Ibid. I. 18.
34 RENAISSANCE IN ITALY.
the great authors of the fourteenth century fixed a
certain type of diction, accurately spoken nowhere,
though nearer to the Tuscan than to any other idiom,
may be reckoned among the most interesting pheno-
mena in the history of literature. Tuscan predomi-
nated; but that the masterpieces of the trecento were
not composed in any one of the unadulterated Tuscan
dialects is clear, not merely from the contemporary
testimony of Dante himself, but also from the ob-
stinate discussions raised upon this subject by Bembc
at a later period. A guiding and controlling principle
of taste determined the instinctive method of selec-
tion whereby Tuscan was adapted to the common
needs of Italy.
While treating of the Latin, the Lombard or
Franco-Italian, and the Sicilian or I talo- Pro venial
periods of national development, I have hitherto
neglected that plebeian literature which, although its
monuments have almost perished, must have been
diffused in dialects through Italy after the opening of
the thirteenth century. Written for and by the people,
the relics of this prose and poetry are valuable, not
merely for the light they throw on the formation of
language, but also for their indications of national
tendencies. In the northern dialects we meet with
treatises of religious, ethical and gnomic import, among
which the Gerusalemme Celeste and Babilonia Infernale
of Fra Giacomino of Verona, the Bible History of Pietro
Bescape of Milan, the Contention between Satan and
the Virgin of Bonvesin da Riva, and two other
dialogues by the same author, one between the Soul
and Body, the other between a son and his father in
ORIGIN OF ITALIAN PROSE. 35
hell, deserve mention. To this class again belongs
Bonvesin's Cinquanta Cortesie da Tavola, a book of
etiquette adapted to the needs of the small bourgeoisie
upon their entrance into social life.
It is impossible to fix even an approximate date
for the emergence of Italian prose. Law documents,
deeds of settlement, contracts, and public acts, which
can be referred with certainty to the first half of the
thirteenth century, display a pressure of the vulgar
speech upon the formal Latin of official verbiage. The
effort to obtain precision in designating some particular
locality or some important person, forces the scribe back
upon his common speech; and these evidences of
difficulty in wielding the Latin which had now become
a dying language, prove that, long before it was written,
Italian was spoken. From the year 1231 we possess
accounts of domestic expenditure written by one Matta-
sala di Spinello dei Lambertini in the Sienese dialect
Then follow Lucchese documents and letters of Si-
enese citizens, which, though they have no literary
value, show that people who could write had begun to ex-
press their thoughts in spoken idiom. The first essays
in Italian composition for a lettered public were trans-
lations from works already written by Italians in
langue doll. Among these a prominent place must be
assigned to the version of Marco Polo's travels, which
Rusticiano of Pisa first published in French, having pos-
sibly received them in Venetian from the traveler's own
lips. The Tesoro of Brunetto Latini and Egidio's D&
Regimine Principum were Italianized in this way; while
numerous digests of Prankish romances, including the
collection known as Conti di antichi Cavalieri, appeared
36 RENAISSANCE IN ITALY.
to meet the same popular demand. Religious history
and ethics furnished another library in the vernacular.
The Dodici Conti Morali, the Introduzione cdle Virtu,
the Giardino delta Consolazione, and the Libra di Cato
supplied the people with specimens from works already
famous. After a like manner, books of rhetoric and
grammar in vogue among the medieval students were
popularized in abstracts for Italian readers. We may cite
a version of Orosius, and a Fiore di Retorica based upon
the Ad Herennium and Cicero. Of scientific compila-
tions, the Composizione del Mondo by Ristoro of Arezzo,
embracing astronomical and geographical information,
takes rank with the ethical and rhetorical works already
mentioned. The note of all these compositions is
that they are professedly epitomes of learning, already
possessed in more authentic sources by scholars. As
such, they prove that there existed a class of readers
eager for instruction, to whom books written in Latin
or in French were not accessible. In a word, they
indicate the advent of the modern tongue, with all its
exigencies and with all its capabilities. To deal with
the Chronicles of this period is no easy matter; for
those which are professedly the oldest Matteo Spi-
nelli's, Ricordano Malespini's, and Lu Ribellament it
di Sicilia have been proved in some sense fabrications.
On the other hand, it is clear from the Cento Novellc
that the more dramatic episodes of history and myth
were being submitted to the same epitomizing treat-
ment. Finally we have to mention Guittone of
Arezzo's epistles as the first serious attempt to treat
the vulgar tongue rhetorically, for a distinct literary
purpose.
POPULAR POETRY. 37
From the dry records of incipient prose it is
refreshing to turn to another species of popular poetry ;
for poetry in the period of origins is always more adult
than prose. Numerous fragments of political songs
have been disinterred from chronicles, which can be
referred to the thirteenth century. Thus an anony-
mous Genoese rhymster celebrated the victories of
Laiazzo (1294) and Curzola (1298), while Giovanni
Villani preserved six lines upon the siege of Messina
(I282). 1 Verses in the vulgar tongue commemorating
the apostasy of Fra Elia, General of the Franciscans,
in 1240, and the coming of the Florentine Lamber-
tesco dei Lamberteschi as Podesta to Reggio in 1243,
with scraps of song relating to Pisan and Florentine
history, may be read in Carducci's monumental work
upon this period of literature. 2 These relics, though
precious, are singularly scanty; nor can a Northern
student pass them by without remarking the absence of
that semi-historical, semi-mythical poetry, which is so
familiar to us under the name of Ballad. More im-
portant, because of greater extent, are the laments and
amorous or comic poems, which can be attributed to
the same century. The Lament of the Paduan woman
for her husband, who has journeyed to Holy Land in
the Crusade preached by Urban IV., may be compared
with Rinaldo d' Aquino's Farewell. 3 Both of these
compositions were written under Provencal influence,
though the former at least is strictly dialectical and
popular. Passing to satirical poems, I may mention
' See Archivio Glottologico Italiano, vol. ii. Villani, lib. vii. cap. 68.
Cantilene e Ballate, Strambotti e Madrigali net Secoli xiii. e xiv.
A cura di GiosuS Carducci (Pisa, 1871), pp. 29-32.
J Ibid. pp. 1 8, 22.
38 RENAISSANCE IN ITALY.
two pieces extracted from a Bolognese MS. of 1272
which paint with vivid force of humor the manners
of women. 1 One represents a drinking-party of more
than Aristophanic freedom; the other, a wrangling
match between two sisters-in-law the Cognate.
Each displays facility of composition and a literary
style already formed. They are not without French
parallels; but the mode of presentation is Italian, and
the phrases have been transplanted without change
from vulgar dialogue. Two romantic lyrics extracted
from the same MS. prove that the fashionable style
of Provence had descended from the nobles to the
common folk and taken a new tincture of realism. 2
The complaint of an unwedded maiden to her mother
is a not uncommon motive in this early literature,
turning either to pathos or suggesting a covert coarse-
ness in the climax. 3 To the same class may be re-
ferred some graceful lyrics and dance- songs, combining
the artlessness of popular inspiration with reminiscences
of French originals. 4 Of these the Nightingale and
the Song of Love in Dreams might be selected for
their close sympathy with the rispetti made in Italian
country districts at the present day. Lastly, I have
to mention two obscene poems of great popularity,
II Nicchio and L,' Ugellino? These were known to
Boccaccio, for he refers to them by name at the close
of the fifth day in the Decameron. Each of the
ditties bears a thoroughly Italian stamp, and anticipates
by its peculiar style of double entendre a whole depart-
ment of national poetry the Florentine Carnival
Ibid. pp. 39, 42. a Ibid. pp. 43, 45.
See ibid. p. 45, the stanza which begins, Matre tant d.
Ibid. pp. 47-60. Ibid. pp. 62-66.
SENSUOUS MOTIVES. 39
Songs and the Capitoli of the Roman academies being
distinctly foreshadowed in their humorous and allusive
treatment of a vulgar topic. Hence we may take
occasion to observe that those who accuse Lorenzo
de' Medici and his contemporaries of debasing popular
taste by the deliberate introduction of licentious-
ness into art, exceed the limits of just censure. What
is called the Paganism of the Renaissance, was in-
digenous in Italy. We find it inherent in vulgar
literature before the date of Boccaccio; and if, with
the advance of social luxury, it assumed, in the
fifteenth and sixteenth centuries, a more objectionable
prominence, this should not be exclusively ascribed to
the influence of humanistic studies or to the example
of far-sighted despots. Indeed, it can be asserted that
the specific quality of the popular Italian genius
its sensuous realism, qualified with irony emerges
unmistakably in five most important relics of the
thirteenth century, the Cognate, the Comadri, the
Tenzone of the Maiden and her Mother (Mamma lo
temp' 2 venuto), the Nicchio> and the Ugellinol They
yield the common stuff of that magnificent art which
shall afterwards be developed into the Decameron and
the Novelle, out of which shall proceed the comedies
and Bernesque lyrics of the Cinque Cento, and which
is destined to penetrate the golden cantos of the
1 The practical and realistic common sense of the Italians, reject-
ing chivalrous and ecclesiastical idealism as so much nonsense, is illus-
trated by the occasional poems of two Florentine painters Giotto's Can-
rone on Poverty, and Orcagna's Sonnet on Love. Orcagna, in the latter,
criticises the conventional- blind and winged Cupid, and winds up with:
L' amore e un trastullo:
Non e composto di legno ne di osso;
E a molte gente fa rc\npere il dosso.
40 RENAISSANCE IN ITALY.
Orlando Furioso. To an unprejudiced student ol
Italian arts and letters nothing seems more clearly
proved than the fact that a certain powerful objective
quality call it realism, call it sensuousness deter-
mines their most genuine productions, sinking to
grossness, ascending to sublimity, combining with
religious feeling in the fine arts, blending with the
definiteness of classic style, but never absent. It is
this objectivity, realism, sensuousness, which consti-
tutes the strength of the Italians, and assigns the
limitations of their faculty.
In quite a different region, but of no less import-
ance for the future of Italian literature, must be
reckoned the religious hymns, which, during the thir-
teenth century, began to be composed in the ver-
nacular. The earliest known specimen is S. Francis'
famous Cantico del Sole, which, even as it is preserved
to us, after undergoing the process of modernization,
retains the purity and freshness of a bird's note in
spring. After S. Francis, but at the distance of half
a century, followed Jacopone da Todi, with his pas-
sionate and dithyrambic odes, which seem to vibrate
tongues of fire. To this religious lyric the Flagel-
lant frenzy (1260) and the subsequent * formation of
Companies of Laudesi gave decisive impulse. I shall
have in a future chapter to discuss the relation between
the Umbrian Lauds and the origins of the Drama.
It is enough here to notice the part played in the
evolution of the language by so early a transition
from the Latin Hymns of the Church to Hymns
written in the modern speech for private confraterni-
ties and domestic gatherings,
POPULAR AND COURTLY POETS. 41
We learn from this meager review of ancient
popular poetry that during the thirteenth century the
dialects of each district had begun to seek literary
expression. There are many indications that the pro-
ducts of one province speedily became the property of
the rest. Spontaneous motives were mingled with
French and Provengal recollections; and already we
can trace the unconscious effort to form a common
language in the process known as Toscaneggiamento>
or the translation of local songs into Tuscan idiom. 1
It would, therefore, be incorrect to imagine either that
the Sicilian poets were blank imitators of Provencal
models, or that the Italian language started into
being at Palermo. What really happened was, that
Frederick's Court became the center of a widespread
literary movement. The Sicilian dialect predomina-
ting at Palermo over the rest, the poets of different
provinces who assembled round the Emperor were
subsequently known as Sicilian. Their songs, passing
upward through the peninsula, bore that name, even
when they had, as at Florence, been converted, by
dialectical modifications, to the use of Tuscan folk. 2
The aristocratic tone of the Court made Provencal
literature fashionable; and a refined diction, softening
the crudities of more than one competing dialect, was
formed to express the subtleties of the Provencal style.
We must bear in mind that the poets of this Court
1 See Carducci, op. cit. pp. 52-60, for early examples ot Tuscanized
Sicilian poems of the people.
1 The Tuscanized Sicilian poems in Carducci's collection referred to
above, are extracted from a Florentine MS. called Napolitana, and a
Tenzone between man and woman (ib. p. 52), which has clearly under-
gone a like process, is called Ciciliana.
43 RENAISSANCE IN ITALY.
were men of learned education judges, notaries,
officials. Dante makes dottori nearly synonymous
with trovatori. At the same time, one of the earliest
specimens of Sicilian poetry, Ciullo d'Alcamo's Tenzone,
is popular, free from Provencal affectation, inclining to
comedy in some of its marked motives and to coarse-
ness at its close. This proves that in the island, sick 1
by side with " courtly makers " and dottori, there flour
ished an original and vulgar manner of poetry.
The process of Tuscanization referred to in the
preceding paragraph is too important in its bearings
on the problems of Italian language and literature, to
be passed over without further discussion. Nearly all
the poetry of the Sicilian epoch has been transmitted
to us in Florentine MSS., after undergoing Toscaneggia-
mento. We possess but a few stanzas in a pure condi-
tion. There is, therefore, reason to believe that when
Dante treated of the courtly Sicilian poets in his essay
De Vulgari Eloquio, he knew their writings in a form
already Tuscanized. 1 In commending the curial and
illustrious vernacular, as something distinct from the
dialects, he was in truth praising the dialect of his
own province, refined by the practice of polite versi-
fiers. At the date of the composition of that essay,
the Suabian House had been extinguished ; the literary
society of the south was broken up ; and to Florence
had already fallen the heritage of art. What is even
more remarkable, the Bolognese poets, who preceded
Dante and his peers by one generation, had abandoned
See Francesco d'Ovidio, Sul Trattato De Vulgari Eloquentia. It
is reprinted in his volume of Saggi Critici, Napoli, 1879. The subject is
fully discussed from a point of view at variance with my text by Adolf
Gaspary, Die Sicilianisckt Dichterschvle, Berlin, 1878.
TUSCANIZATION. 43
their own dialect in favor of the purified Tuscan.
Consequently the new Italian literature was already
Tuscan either by origin, or by adoption, or by a pro-
cess of transformation, before the Florentines assumed
the dictatorship of letters. It seems paradoxical to
hint that Dante should not have perceived what has
been here stated as more than a mere possibility.
How came it that he included Florentine among the
peccant idioms, and maintained that the true literary
speech was still to seek? These doubts may in part
at least be removed, when we remember the peculiar
conditions under which the courtly poetry he praised
had been produced; and the indirect channels by
which it had reached him. In the first place, we have
seen that it was composed in avowed imitation of Pro-
vengal models, by men of taste and learning drawn
from several provinces. They culled, for literary pur-
poses, a vocabulary of colorless and neutral words,
which clothed the same conventional ideas with elegant
and artificial monotony. When these compositions
underwent the further process of Tuscanization (which
was easy, owing to certain dialectical affinities between
Sicilian and Tuscan), they lost to a large extent what
still remained to them of local character, without ac-
quiring the true stamp of Florentine. Even a con-
temporary could not have recognized in the verse of
Jacopo da Lentino, thus treated, either a genuine
Sicilian or a genuine Tuscan flavor. His language
presented the appearance of being, as indeed it was,
different from both idioms. The artifice of style
made it pass for superior; and, in purely literary
quality, it was in truth superior to the products of
44 RENAISSANCE IN ITALY.
plebeian inspiration. We may prefer the racy stanzas
of the Cognate to those frigid and exhausted euphu-
isms. But the critical taste of so great a master as
even Dante was not tuned to any such preference.
Though he recognized the defects of the Sicilian poets,
as is manifest from his dialogue with Guido in the
Purgatory, he gave them all credit for elevating verse
above the vulgar level. Their insipid diction seemed
to him the first germ of a noble lingua aulica. Its
colorlessness and strangeness hid the fact that it had
already, at the close of the thirteenth century, assumed
the Tuscan habit, and that from the well-springs of
Tuscan idiom the Italian of the future would have to
draw its aliment.
The downfall of the Hohenstauffens and the dis-
persion of their Court-poets proved a circumstance of
decisive benefit to Italian literature, by removing it
from a false atmosphere into conditions where it freely
flourished and expanded its originality. Feudalism
formed no vital part of the Italian social system, and
chivalry had never been more than an exotic, culti-
vated in the hotbed of the aristocracy. The impulse
given to poetry in the south, under influences in no
true sense of the phrase national a Norman-German
dynasty attempting to acclimatize Provencal forms
upon Italian soil could hardly have produced a
vigorous type of literature. It is from the people, in
centers of popular activity, or where the spirit of the
people finds full play in representative society, that
characteristic art must be developed. When we say
this, we think inevitably of Periclean Athens, Eliza-
beth's London, the Paris of Louis XIV. If the
OPENING OF TUSCAN PERIOD. 45
chances of our drama had been confined to Court-
patronage or Sidney's Areopagus, instead of being
extended to the nation by free competition in the
wooden theaters where Marlowe and Shakspere
appealed to popular taste, there is little doubt but
that England would only have boasted of a mediocre
and academical stage. When Italian poetry deserted
Palermo for the banks of the Arno, it exchanged the
Court for the people; the subtleties of decadent
chivalry for the genuine impulses of a free community;
the pettiness of culture for the humanities of a public
conscious of high destinies and educated in a mascu-
line political arena. Here the grand qualities of the
Italian genius found an open field. Literature, aban-
doning imitative elegance, expressed the feelings,
thoughts, and aspirations of a breed second to none in
Europe for acuteness of intellect, intensity of emotion,
and greatness of purpose. At Palermo the princes
and their courtiers had been reciprocally auditors
and poets. At Florence the people listened; and
the poets, sprung from them, were speakers. Ex-
cept at Athens in the golden age of Hellas, no
populace has equaled that of Florence both for the
production of original genius, and also for the sen-
sitiveness to beauty, diffused throughout all classes,
which brings the artist and his audience into right
accord.
Two stages in the transition from Sicily to Florence
need to be described. Guittone of Arezzo (1230-
1294) strikes the historian of literature as the man
who first attempted to nationalize the polished poetry
of the Sicilian Court, and to strip the new style of its
46 RENAISSANCE IN ITALY.
feudal pedantry. 1 It was his aim, apparently, dismis
sing chivalrous conventions, to use the diction and the
forms of literary art in an immediate appeal to the
Italian people. He wrote, however, roughly. Though
he practiced vernacular prose, and assumed in verse
the declamatory tone which Petrarch afterwards em-
ployed with such effect in his addresses to the con-
sciousness of Italy, yet Dante could speak of him with
cold contempt 2 ; nor can we claim for him a higher
place than that of precursor. He attempted more
than he was able to fulfill. But his attempt, when
judged by the conditions of his epoch, deserves to rank
among achievements.
With a poet of Bologna the case is different
Placed midway between Lombardy and Tuscany,
Bologna shared the instincts of the two noblest Italian
populations the Communes who wrested liberty from
Frederick Barbarossa, and the Communes who were
to give arts and letters to the nation. Bologna,
moreover, was proud of her legal university, and had
already won her title of " the learned." Here Guido
Guinicelli solved the problem of rendering the Sicil-
ian style at once national in spirit and elevated in
style. 3 He did so by making it scientific. Receiving
from his Italo-ProvenQal predecessors the material of
chivalrous love, and obeying the genius of his native
city, Guido rhymed of love no longer as a fashion-
able pastime, but as the medium of philosophic truth.
Learning was the mother of the national Italian
' Rime di Fra Guittone d'Arezzo, Firenze, Morandi, 1828, 2 vols.
* De Vulg. Eloq. ii. 6; ii. i; i. 13, and Purg. xxvi. 124.
1 His poems will be found in the collections above mentioned, p. 26
note.
GU1DO GUINICELU. 47
poetry. From Guido started a school of transcen-
dental singers, who used the ancient form and subject-
matter of exotic poetry for the utterance of metaphys-
ical thought. The Italians, born, as it were, old, were
destined thus to pass from imitation, through specula-
tion, to the final freedom of their sensuous art. Of
this new lyric style logical, allegorical, mystical the
first masterpiece was Guide's Canzone of the Gentle
Heart. The code was afterwards formulated in
Dane!s_Ca0zrzfo. The life it covered and interpreted
was painteH m the Vita Nuova. Its apocalypse
was the Paradiso. If Guido Guinicelli did not suc-
ceed in writing from the heart, if he was more of
an analyst than a lover, it is yet clear that the
euphuisms of the Italo - Provencal imitators have
yielded in his verse to genuine emotion, while, speak-
ing technically, the complex structure of the true
Italian Canzone now appears in all its harmony of
grace and grandeur. Guide's language is Tuscan; not
the Tuscan of the people, but the Tuscan of the
Toscaneggiamenti. Herein, again, we note the im-
portance of this poet in the history of literature.
Working outside Florence, but obeying Florentine
precedent, he stamps Italian with a Tuscan seal, and
helps to conceal from Tuscans themselves the high
destinies of their idiom.
Dante puts us at the right point of view for
estimating Guide's service. Though he recognized
the Sicilians as the first masters of poetic style in
Italy, Dante saluted the poet of Bologna as his
father l :
' Purg. xxvi.
40 RENAISSANCE IN ITALY.
Quando i' udi* nomar s6 stesso il padre
Mio, e degli altri miei miglior, che mai
Rime d' amor usar dolci e leggiadre.
On the authority of this sentence we hail in Guido
the founder of the new and specifically national litera-
ture of the Italians. If not the master, he was the
prophet of that dolce stil nuovo, which freed them
from dependence on foreign traditions, and led, by
transmutation, to the miracles of their Renaissance
art. He divined that sincere source of inspiration,
whereof Dante speaks * :
Io mi son un che quando
Amore spira, noto; ed a quel modo
Ch* ei detta dentro, vo significando.
The happy instinct which led him to use Tuscan,
has secured his place upon the roll of poets who
may still be read with pleasure. And of this, too,
Dante prophesied 2 :
Li dolci detti vostri,
Che, quanto durerd. 1* uso moderno,
Faranno cari ancora i loro inchiostri.
Bologna could boast of many minor bards of the
excellent Onesto, of Fabrizio and Ghislieri, qui doctor es
fuerunt illustres et vulgarium discretione repleti? Her
erudition was further illustrated by the work of one
Guidotto, who composed a treatise on the new ver-
nacular, which he dedicated to King Manfred. Thus
both by example and precept, by the testimony of
Dante and the fair fame of her own writers, this city
makes for us a link between Sicilian and Tuscan
literature.
Manfred was slain at Benevento in 1266, anc 1
1 Purg. xxiv. * Purg. vu De Vulg. Eloq. i. 15
KING ENZO'S ENVOY TO TUSCANY. 49
with him expired the prospects of Sicilian poetry.
Dante, destined to inaugurate the great age, was born
at Florence in 1265. Guido Guinicelli died in 1277,
when Dante had completed his twelfth yearT From
1249 until 1271, during the whole childhood of Dante,
Enzo, King of Sardinia, Manfred's half-brother and
Frederick II's. son, remained a prisoner in the public
palace of Bologna. In one of those years of prepara-
tion and transition, while the learned stanzas of Guido
Guinicelli were preluding the " new sweet style " of
Tuscany, this yellow-haired scion of the Suabian
princes, the progenitor of the Bentivogli, sent a song
forth from his dungeon's loggie to greet the provinces
of Italy:
Va, Canzonetta mia,
E saluta Messere,
Dilli lo mal ch' i' aggio.
Quella che m' ha in balia
Si distretto mi tene,
Ch' eo viver non poraggio.
Salutami Toscana,
Quella ched e sovrana,
In cui regna tutta cortesia;
E vanne in Puglia piana,
La magna Capitana,
La dove e lo mio core notte e dia.
These lines sound a farewell to the old age and a
salutation to the new. Enzo's heart is in the lowlands
of Apulia and the great Capitanate, where his father
built castles and fought mighty wars. He belongs, like
his verses, like his race, like the chivalrous sentiments
he had imbibed in youth, to the past ; and now he is
dreaming life away, a captive with the burghers of
Bologna. Yet it is Tuscany for which he reserves the
5<> RENAISSANCE IN ITALY.
epithet of Sovereign Tuscany where all courtesy
holds sway. The situation is pathetic. The poem is
a prophecy.
Raimond of Tours, one of the earlier French
minnesingers, bade his friend seek hospitality " in the
noble city of the Florentines, named Florence; for
it is there that joy and song and love are perfected
with beauty crowned." 1 The delicate living and grace-
ful pastimes of Valdarno were famous throughout
Europe. In the old French romance of " Cleomade's,"
for example, we read a rhymed description of the
games and banquets with which Florence welcomed
May and June 2 :
Pour May et Gayn honorer;
Le May pour sa joliviW,
Et le Gayn pour la plants.
Villani, writing of the year 1283, when the Guelis
had triumphed and the nobles had been quelled, speaks
thus of those festivities 3 : "In this happy and fair
state of ease and peaceful quiet so wealth-giving to
merchants and artificers, and specially to the Guelfs,
who ruled the land, there was formed in the quarter of
S, Felicita beyond the Arno, where the family De'
Rossi took the lead, together with their neighborhood,
a company or band of one thousand men and upwards,
all attired in white, with a Lord named the Lord of
Love. This band had no other purpose than to pass
the time in games and solace, and in dances of ladies,
knights and other people of the city, roaming the town
with trumpets and divers instruments of music, in joy
Fauriel, Dante et les origines, etc. (Paris, 1854), i. 269.
* D'Ancona, La Poesia Popolare Italiana (Livorno 1878), p. 36, note.
Giov. Vill. vii. 89.
FLORENTINE PASTIMES. 51
and gladness, and abiding together in banquets at mid-
day and eventide." From another chronicle it appears
that this company was called the Brigata bianco, or
Brigata amoroso.. 1 "There," says a rhymer who had
seen the sports, " might one behold the rich attire of
silk and gold, of samite, white and blue and violet,
with fair velvets; and trappings of all colors I beheld
that day. The young men mid the women went with
gaze fixed upon those eyes angelical, that turn the mid-
night into noon. Over their blonde tresses the
maidens wore gems and precious garlands; lilies,
violets and roses were their charming faces. You
would not have said: ' Yon are mortal beings.' They
rather seemed a thousand paradises." 2
The amusements lasted two months, from May i
until the end of the midsummer feast of S. John, patron
of Florence. Later on, we read of two companies,
the one dressed in yellow, the other in white, each led
by their King, who filled the city with the sound of
music, and wore garlands on their heads, and spent
their time in dances and banquets. 3
Again, when the nobles, after the battle of Cam-
paldino, had been finally suppressed, Villani once
more returns to the subject of these companies, de-
scribing the booths of wood adorned with silken cur-
tains, which were ranged along the streets and squares,
for the accommodation of guests. 4 It will be observed
that Villani connects the gladness of this season
with the successive triumphs of the Guelf party and
the suppression of the nobles by the Popolo. Not
1 Stefani, quoted by D'Ancona, op. cit. p. 36. Ibid. p. 37, note.
8 Giov. Vill. x. 216. Giov. Vill. vii. 132
52 RENAISSANCE IN ITALY.
only was Florence freed from grave anxieties and heavy
expenses, caused by the intramural quarrels between
Counts and Burghers, but the city felt the advent of
her own prosperity, the realization of her true type, in
their victorious close. Then the new noble class, the
popolani grassi, assumed the gentle manners of chivalry,
accommodating its customs to their own rich jovial ideal.
Feudalism was extinguished; but society retained such
portions of feudal customs as shed beauty upon common
life. Tranquillity succeeded to strife, and the medieval
city presented a spectacle similar to that which an old
Greek lyrist has described among the gifts of Peace:
To mortal men Peace giveth these good things:
Wealth, and the flowers of honey-throated song;
The flame that springs
On carven altars from fat sheep and kine,
Slain to the gods in heaven; and, all day long,
Games for glad youths, and flutes, and wreaths, and circling wine.
Then in the steely shield swart spiders weave
Their web and dusky woof:
Rust to the pointed spear and sword doth cleave;
The brazen trump sounds no alarms;
Nor is sleep harried from our eyes aloot,
But with sweet rest my bosom warms:
The streets are thronged with beauteous men and young,
N And hymns in praise of Love like flames to heaven are flung.
Goro di Stagio Dati, writing at the end of the four-
teenth century, has preserved for us an animated pic-
ture of Florence in May. 1 "When the season of
spring appears to gladden all the world, every man
bethinks him how to make fair the day of S. John,
which follows at midsummer, and there is none but
provides himself betimes with clothes and ornaments
i Storia di Ftrenze di Goro Dati (Firenze, 1735), p. 84.
FLORENTINE PAGEAKTTS. 53
and jewels. Marriages and other joyous occasions are
deferred until that time, to do the festival honor; and
two months before the date, they begin to furnish
forth the decorations of the races dresses of varlets,
banners, clarions, draperies, and candles, and whatso-
ever other offerings should be made. The whole city
is in a bustle for the preparation of the Festa; and the
hearts of young men and women, who take part
therein, are set on naught but dancing, playing, sing-
ing, banqueting, jousting, and other fair amusements
as though naught else were to be done in those weeks
before the coming of S. John's Eve." The minute
account of the ceremonies observed on S. John's Day
which follows, need not be transcribed. Yet it may
be well to call attention to a quattrocento picture in
the Florentine Academy, which illustrates the customs
of that festival. It is a long panel representing the
marriage of an Adimari with a daughter of the Rica-
soli. The Baptistery appears in the background; and
on the piazza are ladies and young men, clad in
damask and rich stuffs, with jewels and fantastic head-
dresses, joining hands as though in act of dancing.
Under the Loggia del Bigallo sit the trumpeters of the
Signory, blowing clarions adorned with pennons. The
lily of Florence is on these trappings. Serving men
carry vases and basins toward the Adimari palace, in
preparation for the wedding feast. A large portion
of the square is covered in with a white and red
awning.
If the chroniclers and painters enable us to form
some conception of Florentine festivity, we are intro-
duced to the persons and pastimes of these jovial
54 RENAISSANCE IN ITALY.
companies by the poet Folgore da San Gemignano. 1
Two sets of his Sonnets have been preserved, the
one upon the Months, addressed to the leader of a
noble Sienese company; the other on the Days, to a
member of a similar Florentine society. If we are
right in reckoning Folgore among the poets of the
thirteenth century, the facility and raciness of his
style, its disengagement from Provengalizing pedantry,
and the irony of his luxurious hedonism, prove to
what extent the Tuscans had already left the middle
age behind them. 2 Folgore, in spite of his spring
fragrance and auroral freshness, anticipates the spirit of
the Renaissance. He is a thirteenth-century Boccaccio,
without Boccaccio's enthusiasm for humane studies.
Ideal love, asceticism, religion, the virtues of the
Christian and the knight, are not for him. His soul is
set on the enjoyment of the hour. But this material-
1 The date commonly assigned to Folgore is 1260, and the Niccolo
he addresses in his series on the Months has been identified with that
Nicolo, che la costuma ricca
Del garofano prima discoperse,
so ungently handled by Dante in the Inferno, Canto xxix. I am aware
that grave doubts, based upon historical allusions in Folgore 's miscel-
laneous sonnets, have been raised as to whether we can assign so early a
date to Folgore, and whether his Brigata was really the brigata goderec-
;ia, spendereccia, of Siena alluded to by Dante. See Bartoli, Storia della
Letter afar a Italiana, vol. ii. cap. n, for a discussion of these points
See also Giulio Navone's edition of Folgore 's and Gene's Rime, Bologna
Romagnoli, 1880. This editor argues forcibly for a later date not ear-
lier at all events than from 1300 to 1320. But, whether we choose th<
earlier date 1260 or the later 1315, Folgore may legitimately be use<
for my present purpose of illustration.
This is equally true of Cene dalla Chitarra's satirical parodies of th
Months, in which, using the same rhymes as Folgore, he turns each o
his motives to ridicule. Cene was a poet of Arezzo. His series an-
Folgore's will both be found in the Poeti del Primo Secolo, vol. ii., an
in Navone's edition cited above.
FOLGORE DA SAN GEMIGNANO. 55
ism is presented in a form of art so temperate, with
colors so refined and outlines so delicately drawn, that
there is nothing repulsive in it. His selfishness and
sensuality are related to Aretino's as the miniatures
of a missal to Giulio Romano's Modes of Venus. 1
In his sonnets on the Months, Folgore addresses
the Brigata as " valiant and courteous above Lancelot,
ready, if need were, with lance in rest, to spur along
the lists of Camelot." In January he gives them good
fires and warm chambers, silken coverlids for their
beds, and fur cloaks, and sometimes in the day lo
sally forth and snow-ball girls upon the square:
Uscir di fora alcuna volta il giorno,
Gittando della neve bella e bianca
A le donzelle, che staran dattorno.
February brings the pleasures of the chase. March
is good for fishing, with merry friends at night, and
never a friar to be seen:
Lasciate predicar i Frati pazzi,
Ch' hanno troppe bugie e poco vero.
These remarks have to be qualified by reference to an unfinished
set of five sonnets (Navone's edition, pp. 45-49), which are composed in
a somewhat different key. They describe the arming of a young knight,
and his reception by Valor, Humility, Discretion, and Gladness. Yet
the knight, so armed and accepted, is no Galahad, far less the grim
horseman of Diirer's allegory. Like the members of the brigata goder-
eccia, he is rather a Gawain or Astolfo, all love, fine clothes, and court-
ship. Each of these five sonnets is a precious little miniature of Italian
carpet-chivalry. The quaintest is the second, which begins:
Ecco prodezza che tosto lo spoglia,
E dice: amico e" convien che tu mudi,
Per cib ch' i' vo' veder li uomini nudi,
E vo' che sappi non abbo altra voglia.
This exordium makes one regret that the painter of the young knight In
our National Gallery (Giorgione ?) had not essayed a companion picture.
Valor disrobing him and taking him into her arms and crying Quests
(ami m' at offerte would have made a fine pictorial allegory.
56 RENAISSANCE IN ITALY.
In April the "gentle country all abloom with fair
fresh grass" invites the young men forth. Ladies
shall go with them, to ride, display French dresses,
dance Provencal figures, or touch new instruments
from Germany, or roam through spacious parks.
May brings in tournaments and showers of blossoms
garlands and oranges flung from balcony and win-
dow girls and youths saluting with kisses on cheeks
and lips:
n. pulzellette, giovene, e garzoni
Basciarsi nella bocca e nelle guance;
D' amore e di goder vi si ragioni.
In June the company of youths and maidens quit
the city for the villa, passing their time in shady gar-
dens, where the fountains flow and freshen the fine
grass, and all the folk shall be love's servants. July
finds them in town again, avoiding the sun's heat and
wearing silken raiment in cool chambers where they
feast. In August they are off to the hills, riding at
morn and eve from castle to castle, through upland
valleys where streams flow. September is the month
of hawking; October of fowling and midnight balls.
With November and December winter comes again,
and brings the fireside pleasures of the town. On the
whole, there is too much said of eating and drinking
in these sonnets; and the series concludes with a piece
of inhumane advice:
E beffe far dei tristi cattivelli,
E miseri cattivi sciagurati
Avari: non vogliate usar con elH.
The sonnets on the Days breathe the same quaint
medieval hedonism. 1 Monday is the day of songs
1 If I were writing the history of early Tuscan poetry, I should wish
HIS JOYOUS COMPANIES. 57
and love; our young man must be up betimes, to make
his mistress happy:
Levati su, donzello, e non dor mi re;
Che 1' amoroso giorno ti conforta,
E vuol che vadi tua donna a fruire.
Tuesday is the day of battles and pitched fields; but
these are described in mock-heroics, which show what
the poet really felt about the pleasure of them. Wed-
nesday is the day of banquets, when ladies and
girls are waited on by young men wearing amorous
wreaths:
E donzelletti gioveni garzoni
Servir, portando amorose ghirlande.
Thursday is the day of jousts and tourneys; Fri-
day of hounds and horses; Saturday, of hawks and
fowling-nets; Sunday, of " dances and feats of arms in
Florence":
Danzar donzelli, armeggiar cavalieri,
Cercar Fiorenza per ogni contrada,
Per piazze, per giardini, e per verzieri.
Such then was the joyous living, painted with
colors of the fancy by a Tuscan poet, and realized in
here to compare the rarely beautiful poem of Lapo Gianni, Amor eo chero,
with Folgore, and the masterly sonnets of Cecco Angiolieri of Siena, espe-
cially the one beginning S' io fossi fuoco, with Cene dalla Chitarra, in
order to prove the fullness of sensuous and satirical inspiration in the
age preceding Dante. Lapo wishes he had the beauty of Absalom, the
strength of Samson; that the Arno would run balm for him, her walls
be turned to silver and her paving-stones to crystal; that he might abide
in eternal summer gardens among thousands of the loveliest women, lis-
tening to the songs of birds and instruments of music. The voluptuous-
ness of Folgore is here heightened to ecstasy. Cecco desires to be fire,
wind, sea, God, that he might ruin the world; the emperor, that he might
decapitate its population; death, that he might seek out his father and
mother; life, that he might fly from both; being Cecco, he would fain
take all fair women, and leave the foul to his neighbors. The spue ot
Cene is deepened to insanity.
58 RENAISSANCE IN ITALY.
Florence at the close of that eventful century which
placed the city under Guelf rule, in the plenitude of
peace, equality, and wealth by sea and land. Distinc-
tions of class had been obliterated. The whole popu-
lation enjoyed equal rights and equal laws. No man
was idle; and though the simplicity of the past, praised
by Dante and Villani, was yielding to luxury, still the
pleasure-seekers were controlled by that fine taste
which made the Florentines a race of artists. 1 This
halcyon season was the boyhood of Dante and Giotto,
the prime of Arnolfo and Cimabue. The buildings
whereby the City of the Flower is still made beautiful
above all cities of Italian soil, were rising. The
people abode in industry and order beneath the sway
of their elected leaders. Supreme in Tuscany, fearing
no internal feuds, strong in their militia of thirty
thousand burghers to repel a rival State, the Floren-
tines had reached the climax of political prosperity.
Not as yet had arisen that little cloud, no bigger than
a man's hand, above Pistoja, which was destined to
plunge them into the strife of Blacks and Whites.
During that interval of windless calm, in that fair
city, where the viol and the lute were never silent through
spring-tide and summer, the star of Italian poetry, that
" crowning glory of unblemished wealth," went up and
filled the heavens with light.
| See Paradiso, xv.; Giov. VUL vi. 69,
CHAPTER II.
THE TRIUMVIRATE.
Chivalrous Poetry Ideal of Chivalrous Love Bolognese Erudition
New Meaning given to the Ideal Metaphysics of the Florentine
School of Lyrists Guido Cavalcanti Philosophical Poems Popu-
lar Songs Cino of Pistoja Dante's Vita Nuova Beatrice in the
Convito and the Paradiso The Preparation for the Divine Comedy
in Literature Allegory The Divine Comedy Petrarch's Position
in Life His Conception of Humanism Conception of Italy His
Treatment of Chivalrous Love Beatrice and Laura The Canzoniere
Boccaccio, the Florentine Bourgeois His Point of View His
Abandonment of the Chivalrous Standpoint His Devotion to Art
Anticipates the Renaissance The Decameron Cotnmedia Umana
Precursors of Boccaccio Novels Carmina Vagorum Plan of the
Book Its Moral Character The Visione Amorosa Boccaccio's De-
scriptionsThe Teseide The Rime The Filocopolte Filostrato
The Ameto, Fiammetta, Ninfale, Corbaccio Prose before Boccac-
cio Fioretti di San Francesco and Decameron compared Influence
of Boccaccio over the Prose Style of the Renaissance His Death
Close of the Fourteenth Century Sacchetti's Lament
THE Sicilians followed closely in the track of the
Provencal poets. After, or contemporaneously with
them, the same Italo- Pro venial literature was culti-
vated in the cities of central Italy. The subject-
matter of this imitative poetry was love but love that
bore a peculiar relation to ordinary human feeling.
Woman was regarded as an ideal being, to be ap-
proached with worship bordering on adoration. The
lover derived personal force, virtue, elevation, energy,
from his enthusiastic passion. Honor, justice, cour-
age, self-sacrifice, contempt of worldly goods, flowed
60 RENAISSANCE IN ITALY.
from that one sentiment; and love united two wills
in a single ecstasy. Love was the consummation of
spiritual felicity, which surpassed all other modes of
happiness in its beatitude. Thus Bernard de Venta-
dour and Jacopo da Lentino were ready to forego
Paradise unless they might behold their lady's face
before the throne of God. For a certain period in
modern history, this mysticism of the amorous emotion
was no affectation. It formulated a genuine impulse
of manly hearts, inflamed by beauty, and touched with
the sense of moral superiority in woman, perfected
through weakness and demanding physical protection.
By bringing the cruder passions into accor*d with
gentle manners and unselfish aspirations, it served to
temper the rudeness of primitive society ; and no little
of its attraction was due to the conviction that only
refined natures could experience it. This new aspect
of love was due to chivalry, to Christianity, to the
Teutonic reverence for women, in which religious awe
seems to have blended with the service of the weaker
by the stronger.
Sincere and beautiful as the ideal of chivalrous
love may have been, it speedily degenerated. Chiv-
alry, though a vital element of feudalism, existed, even
among the nations of its origin, more as an aspiration
than a reality. In Italy it never penetrated the life or
subdued the imagination of the people. For the Italo-
Provengal poets that code of love was almost wholly
formal. They found it ready made. They used
it because the culture of a Court, in sympathy with
feudal Europe, left them no other choice. Not Arthur,
but the Virgilian ^tneas, was still the Italian hero;
CHIVALROUS LOVE. 6l
and instead of S. Louis, the nations of the South could
only boast of a crusading Frederick II. Frederick the
troubadour was a no less anomalous being than
Frederick the crusader. He conformed to contempo-
rary fashion, but his spirit ran counter to the age.
Curiosity, incipient humanism, audacious doubt, the
toleration which inclined him to fraternize with
Saracens and seek the learning of the Arabs, placed
him outside the sphere of thirteenth century con-
ceptions. His expedition to the East appears a mere
parade excursion, hypocritical, political, ironical. In
like manner his love-poetry and that of his courtiers
rings hollow in our ears.
It harmonized with the Italian genius, when
Guido Guinicelli treated chivalrous love from the
standpoint of Bolognese learning. He altered none
of the forms; he used the conventional phraseo-
logy. But he infused a new spirit into the subject-
matter. His poetry ceased to be formal; the phrases
were no longer verbiage. The epicureanism of Freder-
ick's life clashed with the mystic exaltation of knight-
hood. There was no discord between Guide's scientific
habit of mind and his expression of a philosophical idea
conveyed in terms of amorous enthusiasm. Upon
his lips the words:
Al cor gentil ripara sempre Amore,
Come 1'augello in selva alia verdura;
Ne fe* Amore anti che gentil core,
Ne gentil cor anti che Amor, Natura:
acquire reality not the reality of passion, but of
sincere thought. They do not convey the spontaneity
of feeling, but a philosopher's contemplation of love
63 RENAISSANCE IN ITALY.
and beauty in their influence on human character
Guide's mood might be compared with that of the
Greek sage, when he exclaimed that neither the morn-
ing nor the evening star is so wonderful as Justice, or
when he thus apostrophized Virtue:
Virtue, to men thou bringest care and toil;
Yet art thou life's best, fairest spoil !
O virgin goddess, for thy beauty's sake
To die is delicate in this our Greece,
Or to endure of pain the stern, strong ache.
For the chivalrous races, Love had been an enthusiastic
ideal. For the Italo-Provengal euphuists it supplied
an artificial -inspiration. At Bologna it became the
form of transcendental science; and here the Italian
intellect touched, by accident or instinct, the same note
that had been struck by Plato in the " Phsedrus " and
" Symposium."
A public trained in legal and scholastic studies,
whose mental furniture was drawn from S. Thomas
and Accursius, hailed their poet in Guido Guinicelli.
For them it was natural that poetry should veil phi-
losophy with verse; that love should be confounded
with the movement of the soul toward truth; that
beauty should be treated as the manifestation of a
spiritual good. Dante in his Canzone, Donne ch' avete
intelletto d' amore, appeals, not to emotion, but to in-
telligence. He tells us that understanding was the
ancient name of lave, and describes the effect of passion
in a young man's heart as a revelation raising him
above the level of common experience. Thus the
transmutation of the simpler elements of the chivalrous
code into philosophical doctrine, where the form of the
ITALIAN SCIENCE. 63
worshiped lady transcends the sphere of sense, and
her spirit is identified with the lover's deepest thought
and loftiest aspiration, was sincere in medieval Florence.
The Tuscan intellect was too virile and sternly strung
to be satisfied with amorous rhymes. The contem-
porary theory of aesthetics demanded allegory, and
imposed upon the poet erudition ; nor was it easy for
the singer of that epoch to command his own immediate
emotions, or to use them for the purposes of a direct
and plastic art. Enjoying neither the freedom of the
Greek nor the disengagement of the modern spirit,
he found it more proper to clothe a scientific content
with the veil of passion, than to paint the personality
of the woman he loved with natural precision. Be-
tween the mysticism of a sublime but visionary adora-
tion on the one side, and the sensualities of vulgar
appetite or the decencies of married life on the other,
there lay for him no intermediate artistic region. He
understood the love of the imagination and the love of
the senses; but the love of the heart, familiar to the
Northern races, hardly existed for him.
And here it may be parenthetically noticed that the
Italians, in the middle ages, created no feminine ideal
analogous to Gudrun or Chriemhild, Iseult or Guine-
vere. When they left the high region of symbolism,
they descended almost without modulation to the prose
of common life. Thus the Selvaggia of Cino, the
Beatrice of Dante, the Laura of Petrarch, made way
for the Fiammetta of Boccaccio and the women of the
Decameron, when that ecstasy of earlier enthusiasm
was exhausted. For a while, however, the Florentines
were well prepared to give an intellectual significance,
64 RENAISSANCE IN ITALY.
and with it a new life, to the outworn conventions of
the Italo-Provengal lyrists. Nor must it be thought
that the emotions thus philosophized were unreal,
Dante loved Beatrice, though she became for him an
allegory. The splendid vision of her beauty and good-
ness attended him through life, assuming the guidance
of his soul in all its stages. Difficult as it may be to
comprehend this blending of the real and transcen-
dental, we must grasp it if we desire to penetrate the
spirit of the fourteenth century in Italy.
The human heart remains unchanged. No meta-
physical sophistication, no allegory, no scholastic mysti-
cism, can destroy the spontaneity of instinct in a man
who loves, or cloud a poet's vision. Love does not
cease to be love because it is sublimed to the quint-
essence of a self-denying passion. It still retains its
life in feeling, and its root in sense. Beauty does not
cease to be beautiful because it has been moralized and
identified with the attraction that lifts men upward to
the sphere of the eternal truths. Nor is poetry ex-
tinguished because the singer deems it his vocation to
utter genuine thought, and scorns the rhyming pas-
times of the simple amorist. The Florentine school
presents us with a poetry which aimed at being philo-
sophical, but which at the same time vibrated with life
and delineated moods of delicate emotion. To effect
a flawless fusion between these two strains in the new
style, was infinitely difficult ; nor were the poets of that
epoch equally successful. Guido Cavalcanti, the leader
of the group which culminates in Dante, won his fame
by verse that savors more of the dialectician than the
singer. Ranking science above poetry, he is said to
GUIDO CAVALCANTL 65
have disdained even Virgil. His odes are dryly
scholastic especially that famous Donna mi priega,
which contemporaries studied clause by clause, and
which, after two centuries, served Dino del Garbo for
the text of a metaphysical discourse. 1 At the same
time, certain lyrics, composed in a lighter mood by the
same poet, have in them the essence of spontaneous
and natural inspiration. His Ballate were probably
regarded by himself and his friends as playthings,
thrown off in idle moments to distract a mind engaged
in thorny speculations. Yet we find here the first full
blossom of genuine Italian verse. Their beauty is that
of popular song, starting flowerlike from the soil,
and fragrant in its first expansion beneath the sun of
courtesy and culture. Nothing remained, in this kind,
for Boccaccio and Poliziano, but to echo the Ballata of
the country maidens, and to complete the welcome to
the May. 2
Two currents of verse, the one rising from the
senses, the other from the brain, the one deriving force
and fullness from the people, the other nourished by
the schools, flowed apart in Guido Cavalcanti's poetry.
They were combined into a single stream by Cino da
Pistoja. 3 Cino was a jurist of encyclopaedic erudition,
1 Rime di Guido Cavalcanti t edite edinedite, etc., Firenze, 1813. See
p. 29 for the Canzone, and p. 73 for a translation into Italian of Dino's
Latin commentary.
* Op. cit. pp. 21-27. Two in particular, Era in pensier and Gh
occhi di quella gentil forosetta, may be singled out. A pastourelle, In
un boschetto, anticipates the manner of Sacchetti. As for the May song,
its opening lines, Ben venga Maggio, etc., are referred by Carducci to
Guido Cavalcanti.
3 See Vita e Poesie di Messer Cino da Pistoja, Pisa, Capurro, 1813.
Abo Barbara's diamond edition of Cino da Pistoja and other poets, edited
by Carducci.
66 RENAISSANCE IN ITALY.
as well as a sweet and fluent singer. 1 His verseb
have the polish and something of the chill of marble.
His Selvaggia deserves a place with Beatrice and
Laura. From Cino Petrarch derived his mastery of
limpid diction. In Cino the artistic sense of the
Italians awoke. He produced something distinct
both from the scientific style of Guido Guinicelli, and
also from the wilding song which Guido Cavalcanti's
Ballate echoed. He seems to have applied himself to
the main object of polishing poetical diction, and
rendering expression at once musical and lucid. 2
Though his hold upon ideas was not so firm as
Cavalcanti's, nor his passion so intense, he achieved a
fusion of thought and feeling in an artistic whole of
sympathetic suavity. We instinctively compare his
work with that of Mino da Fiesole in bass-relief.
Dante was five years older than Cino. To him
belongs the glory of having effected the same fusion in
a lyric poetry at once more comprehensive and more
lofty. Dante yields no point as a dialectician and
subtle thinker to Guido Cavalcanti. He surpasses
Cino da Pistoja as an artist. His passion and
imagination are more fiery than Guido's. His tender-
ness is deeper and more touching than Cino's. Even
1 The tomb of Cino in the Duomo at Pistoja, with its Gothic canopies
and the bass-reliefs which represent a Doctor of Laws lecturing to men of
all ranks and ages at their desks beneath his professorial chair, is a fine
contemporary monument. The great jurist is here commemorated, not
the master of Petrarch in the art of song.
1 Cp. Dante De Vulg. Eloq. i. 17, upon Cino's purification of Italian
from vulgarisms, with Lorenzo de' Medici, who calls Cino " tutto delicato
e veramente amoroso, il quale primo, al mio parere, cominci6 1' antico
rozzore in tutto a schifare." Lettera all' illustr. Sig. Federigo, Poesie
(ed. Barbera, 1858), p. 33.
DANTE'S LYRICS. 67
in those minor works with which he preluded the
Divine Comedy, Dante soars above all competition,
taking rank among the few poets born to represent
an age and be the everlasting teachers of the human
soul. Yet even Dante, though knowing that he was
destined to eclipse both the Guidi, though claiming
Love alone for his inspirer, was not wholly free from
the scholasticism of his century. In the earlier lyrics
of the Vtfq Nuava and in the Canzoni of the Convito,
he allows his feeling to be over-weighted by the
scientific content. Between his emotion and our sym-
pathy there rises, now and again, the mist of meta-
physic. While giving them intenser meaning, he still
plays upon the commonplaces of his predecessors.
Thus in the sonnet Amor e 7 cor gentil son una cosa
he rehandles Guinicelli's theme; while the following
stanza repeats the well-worn doctrine that Love should
be the union of beauty and of excellence * :
Che la heltk che Amore in voi consente,
A virtu solamente
Formata fu dal suo decreto antico,
Contro lo qual fallate.
lo dico a voi che siete innamorate,
Che se beltate a voi
Fu data, e virtu a noi,
Ed a costui di due potere un fare,
Voi non dovreste amare,
Ma coprir quanto di belte vi e dato,
Poiche non e virtu, ch' era suo segno.
Dante's concessions to the mannerism of the school
weigh as nothing in the scales against the beauty
and the truth of that most spiritual of romances, to
' H Cantoniere (Fraticelli's edition), p. 199.
68 RENAISSANCE IN ITALY.
which the Vita Nuova gives melodic utterance. With-
in the compass of one little book is bound up all
that Florence in the thirteenth century contributed to
the refinement of medieval manners, together with all
that the new school of poets had imagined of highest
in their philosophical conception. The harmony of
life and science attains completion in the real but
idealized experience, which transcends and combines
both motives in a personality uniquely constituted for
this blending. It is enough for the young Dante to
meet Beatrice, to pass her among her maidens in the
city-ways, to receive her salute, to admire her moving
through the many-colored crowd, to meditate upon
her apparition, as of one of God's angels, in the
solitude of his chamber. She is a dream, a vision.
But it is the dream of his existence, the vision that
unfolds for him the universe more actual, more
steeped in emotion, more stimulative of sublime aspira-
tion and virile purpose than many loves which find
fruition in long years of intercourse. We feel that
the man's true self has been revealed to him ; that he
has given his life-blood to the ideal which, without
this nourishment, would have ranked among phantoms,
but is now reality. Students who have not followed
the stages through which the doctrine of chivalrous
love reached Dante, and the process whereby it was
transmuted into science for the guidance of the soul,
will regard the records of the Yita Nuova as shadowy
or sentimental. Or if they only dwell upon the
philosophical aspect of Dante's work, if they do not
make allowance for the natural stirring of a heart that
throbbed with liveliest feeling, they will fail to com-
THE "VITA NUOVA." 69
prehend this book, at once so complex and so simple.
The point lies exactly in the fusion of two elements
in the truth of the passion, the truth of the idealization,
and the spontaneity of the artistic form combining
them. What is most intelligible, because most com-
mon to all phases of profound emotion, in the Vita
Nuova, is its grief the poet's sympathy with Beatrice
in the house of mourning for her .father's death, the
vision of her own passage from earth to heaven, and
the apostrophe to the pilgrims who thread the city
clothed with mourning for her loss. 1 No one, reading
these poems, will doubt that, though Beatrice did but
cross the path of Dante's life and shed her brightness
on it for a season from afar, the thought of her had
penetrated heart and fiber, making him a man new-
born through love, and striking in his soul a note that
should resound through all his years, through all the
centuries which grow to understand him.
Dante was born in 1266 of poor but noble parents,
who reconciled themselves to the Guelf party. He
first saw Beatrice in his ninth year; and, when a man,
he well remembered how her beauty dawned upon
him. 2 " Her dress, on that day, was of a most noble
color, a subdued and goodly crimson, girdled and
adorned in such sort as best suited with her very
tender age. At that moment, I say most truly that
the spirit of life, which hath its dwelling in the secretest
chamber of the heart, began to tremble so violently
that the least pulses of my body shook therewith; and
in trembling it said these words: Ecce deus fortior me..
1 Voi che portate; Donna pietosa; Deh peregrini.
See Rossetti's translation of the Vita Nuova.
70 RENAISSANCE IN ITALY.
qui veniens dominabitur mihi" Beatrice died in 1290
and Dante closed the Vita Nuova with these words l :
" It was given unto me to behold a very wonderful vision ;
wherein I saw things which determined me that I
would say nothing further of this most blessed one,
until such time as I could discourse more worthily con-
cerning her. And to this end I labor all I can ; as
she well knoweth. Wherefore if it be His pleasure
through whom is the life of all things, that my life
continue with me a few years, it is my hope that I
shall yet write concerning her what hath not before
been written of any woman. After the which, may it
seem good unto Him who is the Master of Grace,
that my spirit should go hence to behold the glory of
its lady: to wit, of that blessed Beatrice who now
gazeth continually on His countenance gut est per
omnia scecula benedictus. Lam Deo"
This passage was written possibly in Dante's
twenty-eighth year. The consecration of his younger
manhood was the love of Beatrice. She made him a
poet. Through her came to him the " sweet new
style," which shone with purest luster in his verse;
and the songs he made of Beatrice were known
through all the City of the Flower. Yet love had not
absorbed his energies. He studied under Brunette
Latini, and qualified himself for the career of a Flor-
entine citizen by entering the Guild of Speziali.
After Beatrice's death a great and numbing sorrow
fell upon him. From this eclipse he recovered by the
help of reading, and also by the distractions of public
life. He fought in the battle of Campaldino, and
1 Rossetti's translation of the Vita Nuova.
DANTE'S LIFE. ^\
married his wife Gemma Donati. He went as ambas-
sador to San Gemignano in 1299; and in the year
1300, when Florence was divided by the parties of
Cerchi and Donati, he fulfilled the functions of the
Priorate. These ten years between Beatrice's death
and Dante's election as Prior were a period of hesita-
tion and transition. He was no longer the poet of
QJLYJne. Love, inspired by spontaneous emotion, master-
ing and glorifying the form which tradition imposed
on verse. He had become a student of philosophy;
and this change makes itself felt in the more abstruse
and abstract odes of the Cgwyitp. Yet he was still
attended, through those years of study, civic engage-
ments and domestic duties, by the vision of Beatrice.
This is how he speaks of science in the second part of
the Convito: " After some time my mind, which strove
to regain strength, bethought itself (since neither my
own consolations nor those of friends availed me
aught) of having recourse to the method which had
helped to comfort other spirits in distress. I took to
reading the book, not known to many students, of
Boethius, wherewith, unhappy and in exile, he had
comforted himself. And hearing also that Tully had
written another book in which, while treating of friend-
ship, he had used words of consolation to Laelius in
the death of his friend Scipio, I read that also, and as
it happens that a man goes seeking silver, and far
from his design finds gold, which hidden causes yield
him, not perchance without God's guidance, so I who
sought for consolation found not only comfort for my
tears, but also words of authors and of sciences and of
books, weighing the which, I judged well that philo-
72 RENAISSANCE IN ITALY.
sophy, the lady of these authors, of these sciences and
of these books, was a thing supreme. And I imagined
her in fashion like a gentle lady, nor could I fancy her
otherwise than piteous; wherefore so truly did I gaze
upon her with adoring eyes that scarcely could I turn
myself away. And having thus imagined her I began
to go where she displayed her very self, that is, in the
schools of the religious, and the disputations of philo-
sophers; so that in short time, about thirty months, I
began so much to feel her sweetness that her love
chased away and destroyed all other thought in
me."
Beatrice, who in her lifetime had been the revela-
tion of beauty and all good, lifting her lover above the
region of sordid thoughts, and opening a sphere of
spiritual intelligence, now accompanied him througl
the labyrinths of speculation. She was still th<
form, the essence, of all he learned; and the vo^
which closes the Vita Nuova had not been for-
gotten.
Through the transition period, marked by the
Convito, we are led to the third stage of Dante's life
those twenty-one years, during which he roamed in
exile over Italy, and wrote the poem of medieval
Christianity. The studies of which the Convito forms
a fragment, and the political career which ended in the
embassy to Boniface, were both necessary for the
Divine Comedy. Had it not been for Dante's exile,
the modern worfd might have lacked its first and
greatest epic; Beatrice might have missed her pro-
mised apotheosis. As her hand had guided him
through the paths of love and the labyrinths of
RELIGIOUS LITERATURE. 73
science, so now the brightness of her glorified face
lifted him from sphere to sphere of Paradise. By
gazing on her eyes, he rose through heaven, and stood
with her before the splendor of the Beatific Vision.
To identify Beatrice with Theology in this last stage
of Dante's spiritual life is a facile but inadequate ex-
pedient of criticism. From the earliest she had been
for him the light and guidance of his soul; and at the
last he ascribed to her the best and the sublimest of
his inspirations.
Since its origin Italian poetry had pursued one
line of evolution, first following and then transmuting
the traditions of Provence. In the Divine Comedy
it took a new direction. Chivalry, insufficient for the
nation and ill-adapted to its temper, yielded to a
motive force derived from the religious sentiment.
The Bible history, the Lives of the Saints, and the
doctrine of the Church concerning the future of man-
kind, together with the emotions of piety, had hitherto
received but partial exposition at the hands of a few
poets of the people. S. Francis struck the keynote
of popular Italian poetry in his Cantico del Sole, which
can be accepted as the first specimen of composition
in the vulgar tongue. Guittone of Arezzo, already
mentioned as the earliest learned poet who attempted
to nationalize his style, acquired fame as the writer of
one sublime sonnet to Madonna and two Canzoni to
the Mother and her ..Son. 1 But the most decisive im-
pulse toward religious poetry was given by the Flagel-
1 Donna del cielo; O benigna, o dolce; O ban Gesii, See Rime dl
Fra Guittone d' Arezzo (Firenze, Morandi, 1828), vol. ii. pp. 212, 3;
70 1. 1. p. 6l.
74 RENAISSANCE IN ITALY.
lants, who, starting from the Umbrian highlands in
1290, diffused their peculiar devotion over Italy. I
shall have occasion to return in a future chapter to the
history of this movement and to trace its influence
over popular Italian literature. It is enough, at pre-
sent, to have mentioned it among the forces tending
toward religious poetry upon the close of the thir-
teenth century.
The spirit of the epoch inclined to Allegory and
Vision. When we remember the prestige of Virgil
in the middle ages, both as a philosopher and also as
the precursor of Christianity, it will be understood how
his descent into Hades fascinated the imagination, and
prepared the mind to accept the Vision as a proper
form for conveying theological doctrine. 1 The Jour-
ney of S. Brandan, the Purgatory of S. Patrick, and
the Visions of Tundalus and Alberic pretended to
communicate information concerning the soul's state
after death, the places of punishment, and the method
of salvation. In course of time the Vision was used
for political or ecclesiastical purposes by preachers who
averred that they had seen the souls of eminent sinners
in torment. It became an engine of terrorism, as-
sumed satiric tone, and finally fell into the hands of
didactic or merely fanciful poets. 2
The chief preoccupation of the medieval mind was
with the future destiny of man. This life came to be
1 Not only the sixth ^Eneid, but the Dream of Scipio also, influenced
the medieval imagination. The Biblical visions, whether allegorical like
those of Ezekiel and Paul, or apocalyptic, like S. John's, exercised a sim-
ilar control.
8 See the little book of curious learning by Alessandro d' Ancona,
entitled I Precursori di Dante, Firenze, Sansoni, 1874.
THE VISION. 75
regarded as a preparation for eternity. Like a fore-
ground, the actual world served to relieve the picture
of the world beyond the grave. Therefore popular
literature abounded in manuals of devotion and disci-
pline, some of which set forth the history of the soul
in allegorical form. Among other examples may be
cited three stories of the spiritual life, corresponding
to its three stages of Nature, Purification, and Restor-
ation, conveyed under the titles of Umano, Spoglia,
Rinuova. Many prelusions of this class were com-
bined in one religious drama called Commedia deW
Anima, the substance of which is certainly old, though
the form yields evidence of sixteenth-century rifaci-
mento. 1
The object of the foregoing paragraphs has been
to show that the popular intellect was well prepared
for religious poetry, and had appropriated the forms
of Allegory and Vision. Not in order to depreciate
the originality of Dante, but to prove in how vital a
relation he stood toward his age, I have here insisted
on those formless preludes to his work of art. In the
Epistle to Can Grande he thus explains the theme of
the Commedia: " The subject of the whole work, taken
literally, is the state of souls after death, regarded as
fact; for the action deals with this, and is about this
1 See De Sanctis, Storia della Letteratura Italiana, vol. i. chap. 5.
Of the Commedia Spirituale dell' Anima I have seen a Sienese copy
of the date 1608, a reprint from some earlier Florentine edition. The
Comedy is introduced by two boys, good and bad. The piece itself
brings God as the Creator, the soul He has made, its guardian angel,
the devil, the powers of Memory, Reason, Will, and all the virtues in
succession, with corresponding vices, on the scene. It ends with the
soul's judgment after death and final marriage to Christ. Dramatically
It is almost devoid of merit.
76 RENAISSANCE IN ITALY.
But if the work be taken allegorically, its subject is
man, in so far as by merit or demerit in the exercise
of free will he is exposed to the rewards or punish-
ments of justice." Attending to the letter, we find in
the Commedia a vision of that life beyond the tomb,
in relation to which alone our life on earth has value.
It presents a picture of the everlasting destiny of
souls, so firmly apprehended and vividly imagined by
the medieval fancy. But since this picture has to set
forth mysteries seen and heard by none, the revelation
itself, like S. John's Apocalypse, is conveyed in sym-
bols fashioned to adumbrate the truths perceived by
faith. The same symbols portray another reality,
not apprehended merely by faith, but brought home
to the heart by experience. Attending to the allegory,
we find in the Commedia a history of the soul in this
life an ethical analysis of sin, purgation and salvation
through grace. The poem is a narrative of Dante's
journey through the region into which all pass after
death; but at the same time it describes the hell and
heaven and the transition through repentance from
sin to grace, which are the actual conditions of the
soul in this life. The Inferno depicts unmitigated
evil. The Paradiso exhibits goodness, absolute and
free from stain. In the one there is no relief, in the
other no alloy; the one is darkness, the other light.
The intermediate region of the Purgatorio is a realm
of expectation and conversion, where sin is no longer
possible, but where the fruition of goodness is delayed
by the necessity of purification. Here then are the
natural alternations of day and night, the relative
twilight c-f a world where all is yet transition rather
STRUCTURE OF "DIVINE COMEDY." 77
than fulfillment. It may be observed that Purga-
tory belongs to the order of things which by their
nature pass away; while Hell and Heaven are both
eternal. Therefore the Commedia, considered as
an apocalypse of the undying soul, reveals absolute
damnation and absolute salvation, both states being
destined to endure so long as God's justice and love
exist; but it also reveals a state of purifying pain,
which ceases when the men who need it have been
numbered. Considered as an allegory of the spiritual
life on earth, it describes the process of escape from
eternal condemnation through grace into eternal
happiness.
A theme so vast and all-embracing enabled Dante
to inform the whole knowledge of his epoch. The
Commedia is the poem of that scholastic theology
which absorbed every branch of science and brought
the world within the scope of one thought, God. As
the Summa of S. Thomas combined philosophy and
revelation, so Dante included both the Pagan and
Christian dispensations in his scheme. He starts
from the wood of terror, where men are assailed by the
wild beasts of their passions ; and two guides lead him,
by the light of knowledge, up to God. The one is
Virgil, the other Beatrice Virgil, who stands for
human reason, science, the four cardinal virtues ; Bea-
trice, who symbolizes divine grace, faith formulated
in theology, the virtues bestowed on man through
Christ for his salvation. Virgil cannot lead the poet
beyond Purgatory; because thus far only is human
knowledge of avail to elevate and guide the soul.
Beatrice lifts him through the spheres of Paradise by
78 RENAISSANCE IN ITALY.
contemplation; because the highest summit attained
by reason and natural virtue is but the starting point
of the true Christian's journey.
The Commedia is thus the drama or the epos of the
soul. It condenses all that man has thought or done,
can think or do; all that he knows about the universe
around him, all that he hopes or fears from the future;
his intuition of an incorruptible and ideal order, under-
lying and controlling the phenomenal world. God, the
world and man are brought into one focus; and the
interest of the poem is the relation of the individual
soul to them, the participation of each human person-
ality in the dramatic action. It need hardly be ob-
served that Dante's solutions of the problems which
arise in the development of this theme, are medieval.
His physical science has been superseded. His the-
ology is far from approving itself to the general con-
sciousness of Christians in our age. Yet while all
must recognize this obvious truth, the essence of the
Commedia is indestructible because of its humanity,
because of the personality which animates it. Men
change far less than the hypotheses of religion and phi-
losophy, which take form from experience as shadows
fly before the sun. However these may alter, man re-
mains substantially the same; and Dante penetrated hu-
man nature as few have done was such a man as few
have been. The unity and permanence of his poem are
in himself. Never was a plan so vast and various per-
meated so completely with a single self. At once,
creator and spectator of his vision, neophyte and hiero-
phant, arraigned and judge, he has not only seen hell
as the local prison-house of pain, but has felt it as the
HUMANITY OF THE POEM.
state of sin within his heart. He has passed through
purifying fires; and the songs of Paradise have
sounded by anticipation in his ears. Dante is both the
singer and the hero of his epic. In him the universal
idea of mankind becomes concrete. The continuous
experience of this living person who is at one and the
same time a figure of each and every soul that ever
breathed, and also the real Dante Alighieri, exile from
Florence without blame, sustains as on one thread the
medley of successive motives which else might lack
poetic unity, gives life to a scheme which else might be
too abstract. Expanding to embrace the universe, con-
tracting to a point within one breast, the Commedia
combines the general and the particular in an individ-
ual commensurate with man.
It may be conjectured that Dante, obeying the
scholastic impulse of his age, started from the abstract
or universal. Therein lay the reality of things, not in
the particular. What has been already quoted from
the letter to Can Grande justifies this supposition.
He meant to lay bare the scheme of the universe, as
understood by medieval Christianity, and viewed from
the standpoint of the human agent. That scheme
presented itself in a series of propositions, a logic or a
metaphysic apprehended as truth. Each portion of
the poem was mapped out with rigorous accuracy.
Each section illustrated a thought, an argument, a
position. The whole might be surveyed as a structure
of connected syllogisms. To this scientific articulation
of its leading motives corresponds the architectural
symmetry, the simple outlines and severe masses of
the Commedia. The plan, however minute in detail,
80 RENAISSANCE IN ITALY.
is comprehended at a glance. The harmonies of the
design are as geometrical as some colossal church
imagined by Bramante. But Dante had no intention
of re-writing the Summa in verse. He meant to be a
poet, using the vulgar speech of "that low Italy" in the
production of an epic which should rank on equal terms
with the ^Eneid, and be for modern Christendom what
that had been for sacred Rome. Furthermore he had
it in his heart to yield such honor to Virgil, " leader,
lord, and master," as none had ever paid, and to write
concerning Beatrice " what had not before been written
of any woman." His poem was to be the storehouse
of his personal experience. His love and hatred, his
admiration of greatness and his scorn for cowardice,
his resentment of injury, his gratitude for service ren-
dered, his political creed and critical opinions, the joy he
had of nature, and the pain he suffered when he walked
with men: all this was to find expression at right
seasons and in seemly order. Upon the severe frame-
work of abstract truth, which forms the skeleton of
the Commedia and is the final end of its existence,
Dante felt free to superimpose materials of inexhaust-
ible variety. Following the metaphor of building
more exactly, we may say that he employed these
materials as the stones whereby he brought his archi-
tectural design to view. The abstract thought of the
Commedia, tyrannous and all-controlling as it is, could
not lay claim to reality but for the dramatic episodes
which present it to the intellect through the imagina-
tion.
Some such clothing of abstractions with concrete
images was intended in the medieval theory of allegory
MEDIEVAL ALLEGORY. Si
The Church proscribed the poets of antiquity; and it
had become an axiom that poetry was the art of lies. 1
Poetry was hardly suffered to exist except as a veil to
cloak some hidden doctrine; and allegory presented a
middle way of escape, whereby the pleasure of art
could be enjoyed with a safe conscience. Virgil,
whom the middle ages would not have relinquished,
though a General Council had condemned him,
received the absolution of allegorical interpretation
Dante, who defined poetry as the art " which publishes
the truth concealed beneath a veil of fable," frequently
interrupts the story to bid his readers note the mean-
ing underneath the figures of his verse. In composing
the Commedia, he had moral edification and scientific
truth for his end. The dramatic, narrative, descrip-
tive, and lyrical beauties of his poem served to bring
into relief or to shroud in appropriate mystery since
allegory both elucidates and obscures the matter it
conveys the doctrines he designed to inculcate. Still
Dante stood, as a poet, at a height so far above his
age and his own theories, that the cold and numbing
touch of symbolism rarely mars the interest of his
work. We may, perhaps, feel a certain confusion
between the personalities of Virgil and Beatrice and
the thoughts they represent, which chills our sym-
pathy, raising a feeling of indignation when Virgil re-
turns unwept to Hell, and removing Beatrice into a
world of intangible ideas. We may find the pageant
at the close of the " Purgatory " unattractive; nor will
the sublimity of the " Paradise " save the figures by
which spiritual meanings are here suggested, from
1 See Revival of Learning, chapter il-
8l RENAISSANCE IN ITALY.
occasional grotesqueness. Thus much can be con-
ceded. Dante, though born to be the poet of all time,
was still a scion of his epoch. He could not altogether
escape the influences of a misleading conception. But,
apart from allegory, apart from didactic purpose, the
Com/media takes highest rank for the episodes, the ac-
tion, the personal interest which never flags. No poet
ever had a finer sense of reality, and none commanded
the means of expressing it in all its forms more fully.
Dante's own theory of symbolism offered an illimitable
sphere for the exercise of his imagination, since it led
him to give visible and palpable shape to the thoughts
of his brain. And here it may be noted that the alle-
gorical heresy proved less pernicious than another
form of false opinion based upon an ideal of classical
purity might have been. Since the poem was to
present truth under a cloak of metaphor, it did not
signify what figures were used. The purpose they
served, justified them. Therefore Dante found him-
self at liberty to mingle satire with the hymns of
angels; to seek illustrations from vulgar life no less
than from nature in her sublimest moods; to delineate
the horrible, the painful, the grotesque, and the
improbable with the same sincerity as the beautiful,
the charming, and the familiar. His dramatic faculty
was exercised on themes so varied that to classify
them is impossible on the pathos of Francesca and
the terror of Ugoltno; the skirmish of the fiends in
Malebolge and the meeting of Statius with Virgil; the
pride of Farinata and the penitence of Manfred; the
agonies of Adamo da Brescia and the calm delights of
Piccarda dei Donati. He tells the stories of Ulysses
DANTESQUE KEALJSM. 83
and S. Francis, describes the flight of the Roman
eagle and Cacciaguida's manhood, with equal energy
of brief but ineffaceably impressive narration. This
license inherent in the use of allegory justified his
classing the fameless folk of his own days with the
heroes of Biblical and classical antiquity, and permitted
him to mingle ancient history with his censure of
contemporary politics. All times, ages, countries,
races of men are alike before the tribunal of God's
justice. Accordingly, the poet who had taken man's
moral nature for his theme, and was bound by his
theory to present this theme symbolically, could bring
to view a multitude of concrete persons, arranged
(whatever else may issue from their converse with the
protagonist) according to gradations of merit or de-
merit. Thus the Divine Comedy, though written
with a didactic object and under the influence of
allegory, surpasses every other epic in the distinctness
of its motives and the realism of their presentation.
The brief and pregnant style which scorns rhetorical
adornment, the accurate picture painting which aims
at vivid delineation of the thing to be discerned, har-
monize with its inflexible ethics, its uncompromising
sincerity, its intense human feeling.
The Commedia is too widely commensurate with
its theme, the Human Soul, to be described or classi-
fied. The men of its era called it the Divine; and
this title it has preserved, in spite of the fierce
censures of the Church which it contains. They
called it La Divina because of its material doubtless,
but also, we may dare to think, because of its un-
fathomable depth and height and breadth of thought
84 RENAISSANCE IN ITALY.
In course of time chairs were established at Florence,
Padua, and in other cities, for its explanation; and the
labor of the commentator was applied to it. That
labor has been continued from Boccaccio's down to our
own day; yet the dark places of the Commedia have not
been illuminated, nor is learning likely to solve some
problems which perplex a careful student of its cantos.
That matters, indeed, but little; for the main scope
and purpose of the poem are plain, and its spirit is
such that none who read can fail to recognize it.
Before Dante the Christian world had no poet, and
Italy had no voice. The gift of Dante to Europe was
an Epic on the one subject which united the modern
nations in community of interest. The gift of Dante
to his country was a masterpiece which placed her on
a par with Homer's Hellas and with Virgil's Rome.
If the first century of Italian literature could have
produced three men of the caliber of Dante, Italy
would have run her future course, as she began,
abreast with ancient Greece. That was not, however,
destined to be. The very conditions of the mission
she had to fulfill in the fourteenth and two following
centuries, rendered the emergence of a race of heroes
impossible. Italy was about to recover the past. Her
energies could not be concentrated on the evolution of
herself in a new literature. To Dante succeeded
Petrarch and Boccaccio.
Petrarch was born at Arezzo in the year 1304,
when his father, like Dante, and in the same cause,
had been expelled from Florence. His youth, passed
partly in Tuscany and partly at Avignon, coincided
with the years spent bv Dante in the composition of
THE AGE OF PETRARCH. 85
the Commedia. He was a student at Montpellier,
neglecting his law-books for Cicero and Virgil, when
Dante died at Ravenna in 1321. During those seven-
teen years of Dante's exile and Petrarch's boyhood, a
change had passed over the political scene. The
Papacy was transferred from Rome to France. The
last attempts of the German Emperors to vindicate
their authority below the Alps had failed. The Com-
munes were yielding to anarchy and party feuds, or
fast becoming the prey of despots. A new age had
begun ; and of this new age Petrarch was the repre-
sentative, as Dante had been the poet of the ages
which had passed away. Petrarch's inauguration of
the classical Revival has been already described in this
work; nor is it necessary to repeat the services he
rendered to the cause of humanism. 1 In a volume
dealing with Italian literature the poet of the Canzon-
iere must engage attention rather than the resusci-
tator of antique learning. It is Petrarch's peculiar
glory to have held two equally illustrious places in
the history of modern civilization, as the final lyrist
of chivalrous love and as the founder of the Renais-
sance. Yet this double attitude, when we compare him
with Dante, constitutes the chief cause of his manifest
inferiority.
The differences between Dante's and Petrarch's
education were marked, and tended to accentuate the
divergence of their intellectual and moral qualities.
Dante, who lived until maturity within sight of his bel
1 See above, Revival of Learning, chapter ii. I may also refer to
an article by me in the Quarterly Review for October, 1878, from which
I shall have occasion to draw largely in the following pages.
86 RENAISSANCE IN ITALY.
San Giovanni, grew up a Florentine in core and fiber
In his earliest work, the Vita Nuova y there is a home-
bred purity of style, as of something which could only
have been perfected in Florence ; a beauty akin to that
of Giotto's tower ; a perfume as of some flower pecu-
liar to a district whence it will not bear transplanting.
In his latest, the Paradiso, he devotes one golden
canto to the past prosperity of Florence, another to
her decadence through the corruption of her citizens.
While wandering like " the world's rejected guest "
away from that fair city of his birth, the unrest of his
pilgrimage, contrasted with the peace of earlier man-
hood, only strengthened the Florentine within him.
Though he traversed Italy in length and breadth,
though the Commedia furnishes an epitome of her
landscapes and her local customs, describes her cities
and resumes her history, the thought of national unity
was not present to his mind. Italy remained for him
the garden of the empire, the unruly colt whom Caesar
should bestride and curb. Elsewhere than in Flor-
ence Dante felt himself an alien. He refused the
poet's crown unless it could be taken by the font of
baptism upon the square of Florence. He chose
banishment with honor and the stars of heaven,
rather than ignominious entrance through the gates
he loved so well; and yet from the highest sphere
of Paradise he turned his eyes down to Florence and
her erring folk :
Io, ched era al divino dall' umano,
Ed all* eterno dal tempo venuto,
E di Fioronza in popol giusto e sano.
Petrarch, called to perform another mission, had a
PETRARCH'S TRAINING. 87
different training. Brought up from earliest infancy in
exile, transferred from Tuscany to France, deprived
of civic rights and disengaged from the duties of a
burgher in those troublous times, he surveyed the world
from his study and judged its affairs with the impar-
tiality of a philosopher. Without a city, without a
home, without a family, consecrated to the priesthood
and absorbed in literary interests, he spent his life in
musings at Vaucluse or in the splendid hospitalities of
the Lombard Courts. Through all his wanderings he
was a visitor, the citizen of no republic, but the free-
man of the City of the Spirit. Without exaggeration
he might have chosen for his motto the phrase of
Marcus Aurelius: " I will not say dear city of Cecrops
but dear city of God!" Avignon, where his intellect
was formed in youth, had become through the resi-
dence of the Popes the capital of Christendom, the
only center of political and ecclesiastical activity where
an ideal of universal culture could arise. Itself in
exile, the Papacy still united the modern nations by a
common bond; but its banishment from Rome was
the sign of a new epoch, when the hegemony of civili-
zation should be transferred from the Church to secular
control. In this way Petrarch was enabled to shape a
conception of humanism which left the middle age be-
hind; and when his mind dwelt on Italy at a distance,
he could think of her as the great Italic land, inheritor
of Rome, mother of a people destined to be one, born
to rule, or if not rule, at least to regenerate the world
through wisdom. From his lips we hear of Florence
nothing; but for the first time the passionate cry of
Italia mia the appeal of an Italian who recognized his
88 RENAISSANCE IN ITALY.
race, yet had no local habitation on the sacred soil
vibrates in his oratorical canzoni. Petrarch's dreams
of a united Italy and a resuscitated Roman republic
were hardly less visionary than Dante's ideal of uni-
versal monarchy with Rome for the seat of empire.
Yet in his lyrics the true conception of Italy, one
intellectually in spite of political discord and foreign
oppression, the real and indestructible unity of the
nation in a spirit destined to control the future of the
human race, came suddenly to consciousness. There
was an out-cry in their passion-laden strophes which
gathered volume as the years rolled over Italy, until
at last, in her final prostration beneath Spanish Austria,
they seemed less poems than authentic prophecies.
Thus while Dante remained a Florentine, Petrarch
was the first Italian. Nor is it insignificant that
whereas Dante refused the poet's crown unless he
could place the laurels on his head in Florence,
Petrarch ascended the Capitol among the plaudits of
the Romans, and, in the absence of Pope and Em-
peror, received his wreath from the Senator Roman us.
Dante's renunciation and Petrarch's acceptance of this
honor were equally appropriate. Dante, as was fit-
ting for a man of his era, looked still to the Commune.
Petrarch's coronation on the Capitol was the outward
sign that the age of the Communes was over, that
culture was destined to be cosmopolitan, and that the
Eternal City, symbolizing the imperishable empire of
the intellect, was now the proper throne of men
marked out to sway the world by thoughts and written
words.
In Petrarch the particular is superseded by the
GENERALIZING TENDENCY. 89
universal. The citizen is sunk in the man. The
political prejudices of the partisan are conspicuous by
absence. His language has lost all trace of dialect.
He writes Italian, special to no district, though Tuscan
in its source; and his verse fixes the standard of
poetic diction for all time in Italy. These changes
mark an important stage in literature emerging from
its origins, and account for Petrarch's unequaled
authority during the next three centuries. Dante's
Epic is classical because of its vivid humanity and in-
destructible material; but its spirit is medieval and its
details are strictly localized. Petrarch's outlook over
the world and life is, in form at least, less confined to
the limitations of his age. Consequently the students
of a period passing rapidly beyond the medieval cycle
of ideas, found no bar between his nature and their
sympathies.
In his treatment of chivalrous love we may notice
this tendency to generalization. The material trans-
mitted from the troubadours, handled with affectation
by the Sicilians, philosophized by the Florentines, loses
transient and specific quality in the Canzoniere. It
takes rank at last among simply human emotions; and,
though it has not lost a certain medieval tincture, the
Canzoniere rather than the Vita Nuova, the work of
distinguished rather than of supreme genius, has on
this account been understood and appropriated by all
lovers in all ages and in every land. Petrarch's verses,
to use Shelley's words, "are as spells, which unseal the
inmost enchanted fountains of the delight which is the
grief of love." And while we admit that " Dante under
stood the secrets of love even more than Petrarch," there
90 RENAISSANCE IN ITALY.
is no doubt that the Canzoniere strikes a note which
vibrates more universally than the Vita Nuova. The
majority of men cannot but prefer the comprehensive
to the intense expression of personal emotion.
Death rendered Beatrice's apotheosis conceivable;
and Dante may be said to have rediscovered the
Platonic mystery, whereby love ^ is an initiation into
the secrets of the spiritual world. It was the intuition
of a sublime nature into the essence of pure impersonal
enthusiasm. It was an exaltation of womanhood
similar to that attempted less adequately by Shelley
in Epipsychidion. It was a real instinct like that
which pervades the poetry of Michelangelo, and which
sustains some men even in our prosaic age. Still there
remained an ineradicable unsubstantially in Dante's
point of view, when tested by the common facts of feel-
ing. His idealism was too far removed from ordinary
experience to take firm hold upon the modern mind.
In proportion as Beatrice personified abstractions, she
ceased to be a woman even for her lover; nor was it
possible, except by diminishing her individuality, to
regard her as a symbol of the universal. She passed
from the sphere of the human into the divine; and
though her face was still beautiful, it was the face of
Science rather than of one we love. There was even
too little alloy of earth in Dante's passion for Beatrice
Petrarch's love for Laura was of a different type.
The unrest of earthly desire, for ever thwarted but
recurring with imperious persistence, and the rebellion
of the conscience against emotions which the lover
recognized as lawless, broke his peace. It is true
that, using the language of the earlier poets and obey-
PETRARCH'S LOVE. 91
ing a sanguine mood of his own mind, he from time tc
time spoke of Laura as of one who led his soul to God.
But his si.ncerest utterances reveal the discord of a
heart divided between duty and inclination, the melan-
choly of a man who knows himself the prey of warring
powers. His love for Laura seemed an error and a
sin, because it clashed with an ascetic impulse which
had never been completely blunted. In his Hymn to
the Virgin he referred to this passion as the Medusa
that had turned his better self to stone:
Medusa e 1' error mio m' han fatto un sas so
D' umor van stillante.
There is a passage in the De Remediis utriusque
Fortunes, where the lyrist of chivalrous love pours
such contempt on women as his friend Boccaccio might
have envied. In the Secretum, again, he describes his
own emotion as a torment from which he had vainly
striven to emancipate himself by solitude, by journeys,
by distractions, and by obstinate studies. In truth, he
rarely alludes to the great passion of his life without a
strange blending of tenderness and sore regret. Here-
in he proved himself not only a true child of his age,
but also the precursor of the modern world. While
he was still bound by the traditions of medieval as-
ceticism, a Christian no less devout and only less firm
than Dante, his senses and his imagination, stirred
possibly by contact with classic literature, rebelled
against the mysticism of the Florentine School. This
rebellion, but dimly apprehended by the poet himself,
and complicated with the yearnings of a deeply re-
ligious nature after pjrity of thought and deed, gave
its supreme strength and beauty to his verse. The
9* RENAISSANCE IN ITALY.
Canzoniere is not merely the poetry of love but the
poetry of conflict also. The men of the Renaissance
overleaped the conflict, and satisfied themselves with
empty idealizations of sensual desire. But modern
men have returned to Petrarch's point of view and
found an echo of their own divided spirit in his poetry.
He marks the transition from a medieval to a modern
mood, the passage from Cino and Guido to Werther
and Rousseau.
That Laura was a real woman, and that Petrarch's
worship of her was unfeigned; that he adored her with
the senses and the heart as well as with the head; but
that this love was at the same time more a mood
of the imagination, a delicate disease, a cherished
wound, to which he constantly recurred as the most
sensitive and lively wellspring of poetic fancy, than a
downright and impulsive passion, may be clearly seen
in the whole series of his poems and his autobiographical
confessions. Laura appears to have treated him with
the courtesy of a somewhat distant acquaintance, who
was aware of his homage and was flattered by it But
her lover enjoyed no privileges of intimacy, and it may
be questioned whether, if Petrarch could by any accident
have made her his own, the fruition of her love would
not have been a serious interruption to the happiness
of his life. He first saw her in the church of S. Claire,
at Avignon, on April 6, 1327. She passed from this
world on April 6, 1348. These two dates are the
two turning-points of Petrarch's life. The interval of
twenty-one years, when Laura trod the earth, and her
lover in all his wanderings paid his orisons to her at
morning, evening, and noonday, and passed his nights in
LIFE AND DEATH OF LAURA. 93
dreams of that fair form which never might be his, was
the storm and stress period of his checkered career.
There is an old Greek proverb that " to desire the im-
possible is a malady of the soul." With this malady
in its most incurable form the poet was stricken ; and.
instead of seeking cure, he nursed his sickness and de-
lighted in the discord of his spirit. From that discord
he wrought the harmonies of his sonnets and canzoni.
That malady made him the poet of all men who have
found in their emotions a dreamland more wonderful
and pregnant with delight than in the world which we
call real. After Laura's death his love was tranquil-
ized to a sublimer music. The element of discord had
passed out of it ; and just because its object was now
physically unattainable, it grew in purity and power.
The sensual alloy which, however spiritualized, had
never ceased to disturb his soul, was purged from his
still vivid passion. Laura in heaven looked down
upon him from her station mid the saints; and her
poet could indulge the dream that now at last she
pitied him, that she was waiting for him with angelic
eyes of love, and telling him to lose no time, but set
his feet upon the stairs that led to God and her. The
romance finds its ultimate apotheosis in that tran-
scendent passage of the Trionfo delta Morte which
describes her death and his own vision. Throughout
the whole course of this labyrinthine love-lament, sus-
tained for forty years on those few notes so subtly
modulated, from the first sonnet on his primo giavenile
errore to the last line of her farewell, tu starai in
terra senza me gran tempo, Laura grows in vividness
before us. She only becomes a real woman in death,
94 RENAISSANCE IN ITALY.
because she was for Petrarch always an ideal, and in
the ideal world beyond the tomb he is more sure of
her than when " the fair veil " of flesh was drawn be
tween her and his yearning.
Petrarch succeeded in bringing the old theme of
chivalrous love back from the philosophizing mysticism
of the Florentines to simple experience. He forms a
link between their transcendental science and the
positive romance of the Decameron, between the spirit
of the middle ages and the spirit of the Renaissance.
Guided by his master, Cino da Pistoja, the least
metaphysical and clearest of his immediate prede-
cessors, Petrarch found the right artistic via media;
and perhaps we may attribute something to that
double education which placed him between the in-
fluences of the Tuscan lyrists and the troubadours of
his adopted country. At any rate he returned from
the allegories of the Florentine poets to the directness
of chivalrous emotion; but he treated the original
motive with a greater richness and a more idealizing
delicacy than his Provencal predecessors. The mar-
velous instruments of the Italian Sonnet and Canzone
were in his hands, and he knew how to draw from
them a purer if not a grander melody than either
Guido or Dante. The best work of the Florentines
required a commentary; and the structure of their verse,
like its content, was scientific rather than artistic
Petrarch could publish his Canzoniere without ex-
planatory notes. He laid his heart bare to the world,
and every man who had a heart might understand his
language. Between the subject-matter and the verbal
expression there lay no intervening veil of mystic
THE ARTIST IN PETRARCH. 95
meaning. The form had become correspondingly more
clear and perfect, more harmonious in its proportions,
more immediate in musical effects. In a word, Pet-
rarch was the first to open a region where art might be
free, and to find for the heart's language utterance
direct and limpid.
This was his great achievement. The forms he
used were not new. The subject-matter he handled
was given to him. But he brought both form and
subject closer to the truth, exercising at the same time
an art which had hitherto been unconceived in subtlety,
and which has never since been equaled. If Dante
was the first great poet, Petrarch was the first true
artist of Italian literature. It was, however, impossible
that Petrarch should overleap at one bound all the
barriers of the middle ages. His Laura has still
something of the earlier ideality adhering to her. She
stands midway between the Beatrice of Dante and the
women of Boccaccio. She is not so much a woman
with a character and personality, as woman in the
general, la femme, personified and made the object of
a poet's reveries. Though every detail of her physical
perfections, with the single and striking exception of
her nose, is carefully recorded, it is not easy to form a
definite picture even of her face and shape. Of her
inner nature we hear only the vaguest generalities.
She sits like a lovely model in the midst of a beautiful
landscape, like one of our Burne-Jones's women who
incarnate a mood of feeling while they lack the fullness
of personality. The thought of her 'pervades the
valley of Vaucluse; the perfume of her memory is in
the air we breathe. But if we met her, we should find
96 RENAISSANCE IN ITALY.
it hard to recognize her; and if she spoke, we should
not understand that it was Laura.
Petrarch had no strong objective faculty. Just as
he failed to bring Laura vividly before us, until she had
by death become a part of his own spiritual substance,
so he failed to depict things as he saw them. The
pictures etched in three or four lines of the Purgatorio
may be sought for vainly in his Rime. That his love
of nature was intense, there is, no doubt. The solitary
of Vaucluse, the pilgrim of Mont Ventoux, had
reached a point of sensibility to natural scenery far in
advance of his age. But when he came to express
this passion for beauty, he was satisfied with giving
the most perfect form to the emotion stirred in his own
subjectivity. Instead of scenes, he delineates the
moods suggested by them. He makes the streams
and cliffs and meadows of Vaucluse his confidants.
He does not lose himself in contemplation of the
natural object, though we feel that this self found its
freest breathing-space, its most delightful company, in
the society of hill and vale. He never cares to paint
a landscape, but contents himself with such delicate
touches and such cunning combinations of words as
'may suggest a charm in the external world. At this
point the humanist, preoccupied with man as his main
subject, meets the poet in Petrarch. What is lost, too,
in the precision of delineation, is gained in univer-
sality. The Canzoniere reminds us of no single spot;
wherever there are clear fresh rills and hanging moun-
tains, the lover walks with Petrarch by his side.
If the poet's dominant subjectivity weakened his
grasp upon external things, it made him supreme in
PASSAGE TO BOCCACCIO. 97
self-portraiture. Every mood of passion is caught and
fixed precisely in his verse. The most evanescent
shades of feeling are firmly set upon the exquisite
picture. Each string of Love's many-chorded lyre is
touched with a vigorous hand. The fluctuations of
hope, despair, surprise ; the " yea and nay twinned in
a single breath ; " the struggle of conflicting aspirations
in a heart drawn now to God and now to earth ; the
quiet resting-places of content; the recrudescence of
the ancient smart; the peace of absence, when longing
is luxury; the agony of presence, adding fire to fire
all this is rendered with a force so striking, in a
style so monumental, that the Canzoniere may still be
called the Introduction to the Book of Love. Thus,
when Petrarch's own self was the object, his hand was
steady; his art failed not in modeling the image
into roundness.
Dante brought the universe into his poem. But
" the soul of man, too, is a universe : " and of this
inner microcosm Petrarch was the poet. It remained
for Boccaccio, the third in the triumvirate, to treat
of common life with art no less developed. From
Beatrice through Laura to La Fiammetta; from the
Divine Comedy through the Canzoniere to the Deca-
meron; from the world beyond the grave through
the world of feeling to the world in which we play our
puppet parts ; from the mystic terza rima, through the
stately lyric stanzas, to Protean prose such was the
rapid movement of Italian art within the brief space
of some fifty years.
Giovanni Boccaccio was born in 1313, the eleventh
year of Dante's exile, the first of Petrarch's residence
98 RENAISSANCE IN ITALY.
at Avignon. His grandfather belonged originally to
Certaldo; but he removed to Florence and received
the rights of burghership among those countryfolk
whom Dante reckoned the corrupters of her ancient
commonwealth l :
Ma la cittadinanza, ch' & or mista
Di Campi e di Certaldo e di Figghine,
Pura vedeasi nell' ultimo artista.
Certaldo was a village of Valdelsa, famous for its
onions. This explains the rebuff which the author of
the Decameron received from a Florentine lady, whom
he afterwards satirized in the Corbaccio : " Go back
to grub your onion-beds, and leave gentlewomen
alone ! " Boccaccio was neither born in wedlock nor
yet of pure Italian blood. His mother was a French-
woman, with whom his father made acquaintance dur-
ing a residence on business at Paris. These facts de-
serve to be noted, since they bear upon the temper of
his mind and on the quality of his production.
It has been observed that the three main elements
of Florentine society the popolo vecchio, or nobles
who acquiesced in the revolution of 1282; the popol
grasso, or burghers occupying a middle rank in the
city, who passed the Ordinances of 1293; and the
popolo minuto, or artisans and contadini admitted to the
franchise, who came to the front between 1343 anc
1378 are severally represented by Dante, Petrarch,
and Boccaccio. 2 So rapid are the political and intellec-
tual mutations in a little state like Florence, where th<
vigor of popular life and the vivacity of genius be;
1 Par. xvi.
* Carducci, " Dello Svolgimento della Letteratura Nazionale: '
Letterari (Livorno, 1874), P- 6o
THE BOURGEOIS. 99
no proportion to the size of the community, that within
the short span of fifty years the center of power may
be transferred from an aristocracy to the proletariate,
and the transition in art and literature from the Middle
Age to the Renaissance may not only be accomplished
but copiously illustrated in detail. 1
Boccaccio was the typical Italian bourgeois, the
representative of a class who finally determined the
Renaissance. His prose and poetry contain in germ
the various species which were perfected during that
period. Studying him, we study in its immaturity
the spirit of the next two centuries. He was the
first to substitute a literature of the people for the
literature of the learned classes and the aristocracy.
He freed the natural instincts from ascetic inter-
dictions and the mysticism of the transcendental
school. He exposed the shams of chivalrous romance
and the hypocrisies of monkery with ridicule more
deadly than satire or invective. He brought realism
in art and letters back to honor by delineating the
world as he found it sensual, base, comic, ludicrous,
pathetic, tender, cruel in all its crudities and contra-
dictions. He replaced the abstractions of the allegory
by concrete fact. He vindicated the claims of appetite
and sensuous enjoyment against ideal aspirations and
the scruples of a faith - tormented conscience. He
taught his fellow-countrymen that a life of studious
indifference was preferable to the strife of factions and
the din of battle-fields.
Boccaccio did not act consciously and with fixed
1 The Divine Comedy was probably begun in earnest about 1303.
and the Decameron was published in 1353.
100 RENAISSANCE IN ITALY.
purpose to these ends. He was rather the spokesman
of his age and race the sign in literature that Italian
society had entered upon a new phase, and that the
old order was passing away. If the Decameron seemed
to shake the basis of morality; if it gained the name of
II Principe Galeotto or the Pandar; if it was denounced
as the corrupter of the multitude; this meant, not that
its author had a sinister intention, but that the medi-
eval fabric was already sapped, and that the people
whom Boccaccio wrote to please were disillusioned of
their previous ideals. The honest easy-going- man,
Giovanni della Tranquillita, as he was called, painted
what he saw and made himself the mouthpiece of the
men around him. 1
For the work he had to do, he was admirably fitted
by nature and education. He combined the blood of
a Florentine tradesman and a Parisian grisette. He
had but little learning in his youth, and was the first
great Italian writer who had not studied at Bologna.
His early manhood was passed in commerce at
Naples, where he gained access to the dissolute Court
of Joan, and made love to her ladies. At his father's
request he applied himself for a short while to legal
1 Boccaccio was called Giovanni della Tranquillita partly in scorn.
He resented it, as appears from a letter to Zanobi della Strada ( Op. Volg.
vol. xvii. p. 101), because it implied a love ot Court delights and parasitical
idleness. In that letter he amply defends himself from such imputations,
showing that he led the life of a poor and contented student. Yet the
nickname was true in a deeper sense, as is proved by the very argu-
ments of his apology, and confirmed by the description of his life at Cer-
taldo remote from civic duties (Letter to Pino de" Rossi, ibid. p. 35), as
well as by the tragi-comic narrative of his discomfort at Naples (Letter
to Messer Francesco, ibid. pp. 37-87). Not only in these passages, but
in all his works he paints himself a comfort-loving bourgeois, whose
heart was set on his books, whose ideal of enjoyment was a satisfied
passion ot a sensual kind.
BOCCACCIO'S SPIRIT. IO1
studies; but he does not appear to have practiced as a
lawyer in real earnest. Literature very early became
the passion, the one serious and ennobling enthusiasm
of his life. We have already seen him at the tomb of
Virgil, vowing to devote his powers to the sacred
Muses; and we know what services he rendered to
humanism by his indefatigable energy in the acquisi-
tion and diffusion of miscellaneous learning. 1 This is
not the place to treat of Boccaccio's scholarship. Yet
it may be said that, just as his philosophy of life was
the philosophy of a jovial and sensuous plebeian, so
his conception of literature lacked depth and greatness.
He repeated current theories about the dependence of
poetry on truth, the dignity of allegory, the sacredness
of love, the beauty of honor. But his own work
showed how little he had appropriated these ideas.
As a student, a poet, and a man, he lived upon a
lower plane of thought than Petrarch; and when he
left the concrete for the abstract, his penetrative
insight failed him.
From this point of view Boccaccio's Life of Dante
is instructive. It is crammed with heterogeneous
erudition. It bristles with citations and opinions
learned by rote. It reveals the heartiest reverence
for all things reckoned worthy in the realm of in-
tellect. The admiration for the divine poet ex-
pressed in it is sincere and ungrudging. Yet this
book betrays an astonishing want of sympathy with
Dante, and transforms the sublime romance of the
Vita Nuova into a commonplace novella. Dante
told the world how he first felt love for Beatrice at
1 See above, vol ii. Revival of Learning, chap. ii. pp. 87-98.
102 RENAISSANCE IN ITALY.
the age of nine. His biographer is at a loss to
understand this miracle. He supposes that the sweet
season of May, the good wines and delicate dishes of
the Portinari banquet, all the sensuous delights of a
Florentine festival, combined to make the boy pre-
maturely a man. l Dante called Beatrice " youngest of
the angels." Boccaccio draws a lively picture of an
angel in the flesh, as he imagined her; and in his
portrait there is far less of the angelic than the carnal
nature visible. This he does in perfect good faith,
with the heartfelt desire to exalt Dante above all
poets, and to spread abroad the truth of his illustrious
life. But the hero of Renaissance literature was
incapable of comprehending the real feeling of the
man he worshiped. Between him and the enthu-
siasms of the middle ages a nine-fold Styx already
poured its waves.
Boccaccio's noblest quality was the recognition of
intellectual power. It was this cult of great men, if
we may trust Filippo Villani, which first decided him
to follow literature. 2 His devotion to the memory of
Dante, and his frank confession of inferiority to
Petrarch, whom he loved and served through twenty
years of that exacting poet's life, are equally sin-
cere and beautiful. These feelings inspired some of
his finest poems, and penetrated the autobiographical
passages of his minor works with a delicacy that
endears the man to us. 3 No less candid was his
i Boccaccio, Opere Volgari (Firenze, 1833), vol. xv. p. 18.
Revival of Learning, p. 88.
I may specially refer to the passages of the Amorosa Visions (cap
v. vi.) where he meets with Dante, " gloria delle muse mentre visse,
"il maestro dal qua!' io tengo ogni ben," " il Signor d' ogni savere;
DEVOTION TO ART. 103
worship of beauty not beauty of an intellectual or
ideal order, but sensuous and real the beauty which
inspired the artists and the poets of the following
centuries. Nor has any writer of any age been gifted
with a stronger faculty for its expression. From this
service of the beautiful he derived the major impulse
of his activity as an artist. If he lacked moral great-
ness, if he was deficient in philosophical depth and
religious earnestness, his devotion to art was serious,
intense, profound, absorbing. He discharged his du-
ties as a citizen with easy acquiescence, but no stern
consciousness of patriotic purpose. He conformed to
the Church, and allowed himself in old age to be
frightened into a kind of half- repentance. But the
homage he rendered to art was of a very different
and more exacting nature. With his best energies
he labored to make himself, at least in this sphere,
perfect. How amply he succeeded must be acknowl-
edged by all men who have read the Decameron, and
who have seen that here Boccaccio forms the legends
of all ages and all lands into one harmonious whole,
brings a world of many-sided human interest and
varied beauty out of the chaos of medieval materials,
finishing every detail with love, inspiring each particle
with life, and setting the daedal picture of society in
a framework of delicate romance. The conception
and the execution of this masterpiece of literature are
equally artistic. If the phrase " art for art " can be
used in speaking of one who was unconscious of the
also to the sonnets on Dante, and that most beautiful sonnet addressed
fo Petrarch after death at peace in heaven with Cino and Dante. See
the Rime (Op. Volg. vol. xvi.), sonnets 8, 60, 97, 108.
104 RENAISSANCE IN ITALY.
theory it implies, Boccaccio may be selected as the
typical artist for art's sake. Within the sphere of
his craft, he is impassioned, enthusiastic, sincere, pro-
found. His attitude with regard to all else is one of
amused or curious indifference, of sensuous enjoy-
ment, of genial ridicule, of playful cynicism.
Boccaccio was a bourgeois of the fourteenth cen-
tury; but his character, as stamped on the Decameron,
was common to Italy during the next two hundred
years. The whole book glows with the joyousness of
a race discarding dreams for realities, scorning the ter-
rors of a bygone creed, reveling in nature's liberty,
proclaiming the empire of the senses with a frankness
which passes over into license. In Boccaccio, the
guiding genius of the Italian Renaissance arrives at
consciousness. That blending of moral indifference
with artistic seriousness, which we observe in him,
marks the coming age. He is not the precursor but
the inaugurator of the era. The smile which plays
around his mouth became, though changeful in ex-
pression, fixed upon the lips of his posterity genial
in Ariosto, gracious in Poliziano, mischievous in Pulci,
dubious in Lorenzo de' Medici, sardonic in Aretino.
bitter in Folengo, toned to tragic irony in Machiavelli.
impudent in Berni, joyous in Boiardo, sensual in Ban-
dello assuming every shade of character, Protean,
indescribable, until at last it fades from Tasso's brow,
when Italy has ceased to laugh except in secret.
The Decameron has been called the Commedia
Umana. 1 This title is appropriate, not merely because
the book portrays human life from a comic rather than
1 De Sanctis, Storia della Letteratura Italiana, vol. i. cap. 9.
THE HUMAN COMEDY. 1O$
a. serious point of view, but also because it is the
direct antithesis of Dante's Commedia Divina. As
poet and scene-painter devised for our ancestors of
the Elizabethan period both Mask and Anti-mask,
so did the genius of Italy provide two shows for
modern Europe the Mask and Anti-mask of hu-
man nature. Dante's Comedy represents our life in
relation to the life beyond the grave. Boccaccio in his
Comedy depicts the life of this earth only, subtracting
whatsoever may suggest a life to come. It would be
difficult to determine which of the two dramas is the
more truthful, or which of the two poets had a firmer
grasp upon reality. But the realities of the Divine
Comedy are spiritual ; those of the Human Comedy
are material. The world of the Decameron is not an
inverted world, like that of Aristophanes. It does
not antithesize Dante's world by turning it upside
down. It is simply the same world surveyed from an
opposite point of view unaltered, uninverted, but
seen in the superficies, presented in the concrete. It
is the prose of life ; and this justifies the counterpoise
of its form to that of Dante's poem. It is the world
as world, the flesh as flesh, nature as nature, without
intervention of spiritual agencies, without relation to
ideal order, regarded as the sphere of humor, for-
tune, marvelous caprice. It is everything which the
Church had banned, proscribed, held in abhorrence,
without that which the Church had inculcated for the
exaltation of the soul. This world, actual and unex-
plained, Boccaccio paints with the mastery of an ac-
complished artist, molding its chaotic elements into a
form of beauty which comoels attention,
106 RENAISSANCE IN ITALY.
Dante condemned those " who submit their reason
to natural appetite." 1 Boccaccio celebrates the apothe-
osis of natural appetite, of il talento, stigmatized as sin
by ascetic Christianity. 2 His strongest sympathies arc
reserved for those who suffer by abandoning them-
selves to impulse, and in this self-abandonment he sees
the poetry of life. This is the very core of the an-
tithesis presented by the Human to the Divine Comedy.
The Decameron is an undesigned revolt against the
sum of medieval doctrine. Like all vehement reac-
tions, it is not satisfied with opposing the extrava-
gances of the view it combats. Instead of negativing
asceticism, it affirms license. Yet though the Divine
Comedy and the Decameron are antithetical, they are
both true, and true together, inasmuch as they pre-
sent the same humanity studied under contradictory
conditions. Human nature is vast enough to furnish
the materials for both, inexplicable enough to render
both acceptable to reason, tolerant enough to view
with impartial approbation the desolate theology of
the Inferno and the broad mirth of the Decameron. 3
1 " Che la ragion sommettono al talento: " Inferno v. Compare these
phrases:
Le genti dolorose
Che hanno perduto il ben dell* intelletto.
Inferno iii.
And Semiramis:
Che libito fe lecito in sua legge.
Inferno v.
8 In all his earlier works, especially in the Fiammetta, the Filostrafo,
the Ninfale Fiesolano, the Amoroso, Visione, he sings the hymn of II
Talento, triumphant over medieval discipline. They form the proper
prelude to what is sometimes called the Paganism of the Renaissance,
but what is really a resurgence of the natural man. It was this talentc
which Valla philosophized, and Beccadelli and Pontano sang.
One instance will suffice to illustrate the different methods of Hoc-
FABLIAUX. 107
The Decameron did not appear unheralded by
similar attempts. No literary taste was stronger in
the middle ages than the taste for stories. This is
proved by the collection known as Gesta Romanorum,
and by the Bestiarii, Lapidarii, Physiologi and Apiarii,
which contain a variety of tales, many of them sur-
prisingly indecent, veiling spiritual doctrine under
obscenities which horrify a modern reader. 1 From
the hands of ecclesiastical compilers these short stories
passed down to popular narrators, who in France
made the fabliaux a special branch of vulgar literature.
The follies and vices of the clergy, tricks practiced by
wives upon their husbands, romantic adventures of
lovers, and comic incidents of daily life, formed the
staple of their stock in trade. When the fabliau
reached Italy, together with other literary wares, from
France, it was largely cultivated in the South; and the
first known collection of Italian stories received the
name of // Novellino, or // Fiore del parlar gentile.
The language of this book was immature, and the
tales themselves seem rather memoranda for the nar-
rator than finished compositions to be read with plea-
sure. 2 It may therefore be admitted that the rude
caccio and Dante in dealing with the same material. We all know in
what murk and filth Dante beheld Ciacco, the glutton, and what tor-
ments awaited Filippo Argenti, \htfiorentino spirito bizzarro, upon the
marsh of Styx (Inferno vi. and viii.). These persons play the chief parts
in Giorn. ix. nov. 8, of the Decameron. They are still the spendthrift
parasite, and the brutally capricious bully. But while Dante points the
sternest moral by their examples, Boccaccio makes their vices serve his
end of comic humor. The inexorableness of Dante is nowhere more
dreadful than in the eighth Canto of the Inferno. The levity of Boc-
caccio is nowhere more superficial than in that Novella.
1 See the little work, full of critical learning, by Adolfo Bartoli, /
Precursors del Boccaccio, Firenze, Sansoni.
- See Le Novelle Antiche (another name for II Novellino), per cura di
108 KhA'AISSANCE IN ITALY.
form of the Decameron was given to Boccaccio. Not
to mention the larger chivalrous romances, Conti di
antichi Cavalieri, and translations from French Chan-
sons de Geste, which have no genuine link of connection
with the special type of the Novella, he found models
for his tales both in the libraries of medieval convents
and upon the lips of popular raccontatori. Yet this
must not be taken to imply any lack of originality in
Boccaccio. Such comparisons as Professor Bartoli has
instituted between the Decameron and some of its
supposed sources, prove the insignificance of his debt,
the immeasurable inferiority of his predecessors. 1
The spirit of the Decameron no less than the
form, had been long in preparation. Satire, whether
superficial, as in the lays of the jongleurs, or searching,
as in the invectives of Dante and Petrarch, was famil-
iar to the middle ages; and the popular Latin poems
of the wandering students are steeped in rage against
a corrupt hierarchy, a venal Curia. 2 Those same Car-
Guido Biagi, Firenze, Sansoni, 1880. It is a curious agglomeration of
anecdotes drawn from the history of the Suabian princes, Roman sources,
the Arthurian legends, the Bible, Oriental apologues, fables, and a few
ancient myths. That of Narcis, p. 66, is very prettily told. Only one
tale is decidedly cynical. We find in the book selections made from
the dlbris of a vast and various medieval library. French influence i.\
frequently perceptible in the style.
1 Precursors del Boccaccio, p. 57 to end.
See Carmina Burana (Stuttgart, 1847), PP- I-H2; Poems of Walter
Mapes, by Thomas Wright (for Camden Society, 1841), pp. 1-257, for
examples of these satiric poems. The Propter Syon non tacebo, Flete
Sionfilice, Utar contra vitia, should be specially noticed. Many other
curious satires, notably one against marriage and the female sex, can
also be found fn Du MeYil's three great collections, Poisies Populaires
Latines antirieures au douzieme Siecle, Poesies Populaires Latines du
Moyen Age, and Poisies Inidites du May en Age, Paris, 1843-1847
Those to whom these works are not accessible, may find an excellent
selection of the serious and jocular popular Latin medieval poetry in a
Httle. volume (7 .-in ./,-./ >nusf Carmina Va^orum selecta, Lipsiae, Teubnei.
CARMINA BUR ANA. 109
mina Vagorum reveal the smoldering embers of un-
extinguished Paganism, which underlay the Christian
culture of the middle ages. Written by men who
belonged to the clerical classes, but who were often on
bad terms with ecclesiastical authorities, tinctured with
the haughty contempt of learning for the laity, yet
overflowing with the vigorous life of the proletariate,
these extraordinary poems bring to view a bold and
candid sensuality, an ineradicable spontaneity of nat-
ural appetite, which is strangely at variance with the
cardinal conceptions of ascetic Christianity. 1 In the
sect of the Italian Epicureans ; in the obscure bands of
1877. The question of their authorship has been fairly well discussed by
Hubatsch, Die lateinischen Vagantenlieder, Gb'rlitz, 1870.
1 The erotic and drinking songs of the Vagi deserve to be carefully
studied by all who wish to understand the germs of the Renaissance in
the middle ages. They express a simple naturalism, not of necessity
Pagan, though much is borrowed from the language of classical mytho-
logy. I would call attention in particular to sEstuans interius, Omit-
tamus studia, O admirabile Veneris idolum, Ludo cum Ccecilia, Si puer
cum puellula, and four Pastoralia, all of which may be found in the little
book Gaudeamus cited above. In spontaneity and truth of feeling they
correspond to the Latin hymns. But their spirit is the exact antithesis
of that which produced the Dies Ira and the Stabat Mater. The absence
of erudition and classical imitation separates them from the poems of
Beccadelli, Pontano, Poliziano, or Bembo. They present the natural ma-
terial of neo-pagan Latin verse without its imitative form. It is youth
rejoicing in its strength and lustihood, enjoying the delights of spring,
laughing at death, taking the pleasures of the moment, deriding the
rumores senum severiorum, unmasking hypocrisy in high places, at
wanton war with constituted social shams. These songs were written
by wandering students of all nations, who traversed Germany, France,
Italy, Spain, England, seeking special knowledge at the great centers of
learning, following love-adventures, poor and careless, coldly greeted by
the feudal nobility and the clergy, attached to the people by their habits
but separated from them by their science. In point of faith these poets
are orthodox. There is no questioning of ecclesiastical dogma, no an-
ticipation of Luther, in their verses. This blending of theological con-
formity with satire on the Church and moral laxity is eminently charac-
teristic of the Renaissance in Italy.
HO RENAISSANCE IN ITALY.
the Cathari and Paterini ; in the joyous companies of
Provencal Court and castle, the same note of irre-
pressible nature sounded. Side by side with the new-
built fabric of ecclesiastical idealism, the old temples
of unregenerate human deities subsisted. They were
indeed discredited, proscribed, consigned to shame.
They formed the mauvais lieux of Christendom. Yet
there they stood, even as the Venusberg of Tann-
hauser's legend abode unshaken though cathedrals
rose by Rhine. All that was needed to restore the
worship of these nature-gods was that a great artist
should decorate their still substantial temple- walls with
the beauty of a new, sincere, and unrepentant style,
fitting their abandoned chambers for the habitation of
the human spirit, free now to choose the dwelling that
it listed. This Boccaccio achieved. And here it
must again be noticed that the revolution of time was
about to bring man's popular and carnal deities once
more, if only for a season, to the throne. The mur-
mured songs of a few wandering students were about
to be drowned in the paan of Renaissance poetry.
The visions of the Venusberg were to be realized in
Italian painting. The coming age was destined to
live out Boccaccio's Human Comedy in act and deed.
This is the true kernel of his greatness. As poet, he
ranked third only, and that at a vast interval, in the
triumvirate of the fourteenth century. But the tem-
per of his mind, the sphere of his conceptions, made
him the representative genius of the two following
centuries. Awaiting the age when science should once
more co-ordinate the forces of humanity in a coherent
theory, men in the Renaissance exchanged superfluous
THE PLAGUE. Til
restraint for immoderate license. It is not to be won-
dered at that Boccaccio and not Dante was their hero.
The description of the Plague at Florence which
introduces the Decameron, has more than a merely
artistic appropriateness. Boccaccio may indeed have
meant to bring his group of pleasure -seeking men and
maidens into strong relief by contrast with the horrors
of the stricken city. Florence crowded with corpses,
echoing to the shrieks of delirium and the hoarse cries
of body-buriers, is the background he has chosen for
that blooming garden, where the birds sing and the
lovers sit by fountains in the shade, laughing or weep-
ing as the spirit of each tale compels them. But in-
dependently of this effect of contrast, which might be
used to illustrate the author's life-philosophy, the de-
scription of the Plague has a still deeper significance,
whereof Boccaccio never dreamed. Matteo Villani
dates a progressive deterioration of manners in the
city from the Plague of 1348, and justifies us in con-
necting the Ciompi riots of 1378 with the enfeeblement
of civic order during those thirty years. The Plague
was, therefore, the outward sign, if not the efficient
cause, of those very ethical and social changes which
the Decameron immortalized in literature. It was the
historical landmark between two ages, dividing the
Florence of the Grandi from the Florence of the
Ciompi. The cynicism, liberated in that time of terror,
lawlessness, and sudden death, assumed in Boccaccio's
romance a beautiful and graceful aspect. It lost its
harsh and vulgar outlines, and took the air of genial
indulgence which distinguished Italian society through-
out the years of the Renaissance.
M2 RENAISSANCE Iff ITALY.
Boccaccio selects seven ladies of ages varying
from eighteen to twenty-eight, and three men, the
youngest of whom is twenty-five. Having formed
this company, he transports them to a villa two miles
from the city, where he provides them with a train of
serving-men and waiting-women, and surrounds them
with the delicacies of medieval luxury. He is careful
to remind us that, though the three men and three of
the ladies were acknowledged lovers, and though their
conversation turned on almost nothing else but pas-
sion, " no stain defiled the honor of the party."
Stories are told; and these unblemished maidens
listen with laughter and a passing blush to words
and things which outrage Northern sense of decency.
The remorseless but light satire of the Decameron
spares none of the ideals of the age. All the me-
dieval enthusiasms are reviewed and criticised from
the standpoint of the Florentine bottega and piazza.
It is as though the bourgeois, not content with having
made nobility a crime, were bent upon extinguishing
its spirit. The tale of Agilulf vulgarizes the chival-
rous conception of love ennobling men of low estate,
by showing how a groom,' whose heart is set upon a
queen, avails himself of opportunity. Tancredi bur-
lesques the knightly reverence for a stainless scutcheon
by the extravagance of his revenge. The sanctity of
the Thebaid, that ascetic dream of purity and self-
renunciation for God's service, is made ridiculous by
Alibech. Ser Ciappelletto brings contempt upon the
canonization of saints. The confessional, the worship
of relics, the priesthood, and the monastic orders
are derided with the deadliest persiflage. Christ him-
BOCCACCIO'' S IRONY. 1 13
self is scoffed at in a jest which points the most in-
decent of these tales. l Marriage affords a never-failing
theme for scorn; and when, by way of contrast, the
novelist paints an ideal wife, he runs into such hyper-
boles that the very patience of Griselda is a satire on
its dignity. Like Balzac, Boccaccio was unsuccessful
in depicting virtuous womanhood. Attempting this,
he fell, like Balzac, into the absurdities of sentiment.
His own conception of love was sensual and voluptu-
ous not uniformly coarse, nay often tender, but
frankly carnal. Without having recourse to the
Decameron, this statement might be abundantly
substantiated by reference to the Filostrato, Fiam-
metta, Amoroso, Visione, Ninfale Fiesolano. Boccaccio
enjoyed the painting of licentious pleasure, snatched
in secret, sometimes half by force, by a lover after
moderate resistance from his paramour. He imported
into these pictures the plebeian tone which we have
already noticed in the popular poetry of the preceding
century, and which was destined to pervade the erotic
literature of the Renaissance. There is, therefore, an
ironical contrast between the decencies observed by
his brigata and their conversation; a contrast rooted
in the survival from chivalrous times of conventional
ideals, which have lost reality and been persistently
ignored in practice. This effect of irony is enhanced
by the fact that many of the motives are such as
might have been romantically treated, but here are
handled from the popolano grassds point of view. A
skeptical and sensuous imagination plays around the
' See the last sentence of Giorn. iii. Nov. i.
114 RENAISSANCE IN ITALY.
sanctities and sublimities which have for it become
illusory.
We observe the same kind of unconscious hypoc-
risy, the same spontaneous sapping of now obsolete
ideals, in the Amoroso, Visione.^ Here Love is still
regarded as the apotheosis of mortal experience. It
is still said to be the union of intelligence and moral
energy in an enthusiasm of the soul. Yet the joys of
love revealed at the conclusion of the poem are such
as a bayadere might offer. 2 The bourgeois effaces the
knight; the Italian of the Renaissance has broken the
leading strings of mystical romance. This vision,
composed in terza rima, was assuredly not meant to
travesty Dante. Still it would be difficult to imagine
a more complete inversion of the Dantesque point of
view, a more deliberate substitution of an Earthly
Paradise for the Paradise of the Divine Comedy. It
is as though Boccaccio, the representative of the new
age, in all the fullness of his sensuous naivete, appealed
to the poets of chivalry, and said: " See here how all
your fancies find their end in nature!"
It will not do to over-strain the censure implied in the
foregoing paragraphs. Natural appetite, no less than
the ideal, has its elements of poetry; and the sensu-
ality of the Decameron accords with plastic beauty in
a work of art incomparably lucid. Shelley, no lenient
critic, wrote these words about the setting of the
tales 3 : "What descriptions of nature are those in his
little introductions to every new day! It is the
morning of life stripped of that mist of familiarity
i Op. Volg. vol. xiv. * Cap. xlbc.
Letter to Leigh Hunt. September 8, 1819.
SENSE OF BEAUTY. 115
which makes it obscure to us." Boccaccio's sense of
beauty has already been alluded to; and it so pervades
his work that special attention need scarcely be called
to it. His prose abounds in passages which are
perfect pictures after their own kind, like the following,
selected, not from the Decameron, but from an earlier
work, entitled Filocopo 1 :
Con gli orecchi intent! al suono, comincib ad andare in quella parte
ove il sentiva; e giunto presso alia fontana, vide le due giovinette. Elle
erano nel viso bianchissime, la quale bianchezza quanto si conveniva
di rosso colore era mescolata. I loro ocohi pareano mattutine stelle,
e le picciole bocche di colore di vermiglia rosa, piu piacevoli diveniano
nel muoverle alle note della loro canzone. I loro capelli come fila d'oro
erano biondissimi, i quali alquanto crespi s'avvolgevano infra le verdi
frondi delle loro ghirlande. Vestite per lo gran caldo, come e detto
sopra, le tenere e dilicate carni di sottilissimi vestimenti, i quali dalla
cintura in su strettissimi mostravano la forma delle belle mamme, le
quali come due ritondi pomi pignevano in fuori il resistente vestimento,
e ancora in piu luoghi per leggiadre apriture si manifestavano le can-
dide carni. La loro statura era di convenevole grandezza, in ciascun
membro bene proporzionata.
Space and nineteenth-century canons of propriety
prevent me from completing the picture made by
1 Op. Volg. vol. vii. p. 230. I am loth to attempt a translation of this
passage, which owes its charm to the melody and rhythm of chosen
words:
" With ears intent upon the music, he began to go in the direction
whence he heard it; and when he drew nigh to the fountain, he beheld
the two maidens. They were of countenance exceeding white, and this
whiteness was blent in seemly wise with ruddy hues. Their eyes seemed
to be stars of morning, and their little mouths, of the color of a vermeil
rose, became of pleasanter aspect as they moved them to the music of
their song. Their tresses, like threads of gold, were very fair, and
slightly curled went wandering through the green leaves of their garlands.
By reason of the great heat their tender and delicate limbs, as hath been
said above, were clad in robes of the thinnest texture, the which, made
very tight above the waist, revealed the form of their fair bosoms, which
like two round apples pushed the opposing raiment outward, and there-
with in divers places the white flesh appeared through graceful openings.
Their stature was of fitting size, and each limb well-proportioned."
Il6 RENAISSANCE IN ITALY.
Florio and these maidens. It might be paralleled
with a hundred passages of like intention, where the
Italian artist is revealed to us by touches curiously
multiplied. 1 We find in them the sense of color, the
scrupulous precision of form, and something of that
superfluous minuteness which belongs to painting
rather than to literature. The writer has seen a
picture, and not felt a poem. In rendering it by
words, he trusted to the imagination of his reader for
suggesting a highly-finished work of plastic art to the
mind. 2 The files champttres of the Venetian masters
are here anticipated in the prose of the trecento. Such
descriptions were frequent in Italian literature, especially
frequent in the works of the best stylists, Sannazzaro,
Poliziano, Ariosto, the last of whom has been severely
but not unjustly criticised by Lessing for overstep-
ping the limits of poetry in his portrait of Alcina.
It may be pleaded in defense of Boccaccio and his
followers that they belonged to a nation dedicated to
the figurative arts, and that they wrote for a public
familiar with painted form. Their detailed descrip-
tions were at once translated into color by men
habituated to the sight of pictures. During the
Renaissance, painting dominated the Italian genius,
and all the sister arts of expression felt that influence,
1 The description of the nymph Lia in the Ameto (Op. Volg. xv.
30-33) carries Boccaccio's manner into tedious prolixity.
* Boccaccio was a great painter of female beauty and idyllic land-
scape; but he had not the pictorial faculty in a wider sense. The fres-
coes of the Amoroso. Visione, when compared with Poliziano's descrip-
tions in La Giostra, are but meager notes of form. Possibly the progress
of the arts from Giotto to Benozzo Gozzoli and Botticelli may explain this
picturesque inferiority of the elder poet; but in reading Boccaccio we
feel that the defect lay not so much in his artistic faculty as in the lim-
Uation of his sympathy to certain kinds of beauty.
THE TESEIDE. 117
just as at Athens sculpture lent something even to
the drama.
As a poet, Boccaccio tried many styles. His epic,
the Teseide, cannot be reckoned a great success. He
was not at home upon the battle-field, and knew not
how to sound the heroic trumpet. 1 Yet the credit of
discovery may be awarded to the author of this poem.
He introduced to the modern world a tale rich in
romantic incidents and capable of still higher treat-
ment than he was himself able to give it. When we
remember how Chaucer, Shakspere, Fletcher and
Dryden handled and rehandled the episode of Pala-
mon's rivalry with Arcite for the hand of Emilia, we
dare not withhold from Boccaccio the praise which
belongs to creative genius. 2 It is no slight achieve-
' Dante (De Vulg. Eloq, ii. 2) observed that while there were thiee
ibjects of great poetry War, Love, Morality no modern had chosen
the first of these themes. Boccaccio in the last Canto of the Teseide
seems to allude to this:
Poiche le muse nude cominciaro
Nel cospetto degli uomini ad andare,
Gia fur di quelli che le esercitaro
Con bello stile in ones to fiarlare,
Ed altri in amoroso le operaro;
Ma tu, o libro, primo a lor cantare
Di Marte fai gli affanni sostenuti,
Nel volgar Lazio mai piit non veduti.
* How far Boccaccio actually created the tale can be questioned. In
le dedication to Fiammetta (Of. Volg. ix. 3), he says he found a very
indent version of his story, and translated it into rhyme and the latino
volgare for the first time. Again, in the exordium to the first Book
(ib. p. 10), he calls it:
una storia antica
Tanto negli anni riposta e nascosa
Che latino autor non par ne dica
Per quel ch' i' senta in libro alcuna cosa.
We might perhaps conjecture that he had discovered the legend ia a
Jyzanttne MS.
II 8 RENAISSANCE IN ITALY.
ment to have made a story which bore such noble
fruit in literature. The Teseide, moreover, fulfilled an
important mission in Italian poetry. It adapted the
popular ottava rima to the style of the romantic epic,
and fixed it for Pulci, Poliziano, Boiardo, and Ariosto.
That Boccaccio was not the inventor of the stanza, as
used to be assumed, may now be considered beyond
all question. That he had not learned to handle it
with the majestic sweetness of Poliziano, or the infinite
variety of Ariosto, is evident. Yet he deserves credit
for having discerned its capacity and brought it into
cultivated use.
Though unequal in quality, his sonnets and ballate,
whether separately published or scattered through his
numerous prose works, have a higher merit. The
best are those in which, following Guido Cavalcanti's
path, he gives free scope to his incomparable sense of
natural beauty. The style is steeped in sweetness,
softness and the delicacy of music. From these half-
popular poems I might select the Ballata lo mi son
giovinetta; the song of the Angel from the planet Venus,
extracted from the Filocopo; a lament of a woman for
her lost youth, E fior che 7 valor perde; and the girl's
prayer to Love, Tu se nostro Signor caro e verace. 1
It is difficult for the critic to characterize poems so
true to simple nature, so spontaneously passionate, and
yet so artful in the turns of language, molded like
wax beneath the poet's touch. Here sensuousness
has no vulgarity, and the seductions of the flesh are
sublimed by feeling to a beauty which is spiritual in
refinement. It may be observed that Boccaccio writes
Carducci, "Cantilene, etc.," Op. cit. pp. 168, 170, 171. 173-
THE RIME.
119
his best love-poetry to be sung by girls. He has aban-
doned the standpoint of the chivalrous lover, though
he still uses the phraseology of the Italo- Pro venial
school. What arrests his fancy is, not the ideal of
womanhood raising man above himself, but woman
conscious of her own supreme attractiveness. He de-
lights in making her the mirror of the feelings she
inspires. He bids her celebrate in hymns the beauty
of her sex, the perfume of the charms that master man.
When the metaphysical forms of speech, borrowed
from the elder style, are used, they give utterance
to a passion which is sensual, or blent at best with
tenderness a physical love-longing, a sentiment born
of youth and desire. A girl, for instance, speaks about
herself, and says : l
Colui che muove il cielo et ogni Stella
Mi fece a suo diletto
Vaga leggiadra graziosa e bella,
Per dar qua gid ad ogni alto intelletto
Alcun segno di quella
Biltei che sempre a lui sta nel cospetto.
On the lips of him who wrote the tale of Alibech,
this language savors of profanity. Yet we are forced
to recognize the poet's sincerity of feeling. It is the
same problem as that which meets us in the Amoroso,
Visione? The god Boccaccio worshiped was changed:
but this deity was still divine, and deserved, he thought,
the honors of mystic adoration. At the same time
there is nothing Asiatic in his sensuous inspiration.
The emotion is controlled and concentrated; the form
is pure in all its outlines.
The Decameron was the masterpiece of Boccaccio's
1 Q0. cit. p. 160. t See above, p. 114.
120 RENAISSANCE IN ITALY.
maturity. But he did not reach that height of excel-
lence without numerous essays in styles of much
diversity. While still a young man, not long after his
meeting with Fiammetta, he began the Filocopo and
dedicated it to his new love. 1 This romance was
based upon the earlier tale of Floire et Blanceflor?
But the youthful poet invested the simple love-story
of his Florio and Biancofiore with a masquerade cos-
tume of mythological erudition and wordy rhetoric,
which removed it from the middle ages. The gods
and goddesses of Olympus are introduced as living
agents, supplying the machinery of the romance until
the very end, when the hero and heroine are converted
to Christianity, and abjure their old protectors with
cold equanimity. We are left to imagine that, for
Boccaccio at any rate, Venus, Mars and Cupid were
as real as Christ and the saints, though superseded
as objects of pious veneration. This confusion of
Pagan and Christian mythology is increased by his
habit of finding classical periphrases for the expression
of religious ideas. He calls nuns Sacerdotesse di Diana.
God the Father is Quell' eccelso e inestimabile principe
Sommo Giove. Satan becomes Pluto, and human sin
is Atropos. The Birth of Christ is described thus:
la terra come sentl il nuovo incarco delta deith del
1 This appears from the conclusion (Op. Volg. viii. 376). Fiammetta
was the natural daughter of Petrarch's friend and patron, King Robert.
Boccaccio first saw her in the church of S. Lawrence at Naples, April 7,
The history of this widely popular medieval romance has been
traced by Du MeYil in his edition of the thirteenth-century French ver-
sion (Paris, 1856). He is of opinion that Boccaccio may have derived
it from some Byzantine source. But this seems hardly probable, since
Boccaccio gained his knowledge of Greek later in life. Certain indica-
tions in the Filocopo point to a Spanish original.
FJLOCOPO AND FILOSTRATO. 121
figliuol di Giove. The Apostles appear as nuam
cavalieri entrati contra a Plutone in campo. 1 The
style of the Filocopo was new; and in spite, or
perhaps because of, its euphuism, it had a decided
success. This encouraged Boccaccio to attempt the
Teseide. The Filostrato soon followed; and here for
the first time we find the future author of the Deca-
meron. Under Greek names and incidents borrowed
from the War of Troy, we are in fact studying some
episode from the chroniques galantes of the Neapolitan
Court, narrated with the vigor of a perfect master
in the art of story telling. Nothing could be further
removed in sentiment from the heroism of the Homeric
age or closer to the customs of a corrupt Italian city
than this poem. In Troilo himself a feverish type of
character, overmastered by passion which is rather a
delirium of the senses than a mood of feeling, has been
painted with a force that reminds us of the Fiammetta,
where the same disease of the soul is delineated in a
woman. Pandaro shows for the first time in modern
literature an utterly depraved nature, reveling in
seduction, and glutting a licentious imagination with
the spectacle of satiated lust. The frenzied appetite
of Troilo, Pandaro's ruffian arts, and the gradual
yieldings of Griselda to a voluptuous inclination,
reveal the master's hand; and though the poem is
hurried toward the close (Boccaccio being only in-
terested in the portrayal of his hero's love-languors,
ecstasies and disappointment), the Filostrato must
1 See Op. Volg. vii. 6-n. Compare with these phrases those se-
lected from the humanistic writings of a later date, Revival of Learn-
in . P- 397-
122 RENAISSANCE IN ITALY
undoubtedly be reckoned the finest of his narratives i
verse. The second and third Cantos are remarkabl
for dramatic movement and wealth of sensuous im
agination, never rising to sublimity nor refined witl
such poetry as Shakspere found for Romeo and Juliet,
but welling copiously from a genuinely ardent nature.
The love described is nakedly and unaffectedly luxu-
rious; it is an overmastering impulse, crowned at lasf
with all the joys of sensual fruition. According t(
Boccaccio the repose conferred by Love upon hi
votaries is the satiety of their desires. 1 Betweei
Dante's Signore delta nobilitade and his Sir di tuth
pace there is indeed a wide gulf fixed. 2
After the Filostrato, Boccaccio next produced the
1 This is the climax (Parte Terza, stanza xxxii.):
A cui Troilo disse; anima mia,
I' te ne prego, si ch' io t' abbia in braccio
Ignuda si come il mio cor disia.
Ed ella allora: ve* che me ne spaccio;
la camicia sua gittata via,
Nelle sue braccia si raccolse avvaccio;
E stringnendo 1' un 1* altro con fervore,
D' amor sentiron 1' ultimo valore.
8 The Amoroso Visione ends with these words, Sir di tutta pace;
their meaning is explained in previous passages of the same poem. At
the end of cap. xlvi. the lady says:
Io volli ora al presente far quieto
II tuo disio con amorosa pace,
Dandoti 1' arra che finirk il fleto.
Again in cap. 1. we read:
E quel disio che or piu ti tormenta
Porro in pace, con quella bellezza
Che 1* alma al cor tuttora ti presenta.
The context reveals the nature of the peace to be attained. It is the
satisfaction of an orgasm. We may compare the invocation to Venus
and her promise at the end of the Caccia di Diana, canto xvii. (Op. Volg.
xiv.). The time-honored language about "expelling all base thoughts "
is here combined with the anticipation of sensual possession.
FIAMMETTA. 1*3
Ameto, Amoroso, Visionc, Fiammetta, Ninfale Fieso-
lano, and Corbaccio, between the years 1343 and 1355.
The Ameto is a tissue of pastoral tales, descriptions,
and versified interludes, prolix in style and affected
with pedantic erudition. To read it attentively is now
almost impossible, in spite of frequent passages where
the luxuriant word-painting of the author is con-
spicuous. In the Amoroso, Visione he attempted the
style which Petrarch had adopted for his Trionfi.
After reviewing human life under the several aspects
of learning, glory, love, fortune, the poet finally resigns
himself to a Nirvana of sensual beatitude. The poem
is unsuccessful, because it adapts an obsolete form of art
to requirements beyond its scope. Boccaccio tries to
pour the new wine of the Renaissance into the old
bottles of medieval allegory. In the Fiammetta
Boccaccio exhibited all his strength as an anatomist of
feeling, describing the effects of passion in a woman's
heart, and analyzing its varying emotions with a
subtlety which proved his knowledge of a certain
type of female character. It is the first attempt in
modern literature to portray subjective emotion ex-
terior to the writer. Since Virgil's Dido, or the
Heroidum Epistolce of Ovid, nothing of the sort had
been essayed upon an equal scale. Taken together
with Dante's Vita Nuova and Petrarch's Secretum,
each of which is a personal confidence, the Fiammetta
may be reckoned among those masterpieces of analytic
art, which revealed the developed consciousness of the
Italian race, at a moment when the science of emotion
was still for the rest of Europe an undiscovered terri-
tory. This essay exercised a wide and lasting influence
124 RENAISSANCE IN ITALY.
over the descriptive literature of the Renaissance. Yet
when we compare its stationary monologues with the
brief but pregnant touches of the Decameron, we are
forced to assign it the rank of a study rather than a
finished picture. The Fiammetta is to the Decameron
what rhetoric is to the drama. This, however, is
hardly a deduction from its merit. The delineation of
an unholy and unhappy passion, blessed with fruition
for one brief moment, cursed through months of illness
and despair with all the furies of vain desire and
poignant recollection, is executed with incomparable
fullness of detail and inexhaustible richness of fancy.
The reader rises from a perusal of the Fiammetta with
impressions similar to those which a work of Richard-
son leaves upon the mind. At the same time it is full
of poetry. The Vision of Venus, the invocation to
Sleep, and the description of summer on the Bay of
Baise relieve a deliberate anatomy of passion, which
might otherwise be tedious. 1 The romance is so rich
in material that it furnished the motives for a score of
tales, and the novelists of the Renaissance availed
themselves freely of its copious stores. 2
The Corbaccio or Laberinto d'Amore is a satire
upon women, animated with the bitterest sense of
injury and teeming with vindictive spite. It was
written with the avowed purpose of reviling a lady
who had rejected Boccaccio's advances, and it paints
the whole sex in the darkest colors. We could
fancy that certain passages had been penned by a
1 Op. Volg. vi. 21, 89, 91.
Bonucci in his edition of Alberti's works, conscious of that author's
debt to Boccaccio, advances the wild theory that he wrote the Fiam-
metta. See Opere Volgari di L. B. Alberti, vol. iii. p. 353.
CORBACCIO AND NINFALE. 125
disappointed monk. Though this work is in tone
unworthy of its author, it bore fruits in the literature
of the next century. Alberti's satires are but rhetorical
amplifications of themes suggested by the Corbaccio.
Nor is it without value for the student of Italian
manners. The list of romances read by women in the
fourteenth century throws light upon Francesca's
episode in Dante, and proves that the title Principe
Gcdeotto was not given without precedent to Boccaccio's
own writings. 1 The discourse on gentle birth in the
same treatise should be studied in illustration of the
Florentine conception of nobility. 2 Boccaccio, though
he follows so closely in time upon Dante, already
anticipates the democratic theories of Poggio. 3 Feudal
feeling was extinct in the bourgeoisie of the great
towns; nor had the experience of the Neapolitan
Court suppressed in Boccaccio's mind the pride of a
Florentine citizen. At the same time he felt that
contempt of the literary classes for the common folk
which was destined in the next century to divide the
nation and to check the development of its vulgar liter-
ature. He apologizes for explaining Dante, and for
bringing poetry down to the level of the feccia plebeia,
the vulgo indegno, the ingrati meccanici, and so forth j
It remains to speak of yet another of Boccaccio's
minor works, the Ninfale Fiesolano. This is a tale
in octave stanzas, which, under a veil of mythological
romance, relates the loves of a young man and a nun,
and their subsequent tragic ending. It owes its in-
' Laberinto d' Amore (Firenze, Caselli), p. 153, and p. 127.
Ibid. p. 174. See Age of the Despots, p. 186, note.
4 See Sonnets vii. and viii. of the Rime.
126 RENAISSANCE IN ITALY.
terest to the vivid picture of seduction, so glowingly
painted as to betray the author's personal enjoyment
of the motive. The story is thrown back into a time
antecedent to Christianity and civil life. The heroine,
Mensola, is a nymph of Diana; the hero, Affrico,
a shepherd. The scene is laid among the mountains
above Florence ; and when Mensola has been changed
into a fountain by the virgin goddess, whose rites she
violated, the poem concludes with a myth invented
to explain the founding of Fiesole. Civil society
succeeds to the savagery of the woodland, and love is
treated as the vestibule to culture. 1 The romantic
and legendary portions of this tale are ill-connected.
The versification is lax ; and except in the long episode
of Mensola's seduction, which might have formed a
passage of contemporary novel-writing, the genius of
Boccaccio shines with clouded luster. 2 Yet the Nin-
fale Fiesolano occupies a not unimportant place in
the history of Italian literature. It adapts the pastoral
form to that ideal of civility dependent upon culture,
which took so strong a hold upon the imagination of
the cinque cento. Its stanzas are a forecast of the
Arcadia and the Orfeo.
In the minor poems and romances, which have
here been passed in review, except perhaps in the
Fiammetta, Boccaccio cannot be said to take a place
> The same motive occurs in the Ameto, where the power of love to
refine a rustic nature is treated both in the prose romance and in the
interpolated terza rima poems. See especially the song of Teogaper
(Op. Volg. xv. 34).
Boccaccio breaks the style and becomes obscenely vulgar at times
See Parte Quarta, xxxvi. xxxvii., Parte Quinta, xlv. xlvi. The innuendoes
of the Ugellino and the Nicchio are here repeated in figures which an-
ticipate the novels and capitoli of the cinque cento.
THE DECAMERON. 127
among European writers of the first rank. His style
is prolix; his versification, if we omit the Canzoni a
Ballo and some sonnets, is slovenly; nor does he show
exceptional ability in the conception and conduct of
his stories. He is strongest when he paints a violent
passion or describes voluptuous sensations, weakest
when he attempts allegory or assumes the airs of a
philosopher. We feel, in reading these productions of
his earlier manhood, that nearly all were what the
Germans call Gelegenheits-gedicktc. The private key
is lost to some of these works, which were intended for
the ears of one among the multitude. On others it is
plainly written that they were the outpourings of a
personal desire, the self-indulgence of a fancy which
reveled in imagined sensuality, using literature as the
safety-valve for subjective longings. They lack the
calm of perfect art, the full light falling on the object
from without, which marks a poem of the highest order.
From these romances of his youth, no less than from
the Latin treatises of his maturity, we return to the
Decameron when we seek to place Boccaccio among
the classics. Nothing comparable with this Human
Comedy for universal interest had appeared in modern
Europe, if we except the Divine Comedy; and it may
be questioned whether any work of equal scope was
given to the world before the theater of Shakspere and
the comedies of Moliere. Boccaccio, though he paints
the surface of life, paints it in a way to suggest the
inner springs of character, and to bring the motives of
action vividly before us. Quicquid agunt homines is
the matter of his book. The recoil from medieval
principles of conduct, which gives it a certain air of
128 RENAISSANCE IN ITALY.
belonging to a moment rather than all time, was
necessary in the evolution of intellectual freedom. In
this respect, again, it faithfully reflected the Florentine
temperament. At no epoch have the Italians been
sternly and austerely pious. Piety with them is a
passionate impulse rather than a deeply-reasoned habit
based upon conviction. Their true nature is critical,
susceptible to beauty, quick at seizing the ridiculous
and exposing shams, suspicious of mysticism, realistic,
pleasure-loving, practical. These qualities, special to
the Florentines, but shared in large measure by the
nation, found artistic expression in the Decameron.,
and asserted their supremacy in the literature of the
Renaissance. That a sublime ideal, unapprehended
by Boccaccio, and destined to remain unrepresented in
the future, should have been conceived by Dante;
that Petrarch should have modulated by his master-
piece of poetic workmanship from the key of the
Divine Comedy to that of the Decameron; that one
city should have produced three such men, and that
one half-century should have witnessed their successive
triumphs, forms the great glory of Florence, and is one
of the most notable facts in the history of genius.
It remains to speak about Boccaccio's prose, and
the relation of his style to that of other trecentisti. If
we seek the origins of Italian prose, we find them
first in the Franco-Italian romances of the Lombard
period, which underwent the process of toscaneggiamento
at Florence, next in books of morality and devotion,
and also in the earlier chronicles. Among the Tus-
canized tales of chivalry belonging to the first age
of Italian literature are the Conti di antichi cavalien
THIRTEENTH-CENTURY PROSE. 129
and the Tavola Ritonda, both of which bear traces
of translation from Provengal sources. ! The Novellino,
of which mention has already been made, betrays the
same origin. The style of these works offers a pretty
close parallel to the English of Sir Thomas Mallory.
At the same time that the literature of France was
assuming an Italian garb, many versions of Roman
classics appeared. Orosius, Vegetius, Sallust, with
parts of Cicero, Livy and Boethius were adapted to
popular reading. But the taste of the time, as we
have already seen in the preceding chapter, inclined
the authors of these works to make selections with a
view to moral edification. Their object was, not to
present the ancients in a modern garb, but to cull
notable examples of conduct and ethical sentences
from the works that found most favor with the medi-
eval intellect. Passing under the general titles of
Fieri, Giardini, Tesori and Conviti Fiori difilosofi &
molto saviy Giardino di Consolazione, Fiore di Ret-
torica, Fiore del parlar gentile these collections
supplied the laity with extracts from Latin authors,
and extended culture to the people. The Libro di
Cato might be chosen as a fair example of their
scope. 2 The number of such books, ascribed to
Bono Giamboni, Brunette Latini, and Guidotto of
Bologna, proves that an extensive public was eager
for instruction of this sort; and it is reasonable to
believe that they were studied by the artisans of
1 Students may consult the valuable work of Vincenzo Nannucci,
Manuale delta Letteratura del primo secolo della Lingua Italia.no
Firenze, Barbera, 1874. The second volume contains copious speci
mens of thirteenth-century prose.
* Nannucci, op. cit. vol. ii. p. 95.
130 RENAISSANCE IN ITALY.
central Italy. The bass-reliefs and frescoes of incipient
Italian art, the pavement of the Sienese Cathedral,
the Palazzo della Ragione at Padua, bear traces of the
percolation through all social strata of this literature.
A more important work of style was the De Regimine
Principum, of Egidio Colonna, translated from the
French version by an unknown Tuscan hand; while
Giamboni's Florentine version of Latini's Tesoro in-
troduced the erudition of the most learned grammarian
of his age to the Italians. Contemporaneously with
this growth of vernacular treatises on rhetorical and
ethical subjects, we may assume that memoirs and
chronicles began to be written in the vulgar tongue.
But so much doubt has recently been thrown upon
the earliest monuments of Italian historiography that
it must here suffice to indicate the change which was
undoubtedly taking place in this branch also of com-
position toward the close of the thirteenth century. 1
Literature of all kinds yielded to the first strong
impact of the native idiom. Epistles, for example,
whether of private or of public import, were now
occasionally written in Italian, as can be proved
by reference to the published letters of Guittone
d'Arezzo. 2
The works hitherto mentioned belong to the latter
half of the thirteenth century. Their style, speaking
1 The journals of Matteo Spinelli, ascribed to an Apulian of the
thirteenth century, were long accepted as the earliest vernacular at-
tempt at history in prose. It has lately been suggested, with good show
of argument, that they are fabrications of the sixteenth century. With
regard to the similar doubts affecting the Malespini Chronicles and Dino
Compagni, I may refer to my discussion of this question in the first vol
ume of this work, Age of the Despots, pp. 251, 262-273.
Nannucci, op. cit. p. 137.
FOURTEENTH-CENTURY PROSE. 131
generally, is dry and tentative. Except in the versions
of French romances, which borrow grace from their
originals, we do not find in them artistic charm of
diction. The Fiori and Giardini are little better than
commonplace books, in which the author's personality
is lost beneath a mass of extracts and citations. The
beginning of the fourteenth century witnessed the
growth of a new Italian prose. Of this second stage,
the masterpieces are Villani's Chronicle, Dante's Vita
Nuavciy the Fioretti di S. Francesco, the Leggende del
Santi Padri of Domenico Cavalca, and Jacopo Pass-
avanti's Specchio delta vera Penitenzal These writers
have no lack of individuality. Their mind moves in
their style, and gives a personal complexion to their
utterance. The chief charm of their manner, so far as
it is common to characters so diverse, is its grave and
childlike spontaneity. For vividness of description, for
natural simplicity of phrase, and for that amiable gar-
rulity which rounds a picture by innumerable details
and unconscious touches of graphic force, not one of
the books of this period surpasses the Fioretti. Nor
are the Leggende of Cavalca less admirable. Modern,
especially Northern, students may discover too much
suavity and unction in the writer's tone a superfluity
of sweetness which fatigues, a caressing tenderness that
clogs. After reading a few pages, we lay the book
down, and wonder whether it could really have been a
grown man, and not a cherub flown from Fra Angelico's
Paradise, who composed it. This infantine note be-
1 Of Villani's Chronicle I have already spoken sufficiently in the Age
of the Despots, chap. 5, and of the Vita Nuova in this chapter (above,
pp. 67-70X
132 RENAISSANCE IN ITALY.
longs to the cloister and the pulpit. It matches the
simple credulity of the narrator, and well befits the
miracles he loves to record. We seem to hear a good
old monk gossiping to a party of rosy-cheeked novices,
like those whom Sodoma painted in his frescoes of
S. Benedict at Monte OH veto. It need hardly be ob-
served that neither in Villani's nor in Dante's prose do
we find the same puerility. But all the trecentisti
have a common character of limpidity, simplicity, and
unaffected grace.
The difficulties under which even the best Italian
authors labor while using their own language, incline
them to an exaggerated admiration for these pearls of
the trecento. They look back with envy to an age
when men could write exactly as they thought and felt
and spoke, without the tyranny of the Vocabolario or
the fear of an Academy before their eyes. We, with
whom the literary has always closely followed the
spoken language, and who have, practically speaking,
no dialects, while we recognize the purity of that in-
comparably transparent manner, cannot comprehend
that it should be held up for imitation in the present
age. To paint like Giotto would be easier than tc
write like Passavanti. The conditions of life and the
modes of thought are so altered that the style of the
trecento will not lend itself to modern requirements.
Among the prosaists of the fourteenth century
Cavalca, Villani, the author of the Fioretti, and Pass-
avanti Boccaccio meets us with a sudden surprise.
They aimed at finding the readiest and most appro-
priate words to convey their meaning in the simplest,
most effective manner. Without artistic purpose,
BOCCACCIO* S PROSE. 133
without premeditation, without side-glances at the
classics, they wrote straightforward from their heart.
There is little composition or connection in their work,
no molding of paragraphs or rounding of phrases,
no oratorical development, no gradation of tone. Boc-
caccio, on the contrary, sought to give the fullness and
sonority of Latin to the periods of Italian prose. He
had the Ciceronian cadence and the labyrinthine sen-
tences of Livy in view. By art of style he was bent
on rendering the vulgar language a fit vehicle for
learning, rhetoric, and history. In order to make it
clear what sorts of changes he introduced, it will be
necessary to compare his prose with that of his con-
temporaries. Dante used the following words to de-
scribe his first meeting with Beatrice l :
Move fiate gia, appresso al mio nascimento, era tomato lo cielo
della luce quasi ad un medesimo punto, quanto alia sua propria
girazione, quando alii miei occhi apparve prima la gloriosa Donna
della mia mente, la quale fu chiamata da mold Beatrice, i quali non
sapeano che si chiamare. Ella era gik in questa vita stata tanto che
nel suo tempo lo cielo stellate era mosso verso la parte d' oriente
delle dodici parti 1* una d* un grado: si che quasi dal principio del
suo anno nono apparve a me, ed io la vidi quasi alia fine del mio
nono anno.
Boccaccio, relating his first glimpse of Fiammetta
on April, 17, 1341, spins the following cocoon of
verbiage : 2
Avvenne che un giorno, la cui prima ora Saturno avea signor-
eggiata, essendo gia Febo co* suoi cavalli al seclecimo grado del
celestiale Montone pervenuto, e nel quale il glorioso partimento del
figliuolo di Giove dagli spogliati regni di Plutone si celebrava, io,
della presente opera componitore, mi trovai in un grazioso e bel
Vita Nuova, cap. 2.
Ftlocopo, Op. Volg. vii. 4.
134 RENAISSANCE IN ITALY.
tempio in Partenope, nominato da colui che per deificarsi sostenne
che fosse fatto di lui sacrificio sopra la grata, e quivi con canto pieno
di dolce melodia ascoltava 1' uficio che in tale giorno si canta, cele-
brato da' sacerdoti successori di colui che prima la corda cinse umil-
mente esaltando la povertade quella seguendo.
Dante's style is analytic and direct. The sentences
follow each other naturally ; and though the language
is stiff, from scrupulous precision, and in one place
intentionally obscure, it is free from affectation. Boc-
caccio aims at a synthetic presentation of all he means
to say ; and he calls nothing by its right name, if he
can devise a periphrasis. The breathless period pants
its labored clauses out, and dwindles to a lame con-
clusion. The Filocopo was, however, an immature
production. In order to do its author justice, and at
the same time to compare his style with a graceful
piece of fourteenth-century composition, I will select a
passage from the Fioretti di S. Francesco, and place it
beside one taken from the first novel of the De-
cameron. This is the episode of S. Anthony preaching
to the fishes * :
E detto ch* egli ebbe cosi, subitamente venne alia riva a lui tanta
moltitudine di pesci, grandi, piccoli e mezzani, che mai in quel mare
ne in quel fiume non ne fu veduta si grande moltitudine: e tutti
teneano i capi fuori dell' acqua, e tutti stavano attenti verso la fac-
cia di santo Antonio, e tutti in grandissima pace e mansuetudine e
ordine: imperocche dinanzi e piu presso alia riva stavano i pesciolini
minori, e dopo loro stavano i pesci mezzani, poi di dietro, dov' era
1' acqua piu profonda, stavano i pesci maggiori. Essendo dunque in
cotale ordine e disposizione allogati i pesci, santo Antonio comincib
a predicare solennemente, e disse cosi : Fratelli miei pesci, molto
siete tenuti, secondo la vostra possibilitade, di ringraziare il nostro
Creatore, che v' ha dato cosi nobile elemento per vostra abitazione;
sicche, come vi piace, avete 1* acque dolci e salse; c havvi dati molti
' Fioretti di S. Francesco (Venezia. 1853). p. 104.
THE FIORETTI AND DECAMERON. 135
rifugii a schifare le tempeste; havvi ancora dato elemento chiaro e
trasparente, e cibo, per lo quale voi possiate vivere, etc., etc
A queste e simiglianti parole e ammaestramenti di santo Antonio,
cominciarono li pesci ad aprire la bocca, inchinaronli i capi, e con
questi ed altri segnali di riverenza, secondo li modi a loro possibili,
laudarono Iddio.
This is a portion of the character of Ser Ciapel-
letto:
Era questo Ciapelletto di questa vita. Egli essendo notajo, avea
grandissima vergogna quando uno de' suoi strumenti (come che pochi
ne facesse) fosse altro che falso trovato; de' quali tanti avrebbe fatti,
di quanti fosse stato richesto, e quelli piu volentieri in dono, che
alcun altro grandemente salariato. Testimonianze false con sommo
diletto diceva richesto e non richesto; e dandosi a' que' tempi in
Francia a' saramenti grandissima fede, non curandosi fargli falsi,
tante quistioni malvagiamente vincea, a quante a giurare di dire il
vero sopra la sua fede era chiamato. Aveva oltre modo piacere, e
forte vi studiava, in commettere tra amici e parenti e qualunque altra
persona mali et inimicizie e scandali; de' quali quanto maggiori mali
vedeva seguire, tanto piu d' allegrezza prendea. Invitato ad uno
omicidio o a qualunque altra rea cosa, senza negarlo mai, volentero-
samente v* andava; e piu volte a fedire et ad uccidere uomini colle
proprie mani si trovo volentieri.
These examples will suffice to show how Boccaccio
distinguished himself from the trecentisti in general.
When his style attained perfection in the Decameron,
it had lost the pedantry of his first manner, and com-
bined the brevity of the best contemporary writers
with rhetorical smoothness and intricacy. The artful
structure of the period, and the cadences of what
afterwards came to be known as " numerous prose,"
were carried to perfection. Still, though he was the
earliest writer of a scientific style, Boccaccio failed to
exercise a paramount influence over the language un-
til the age of the Academies. 1 The writers of the
1 See below, the chapter on the Purists.
136 RENAISSANCE IN ITALY.
fifteenth century, partly no doubt because these were
chiefly men of the people, appear to have developed
their manner out of the material of the trecento in
general, modified by contemporary usage. This is
manifest in the Reali di Francia, a work of consider-
able stylistic power, which cannot probably be dated
earlier than the middle of the fifteenth century. The
novelist Masuccio modeled his diction, so far as he was
able, on the type of the Decameron, and Alberti owed
much to the study of such works as the Fiammetta
Yet, speaking broadly, neither the excellences nor the
defects of Boccaccio found devoted imitators until the
epoch when the nation at large turned their atten-
tion to the formation of a common Italian style. It
was then, in the days of Bembo and Sperone, that
Boccaccio took rank with Petrarch as an infallible
authority on points of language. The homage ren-
dered at that period to the Decameron decided the
destinies of Italian prose, and has since been deplored
by critics who believe Boccaccio to have established
a false standard of taste. 1 This is a question which
must be left to the Italians to decide. One thing,
however, is clear; that a nation schooled by humanistic
studies of a Latin type, divided by their dialects, and
removed by the advance of culture beyond the influ-
ences of the purer trecentisti, found in the rhetorical
diction of the Decameron a common model better
suited to their taste and capacity than the simple style
of the Villani could have furnished.
> See Capponi's Storia della Repubblica di Firente, lib. iii. cap. 9,
for a very energetic statement of this view.
CLOSE OF THE TRECENTO. 137
Boccaccio died in 1375, seventeen months after the
death at Arqua of his master, Petrarch. The painter
Andrea Orcagna died about the same period. With
these three great artists the genius of medieval Flor-
ence sank to sleep. A temporary torpor fell upon the
people, who during the next half century produced
nothing of marked originality in literature and art
The Middle Age had passed away. The Renaissance
was still in preparation. When Boccaccio breathed
his last, men felt that the elder sources of inspiration
had failed, and that no more could be expected from
the spirit of the previous centuries. Heaven and hell,
the sanctuaries of the soul, the garden of this earth,
had been traversed. The tentative essays and scat-
tered preludings, the dreams and visions, the prepara-
tory efforts of all previous modern literatures, had
been completed, harmonized and presented to the
world in the master-works of Dante, Petrarch, and
Boccaccio. What remained but to make a new start ?
This step forward or aside was now to be taken in the
Classical Revival. Well might Sacchetti exclaim in
that canzone 1 which is at once Boccaccio's funeral
See Rime di M. Cino da Pistoja t d' altri del Secolo xiv. (Firenze,
Barbera, 1862), p. 528. It begins:
Ora e mancata ogni poesia
E vote son le case di Parnaso.
It contains the famous lines:
Come deggio sperar che surga Dante
Che gia chi il sappia legger non si trova ?
E Giovanni che e morto ne fe scola.
Not less interesting is Sacchetti's funeral Ode for Petrarch (ibid. p. 517).
Both show a keen sense of the situation with respect to the decline of
literature.
'38
RENAISSANCE IN ITALY.
dirge and also the farewell of Florence to the four-
teenth century:
Sonati sono i corn!
D' ogni parte a ricolta;
La stagione 6 rivolta:
Se tornera non so, ma credo tardi.
CHAPTER III.
THE TRANSITION.
The Church, Chivalry, the Nation The National Element in Italian
Literature Florence Italy between 1373 and 1490 Renascent
Nationality Absorption in Scholarship Vernacular Literature fol-
lows an obscure Course Final Junction of the Humanistic and Pop-
ular Currents Renascence of Italian The Italian Temperament
Importance of the Quattrocento Sacchetti's Novels Ser Giovan-
ni's Pecorone Sacchetti's and Ser Giovanni's Poetry Lyrics of
the Villa and the Piazza Nicolb Soldanieri Alesso Donati His
Realistic Poems Followers of Dante and Petrarch Political Poetry
of the Guelfs and Ghibellines Fazio degli Uberti Saviozzo da Siena
Elegies on Dante Sacchetti's Guelf Poems Advent of the Bour-
geoisie Discouragement of the Age Fazio's Dittamondo Rome
and Alvernia Frezzi's Quadriregio Dantesque Imitation Blend-
ing of Classical and Medieval Motives Matteo Palmieri's Cittd di Vita
The Fate of Terza Rima Catherine of Siena Her Letters S.
Bernardino's Sermons Salutati's Letters Alessandra degli Strozzi
Florentine Annalists Giov. Cavalcanti Corio's History of Milan
Matarazzo's Chronicle of Perugia Masuccio and his Novellino His
Style and Genius Alberti Born in Exile His Feeling for Italian
Enthusiasm for the Roman Past The Treatise on the Family Its
Plan Digression on the Problem of its Authorship Pandolfini or
Alberti The Deiciarchia Tranquillitd dell' Animo Teogenio
Alberti's Religion Dedication of the Treatise on Painting Minor
Works in Prose on Love Ecatomfila, Amiria, Deifiria, etc. Miso-
gynism Novel of ippolito and Leonora Alberti's Poetry Review
of Alberti's Character and his Relation to the Age Francesco Co-
lonna The Hypnerotomachia Poliphili Its Style Its Importance
as a Work of the Transition A Romance of Art, Love, Humanism
The Allegory Polia Antiquity Relation of this Book to Boc-
caccio and Valla It Foreshadows the Renaissance.
THE two preceding chapters will have made it clear
that the Church, Chivalry, and the Nation contributed
140 RENAISSANCE IN ITALY.
their several quotas to the growth of Italian literature.
The ecclesiastical or religious element, so triumphantly
expressed in the Divine Comedy, was not peculiar to
the Italians. They held it in common with the whole
of Christendom; and though the fabric of the Roman
Church took form in Italy, though the race gave
S. Francis, S. Thomas, and S. Bonaventura to the
militia of the medieval faith, still the Italians as a
nation were not specifically religious. Piety, which
is quite a different thing from ecclesiastical organiza-
tion, was never the truest and sincerest accent of their
genius. Had it been so, the history of Latin Chris-
tianity would have followed another course, and the
schism of the sixteenth century might have been
avoided.
The chivalrous element they shared, at a consider-
able disadvantage, with the rest of feudal Europe.
Chivalry was not indigenous to Italian soil, nor did it
ever flourish there. The literature which it produced
in France, became Italian only when the Guidi and
Dante gave it philosophical significance. Petrarch,
who represents this motive, as Dante represents the
ecclesiastical, generalized Provencal poetry. His Can-
zoniere cannot be styled a masterpiece of chivalrous
art. Its spirit is modern and human in a wider and
more comprehensive sense.
To characterize the national strain in this complex
I may refer to the Age of the Despots, 2nd edition, pp. 58-65, for a
brief review of the circumstances under which the Nation defined itself
against the Church and the Empire the ecclesiastical and feudal 01
chivalrous principles during the Wars of Investiture and Independence.
In Carducci's essay Dello Svolgimento delta Letteratura nazionale will
be found an eloquent and succinct exposition of the views I have at-
tempted to express in these paragraphs.
NATIONAL ITALIAN ELEMENT. I A I
pedigree of culture is no easy task chiefly because it
manifested itself under two apparently antagonistic
forms; first in the recovery of the classics by the
scholars of the fifteenth century; secondly in the por-
traiture of Italian character and temperament by
writers of romance and fiction. The divergence of
these two main currents of literary energy upon the
close of the middle ages, and their junction in the
prime of the Renaissance, are the topics of my present
volume.
We have seen how tenaciously the Italians clung
to memories of ancient Rome, and how their history
deprived them of that epical material which started
modern literature among the northern races. While
the vulgar language was being formed from the
dialects into which rustic Latin had divided, a new
nationality grew into shape by an analogous process
out of the remnants of the old Italic population, fused
with recent immigrants. Absorbing Greek blood in
the south and Teutonic in the north, this composite
race maintained the ascendancy of the Romanized
people, in obedience to laws whereby the prevalent
and indigenous strain outlives and assimilates ingredi-
ents from without. Owing to a variety of causes,
among which must be reckoned geographical isolation
and imperfect Lombard occupation, the purest Italic
stock survived upon the Tuscan plains and highlands,
between the Tyrrhene Sea and the Apennines, and
where the Arno and the Tiber start together from the
mountains of Arezzo. This region was the cradle of
the new Italian language, the stronghold of the new
Italian nation. Its center, political, commercial and
142 RENAISSANCE IN ITALY.
intellectual, was Florence, which gave birth to the
three great poets of the fourteenth century. Though
Florence developed her institutions later than the
Lombard communes, she maintained a civic indepen-
dence longer than any State but Venice; and her
popolo may be regarded as the type of the popular
Italian element. Here the genius of Italy became
conscious of itself, and here the people found a
spokesman in Boccaccio. Abandoning ecclesiastical
and feudal traditions, Boccaccio concentrated his force
upon the delineation of his fellow-countrymen as he
had learned to know them. The Italians of the new
age start into distinctness . in his work, with the
specific qualities they were destined to maintain and
to mature during the next two centuries. Thus
Boccaccio fully represents one factor of what I have
called the national element. At the same time, he
occupies a hardly less important place in relation to
the other or the humanistic factor. Like his master
Petrarch, he pronounced with ardor and decision for
that scholarship which restored the link between the
present and the past of the Italian race. Indepen-
dently of their achievements in modern literature, we
have to regard the humanistic efforts of these two
great writers as a sign that the national element had
asserted itself in antagonism to the Church and
chivalry.
The recovery of the classics was, in truth, the
decisive fact in Italian evolution. Having attained
full consciousness in the Florence of Dante's age, the
people set forth in search of their spiritual patrimony.
They found it in the libraries. They became pos-
RECOVERY OF CLASSICS. 143
sessed of it through the labors of the scholars. Ital-
ian literature during the first three quarters of the
fifteenth century merged, so far as polite society was
concerned, in Humanism, the history of which has
already been presented to the reader in the second
volume of this work. 1 For a hundred years, from the
publication of the Decameron in 1373 to the publica-
tion of Poliziano's Stanze, the genius of Italy was
engaged in an exploratory pilgrimage, the ultimate
end of which was the restoration of the national in-
heritance in ancient Rome. This process of renascent
classicism, which was tantamount to ranascent nation-
ality, retarded the growth of the vulgar literature.
Yet it was imperatively demanded not only by the
needs of Europe at large, but more particularly and
urgently by the Italians themselves, who, unlike the
other modern races, had no starting-point but ancient
Rome. The immediate result of the humanistic move-
ment was the separation of the national element into
two sections, learned and popular, Latin and Italian.
The common people, who had repeated Dante's
Canzoni, and whose life Boccaccio had portrayed in
the Decameron, were now divided from the rising
class of scholars and professors. Cultivated persons
of all ranks despised Italian, and spent their time in
studies beyond the reach of the laity. Like some
mountain rivers after emerging from the highlands of
their origin, the vernacular literature passed as it were
for a season underground, and lost itself in unexplored
ravines. Absorbed into the masses of the people, it
continued an obscure but by no means insignificant
Revival of Learning.
144 RENAISSANCE IN ITALY.
course, whence it was destined to reappear at the right
moment, when the several constituents of the nation
had attained the sense of intellectual unity. This
sense of unity was the product of the classical revival;
for the activity of the wandering professors and the
fanatical enthusiasm for the ancients were needed to
create a common consciousness, a common standard of
taste and intelligence in the peninsula. It must in this
connection be remembered that the vernacular litera-
ture of the fourteenth century, though it afterwards
became the glory of Italy as a whole, was originally
Florentine. The medium prepared by the scholars
was demanded in order that the Tuscan classics should
be accepted by the nation as their own. Toward the
close of the fifteenth century, a fusion between the hu-
manistic and the vulgar literatures was made; and this
is the renascence of Italian no longer Tuscan, but
participated by the race at large. The poetry of the
people then received a form refined by classic learning;
and the two sections of what I have called the national
element, joined to produce the genuine Italian culture
of the golden age.
It is necessary, for the sake of clearness, to insist
upon this point, which forms the main motive of my
present theme. After the death of Boccaccio the
history of Italian literature is the history of that
national element which distinguished itself from the
ecclesiastical and the chivalrous, and at last in the
Decameron asserted its superiority over both. But
the stream of intellectual energy bifurcates. During
the fifteenth century, the Latin instincts of the new
Italic people found vigorous expansion in the human-
TRIUMPH OF NATIONAL ELEMENT. 14$
istic movement, while the vernacular literature carried
on a fitful and obscure, but potent, growth among the
proletariate. At the end of that century, both currents,
the learned and the popular, the classical and the
modern, reunited on a broader plane. The nation,
educated by scholarship and brought to a sense of its
identity, resumed the vulgar tongue; and what had
hitherto been Tuscan, now became Italian. In this
renascence neither the religious nor the feudal prin-
ciple regained firm hold upon the race. Their influ-
ence is still discernible, however, in the lyrics of the
Petrarchisti and the epics of Orlando; for nothing
which has once been absorbed into a people's thought
is wholly lost. How they were transmuted by the
action of the genuine Italic genius, triumphant now
upon all quarters of the field, will appear in the sequel
of these volumes ; while it remains for another work to
show in what way, under the influences of the Counter-
Reformation, both the ecclesiastical and the chivalrous
elements reasserted themselves for a brief moment in
Tasso. Still even in Tasso we recognize the Italian
courtier rather than the knight or the ascetic. For the
rest, it is clear that the spirit of Boccaccio that is, the
spirit of the Florentine people refined by humanistic
discipline and glorified by the reawakening of Italy to
a sense of intellectual unity, determined the character
of literature during its most brilliant period. 1
It is not quite exact, though convenient, to identify Dante, Petrarch
and Boccaccio severally with the religious, chivalrous and national prin-
ciples of which I have been speaking. Petrarch stands midway. With
Dante he shares the chivalrous, with Boccaccio the humanistic side of
the national element. Though Boccaccio anticipates in his work the
literature of the Renaissance, yet Petrarch was certainly not less influ-
146 RENAISSANCE IN ITALY.
Many peculiarities of the Renaissance in Italy, and
of the Renaissance in general, as communicated
through Italians to Europe, can be explained by this
emergence of the national Italic temperament. Political
and positive; keenly sensitive to natural beauty, and
gifted with a quick artistic faculty ; neither persistently
religious nor profoundly speculative ; inclined to skep-
ticism, but accepting the existing order with sarcastic
acquiescence; ironical and humorous rather than sa-
tirical; sensuous in feeling, realistic in art, rhetorical
in literature; abhorring mysticism and ill-fashioned
for romantic exaltation; worldly, with a broad and
genial toleration; refined in taste and social con-
duct, but violent in the indulgence of personal pro-
clivities; born old in contrast with the youth of the
Teutonic races ; educated by long experience to expect
a morrow differing in no essentials from to-day or
yesterday ; demanding, therefore, from the moment all
that it can yield of satisfaction to the passions the
Italians, thus constituted, in their vigorous reaction
against the middle ages, secularized the Papacy, ab-
sorbed the Paganism of the classics, substituted an
aesthetic for an ethical ideal, democratized society, and
opened new horizons for pioneering energy in all the
fields of knowledge. The growth of their intelligence
was precocious and fore-doomed to a sudden check; nor
was it to be expected that their solutions of the deepest
problems should satisfy races of a different fiber and a
posterity educated on the scientific methods of investi-
cntial as an authority in style. Ariosto represents the fusion of both sec
lions of the national element in literature Italian is distinguished from
Tuscan.
THE QUATTROCENTO. 147
gation. Unexpected factors were added to the general
calculation by the German Reformation and the politi-
cal struggles which preceded the French Revolution.
Vet the influence of this Italian temperament, in form-
ing and preparing the necessary intellectual medium in
modern Europe, can hardly be exaggerated.
When the Italian genius manifested itself in art, in
letters and in scholarship, national unity was already an
impossibility. 1 The race had been broken up into re-
publics and tyrannies. Their political forces were
centrifugal rather than centripetal. The first half of
the fifteenth century was the period when their division
into five great powers, held together by the frail bond
of diplomacy, had been accomplished, and when Italy
was further distracted by the ambition of unprincipled
condottieri. Under these conditions of dismember-
ment, the Renaissance came to perfection, and the
ideal unity of the Italians was achieved. The space
of forty years' tranquillity and equilibrium, which pre
ceded Charles VIII.'s invasion, marked an epoch of
recombination and consolidation, when the two currents
of national energy, learned and popular, met to form
the culture of the golden age. After being Tuscan
and neo- Latin, the literature which expressed the
nation now became Italian. Such is the importance of
the Quattrocento in Italian history long denied, late
recognized, but now at length acknowledged as neces-
sary and decisive for both Italy and Europe.
In the present chapter I propose to follow the tran-
sition from the middle ages effected by writers who,
though they used the mother tongue, take rank among
1 Sec Age of the Despots, chap. a.
148 RENAISSANCE IN ITALY.
cultivated authors. The two succeeding chapters will
be devoted to the more obscure branches of vernac-
ular literature which flourished among the people.
Franco Sacchetti, who uttered the funeral dirge
of the fourteenth century, was also the last consider-
able writer of that age. 1 Born about the year 1335,
of one of the old noble families of Florence, he lived
until the end of the century, employed in various
public duties and assiduous in his pursuit of letters. 2
He was a friend of Boccaccio, and felt the highest
admiration not only for his novels but also for his
learning, though he tells us in the preface to his own
three hundred tales that he was himself a man of
slender erudition uomo discolo e grosso.* From this
preface we also learn that enthusiasm for the De-
cameron prompted him to write a set of novels on his
own account. 4 Though Sacchetti loved and wor-
shiped Boccaccio, he did not imitate his style. The
Novelle are composed in the purest vernacular, without
literary artifice or rhetorical ornament. They boast no
framework of fiction, like that which lends the setting
of romance to the Decameron; nor do they pretend to
be more than short anecdotes with here and there a
word of moralizing from the author. Yet the student
of Italian, eager to know what speech was current in
' See above, p. 138. All that is known about Sacchetti 's life may be
found in the Discourse of Monsignor Giov. Bottari, prefixed to Silvestri's
edition of the Novelle.
* For Sacchetti's conception ot a citizen's duty, proving him a son
of Italy's heroic age, see the sonnet Amar la patria, in Monsignor Bot-
tari's Discourse above mentioned.
See the Sonnet Pien di quell' acqua written to Boccaccio on his
entering the Certosa at Naples.
Here too he mentions a translation of the Decameron into English,
SACCHETTI'S NOVELS. 149
the streets of Florence during the last half of that
century, will value Sacchetti's idiomatic language even
more highly than Boccaccio's artful periods. He tells
us what the people thought and felt, in phrases bor-
rowed from their common talk. The majority of the
novels treat of Florentine life, while some of them
bring illustrious Florentines Dante and Giotto and
Guido Cavalcanti on the scene. Sacchetti's preface
vouches for the truth of his stories ; but, whether they
be strictly accurate or not, we need not doubt their
fidelity to contemporary customs, domestic manners,
and daily conversation. Sacchetti inspires a certain
confidence, a certain feeling of friendliness. And yet
what a world is revealed in his Novelle a world with-
out tenderness, pathos, high principle, passion, or
enthusiasm men and women delighting in coarse
humor, in practical jokes of inconceivable vulgarity,
in language of undisguised grossness, in cruelty, fraud,
violence, incontinence ! The point is almost always
some clever trick, a burla or a beffa, or a piece of
subtly-planned retaliation. Knaves and fools are the
chief actors in this comic theater; and among the
former we find many friars, among the latter many
husbands. To accept the Novelle as adequate in every
detail to the facts of Florentine society, would be un-
critical. They must chiefly be used for showing what
passed for fun among the burghers, and what seemed
fit and decent topics for discussion. Studied from that
point of view, and also for the abundant light they throw
on customs and fashions, Sacchetti's tales are highly
valuable. The bourgeoisie of Florence lives again in
their animated pages. We have in them a literature
150 RENAISSANCE IN ITALY.
written to amuse, if not precisely to represent, a civic
society closely packed within a narrow area, witty and
pleasure-loving, acutely sensitive to the ridiculous,
with strongly-defined tastes and a decided preference
for pungent flavors. One distinctive Florentine quality
emerges with great clearness. That is a malicious and
jibing humor the malice Dante took with him to the
Inferno \ the malice expressed by II Lasca and Firen-
zuola, epitomized in Florentine nicknames, and con-
densed in Rabelaisian anecdotes which have become
classical. It reaches its climax in the cruel but laughter-
moving jest played by Brunelleschi on the unfortunate
cabinet- maker, which has been transmitted to us in the
novel of E Grasso, Legnaiuolo.
Somewhat later than Sacchetti's Novelle, appeared
another collection of more or less veracious anecdotes,
compiled by a certain Ser Giovanni. 1 He called it Jl
Pecorone, which may be interpreted "The Simpleton:"
Ed 6 per nome il Pecoron chiamato,
Perche ci ha dentro novi barbagianni;
Ed io son capo di cotal brigata,
E vo belando come pecorone,
Facendo libri, e non ne so boccata.
Nothing is known about Ser Giovanni, except what he
tells us in the Sonnet just quoted. From it we learn
that he began his Novelle in the year 1378 the year
of the Ciompi Revolution at Florence. As a frame-
1 This should also be the place to mention the Novelle of Giovanni
Sercambi of Lucca. They have lately been re-edited by Professor d
Ancona, Bologna, Romagnoli, 1871. They are short tales, historical
and moral, drawn from miscellaneous medieval sources, and resembling
the Novellino in type. Two of them (Novelle ix. and x., ed. cit, pp.
62-74) are interesting as forming part of the Legend of Dante the Poet
THE PECORONE. 151
work for his stories, he devised a frigid romance,
which may be briefly told. Sister Saturnina, the
prioress of a convent at Forll, was so wise and beauti-
ful that her fame reached Florence, where a handsome
and learned youth, named Auretto, fell in love with
her by hearsay. He took orders, journeyed across
the Apennines, and contrived to be appointed chaplain
to Saturnina's nuns. In due course of time she dis-
creetly returned his affection, and, managing their
affairs with prudence and decorum, they met for pri-
vate converse and mutual solace in a parlor of the
convent. Here they whiled away the hours by telling
stories entertaining, instructive, or romantic. The
collection is divided into twenty five days; and since
each lover tells a tale, there are fifty Novelle, inter-
spersed with songs after the fashion of Boccaccio. In
the style, no less than in the method of the book, Ser
Giovanni shows himself a closer follower of the
Decameron than Sacchetti. His novels have a wide
range of incidents, embracing tragic and pathetic
motives no less than what is humorous. They are
treated rhetorically, and, instead of being simple anec-
dotes, aim at the varied movement of a drama. The
language, too, is literary, and less idiomatic than
Sacchetti's. Antiquarians will find in some of these
discourses an interest separate from what is common
to works of fiction. They represent how history was
communicated to the people of that day. Saturnina,
for example, relates the myth of Troy and the founda-
tion of Fiesole, which, as Dante tells us, the Tuscan
mothers of Cacciaguida's age sang to their children.
The lives of the Countess Matilda and Frederick
152 RENAISSANCE IN ITA^Y.
Barbarossa, the antiquity and wealth of the Tuscan
cities, the tragedy of Corso Donati, Giano della
Bella's exile, the Angevine Conquest of Sicily, the
origin of Guelfs and Ghibellines in Italy, Attila's
apocryphal siege of Florence, supply materials for
narratives in which the true type of the Novella
disappears. Yet Ser Giovanni mingles more amusing
stories with these lectures; 1 and the historical disser-
tations are managed with such grace, with so golden a
simplicity of style, that they, are readable. Of a truth
it is comic to think of the enamored monk and nun
meeting in the solitude of their parlor to exchange
opinions upon Italian history. Though he had the
good qualities of a trecentisto prosaist, Ser Giovanni
was in this respect but a poor artist.
Both Sacchetti and Ser Giovanni were poets of no
mean ability. As in his prose, so also in his Canzom
a Ballo, the author of the Pbcorone followed Boccaccio,
without, however, attaining to that glow and sensuous
abandonment which renders the lyrics no less enchant-
ing than the narratives of the Decameron. His style
is smooth and fluent, suggesting literary culture rather
than spontaneous inspiration. 2 Yet it is always lucid.
Through the transparent language we see straight
into the hearts of lovers as the novelist of Florence
understood them. Written for the most part in the
seven-lined stanza with recurring couplet, which Guido
1 For example, the first Novel of the fourth day is the story which
Shakspere dramatized in The Merchant of Venice, and forms, as every
one can see, the authentic source of that comedy.
8 It must be remarked that the text of // Pecorone underwent Dome-
nichi's revision in the sixteenth century, which may account for a cer
tain flatness.
SER GIOVANNI'S LYRICS.
'53
Cavalcanti first made fashionable, these Ballate give
lyrical expression to a great variety of tender situa-
tions. The emotion of first love, the pains and pleas-
ures of a growing passion, the anguish of betrayal,
regrets, quarrels, reconciliations, are successively
treated. In short, Ser Giovanni versified and set to
music all the principal motives upon which the*
Novella of feeling turned, and formed an ars amandi
adapted to the use of the people. In this sense his
poems seem to have been accepted, for we find MSS.
of the Ballate detached from the prose of H Peco-
rone. 1 Among the most striking may be mentioned
the canzonet Tradita sono, which retrospectively de-
scribes the joy of a girl in her first love ; another on
the fashions of Florentine ladies, Quante leggiadre;
and the lamentation of a woman whose lover has
abandoned her, and who sees no prospect but the
cloister Oi me lassa?
Ser Giovanni's lyrics are echoes of the city, where
maidens danced their rounds upon the piazza in May
evenings, and young men courted the beauty of the
hour with songs and visits to her chamber :
Con quanti dolci suon e con che canti
lo era visitata tutto '1 giorno !
E nella zambra venivan gli amanti,
Facendo festa e standomi intorno:
Ed io guardava nel bel viso adorno,
Che d* allegrezza mi cresceva il core.
' See Carducci, Cantilene e Ballate, Strambotti c Madrigali nti
Secoli xiii e xiv, Pisa, Nistri, 1871. Pp. 176-205 contain a reprint of
these lyrics. Carducci's work Intorno ad alcune Rime, Imola, 1876,
may be consulted at pp. 54 et seq. for the origin, wide diffusion, and
several species of the popular dance-song.
Cantilene, etc. pp. 196. 199, 204.
154 RENAISSANCE IN ITALY.
Franco Sacchetti carries us to somewhat different
scenes. The best of his madrigals and canzonets de-
scribe the pleasures of country life. They are not
genuinely rustic ; nor do they, in Theocritean fashion,
attempt to render the beauty of the country from the
peasant's point of view. On the contrary, they owe
their fascination to the contrast between the simplicity
of the villa and the unrest of the town, where :
Mai vi si dice e di ben far vi e caro.
They are written for and by the bourgeois who has
escaped from shops and squares and gossiping street-
corners. The keynote of this poetry, which has always
something of the French ecole buissonnibre in its fresh
unalloyed enjoyment, is struck in a song describing the
return of Spring 1 :
Benedetta sia la state
Che ci fa si solazzare !
Maladetto sia lo verno
Che a citti ci fa tornare 1
The poet summons his company of careless folk, on
pleasure bent :
No' siam una compagnia,
I' dico di cacciapensieri.
He takes them forth into the fields among the farms
and olive-gardens, bidding them leave prudence and
grave thoughts within the lofty walls of Florence
town:
II senno e la contenenza
Lasciam dentro all' alte mura
Delia cittet di Fiorenza.
1 Cantiltne, etc. p. 21 1.
SACCHETTI'S LYRICS. 155
This note of gayety and pure enjoyment is sus-
tained throughout his lyrics. In one Ballata he de-
scribes a country girl, caught by thorns, and unable to
avoid her admirer's glance. 1 Another gives a pretty
picture of a maiden with a wreath of olive-leaves and
silver. 2 A third is a little idyll of two girls talking to
their lambs, and followed by an envious old woman. 3
A fourth is a biting satire on old woman Di diavol
vecchia femmina ha natural A fifth is that incom-
parably graceful canzonet, O vaghe montanine pastu-
relle, the popularity of which is proved by the fact that
it was orally transmitted for many generations, and
attributed in after days to both Lorenzo de' Medici
and Angelo Poliziano. 5 Indeed, it may be said in
passing that Poliziano owed much to Sacchetti. This
can be seen by comparing Sacchetti's Ballata on the
Gentle Heart, and his pastoral of the Thorn-tree with
the later poet's lyrics. 6
The unexpressed contrast between the cautious
town-life of the burgher poet and his license in the
villa, to which I have already called attention, deter-
mines the character of many minor lyrics by Sac-
chetti. 7 We comprehend the spirit of these curious
poems, at once popular and fashionable, when we
1 Cantilene, etc., p. 220.
* Ibid. p. 219. Compare Passando con pensier in the Rime di Mes-
ser Cino e d' aUri (Barbara), p. 563.
Ibid. p. 233.
4 Ibid. p. 231.
5 Ibid. p. 214 and note. The popularity of this dance-poem is further
proved by a pious parody written to be sung to the same air with it: "O
vaghe di Gesu, o verginelle." See Laudi Spirituals (Firenze, Molini,
1863), p. 105.
8 Ibid. pp. 217, 218.
7 See ibid. pp. 252-256, 259, 263.
156 RENAISSANCE IN ITALY.
compare them with medieval French Pasivurelles or
with similar compositions by wandering Latin students.
In the Carmin Bur ana may be found several little
poems, describing the fugitive loves of truant scholars
with rustic girls, which prove that, long before Sac-
chetti's age, the town had sought spring-solace in the
country. 1 Men are too apt to fancy that what they
consider the refinements of passion and fashion (the
finer edge, for example, put upon desire by altering its
object from the known and trivial to the untried and
exceptional, from venal beauties in the city to shepherd
maidens on the village-green) are inventions of their
own times. Yet it was precisely a refinement of this
sort which gave peculiar flavor to Sacchetti's songs
in the fourteenth century, and which made them sought
after. They had great vogue in Italy, enjoying the
privilege of popularity among the working classes,
and helping to diffuse that sort of pastoral part-song
which we still know as Madrigal. 2 Sacchetti was
himself a good musician; many of his songs were
set to music by himself, and others by his friends.
This gives a pleasant old-world homeliness to the
Latin titles inscribed beneath the rubrics Franciscus
de Organis sonum dedit; Intonatum per Francum Sac-
chetti; Francus sonum dedit; and so forth.
The Ballads and Madrigals of Niccolc- Soldanieri
should be mentioned in connection with Sacchetti;
1 It is enough to mention Exit diluculo, Vere dulci mediante, ALstivali
sub fervor e.
*I must briefly refer to Carducci's Essay on "Musica e Poesia nel
mondo elegante italiano del secolo xiv," in his Studi Letterari, Livorno,
Vigo, 1874, and to my own translations from some of the there published
Madrigals in Sketches and Studies in Italy, pp. 214-216.
ALESSO DONATI'S LYRICS. 157
though they do not detach themselves in any marked
ray from the style of love poetry practiced at the
close of the fourteenth century. 1 The case is different
with Alesso Donati's lyrics. In them we are struck
by a new gust of coarse and powerful realism, which
has no parallel among the elder poets except in the
savage sonnets of Cecco Angiolieri. Vividly natural
situations are here detached from daily life and deline
ated with intensity of passion, vehement sincerity.
Sacchetti's gentleness and genial humor have dis-
appeared. In their place we find a dramatic energy
and a truth of language that are almost terrible. Each
of the little scenes, which I propose to quote in illus-
tration of these remarks, might be compared to etch-
ings bitten with aquafortis into copper. Here, for
example, is a nun, who has resolved to throw aside
her veil and follow her lover in a page's dress 2 :
La dura corda e '1 vel bruno e la tonica
Gittar voglio e lo scapolo
Che mi tien qui rinchiusa e fammi monica;
Poi teco a guisa d' assetato giovane,
Non gik che si sobarcoli,
Venir me 'n voglio ove fortuna piovane:
E son contenta star per serva e cuoca,
Che men mi cocero ch' ora mi cuoca.
Here is a dialogue at dawn between a woman and her
paramour. The presence of the husband sleeping in
the chamber is suggested with a brutal vigor 3 :
De vattene oggimai, ma pianamente,
Amor; per dio, si piano
Che non ti senta il mal vecchio villano.
Ch' egli sta sentecchioso, e, se pur sente
1 Carducci, Caniihne, pp. 265-296. * Op. cit. p. 298.
3 Op. cit. p. 301.
158 RENAISSANCE IN ITALY.
Ch' i' die nel letto volta,
Temendo abbraccia me no gli sie tolta.
Che tristo faccia Iddio chi gli m' a data
E chi spera 'n villan buona derrata.
Scarcely less forcible is the girl's vow against her
mother, who keeps her shut at home 1 :
In pena vivo qui sola soletta
Giovin rinchiusa dalla madre mia,
La qual mi guarda con gran gelosia.
Ma io le giuro alia croce di Dio
Che s' ella mi terra qui piu serrata,
Ch' i' diro Fa' con Dio, vecchia arrabiata;
E gitterb la rocca, il fuso e 1' ago,
Amor, fuggendo a te di cui m' appago.
To translate these madrigals would be both diffi-
cult and undesirable. It is enough to have printed
the original texts. They prove that aristocratic versi-
fiers at this period were adopting the style of the
people, and adding the pungency of brief poetic treat-
ment to episodes suggested by novelle.*
While dealing with the Novelle and the semi-
popular literature of this transition period, I have
hitherto neglected those numerous minor poets who
continued the traditions of the earlier trecento."*
There are two main reasons for this preference. In
the first place, the navelle was destined to play a
most important part in the history of the Renaissance,
imposing its own laws of composition upon species
so remote as the religious drama and romantic epic.
> op. dt. p. 300.
It may be worth mentioning that Soldanieri and Donati as well as
Sacchetti belonged to the old nobility of Florence, the Grandi celebrated
by name in Dante's Paradise.
See Trucchi's Poesie Irudite, and the Rime Antichs Toscane, cited
above, for copious collections of these poets.
POLITICAL LYRICS. 159
In the second place, the dance-songs, canzonets and
madrigals of Sacchetti's epoch lived upon the lips of
the common folk, who during the fifteenth century
carried Italian literature onward through a subterranean
channel. 1 When vernacular poetry reappeared into
the light of erudition and the Courts, the influences
of that popular style, which drew its origin from
Boccaccio and Sacchetti rather than from Dante or
the Trovatori, determined the manner of Lorenzo de'
Medici and Poliziano. Meanwhile the learned poems
of the latest trecentisti were forgotten with the lumber
of the middle ages. For the special purpose, therefore,
of this volume, which only regards the earlier stages
of Italian literature in so far as they preceded and
conditioned the Renaissance, it was necessary to give
the post of honor to Boccaccio's followers. Some
mention should, however, here be made of those con-
temporaries and imitators of Petrarch, in whom the
traditions of the fourteenth century expired. It is not
needful to pass in review the many versifiers who
treated the old themes of chivalrous love with meri-
torious conventional facility. The true life of the
Italians was not here ; and the phase of literature
which the Sicilian School inaugurated, survived already
as an anachronism. The case is different with such
poetry as dealt immediately with contemporary politics.
In the declamatory compositions of this age, we hear
the echoes of the Guelf and Ghibelline wars. The
force of that great struggle was already spent; but
for the partisans of either faction, passion enough sur-
1 This can be seen in Carducci's Cantilene, pp. 115, 116, 150, and in
his Studi Letterari, pp. 374-446.
160 RENAISSANCE IN ITALY.
vived to furnish genuine inspiration. Fazio degli
Uberti's sermintese on the cities of Italy, for example,
was written in the bitter spirit of an exiled Ghibelline. 1
His ode to Charles IV. is a torrent of vehement med-
ieval abuse, poured forth against an Emperor who had
shown himself unworthy of his place in Italy 2 :
Sappi ch' i' son Italia che ti parlo,
Di Lusimburgo ignominioso Carlo I
After detailing the woes which have befallen her in
consequence of her abandonment by the imperial mas-
ter, Italy addresses herself to God :
Tu dunque, Giove, perche '1 santo uccello . . .
Da questo Carlo quarto
Imperador non togli e dalle man!
Degli altri lurchi moderni germani,
Che d' aquila un allocco n' hanno fatto ?
The Italian Ghibellines had, indeed, good reason to
complain that German gluttons, Caesars in naught but
name, who only thought of making money by their
sale of fiefs and honors, had changed the eagle of the
Empire into an obscene night-flying bird of prey.
The same spirit is breathed in Fazio's ode on Rome. 3
He portrays the former mistress of the world as a lady
clad in weeds of mourning, " ancient, august and hon-
orable, but poor and needy as her habit showed,
prudent in speech and of great puissance." She bids
O pellegrina Italia. Rime di Cino e d' altri (Barbera), p. 318. I
shall quote from this excellent edition of Carducci, as being most acces-
sible to general readers. The Sermintese or Serventese, it may be pa-
renthetically said, was a form of satirical and occasional lyric adapted
from the Provengal Sirvente.
* Cino, etc. p. 342. Ibid. p. 334.
GIAN GALEAZZO VISCONTI. l6l
the poet rouse his fellow-countrymen from their sleep
of sloth and drunkenness, to reassert the majesty of
the empire owed to Italy and Rome:
O figliuol mio, da quanta crudel guerra
Tutti insieme verremo a dolce pace,
Sfi Italia soggiace
A im solo Re che al mio volcr consente !
This is the last echo of the De MonarchiA. The
great imperial idea, so destructive to Italian confedera-
tion, so dazzling to patriots of Dante's fiber, expires
amid the waitings of minstrels who cry for the impos-
sible, and haunt the Courts of petty Lombard princes.
In another set of Canzoni we listen to Guelf and
Ghibelline recriminations, rising from the burghs of
Tuscany. The hero of these poems is Gian Galeazzo
Visconti, rightly recognized by the Guelfs of Florence
as a venomous and selfish tyrant, foolishly belauded
by the Ghibellines of Siena as the vindicator of
imperial principles. The Emperors have abandoned
Italy; the Popes are at Avignon. The factions which
their quarrels generated, agitate their people still, but
on a narrower basis. Sacchetti slings invectives
against the maladetta serpe, aspro tiranno con amaro
fele, who shall be throttled by the Church and Flor-
ence, leagued to crush the Lombard despots. 1 Savi-
ozzo da Siena addresses the same Visconti as novella
monarchia, giusto signore, clemente padre, insigne, vir-
tuoso. By his means the dolce vedovetta, Rome or
Italy, shall at last find peace. 2 This Duke of Milan,
it will be remembered, had already ordered the crown
i Gno, etc. p. 548. * Ibid. p. 586.
l6t RENAISSANCE IN ITALY.
of Italy from his Court-jeweler, and was advancing
on his road of conquest, barred only by Florence,
when the Plague cut short his career in 1402. The
poet of Siena exhorts him to take courage for his
task, in lines that are not deficient in a certain fire of
inspiration:
Tu vedi in ciel la fiammeggiante aurora,
Le stelle tue propizie e rutilanti,
E' segni tutti quanti
Ora disposti alia tua degna spada.
In another strophe he refers to the Italian crown:
Ecco qui Italia che ti chiama padre,
Che per te spera omai di trionfare,
E di s& incoronare
Le tue benigne e preziose chiomc.
An anonymous sonnetteer of the same period uses
similar language 1 ;
Roma vi chiama Cesar mio novello,
I' son ignuda, e 1' anima pur vive;
Or mi coprite col vostro mantello.
The Ghibelline poets, whether they dreamed like
Fazio of Roman Empire, or flattered the Visconti
with a crown to be won by triumph over the detested
Guelfs, made play with Dante's memory. Some of
the most interesting lyrics of the school are elegies
upon his death. To this class belong two sonnets by
Pieraccio Tedaldi and Mucchio da Lucca. 3 Nor must
Boccaccio's noble pair of sonnets, although he was not
a political poet, be here forgotten. s That Dante was
i Cino, etc. p. 391. * Ibid. pp. 199, 200.
a Ibid. pp. 384, 389.
GURLP POETS. 163
diligently studied can be seen, not only in the diction
of this epoch, but also in numerous versified commen-
taries upon the Divine Comedy in the terza rima
abstracts of Boson da Gubbio, Jacopo Alighieri, Sa-
viozzo da Siena, and Boccaccio. 1
Tuscan politics are treated from the Guelf point of
view in Sacchetti's odes upon the war with Pisa, upon
the government of Florence after 1378, and against
the cowardice of the Italians. 2 His conception of a
burgher's duties, the ideal of Guelf bourgeoisie before
Florence had become accustomed to tyrants, finds
expression in a sonnet Amar la patria? We fre-
quently meet with the word Comune on his lips:
O vuol rt o signore o vuol comune,
Che per comune dico cib ch* io parlo.
A like note of municipal independence is sounded
in the poems of Antonio Pucci, and in the admonitory
stanzas of Matteo Frescobaldi. 4 Considerable interest
attaches to these political compositions for the light
they throw on party feeling at the close of the heroic
age of Italian history. The fury with which those
factions raged, prompts the bards of either camp to
curses. I may refer to this passage from Folgore
da San Gemignano, when he sees the Ghibelline
Uguccione triumphant over Tuscany: 8
1 Cino, etc. pp. 202, 211, 573, 390. Ibid. pp. 504, 535, 498.
8 In the Discourse of Monsignor Giov. Bottari, Section vi., printed
before Sacchetti's Novelle.
* Cino, etc. pp. 445-474, 258-263.
Navone's edition (Bologna, Romagnoli, 1880), p. 56. The date ot
this sonnet must be about 1315. We have to choose between placing
Folgore in that century or assigning the sonnet to some anonymous
author. See Appendix II. for translations.
164 RENAISSANCE IN ITALY.
Eo non ti lodo Dio e non ti adoro,
E non ti prego e non ti ringrazio,
E non ti servo ch' io ne son piti sazio
Che 1' aneme de star en purgatoro;
Perche tu ai messi i Guelfi a tal martoro
Ch' i Ghibellini ne fan beffe e strazio,
E se Uguccion ti comandasse il dazio,
Tu '1 pagaresti senza peremptoro !
Yet neither in the confused idealism of the Ghibel-
lines nor in the honest independence of the Guelfs
lay the true principle of national progress. Sinking
gradually and inevitably beneath the sway of despots,
the Italians in the fifteenth century were destined to
become a nation of scholars, artists, litter ati. The
age of Dante, the uncompromising aristocrat, was
over. The age of Boccaccio, the easy-going bourgeois,
had begun. The future glories of Italy were to be
won in the field of culture; and all the hortatory lyrics
I have mentioned, exerted but little influence over the
development of a spirit which was growing quietly
within the precincts of the people. The Italian people
at this epoch cared far less for the worn-out factions
of the Guelfs and Ghibellines than for home-comforts
and tranquillity in burgher occupations. The keener
intellects of the fifteenth century were already so
absorbingly occupied with art and classical studies that
there was no room left in them for politics of the
old revolutionary type. Meanwhile the new intrigues
of Cabinets and Courts were left to a class of human-
istic diplomatists, created by the conditions of despotic
government. Scarcely less ineffectual were the moral
verses of Bambagiuoli and Cavalca, or the Petrarch-
istic imitations of Marchionne Torrigiani, Federigo
CLOSE OF THE HEROIC AGE. 165
cT Arezzo, Coluccio Salutati, Roberto di Battifolle, and
Bonaccorso da Montemagno. 1 The former belonged
to a phase of medieval culture which was waning.
The elegant but lifeless Petrarchistic school dragged
on through the fifteenth century, culminating in the
Canzoniere of Giusto de' Conti, a Roman, which was
called La bella mano. The revival of their mannerism,
with a fixed artistic motive, by Bembo and the purists
of the sixteenth century, will form part of my later
history of Renaissance literature.
One note is unmistakable in all the poetry of
these last trecentisti. It is a note of profound dis-
couragement, mistrust, and disappointment. We have
already heard it sounded by Sacchetti in his lament for
Boccaccio. Boccaccio had raised it himself in two
noble sonnets Apizio legge and Fuggif e ogni virtii?
It takes the shrillness of a threnody in Tedaldi's Jl
mondo vile and in Manfredi di Boccaccio's Amico il
>ndo? The poets of that age were dimly conscious
lat a new era had opened for their country an
;ra of money-getting, despotism, and domestic ease,
icy saw the people used to servitude and sunk in
:ommon pleasures dead to the high aims and imagi-
native aspirations of the past. The turbulence of the
leroic age was gone. The men of the present were
11 Vigliacchi. And as yet both art and learning
rere but in their cradle. It was impossible upon the
opening of the fifteenth century, in that crepuscular
interval between two periods of splendor, to know
what glories for Italy and for the world at large would
Cino. etc. pp. 174-195, 420^441. ' Ibid. p. 418.
Ibid. pp. 197, 198.
1 66 RENAISSANCE IN ITALY.
be produced by Giotto's mighty lineage and Petrarch's
progeny of scholars. We who possess in history the
vision of that future can be content to wait through a
transition century. The men of the moment not un-
naturally expressed the querulousness of Italy, dis-
tracted by her struggles of the past and sinking into
somnolence. Cosimo de' Medici, the molder of Re-
naissance Florence, was already born in 1389; and
men of Cosimo's stamp were no heroes for poets who
had felt the passions that moved Dante.
The Divine Comedy found fewer imitators than
the Canzoniere; for who could bend the bow of
Ulysses? Yet some poets of the transition were
hardy enough to attempt the Dantesque meter, and
, to pretend in a prosaic age that they had shared the
vision of the prophets. Among these should be
mentioned Fazio degli Uberti, a scion of Farinata's
noble house, who lived and traveled much in exile. 1
Taking Solinus, the antique geographer, for his guide,
Fazio produced a topographical poem called the Dicta
Mundi or Dittamondo?
From the prosaic matter of this poem, which re-
sembles a very primitive Mappamondo, illustrated
with interludes of history and excursions into mytho-
logical zoology, based upon the text of Pliny, and not
unworthy of Mandeville, two episodes emerge and
1 He was the author of the Ghibelline Canzoni quoted above.
It was composed about 1360. I have seen two editions of this
poem, Operi di Faccio degli uberti Fiorentino, Chiamato Ditta Mundi,
Volgare. Impresso in Venetia per Christoforo di Pensa da Mondelo.
Adi iiii. Setembrio MCCCCCI. The second is a version modernized in
its orthography: // Dittamondo, Milano, Silvestri, 1826. My quotations
will be made from the second of these editions, which has the advantage
of a more intelligible text.
THE DITTAMONDO. 167
arrest attention. One is the description of Rome a
somber lady in torn raiment, who tells the history
of her eventful past, describes her triumphs and her
empire, and points to the ruins on her seven crowned
hills to show how beautiful she was in youth l :
Ivi una dama scorsi;
Vecchia era in vista, e trista per costume.
Gli occhi da lei, andando, mai ton torsi;
Ma poiche presso le fui giunto tanto
Ch' io 1' avvisava senza nessun forsi,
Vidi il suo volto, ch 1 era pien di pianto,
Vidi la vesta sua rotta e disfatta,
E roso e guasto il suo vedovo manto.
E con tutto che fosse cosi fatta,
Pur nell' abito suo onesto e degno
Mostrava uscita di gentile schiatta.
Tanto era grande, e di nobil contegno,
Ch' io diceva fra me: Ben fu costei,
E pare ancor da posseder bel regno.
Fazio addresses the mighty shadow with respectful
sympathy. Rome answers in language which is noble
through its simple dignity:
Non ti maravigliare s* io ho doglia,
Non ti maravigliar se trista piango,
Ne se me vedi in si misera spoglia;
Ma fatti maraviglia, ch' io rimango,
E non divento qual divenne Ecuba
Quando gittava altrui le pietre e il fango.
The second passage of importance, more noticeable
for a sense of space and largeness than for its poetical
expression, is a description of the prospect seen from
Alvernia, that high station of the " topless Apennines,"
where S. Francis took the Stigmata, and where Dante
' Lib, i.. cap. 2. Cp. Fazio's Ode on Rome, abore, p. 160.
1 68 RENAISSANCE IN ITALY.
sought a home in the destruction of his earthly
hopes l :
Noi fummo sopra il sasso dell Alverna
Al faggio ove Francesco fue fedito
Dal Serafin quel di ch' ei piu s'interna.
Molto e quel monte devoto e rotnito,
Ed e si alto che il piu di Toscana
Mi disegnb un frate col suo dito.
Guarcla, mi disse, al mare, e vedi piana
Con altri colli la maremma tutta
Dilettevole molto e poco sana.
Ivi e Massa, Grosseto e la distrutta
Civite vecchia, ed ivi Populonia
Ch' appena pare, tanto 6 mal condutta.
The whole of Tuscany and Umbria, their cities, plains,
rivers and mountain summits, are unrolled; and the
friar concludes with a sentence which well embodies
the feeling we have in gazing over an illimitable
landscape:
Io so bene che quanto t' ho mostrato,
La vista nol discerna apertamente,
Per lo spazio ch' e lungo dov" io guato:
Ma quando 1' uom che bene ascolta e sente,
Ode parlar di cosa che non vede,
Immagina con 1'occhio della mente.
Such value as the Dittamondo may still retain for
students, it owes partly to the author's enthusiasm
for ancient Rome, and partly to the sympathy with
nature he had acquired during his wandering as an
exile over the sacred soil of Italy.
Another poem of Dantesque derivation was the
Quadriregio of Federigo Frezzi, Bishop of Foligno. 2
1 Lib. iii. cap. 9.
1 Libra chiamato Quatriregio del Decorso de la Vita Humana in
Terza Rima, Impresso in Venetia del MCCCCCXI a di primo di De-
cembrio. There is, I believe, a last century Foligno reprint of the
Quadriregio; but I have not seen it
THE QUADRIREG10. l6g
It is an allegorical account of human life; and the
four regions, which give their name to the book, are
the realms of Love, Satan, Vice and Virtue. 1 Tc
cast the moralizations of the middle ages in a form
imitated from Dante, after Dante had already con-
densed the ethics and politics, the theology and
science of his century in the Divine Comedy, was
little less than a hopeless task. Nor need a word be
spent upon the Quadriregio, except by way of illus-
trating the peculiar conditions of the poetic art, here
upon the border-land between the middle age and the
Renaissance. Federigo Frezzi was intent on depict-
ing the victories of virtue over vice, and on explaining
the advantage offered to the Christian by grace. Yet
he chose a mythological framework for his doctrine.
Cupid, Venus and Minerva are confused with Satan,
Enoch and Elijah. Instead of Eden there is the
golden age. Nymphs of Diana, Juno, and the like,
are used as emblems. Pallas discourses about Christ,
and expounds the Christian system of redemption.
The earthly Paradise contains Helicon, with all the
antique poets. Jupiter is contrasted with Satan. It
is the same blending of antique with Christian motives
which we note in the Divine Comedy; but the tact
of the great artist is absent, and the fusion becomes
grotesque. After reading through the poem we lay it
down with the same feeling as that produced in us
by studying some pulpit of the Pisan School, where a
Gothic Devil, all horns and hoofs and grinning jaws,
squats cheek by jowl with a Madonna copied from a
1 " Regno di Dio Cupido," " Regno di Sathan," " Regno delli Vttli,'
' Regno della Dea Minerva e di Virtd."
170 RENAISSANCE IN ITALY.
Roman tomb. The following description of Cupid
recalls the manner of the Sienese frescanti l :
Appena questo priego havea io decto
quando egli apparve ad me fresco et giocondo,
in un giardino ove io stava solecto.
Di mirto coronato il capo biondo
in forma pueril con si bel viso
che mai piu bel fu visto in questo mondo.
Creso haverai che su del paradiso
fusse el suo aspecto, tanto era sovrano,
se non che quando a lui mirai fiso
Vidi che haveva uno archo orato in mano
col quale Achille et Hercole percosse.
Here is the picture of the Golden Age, transcribed
from Latin poetry, much as it was destined to control
the future of Italian fancy 2 :
Vergine saggia e bella el ciel adorna
di cui Virgilio poetando scripse,
nuova progenie al mondo dal ciel torna,
Rexe gik el mondo et si la gente visse
socto lei in pace che la eta dell oro
et seculo giusto et beato si disse.
La terra allora senza alcun lavoro
dava li fructi, et non faceva spine,
ne ancho al giogo si domava el thorc;
Non erano divisi per confine
anchora i campi, et nesun per guadagno
cercava le contrade pelegrine;
Ognuno era fratello, ognun compagno,
et era tanto amor, tanta pietade,
che ad un fonte bevea el lupo et 1* agno;
Non eran lancia, non erano spade,
non era anchor la pecunia peggiore
che '1 guerigiante ferro piu si fiade;
La invidia allor vedendo tanto amore
di questo bene ad se genero pene
e desto gaudio ad se diede dolore.
> Lib. i. cap. i. Lib. ii. cap. a.
THE CITTA DI VITA. 171
A little while beyond this foretaste of the cinque
cento, we find Charon copied, without addition, but
with a fatal loss of poetry, from the Inferno 1 :
Vidi Caron non molto da lontano
con una nave in mezo la tempesta,
che conducea con un gran remo in mano:
Et ciaschuno occhio chelli havea in testa,
pareva come di nocte una lumiera,
o un falo quando si fa per festa.
Quando egli fu appresso alia riviera
un mezo miglio quasi o poco mancho,
scacci sua faccia grande vizza e nera.
Egli havea el capo di canuti biancho,
el manto adosso rapezato et uncto,
el volto si crudel non vidi un quancho.
Last upon the list of Dantesque imitators stands
Matteo Palmieri, a learned Florentine, who composed
his Cittb di Vita in the middle of the fifteenth century.
This poem won for its author from Marsilio Ficino
the title of Poeta Theologicus. 2 Its chief interest at the
present time is that the theology expressed in it
brought suspicion of heresy on Palmieri. He held
Origen's opinion that the souls of men were rebel
angels. How a doctrine of this kind could be
rendered in painting is not clear. Yet Giorgio Vasari
tells us that a picture executed for Matteo Palmieri
by Sandro Botticelli, which represented the Assump-
tion of the Virgin into the celestial hierarchy Powers,
Princedoms, Thrones and Dominations ranged around
her in concentric circles fell under the charge of hetero-
doxy. The altar in S. Pietro Maggiore where it
was placed had to be interdicted, and the picture
1 Lib. ii. cap. 7.
S6e Flcini Epistolcc, 1495, folio 17. If possible, I will insert some
further notice of Palmieri's poem in an Appendix.
\^^ RENAISSANCE IN ITALY.
veiled from sight. 1 The story forms a curious link
between this last scion of medieval literature and the
painting of the Renaissance. After Palmieri the
meter of the Divine Comedy was chiefly used for
satire and burlesque. Lorenzo de' Medici adapted its
grave rhythms to parody in / Beoni. Berni used it
for the Capitoli of the Pesche and the Peste. At
Florence it became the recognized meter for obscene
and frivolous compositions, which delighted the
Academicians of the sixteenth century. The people,
meanwhile, continued to employ it in Lamenti, his-
torical compositions, and personal Capitoli. 2 Thus
Cellini wrote his poem called / Carceri in terza rima,
and Giovanni Santi used it for his precious but un-
poetical Chronicle of Italian affairs. Both Benivieni
and Michelangelo Buonarroti composed elegies in this
meter; and numerous didactic eclogues of the pastoral
poets might be cited in which it served for analogue
to Latin elegiacs. In the Sacre Rappresentazioni it
sometimes interrupted ottava rima, o the occasion
of a set discourse or sermon. 3 Both Ariosto and
Alamanni employed it in their satires. From these
brief notices it will be seen that terza rima during the
Renaissance period was reserved for dissertational,
didactic and satiric themes, the Capitoli of the bur-
lesque poets being parodies of grave scholastic lucu-
i See Vasari (Lemonnier, 1849), vo1 - v - P- !1 S and note -
by Botticelli is now in England.
* I may refer curious readers to two Lamenti of Pre Agostino, con
demned to the cage or Chebba at Venice for blasphemy. They are given
at length by Mutinelli, Annali Urbani di Venezia, pp. 352-356.
For instance, " Un Miracolo di S. M. Maddalena," in D'Ancona's
Sacre Rappr, vol. i. p. 397.
S. CATHERINE'S LETTERS. 173
brations. But no one now attempted an heroic poem
in this verse. 1
To give a full account of Italian prose during this
period of transition from the middle age to the
Renaissance is not easy. At the close of the four-
teenth century, S. Catherine of Siena sustained the
purity and " dove-like simplicity " of the earlier trecento
style, with more of fervor and personal power than
any subsequent writer. Her letters, whether addressed
to Popes and princes on the politics of Italy, or dealing
with private topics of religious experience, are models
of the purest Tuscan diction. 2 They have the gar-
rulity and over-unctuous sweetness of the Fioretti and
Leggende. But these qualities, peculiar to medieval
piety among Italians, are balanced by untutored elo-
quence which borders on sublimity. Without de-
liberate art or literary aim, the spirit of a noble
woman speaks from the heart in Catherine's letters.
The fervor of her feeling suggests poetic imagery.
The justice of her perception dictates weighty sen-
tences. The intensity with which she realizes the
unseen world of spiritual emotion, gives dramatic
movement to her exhortations, expositions and en-
treaties. These rare excellences of a style, where
spontaneity surpasses artifice, are combined in the
It would be an interesting study to trace the vicissitudes ot terza
rima from the Paradiso of Dante, through the Quadriregio and Ditta-
mondo, to Lorenzo de* Medici's Beoni and La Casa's Capitolo del Forno.
In addition to what I have observed above, it occurs to me to mention
the semi-popular terza rima poems in Alberti's Accademia Coronaria
(Bonucci's edition of Alberti, vol. i. pp. clxxv. et seq.) and Boiardo's
comedy of Timone. Both illustrate the didactic use of the meter.
1 Le Lettere di S. Caterina da Siena, Firenze, Barbera, 1860. Edited
and furnished with a copious commentary by Niccolo Tommaseo. Four
relumes.
174 RENAISSANCE IN ITALY.
famous epistle to her confessor, Raimondo da Capua,
describing the execution of Niccol6 Tuldo. 1 He was
a young man of Perugia, condemned to death for
some act of insubordination. Catherine visited him
in prison, and induced him to take the Sacrament
with her for the first time. He besought her to be
present with him at the place of execution. Accord-
ingly she waited for him there, praying to Mary and
to Catherine, the virgin saint of Alexandria, laying
her own neck upon the block, and entering into har-
mony so rapt with those celestial presences that the
multitude of men who were around her disappeared
from view. What followed, must be told in her own
words :
Poi egli giunse, come uno agnello mansueto: e vedendomi, com-
incib a ridere; e volse che io gli facesse il segno della croce. E rice-
vuto il segno, dissi io: " Giuso ! alle nozze, fratello mio dolce ! che
tosto sarai alia vita durabile." Posesi qui con grande mansuetudine;
e io gli distesi il collo, e chinami gift, e rammentalli il sangue dell' Ag-
nello. La bocca sua non diceva se non, Gesti, e Catarina. E, cosi
dicendo, ricevetti il capo nelle mani mie, fermando 1* occhio nella di-
vina bonta e dicendo: " Io voglio."
Allora si vedeva Dio-e-Uomo, come si vedesse la chiarita del sole;
e stava aperto, e riceveva il sangue; nel sangue suo uno fuoco di de-
siderio santo, dato e nascosto nell" anima sua per grazia; riceveva
nel fuoco della divina sua carita. Poiche ebbe ricevuto il sangue e
il desiderio suo, ed egli ricevette 1'anima sua, la quale mise nella
bottiga aperta del costato suo, pieno di misericordia; manifestando
la prima Verita. che per sola grazia e misericordia egli il riceveva, e
non per veruna altra operazione. O quanto era dolce e inestimabilc
a vedere la bontk di Dio !
The sudden transition from this narrative of fact
to the vision of Christ from the simple style of
ordinary speech to ecstasy inebriated with the cross
is managed with a power that truth alone could yield
1 Op. cit, vol. iv. pp. 5-12.
WRITERS OF EPISTLES AND HISTORIES. 175
A dramatist might have conceived it; but only a saint
who lived habitually in both worlds of loving service
and illumination, could thus have made it natural. This
is the noblest and the rarest realism.
If we trust the testimony of contemporary chro-
niclers, S. Bernardino of Siena in the pulpit shared
Catherine's power of utterance, at once impressive
and simple. 1 No doubt the preachers of the quattro-
cento were influential in maintaining a tradition of
prose rhetoric. But it is not in the nature of sermons,
even when ably reported, to preserve their fullness
and their force. Not less important for the formation
of a literary style were the letters and dispatches of
embassadors. Though at this period all ceremonial
orations, briefs, state documents and epistles between
Courts and commonwealths were composed in Latin,
still the secret correspondence of envoys with their
home governments gave occasion for the use of the
vernacular; and even humanists expressed their
thoughts occasionally in the mother tongue. Coluccio
Salutati, for example, whose Latin letters were re-
garded as models of epistolary style, employed Italian
in less formal communications with his office. These
early documents of studied Tuscan writing are now
more precious than his formal Ciceronian imitations.
Private letters may also be mentioned among the best
sources for studying the growth of Italian prose,
although we have not much material to judge by. 2
1 See, for example, the passages from Graziani's Chronicle of Pe-
rugia quoted by me in Appendix IV. to Age of the Despots,
See Alcune Lettere familiari del Sec. xiv, Bologna, Romagnoli,
1868. This collection contains letters by Lemmo Balducci (1333-1389),
Filippo dell' Antella (circa 1398), Dora del Bene, Lanfredino Lanfredini
176 RENAISSANCE IN ITALY
The correspondence of Alessandra degli Strozzi, re-
cently edited by Signor Cesare Guasti, is not only
valuable for the light it casts upon contemporary
manners, but also for the illustration of the Floren-
tine idiom as written by a woman of noble birth. 1
Of Poliziano's, Pulci's and Lorenzo de' Medici's letters
I shall have occasion to speak in a somewhat different
connection later on.
The historiographers of the Renaissance thought
it below their dignity to use any language but Latin. 1
At the same time, vernacular annalists abounded in
Italy, whose labors were of no small value in forming
the prose-style of the quattrocento. After the Villani,
Florence could boast a whole chain of writers, begin-
ning with Marchionne Stefani, including Gino Capponi,
the spirited chronicler of the Ciompi rebellion, and
extending to Goro Dati in the middle of the fifteenth
century. A little later, Giovanni Cavalcanti, in his
Florentine Histories, proved how the simple diction
of the preceding age was being spoiled by false
classicism. 3 This work is doubly valuable both as a
record of the great Albizzi oligarchy and their final
conquest by the Medici, and also as a monument of
the fusion which was being made between the popular
and humanistic styles. The chronicles of other Italian
cities Ferrara, Cremona, Rome, Pisa, Bologna, and
even Siena show less purity of language than the
(born about 1345), Coluccio Salutati (1330-1406), Giorgio Scali (died
1381), and Marchionne Stefani (died 1385).
i Alessandra Macinghi negli Strozzi, Lettere di una Gentildonna
Fiorentina del secolo xv, Firenze, Sansoni, 1877.
See Revival of Learning, chap. 4, and Age of the Despots, chap. 5.
Istorie Florentine scritte da Giov, Cavalcanti, 2 vols. Firenze, 1838.
CORIO AND MATARAZZO. 177
Florentine. 1 Italian is often mixed with vulgar Latin,
and phrases borrowed from unpolished local dialects
abound. It was not until the close of the century that
two great writers of history in the vernacular arose
outside the walls of Florence. These were Corio, the
historian of Milan, and Matarazzo, the annalist of
Perugia. 2 In Corio's somewhat stiff and cumbrous
periods we trace the effort of a foreigner to gain by
study what the Tuscans owed to nature. Yet he
never suffered this stylistic preoccupation to spoil his
qualities as an historian. His voluminous narrative is
a mine of accurate information, illustrated with vivid
pictures of manners and carefully considered portraits
of eminent men. Reading it, we cannot but regret
that Poggio and Bruno, Navagero and Bembo, judged
it necessary to tell the tales of Florence and of Venice
in a pseudo-Livian Latin. The " History of Milan " is
worth twenty of such humanistic exercises in rhetoric.
Matarazzo displays excellences of a different, but of
a rarer order. Unlike Corio, he was not anxious to
show familiarity with rules of Tuscan writing, or to
build again the periods of Boccaccio's ceremonious
style. His language bears the stamp of its Perugian
origin. It is, at the same time, unaffectedly dramatic
1 Besides Muratori's great collection and the Archivio Storico, the
Chronicles of Lombard, Umbrian, and Tuscan towns have been sepa-
rately printed too voluminously for mention m a note.
* L.' Historia di Milano volgarmente scritta dall* eccellentissimo
oratore M. Bernardino Corio, in Vinegia, per Giovan Maria Bonelli.
MDLIIII. "Cronaca della Citta di Perugia dal 1492 al 1503 di Fran
cesco Matarazzo detto Maturanzio," Archivio Storico Italiano, vol. xvi.
par. ii. Of Corio's History I have made frequent use in the Age of the
Despots. It is a book that repays frequent and attentive reperusals,
Those students who desire to gain familiarity at first hand with Renais
sance life cannot be directed to a ourer source.
178 RENAISSANCE IN ITALY.
and penetrated with the charm of a distinguished
personality. No one can read the tragedy of the
Baglioni in this wonderful romance without acknowl-
edging that he is in the hands of a great writer. The
limpidity of the trecento has here survived, and, blend-
ing with Renaissance enthusiasm for physical beauty
and antique heroism, has produced a work of art
unrivaled in its kind. 1
Having advanced so far as to speak in this chapter
of Corio and Matarazzo, I shall take occasion to notice
a book which, appearing for the first time in 1476,
may fairly be styled the most important work of Italian
prose-fiction belonging to the fifteenth century. This
is the Nauellino of Masuccio Guardato, a nobleman of
Salerno, secretary to the Prince Roberto Sanseverino,
and resident throughout his life at the Court of Naples. 2
The Novellino is a collection of stories, fifty in
number, arranged in five parts, which treat respec-
tively of hypocrisy and the monastic vices, jealousy,
feminine incontinence, the contrasts of pathos and of
humor, and the generosity of princes. Each Novella
is dedicated to a noble man or woman of Neapolitan
society, and is followed by a reflective discourse, in
which the author personally addresses his audience.
Masuccio declares himself the disciple of Boccaccio and
Juvenal. 8 Of the Roman poet's spirit he has plenty;
' In Studies in Italy and Greece, article " Perugia," I have dealt
more at large with Matarazzo's Chronicle than space admits of here.
* // Novellino di Masuccio Salernitano. Edited by Luigi Settem-
brini. Napoli, Morano, 1874.
J Introduction to Part iii. op. cit. p. 239. "Cognoscerai i lasciati
vestigi del vetusto satiro Giovenale, e del famoso commendato poeta
Boccaccio, 1' ornatissimo idioma e stile del quale ti hai sempre ingeg-
nato de imitare."
MASUCCICTS NOVELS. 179
for he gives the rein to rage in language of the most
indignant virulence. Of Boccaccio's idiom and style,
though we can trace the student's emulation, he can
boast but little. Masuccio never reached the Latin -
istic smoothness of his model; and while he wrote
Italian, his language was far from being Tuscan.
Phrases culled from southern dialects are frequent;
and the structure of the period is often ungrammatical.
Masuccio was not a member of any humanistic clique.
He lived among the nobles of a royal Court, and knew
the common people intimately. This double experience
is reflected in his language and his modes of thought.
Both are unalloyed by pedantry, and precious for the
student of contemporary manners.
The interest of the Novellino is great when we re-
gard it as the third collection of Novelle, coming after
Boccaccio's and Sacchetti's, and, from the point of
view of art, occupying a middle place between them
The tales of the Decameron were originally recited at
Naples; and though Boccaccio was a thorough Tus-
can, he borrowed something from the south which gave
width, warmth and largeness to his writing. Masuccio
is wholly Neapolitan in tone; but he seeks such charm
of presentation and variety of matter as shall make his
book worthy to take rank in general literature. Sac-
chetti has more of a purely local flavor. He is no
less Florentine than Masuccio is Neapolitan; and,
unlike Masuccio, he has taken little pains to adapt his
work to other readers than his fellow-citizens. Boc-
caccio embraces all human life, seen in the light of
vivid fancy by a bourgeois who was also a great comic
and romantic poet. Sacchetti describes the borghi*
l8o RENAISSANCE IN ITALY.
contrade, and piazze of Florence; and his speech is
seasoned with rare Tuscan salt of wit. Masuccio's
world is that of the free-living southern noble. He is
penetrated with aristocratic feeling, treats willingly of
arms and jousts and warfare, telling the tales of knights
and ladies to a courtly company. l At the same time, the
figures of the people move with incomparable vivacity
across the stage; and his transcripts from life reveal
the careless interpenetration of classes to which he was
accustomed in Calabria. 2 Some of his stories are as
simply bourgeois as any of Sacchetti's. s
When we compare Masuccio with Boccaccio we
find many points of divergence, due to differences of
temperament, social sympathies and local circumstance.
Boccaccio is witty and malicious; Masuccio humorous
and poignant. Boccaccio laughs indulgently at vices;
Masuccio scourges them. Boccaccio makes a jest of
superstition; Masuccio thunders against the hypocrites
who bring religion into contempt. Boccaccio turns the
world round for his recreation, submitting its follies to
the subtle play of analytical fancy. Masuccio is
terribly in earnest; whether sympathetic or vitupera-
tive, he makes the voice of his heart heard. Boccaccio's
pictures are toned with a rare perception of harmony
and delicate gradation. Masuccio brings what strike.;
his sense before us by a few firm touches. Boccaccio
1 For an instance of Masuccio's feudal feeling, take this. A knight
kills a licentious friar " alquanto pentito per avere le sue possenti brac-
cia con la morte di un Fra Minore contaminate " (op. cit. p. 13). It
emerges in his description of the Order of the Ermine (ibid. p. 240). It
is curious to compare this with his strong censure of the point of honor
(pp. 388, 389) in a story which has the same blunt sense as Ariosto's
episode of Giocondo. The Italian here prevails over the noble.
See especially Nov. xi. and xxxviii. * i\ov. ii. iii. v. xi. xviii. xxiv
MASUCCI&S ART. 181
shows far finer literary tact. Yet there is something
in the unpremeditated passion, pathos, humor, gross-
ness, anger and enjoyment of Masuccio a chord of
masculine and native strength, a note of vigorous
reality that arrests attention even more imperiously
than the prepared effects of the Decameron. One
point of undoubted excellence can be claimed for
Masuccio. He was a great tragic artist in the rough,
and his comedy displays an uncouth Rabelaisian
realism. The lights and shadows cast upon his scene
are brusque like the sunlight and the shadow on a
Southern city; whereas the painting of Boccaccio is
distinguished by exquisite blendings of color and
chiaroscuro in subordination to the chosen key.
Masuccio displays his real power in his serious
Novelle, when he gives vent to his furious hatred of a
godless clergy, or describes some dreadful incident,
like the tragedy of the two lovers in the lazar-house. 1
Scarcely less dramatic are his tales of comic sensu-
ality. 2 Nor has he a less vivid sense of beauty.
Some of his occasional pictures the meeting of youths
and maidens in the evening light of Naples ; the lover
who changed his jousting-badge because his lady was
untrue; the tournament at Rimini; the portrait of
Eugenia disguised as a ragazzo de omo c arme break
upon us with the freshness of a smile or sunbeam. 3
1 Nov. xxxi. Masuccio's peculiar animosity against the clergy may
be illustrated by comparing his story of the friar who persuaded the nun
that she was chosen by the Holy Ghost (Nov. ii.) with Boccaccio's tale
of the Angel Gabriel. See, too, the scene in the convent (Nov. vi.), the
comedy of S. Bernardino's sermon (Nov. xvi.), the love-adventures of
Cardinal Roderigo Borgia.
For example, Nov. vii. xiii. v.
Op. tit. pp. 292, 282. 391, 379.
1 82 RENAISSANCE IN ITALY.
We might almost detect a vein of Spanish imagination
in certain of his episodes in the midnight ride of the
living monk after the dead friar strapped upon his
palfrey, and in the ghastly murder of the woman and
the dwarf. 1 The lowest classes of the people are pre-
sented with a salience worthy of Velasquez cobblers,
tailors, prostitutes, preaching friars, miracle-workers,
relic- mongers, bawds, ruffians, lepers, highway rob-
bers, gondoliers, innkeepers, porters, Moorish slaves,
the panders to base appetites and every sort of sin. 3
Masuccio felt no compunction in portraying vicious
people as he knew them ; but he reserved language of
scathing vituperation for their enormities. 3
From so much that is coarse, dreadful, and re-
volting, the romance of Masuccio's more genial tales
detaches itself with charming grace and delicacy.
Nothing in Boccaccio is lovelier than the story of the
girl who puts on armor and goes at night to kill her
faithless lover; or that of Mariotto and Giannozza,
which is substantially the same as Romeo and Juliet;
or that of Virginio Baglioni and Eugenia, surprised
and slain by robbers near Brescia; or that of Mar-
chetto and Lanzilao, the comrades in arms, which has
points in common with Palamon and Arcite ; or, lastly,
that of the young Malem and his education by Giu-
1 Nov. i. and xxviii. The second of these stories is dedicated to
Francesco of Aragon, who, born in 1461, could not have been more
than fifteen when this frightful tale of lust and blood was sent him
Nothing paints the manners of the time better than this fact.
See op. cit. pp. 28, 68, 89, 141, 256, 273, 275, 380, 341, 343.
1 For specimens of his invective read pp. 517, 273, 84, 275, 55, 65,
534. I have collected some of these passages, bearing on the clergy, in
a note to p. 458 of my Age of the Despots, 2nd edition. Xo wonder
ihat Masuccio's book was put upon the Index !
LEO BATTISTA ALBERTl. 183
dotto Gambacorto. 1 It is the blending of so many
elements the interweaving of tragedy and comedy,
satire and pathos, grossness and sentiment, in a style
of unadorned sincerity, that places Masuccio high
among novelists. Had his language been as pure as
that of the earlier Tuscan or the later Italian authors,
he would probably rank only second to Boccaccio in
the estimation even of his fellow-countrymen. A for-
eigner, less sensitive to niceties of idiom, may be
excused for recognizing him as at least Bandello's
equal in the story-teller's art. In moral quality he is
superior not only to Bandello, but also to Boccaccio.
The greatest writer of Italian prose in the fifteenth
century was a man of different stamp from Masuccio.
Gifted with powers short only of the very highest,
Leo Battista Alberti exercised an influence over the
spirit of his age and race which was second to none
but Leonardo's. 2 Sacchetti, Ser Giovanni, Masuccio,
and the ordinary tribe of chroniclers pretended to no
humanistic culture. 3 Alberti, on the contrary, was
educated at Bologna, where he acquired the scientific
knowledge of his age, together with such complete
mastery of Latin that a work of his youth, the comedy
Philodoxius, passed for a genuine product of antiquity.
This man of many-sided genius came into the world
too soon for the perfect exercise of his singular facul-
' Nov. xxvii. xxxiii. xxxv. xxxvii. xlviii.
See Revival of Learning, pp. 341-344, for some account ot Al-
berti's life and place among the humanists; Fine Arts, p. 74, for his
skill as an architect.
1 Sacchetti, we have seen, called himself uomo discolo; Ser Giovanni
proclaimed himself a pecorone, Masuccio had the culture of a noble-
man; Corio and Matarazzo, if we are right in identifying the latter with
Francesco Maturanzio, were both men of considerable erudition.
184 RENAISSANCE IN ITALY.
ties. Whether we regard him from the point of view
of art, of science, or of literature, he occupies in each
department the position of precursor, pioneer and in-
dicator. Always original and always fertile, he proph-
esied of lands he was not privileged to enter, leaving
the memory of dim and varied greatness rather than
any solid monument behind him. 1 Of his mechanical
discoveries this is not the place to speak; nor can I
estimate the value of his labors in the science of
perspective. 2 It is as a man of letters that he comes
oefore us in this chapter.
The date of Alberti's birth is uncertain. But we
may fix it probably at about the year 1406. He was
born at Venice, where his father, exiled with the other
members of his noble house by the Albizzi, had taken
refuge. After Cosimo de' Medici's triumph over the
Albizzi in 1434, Leo Battista returned to Florence. 3
It was as a Florentine citizen that his influence in
restoring the vulgar literature to honor, was destined
to be felt. He did not, however, reside continuously
1 The most charming monument of Alberti's memory is the Life by
an anonymous writer, published in Muratori and reprinted in Bonucci's
edition, vol. i. Bonucci conjectures, without any substantial reason, that
it was composed by Alberti himself.
* For the Camera Optica, Reticolo de' dipintori, and Bolide Al-
bertiana, see the Preface (pp. Ixv.-lxix.) to Anicio Bonucci's edition ot
the Opere Volgari di L. B. Alberti, Firenze, 1843, five vols. All refer-
ences will be made to this comprehensive but uncritical collection. Hu-
bert Janitschek's edition of the Treatises on Art should be consulted for
its introduction and carefully prepared text Vienna, 1877, in the Quel-
lenschriften ftit Kunstgeschichte.
The sentence of banishment was first removed in 1428; but the
rights of burghership were only restored to the Alberti in 1434. Leo
Battista finished the Treatise on Painting at Florence, Sept. 7, 1435
(see Janitschek, op. cit. p. iii.), and dedicated it to Brunelleschi, July 17,
1436. From that dedication it would seem that he had only recently
returned.
ALBERT!' S LIFE AND EXILE. 185
in the city of his ancestors, but moved from town to
town, with a restlessness that savored somewhat of
voluntary exile. It is, indeed, noteworthy how many
of the greatest Italians Dante, Giotto, Petrarch,
Alberti, Lionardo, Tasso: men who powerfully helped
to give the nation intellectual coherence were wan-
derers. They sought their home and saw their
spiritual patria in no one abiding-place. 1 Thus, amid
the political distractions of the Italian people, rose
that ideal of unity to which Rome, Naples, Florence,
Venice, Ferrara contributed, but which owned no
metropolis. Florence remained to the last the brain of
Italy. Yet Florence, by stepmotherly ingratitude, by
Dante's exile, by the alienation of Petrarch, by Alberti's
homeless boyhood, prepared for the race a new culture,
Tuscan in origin, national by diffusion and assimila-
tion. Alberti died at Rome in 1472, just when Poli-
ziano, a youth of eighteen, was sounding the first
notes of that music which re-awakened the Muse of
Tuscany from her long sleep, and gave new melodies
to Italy.
In his proemium to the Third Book of the Family,
addressed to Francesco degli Alberti, Leo Battista
enlarges on the duty of cultivating the mother tongue. 2
After propounding the question whether the loss of
the empire acquired by their Roman ancestors Van-
tiquo nostro imperio amplissimo or the loss of Latin
as a spoken language fantiqua nostra gentilissima
1 A passage in the Delia Tranquillitd dell' Animo (Op. Volg. \. 35),
shows how Alberti had lived into the conception of cosmopolitan citizen-
ship. It may be compared with another in the Teogenio (op. cit. iii. 194;
where he argues that love for one's country, even without residence in
it, satisfies the definition of a citizen.
1 Op. cit. ii. 215-221.
r 86 RENAISSANCE IN ITALY.
lingua latino, had been the greater privation to the
Italian race, he gives it as his opinion that, though the
former robbed them of imperial dignity, the latter was
the heavier misfortune. To repair that loss is the
duty of one who had made literature his study. If he
desires to benefit his fellow-countrymen, he will not
use a dead language, imperfectly comprehended by a
few learned men, but will bend the idiom of the people
to the needs of erudition. " I willingly admit," he
argues, " that the ancient Latin tongue is very copious
and of beauty polished to perfection. Yet I do not
see what our Tuscan has in it so hateful that worthy
matter, when conveyed thereby, should be displeasing
to us." Pedants who despise their mother speech, are
mostly men incapable of expressing themselves in the
latter; " and granted they are right in saying that the
ancient tongue has undisputed authority, because so
many learned men have employed it, the like honor
will certainly be paid our language of to-day, if men
of culture take the pains to purify and polish it." He
then declares that, meaning to be useful to the mem-
bers of his house, and to bequeath a record of their
ancient dignity to therr descendants, he has resolved
to choose the tongue in which he will be generally
understood.
This proemium explains Alberti's position in all
his Italian writings. Aiming at the general good,
convinced that a living nation cannot use a dead
language with dignity and self-respect, he makes the
sacrifice of a scholar's pride to public utility, and has
the sense to perceive that the day of erudite exclusive -
ness is over. No one felt more than Alberti the
ALBERTPS CONCEPTION OF LANGUAGE. 187
greatness of the antique Roman race. No one was
prouder of his descent from those patricians of the
Commonwealth, who tamed and ruled the world.
The memory of that Roman past, which turned the
generation after Dante into a nation of students,
glowed in Alberti's breast with more than common
fervor. 1 The sonorous introduction to the first book
of the Family reviews the glories of the Empire and
the decadence of Rome with a pomp of phrase, a
passion of eloquence, that stir our spirit like the tramp
of legions waking echoes in a ruined Roman colon-
nade. 2 Yet in spite of this devotion to the past,
Alberti, like Villani, felt that his Italians of the modern
age had destinies and auspices apart from those of
ancient Rome. He was resolved to make the speech
of that new nation, heiress of the Latin name, equal in
dignity to Cicero's and Livy's. What Rome had done,
Rome's children should do again. But the times were
changed, and Alberti was a true son of the Renais-
sance. He approached his task in the spirit of a
humanist. His style is over-charged with Latinisms;
his periods are cumbrous; his matter is loaded with
citations and scholastic instances drawn from the rep-
1 Such phrases as inostri maggiori patrisii in Roma (i. 37), la quasi
dovuta a noiper le nostre virtii da tutte le genti riverenssia e obbedienzia,
(ii. 218), nostri ottimi passati Itali debellarono e sot-to averono tutte It
genti (ii. 9), might be culled in plenty. Alberti shows how deep was
the Latin idealism of the Renaissance, and how impossible it would have
been for the Italians to found their national self-consciousness on aught
but a recovery of the past.
* Especially the fine passage beginning, " Quello imperio maraviglioso
senza termini, quel dominio di tutte le genti acquistato con nostri latini
auspici, ottenuto colla nostra industria, amplihcato con nostre armt
latine " (ii. 8); and the apostrophe, " E tu, Italia nobilissima, capo e arce
di tutto 1" universe mondo" (ib. 13).
1 88 RENAISSANCE IN ITALY.
ertories of erudition. 1 The vivida vis of inspiration
fails. His work is full of reminiscences. The golden
simplicity of the trecento yields to a studied effort
after dignity of diction, culture of amplitude. Still the
writer's energy is felt in massive paragraphs of power-
ful declamation. His eloquence does not degenerate
into frothy rhetoric; and when he wills, he finds
pithy phrases to express the mind of a philosopher
and poet. That he was born and reared in exile
accounts for a lack of racy Tuscan in his prose; and
the structure of his sentences proves that he had
been accustomed to think in Latin before he made
Italian serve his turn. 2 Still, though for these and
other reasons his works were not of the kind to ani-
mate a nation, they are such as still may be read with
profit and with pleasure by men who seek for solid
thoughts in noble diction.
Alberti's principal prose work, the Trattato delta
Famiglia, was written to instruct the members of his
family in the customs of their ancestors, and to per-
petuate those virtues of domestic life which he re-
garded as the sound foundation of a commonwealth.
The first three books are said to have been composed
within the space of ninety days in Rome, and the
1 An example of servile submission to classical authority might be
chosen from Alberti's discourse on Friendship (Famiglia, lib. iv. op. cit.
ii. 415), where he adduces Sylla and Mark Antony in contradiction to his
general doctrine that only upright conversation among friends can lead
to mutual profit.
* Alberti's loss of training in the vernacular is noticed by his anony-
mous biographer {pp. cit. i. xciv.). It will be observed by students of
his writings that he does not speak of la nostra italiana but la nostra
toscana (ii. 221). Again (iv. 12) in lingua toscana is the phrase used
In his dedication ol the Essay on Painting to Rrunelleschi.
THE TREATISE ON THE FAMILY. 189
fourth added at a later period. 1 It is a dialogue, the
interlocutors being relatives of the Alberti blood.
Nearly all the illustrative matter is drawn from the
biographies of their forefathers. The scene is laid at
Padua, and the essay contains frequent allusions to
their exile. 2 No word of invective against the Al-
bizzi who had ruined them, no vituperation of the
city which had permitted the expulsion of her sons,
escapes the lips of any of the speakers. The grave
sadness that tempers the whole dialogue, is marred
by neither animosity nor passion. Yet though the
Family was written in exile for exiles, the ideal of
domestic life it paints, is Florentine. 3 Taken in its
whole extent, this treatise is the most valuable docu-
ment which remains to us from the times of the
oligarchy, when Florence was waging war with the
Visconti, and before the Medici had based their
despotism upon popular favor. From its pages a
tolerably complete history of a great commercial family
1 The anonymous biographer says: "Scripsit praeterea et affinium
suorum gratia, ut linguae latinae ignaris prodesset, patrio sermone annum
ante trigesimum aetatis suae etruscos libros, primum, secundum, ac ter-
tium de Familia, quos Romae die nonagesimo quam inchoarat, absolvit;
sed inelimatos et asperos neque usquequaquam etruscos. . . . post an-
nos tres, quam primes ediderat, quartum librum ingratis protulit " (pp.
cit. i. xciv. c.). It appears from a reference in Book ii. (op. cit. ii. xxviii.)
that the Treatise was still in process of composition after 1438; and there
are strong reasons for believing that Book iii., as it is now numbered,
was written separately and after the rest of the dialogue.
Note especially the passage in Book iii., op. cit. ii. 256, et. seq.
There is, I think, good reason to believe the testimony of the anony-
mous biographer, who says this Treatise was written before Alberti's
thirtieth year; and if he returned to Florence in 1434, we must take
the date of his birth about 1404. The scene of the Tranquillitd dell
Animo is laid in the Duomo at Florence; we may therefore believe it to
have been a later work, and its allusions to the Famiglia are, in my
opinion, trustworthy.
190 RENAISSANCE IN ITALY.
might be extracted; and this study would form a valu-
able commentary on the public annals of the common-
wealth during the earlier portion of the fifteenth century. 1
The first book of the Famiglia deals with the
1 The pedigree prefixed to the Dialogue in Bonucci's edition would
help the student in his task. I will here cite the principal passages of
importance I have noticed. In volume ii. p. 102, we find a list of the
Alberti remarkable for literary, scientific, artistic, and ecclesiastical dis-
tinctions. On p. 124 we read of their dispersion over the Levant, Greece,
Spain, France, England, Belgium, Germany, and the chief Italian towns.
Their misfortunes in exile are touchingly alluded to with a sobriety of
phrase that dignifies the grief it veils, in the noble passage beginning
with p. 256. Their ancient splendor in the tournaments and games of
Florence, when the people seemed to have eyes only for men of the
Alberti blood, is described on p. 228; their palaces and country houses
on p. 279. A list of the knights, generals, and great lawyers of the
Casa Alberti is given at p. 346. The honesty of their commercial deal-
ings and their reputation for probity form the themes of a valuable di-
gression, pp. 204-206, where we learn the extent of their trade and the
magnitude of their contributions to the State-expenses. On p. 210 there
is a statement that this house alone imported from Flanders enough wool
to supply the cloth-trade, not only of Florence, but also of the larger part
of Tuscany. The losses of a great commercial family are reckoned on
P- 357; while p. 400 supplies the story ot one vast loan of 80,000 golden
florins advanced by Ricciardo degli Alberti to Pope John. The friend-
ship of Piero degli Alberti contracted with Filippo Maria Visconti and
King Ladislaus of Naples is described in the autobiographical discourse
introduced at pp. 386-399. This episode is very precious for explaining
the relation between Italian princes and the merchants who resided at
their courts. Their servant Buto, p. 375, should not be omitted from the
picture; nor should the autobiographical narrative given by Giannozzo of
his relation to his wife (pp. 320-328) be neglected, since this carries us into
the very center of a Florentine home. The moral tone, the political feel-
ing, and the domestic habits of the house in general must be studied in
the description of the Casa, Bottega, and Villa, the discourses on educa-
tion, and the discussion of public and domestic duties. The commercial
aristocracy of Florence lives before us in this Treatise. We learn from
It to know exactly what the men who sustained the liberties of Italy against
the tyrants of Milan thought and felt, at a period of history when the old
fabric of medieval ideas had broken down, but when the new Italy of the
Renaissance had not yet been fully formed. If, in addition to tne Trat-
tato della Famiglia, the letters addressed by Alessandra Macinghi degli
Strozzi to her children in exile be included in such a study, a vivid picture
ANALYSIS OF THE TREATISE. 191
duties of the elder to the younger members of the
household, and the observance owed by sons and
daughters to their parents. It is an essay De Officiis
within the circle of the home, embracing minute par-
ticulars of conduct, and suggesting rules for education
from the cradle upwards. 1 The second book takes up
the question of matrimony. The respective ages at
which the sexes ought to marry, the moral and
physical qualities of a good wife, the maintenance of
harmony between a wedded couple, their separate
provinces and common duty to the State in the pro-
creation of children, are discussed with scientific com-
pleteness. The third book, modeled on the (Econo-
micus of Xenophon, is devoted to thrift. How to use
our personal faculties, our wealth, and our time to best
advantage, forms its principal theme. The fourth
book treats of friendship family connections and
alliances, the usefulness of friends in good and evil
fortune, the mutual benefits enjoyed by men who live
honestly together in a social state. 2 It may be seen
might be formed ol the domestic life ot a Florentine family.* These
letters were written from Florence to sons of the Casa Strozzi at Na-
ples, Bruges, and elsewhere between the years 1447 and 1465. They
contain minute information about expenditure, taxation, dress, marriages,
friendships, and all the public and personal relations of a noble Floren-
tine family. Much, moreover, can be gathered from them concerning
the footing of the members of the circle in exile. The private ricordi
of heads of families, portions of which have been already published
from the archives of the Medici and Strozzi, if more fully investigated,
would complete this interesting picture in many of its important
details.
1 Notice the discussion of wet-nurses, the physical and mon.,1 evils
likely to ensue from an improper choice of the nurse (op. rit. ii. 52-
56).
* These topics ol Amicixia, as the virtue on which society is based,
Lettere di una GentildannckfortHtiHa, Firenze, Sansoni, 1877
19* RENAISSANCE IN ITALY.
from this sketch that the architecture of the treatise is
complete and symmetrical. The first book establishes
the principles of domestic morality on which a family
exists and flourishes. The second provides for its
propagation through marriage. The third shows how
its resources are to be distributed and preserved. The
fourth explains its relations to similar communities
existing in an organized society. Many passages in
the essay have undoubtedly the air of truisms; but
this impression of commonplaceness is removed by
the strong specific character of all the illustrations.
Alberti's wisdom is common to civilized humanity.
His conception of life is such as only suits a Floren-
tine, and his examples are drawn from the annals of a
single family.
I have already dwelt at some length in a former
volume on the most celebrated section of this treatise
the Padre di Famiglia or the Economical To
repeat those observations here would be superfluous.
Yet I cannot avoid a digression upon a matter of
much obscurity relating to the authorship of that
book. 2 Until recently, this discourse upon the
economy of a Florentine household passed under the
name of Agnolo Pandolfini, and was published sepa-
rately as his undoubted work. The interlocutors in
the dialogue, which bore the title of Governo della
are further discussed in a separate little dialogue, La Cena di Famiglia
(op. cit. vol. i.).
1 Age of the Despots, pp. 239-243.
* In stating the question, and in all that concerns the MS. authorit
apon which a judgment must be formed, I am greatly indebted to the
kindness of Signor Virginio Cortesi, who has placed at my disposal his
unpublished Essay on the Governo della Famiglia di Agnolo Pandol*
fini. As the title of his work shows, he is a believer in Pandolfini's
authorship.
PANDOLFIN1 AND ALBERTI. 193
Famiglia, are various members of the Pandolfini
family, and all allusions to the Alberti and their exile
are wanting. The style of the Governo differs in
many important respects from that of Alberti; and
yet the arrangement of the material and the substance
of each paragraph are so closely similar in both forms
of the treatise as to prove that the work is substan-
tially identical. Pandolfini's essay, which I shall call
H Governo, passes for one of the choicest monuments
of ancient Tuscan diction. Alberti's Economico, though
it is more idiomatic than the rest of his Famiglia t
betrays the Latinisms of a scholar. It is clear from a
comparison of the two treatises either that Alberti
appropriated Pandolfini's Governo, brought its style
into harmony with his own, and gave it a place be-
tween the second and the fourth books of his essay on
the Family; or else that this third book of Alberti's
Famiglia was rewritten by an author who commanded
a purer Italian. In the former case, Alberti changed
the dramatis persona by substituting members of his
own house for the Pandolfini. In the latter case, the
anonymous compiler paid a similar compliment to the
Pandolfini by such alterations as obliterated the
Alberti, and presented the treatise to the world as
part of their own history. That Agnolo Pandolfini
was himself guilty of this plagiarism is rendered im-
probable by a variety of circumstances. Yet the prob-
lem does not resolve itself into the simple question
whether Pandolfini or Alberti was the plagiary. Sup-
posing Alberti to have been the original author, there
is no difficulty in believing that the Governo was a
redaction made from his work by some anonymous
194 RENAISSANCE IN ITALY.
hand in honor of the Pandolfini family. On the
contrary, if we assume Agnolo Pandolfini to have
been the author, then Alberti himself was guilty of o
gross and open plagiarism. 1
It will be useful to give some account of the MSS.
upon which the editions of the Governo and the
Ecojwmico are based. 2 In the first edition of the
G&uerno (Tartini e Franchi, Firenze, 1734) six cod-
ices are mentioned. Of these the Codex Pandolfini
A, on which the editors chiefly relied, has been re-
moved from Italy to Paris. The Codex Pandolfini B
was written in 1476 at Poggibonsi by a certain
Giuliano di Niccolajo Martini. Whether the Ccdex
Pandolfini A professed to be an autograph copy, I do
not know; but the editors of 1734, referring to it,
state that the Senator Filippo Pandolfini, member of
the Delia Crusca, corrected the errors, restored the
text, and improved the diction of the treatise by the
help of a still more ancient MS. This admission on
their part is significant. It opens, for the advocates of
Alberti's authorship, innumerable suspicions as to the
part played by Filippo Pandolfini in the preparation of
the Governo. Nor can it be denied that the lack of an
\
1 I use this word according to its present connotation. But such
literary plagiarism was both more common and less disgraceful in the
fifteenth century. Alberti himself incorporated passages of the Fiam-
metta in his Deifira, and Jacopo Nardi in his Storia Fiorentina appro-
priated the whole of Buonaccorsi's Diaries (1498-1512) with slight alter-
ations and a singularly brief allusion to their author.
* Such information, as will be seen, is both vague and meager. The
MSS. of the Governo in particular do not seem to have been accurately
investigated, and are insufficiently described even by Cortesi. Yet this
problem, like that of the Malespini and Compagni Chronicles, can-
not be set at rest without a detailed comparison of all existing
codices.
MANUSCRIPT AUTHORITIES. 195
autograph of the Governo renders the settlement of
the disputed question very difficult.
Of Alberti's Trattato della Famiglia we have three
autograph copies; (i) Cod. Magi. Classe iv. No. 38
in folio; (ii) Riccardiana 1220; (iii) Riccardiana 176
The first of these is the most important; but it pre-
sents some points of singularity. In the first place,
the third book, which is the Economico, has been in-
serted into the original codex, and shows a different
style of writing. In the second place, the first two
books contain numerous corrections, additions, era-
sures and recorrections, obviously made by Albert!
himself. Some of the interpolated passages in the
first two books are found to coincide with parts of the
Governo; and Signer Cortesi, to whose critical Study
I have already referred, argues with great show of
reason that Alberti, when he determined to incorporate
the Governo in his Famiglia, enriched the earlier
books of that essay with fragments which he did not
find it convenient to leave in their original place.
Still it should be remembered that this argument can
be reversed; for the anonymous compiler of the
Governo ', if he had access to Alberti's autograph, may
have chosen to appropriate sentences culled from the
earlier portions of the Famiglia.
It is noticeable that the Economico, even though it
forms the third book of the Treatise on the Family,
has a separate title and a separate introduction, with
a dedication to Francesco Alberti, and a distinct per-
oration. 1 It is, in fact, an independent composition,
1 The anonymous biographer expressly states that the fourth book
was written later than the other three, and dedicated to the one Albert]
196 RENAISSANCE IN ITALY.
and occurs in more than one MS. of the fifteenth
century detached from the rest of the Famiglia. In
style it is far freer and more racy than is usual with
Alberti's writing. Of this its author seems to have
been aware; for he expressly tells his friend and kins-
man Francesco that he has sought to approach the
purity and simplicity of Xenophon. 1
The anonymous writer of Alberti's life says that he
composed three books on the Family at Rome before
he was thirty, and a fourth book three years later. If
we follow Tiraboschi in taking 1414 for the date of his
birth, the first three books must have been composed
before 1444 and the fourth in 1447. The former of
these dates (1444) receives some confirmation from a
Latin letter written by Leonardo Dati to Alberti, ac-
knowledging the Treatise on the Family, in June 1443.
Dati tells him that he finds fault with the essay for
being composed " in a more majestic and perhaps a
harsher style, especially in the first book, than the
Florentine language and the judgment of the laity
would tolerate." He goes on, however, to observe
that " afterwards the language becomes far more sweet
and satisfactory to the ear " a criticism which seems
to suit the altered manner of the third book. With
who took any interest in the previous portion of the work. This, together
with the isolation and more perfect diction of Book iii. is strong presump-
tion in favor of its having been an afterthought.
' The (Economicus of Xenophon served as common material for the
Economico and the Governo, whatever we may think about the author-
ship of these two essays. Many parallel passages in Palmieri's Vita Ci-
vile can be referred to the same source. To what extent Alberti knew
Greek is not ascertained; but even in the bad Latin translations of that
age a flavor so peculiar as that of Xenophon's style could not have es-
caped bis fine sense.
THE THIRD BOOK OF THE FAM1GLJA. 197
reference to the date 1447, in which the Famiglia may
have been completed, Cortesi remarks that Pandolfini
died in 1446. He suggests that, upon this event,
Alberti appropriated the Governo and rewrote it, and
that the Economico, though it holds the place of the
third book in the treatise, is really the fourth book
mentioned by the anonymous biographer. The sugges-
tion is ingenious; and if we can once bring ourselves
to believe that Alberti committed a deliberate act of
larceny, immediately after his friend Pandolfini's death,
then the details which have been already given con-
cerning the autograph of the Famiglia and the discre-
pancies in its style of composition add confirmation to
the theory. There are, however, good reasons for
assigning Alberti's birth to the year 1404 or even
I4O2. 1 In that case Alberti's Roman residence would
fall into the third decade of the century, and the last
book of the Famiglia (which I am inclined to believe
is the one now called the third) would have been
composed before Pandolfini's death. That Alberti
kept his MSS. upon the stocks and subjected them to
frequent revision is certain; and this may account for
one reference occurring in it to an event which hap
pened in 1438.
Is it rational to adopt the hypothesis of Alberti's
plagiarism ? Let us distinctly understand what it im-
plies. In his own preface to the Economico Alberti
states that he has striven to reproduce the simple
and intelligible style of Xenophon 2 ; and there is no
doubt that this portion of the Famiglia, whether we
regard it as Alberti's or as Pandolfini's property,
1 See Op. Volg. vol. i. pp. Ixxxvi.-lxxxviii. * Op. Volg. ii. p. 223.
198 RENAISSANCE IN ITALY.
was closely modeled on the CEconomicus. Cortesi
suggests that the reference to Xenophon was pur-
posely introduced by Albert! in order to put his
readers off the scent. Nor, if we accept the hypo-
thesis of plagiarism, can we restrict ourselves to this
accusation merely. In the essay Delia Tranquillity
deW Animo Alberti introduces Agnolo Pandolfini as
an interlocutor, and makes him refer to the third book
of the Famiglia as a genuine production of Alberti. 1
In other words, he must not only have appropriated
Pandolfini's work, and laid claim to it in the preface to
his Economico; but he must also have referred to it as
his own composition in a speech ascribed to the real
author, which he meant for publication. That is to
say, he made the man whose work he stole pronounce
its panegyric and refer it to the thief. That Pandol-
fini was dead when he committed these acts of treason
would not be sufficient to explain Alberti's audacity;
for according to the advocates of Pandolfini's author-
ship, the MS. formed a known and valued portion of
his sons' inheritance. Is it prima facie probable that
Alberti, even in those days of looser literary copyright
than ours, should have exposed himself to detection in
so palpable and gross a fraud ?
Before answering this question in the affirmative,
it may be asked what positive grounds there are for
crediting Pandolfini with the original authorship. At
present no autograph of Pandolfini is forthcoming.
His claim to authorship rests on tradition, and on the
Pandolfini cast of the dialogue in certain MSS. At
the same time, the admissions made by the editors
1 Op. Volg. i. 10.
WAS ALBERT! A PLAGIARIST f 199
of 1734 regarding their most trusted codex have been
already shown to be suspicious. It is also noticeable
that Vespasiano, in his Life of Agnolo Pandolfini,
though he professes to have been intimately acquainted
with this excellent Florentine burgher, does not men-
tion the Governo delta Famiglia^ The omission is
singular, supposing the treatise to have then existed
under Pandolfini's name, for Vespasiano was himself
a writer of Italian in an age when Latin scholarship
claimed almost exclusive attention. He would, we
should have thought, have been eager to name so
distinguished a man among his fellow-authors in the
vulgar tongue.
Granting the force of these considerations, it must
still be admitted that there remain grave objections to
accepting the Economico of Alberti as the original of
these two treatises. In the first place, the Governo is
a masterpiece of Tuscan; and it is far more reasonable
to suppose that the Economico was copied from the
Governo with such alterations as adapted it to the
manner of the Famiglia, than to assume that the
Economico received a literary rehandling which re-
duced it from its more rhetorical to a popular form.
The passage from simple to complex in literature
admits of easier explanation than the reverse process.
Moreover, if Alberti admired a racy Tuscan style and
could command it for the Economico, why did he not
continue to use it in his subsequent compositions ? In
the second place, the Governo, as it stands, is suited to
1 It should, however, be added that Vespasiano alludes to Pandolfi-
ni's habits of study and composition after his retirement to Signa. Yet
he does not cite the Governo.
ZOO RENAISSANCE IN ITALY.
what Vespasiano tells us about Agnolo Pandolfini
He was a scholar trained in the humanities of the
earlier Renaissance and a statesman who retired from
public life, disgusted with the times, to studious leisure
at his villa. Now, Giannozzo Alberti, who takes the
chief part in the Economico^ proclaims himself a man
of business, without learning. Those passages of the
Governo which seem inappropriate to such a character
are absent from the Economico; but some of them
appear in Alberti's other works, the Teogenio and
Delia Tranquillity. From this circumstance Signor
Cortesi infers that Alberti, working with Pandolfini's
essay before him, made such alterations as brought the
drift of the discourse within the scope of Giannozzo's
acquirements. The advocates of Alberti's authorship
are bound to reverse this theory, and to assume that
the author of the Governo suited the Economico ta
Pandolfini by infusing a tincture of scholarship into
Giannozzo's speeches. 1
We have still to ask who could the author of
the Governo >, if it was not Agnolo Pandolfini, have
been ? The first answer to this question is: Alberti
himself. The anonymous biographer tells us that he
wrote the first three books at Rome, and that he after-
wards made great efforts to improve his Tuscan style
and render it more popular. It is not, therefore, im-
possible that he should himself have fitted that portion
of his Famiglia with new characters, omitted the
1 It is clear that all this reasoning upon internal evidence can be
turned to the advantage of both sides in the dispute. The question will
have finally to be settled on external grounds (comparison of MSS.), com-
bined with a wise use of such arguments from style as have already
been cited.
THEORY OF RIFACIMENTO. 2OI
Alberti, and given the honors of the dialogue to
Pandolfini. The treatise, as he first planned it (accord-
ing to this hypothesis), has a passionate digression
upon the exile of the Alberti, followed by a decla-
mation against public life and politicians. To have
circulated these passages in an essay intended for
Florentine readers, after Alberti's recall by Cosimo de'
Medici, would have been unwise. Alberti, therefore,
may only have retained such portions of them as could
rouse no animosity, revive no painful reminiscences,
and be appropriately placed upon the lips of Pan-
dolfini. As it stands in the Governo, the invective
against statecraft is scarcely in keeping with Pan-
dolfini's character. Though he retired from public
life disgusted and ill at ease, the conclusion that no
man should seek to serve the State except from a
strict sense of duty, sounds strange when spoken by
this veteran politician. Taken as the climax to the
history of the wrongs inflicted upon the Alberti, this
passage is dramatically in harmony with Giannozzo's
experience. 1 With regard to the noticeable improve-
ment of style in the Economico, we might argue that
after Alberti had enjoyed facilities at Florence of
acquiring his native idiom, he remodeled that section
of his earlier work which he intended for the people.
And the same line of argument would account for the
independence of the Ecotwmico and its occurrence in
separate MSS. Had Alberti designed what we now
1 Anyhow, and whatever may have been the source of Alberti's
Economico, the whole scene describing exile and winding up with the
tirade against a political career, is a very noble piece of writing. If
space sufficed, it might be quoted as the finest specimen of Alberti's
eloquence. See Op. Volg. v. pp. 256-266.
202 RENAISSANCE IN ITALY.
call a plagiarism, what need was there to call attention
to it by prefixing an introduction to the third book of
a continuous treatise?
It is not, however, necessary to defend Alberti
from the charge of fraud by suggesting that he was
himself the author of the Governo. There existed, as
we shall soon see, a class of semi-cultivated scribes at
Florence, whose business consisted in manufacturing
literature for the people. They re-wrote, re-fashioned,
condensed, abstracted whatever seemed to furnish
entertainment and instruction for their public. Their
style was close to the vulgar speech and frankly
idiomatic. That one of these men should have made
the necessary alterations in the third book of the
Famiglia to remove the recollection of the Alberti
exile, and to prepare it for popular reading, is by no
means impossible. The Governo is shorter and more
condensed than the Economico. The rhetorical and
dramatic elements are reduced; and the material is
communicated in a style of gnomic pregnancy. If it
was modeled upon the Economico in the way I have
suggested, the writer of the abstract was a man of no
common ability, with a very keen sense of language
and a faculty for investing a work of art and fine
literature with the naivete and grace of popular style.
He also understood the necessity of providing his
chief interlocutor, Agnolo Pandolfini, with a character
different from that of Giannozzo Alberti ; and he had
the tact to realize that character by innumerable
touches. Great additional support would be given to
this hypothesis, if we could trust Bonucci's assertion
that he had seen and transcribed a MS. of the Governo
MINOR MORAL ESSAYS. IQ\
adapted with a set of characters selected from the
Pazzi family. It would then seem clear that the
Governo was an essay which every father of a family
wished to possess for the instruction of his household,
and to connect with the past history of his own race.
Unluckily, Signer Bonucci, though he prints this Pazzi
rifacimento, gives no information as to the source of
the MS. or any hint whereby its existence can be
ascertained. 1 We must, therefore, omit it from our
reckoning.
As the case at present stands, it is impossible to
form a decisive opinion regarding the authorship of this
famous treatise. The necessary critical examination of
MSS. has not yet been made, and the arguments used
on either side from internal evidence are not con-
clusive. My own prepossession is still in favor of
Alberti. I may, however, observe that after reading
Signer Cortesi's inedited essay, I perceive the case in
favor of Pandolfini to be far stronger than I had
expected. 2
Space will not permit a full discussion of Alberti 's
numerous writings; and yet their bearing on the best
opinion of his time is so important that some notice of
them must be taken. Together with the Famiglia we
may class the Deiciarchia, or, as it should probably be
written, the De Iciarchia. 3 This, like the majority of
his moral treatises, is a dialogue, and its subject is civic
See Op. Volg. Preface to vol. v.
* It is greatly to be desired that Signor Cortesi should print this
Studio Critico, and, if possible, append to it an account of the MSS. on
which Pandolfini's claims to be considered the original author rest.
s Op. Volg. vol. iii. The meaning of the title appears on p. 132,
wnere the word Iciarco is defined Supremo uomo e primario principt
della famiglia wo. It is a compound of otVo? and
204
RENAISSANCE IN ITALY.
virtue. Having formed the ideal family, he next con-
siders the functions of householders, born to guide the
State. The chief point of the discourse is that no one
should be idle, but that all should labor in some
calling worthy of the dignity of man. 1 This seems a
simple doctrine; but it is so inculcated as to make us
remember the Guelf laws of Florence, whereby scio-
perati were declared criminals. It must not, however,
be supposed that Alberti confines himself to th'
development of this single theme. His Deiciarchi^
is rather to be regarded as a treatise on the persona!
qualities of men to whom the conduct of a common-
wealth has been by accident of birth intrusted.
A second class of Alberti's dialogues discuss the
contemplative life. In the Famiglia and the Deici-
arc/iia man is regarded as a social and domestic being
In the Tranquillity delV Animo and the Teogenio the
inner life of the student and the sage comes under
treatment. The former of these dialogues owes much
of its interest to the interlocutors and to the scene
where it was laid. 2 Leon Battista Alberti, Niccol6 di
Veri dei Medici, and Agnolo Pandolfini meet inside
the Florentine Duomo, which is described in a few
words of earnest admiration for its majesty and
strength. 3 These friends begin a conversation, which
soon turns upon the means of preserving the mind in
repose and avoiding perturbations from the passions
1 See pp. 24, 28, 88, and the fine humanistic passage on p. 47, which
reads like an expansion of Dante's Fatti non fo ste per -viver come brut.
in Ulysses' speech to his comrades.
* Op. Volg. vol. i.
* He calls it il nostro lempio massimo and speaks of il culto divin
pp. 7-9-
THE TEOGENIO. 205
The three books are enriched with copious allusions to
Alberti's works and personal habits his skill as a
musician and a statuary, the gymnastic feats of his
ycuth, and his efforts to benefit the State by intellec-
tual labor. They form a valuable supplement to the
anonymous biography. The philosophical material is
too immediately borrowed from Cicero and Seneca to be
of much importance. The Teogenio is a more attrac-
tive, and, as it seems to me, a riper work. 1 Of
Alberti's ethical discourses I am inclined to rate this
next to the Famiglia; nor did the Italian Renaissance
produce any disquisition of the kind more elevated in
feeling, finer in temper, or glowing with an eloquence
at once so spontaneous and so dignified. We have
to return to Petrarch to find the same high humanistic
passion; and Alberti's Italian is here more winning than
Petrarch's Latin. Had Pico condescended to the
vulgar tongue, he might have produced work of similar
quality; for the essay on the Dignity of Man is written
in the same spirit.
The Teogenio was sent with a letter of dedication
to Lionelle d' Este not long after his father's death. 2
Alberti apologizes for its Italian style and assures the
prince it had been written merely to console him in his
evil fortunes. The speakers are two, Teogenio and
Microtiro. 3 The dialogue opens with a passage on
Op. Volg. vol. iii.
Ibid. p. 160. This enables us to fix the date within certain limits.
Niccolb III. of Este died 1441. Lionello died 1450. Alberti speaks of
the essay as having been already some time in circulation. It must
therefore have been written before 1440.
Like Boccaccio, Alberti is fond of bad Greek etymologies. Per-
haps we may translate these names, " the God-born " and " the little pu-
pil." In the same dialogue Tichipedio seems to be " ^he youth of fortune.'
206 RENAISSANCE IN ITALY.
friendship, and a somewhat labored description of
the grove where Teogenio intends to pass the day.
Microtiro has come from the city. His friend, the
recluse, welcomes him to the country with these
words: "Ma sediamo, se cosl ti piace, qui fra quest i
mirti, in luogo non men delizioso che vostri teatri e
tempi amplissimi e sontuosissimi." This strikes the
keynote of the treatise, the theme of which is the
superiority of study in the country over the distrac-
tions of the town. Reading it, we see how rightly
Landino assigned his part to Albert! in the Camaldo-
lese Discussions. 1 That ideal of rural solitude which
the Italian scholars inherited from their Roman fore-
fathers, receives its earliest and finest treatment in this
dialogue. It is not communion with nature so much
as the companionship of books and the pursuit of
study in a tranquil corner of the Tuscan hills, that
Alberti has selected for his panegyric. 2 "The society
of the illustrious dead," he says in one of the noblest
passages of the essay, " can be enjoyed by me at leisure
here; and when I choose to converse with sages,
politicians or great poets, I have but to turn to my
bookshelves, and my company is better than your
palaces with all their crowds of flatterers and clients
can afford." 3 After enlarging on the manifold advan-
tages of a student's life, he concludes the book with a
magnificent picture of human frailty, leading up to a
discourse on death.
It is noticeable that Alberti, though frequently
approaching the subject of religion, never dilates upon
> See Revival of Learning, p. 339.
2 Op. Volg. iii. 179. Ibid. p. 186.
TREATISES ON ART. 2<yj
it, and in no place declares himself a Christian. His
creed is that of the Roman moralists a belief in the
benignant Maker of the Universe, an intellectual and
unsubstantial theism. We feel this even in that
passage of the Fami^lia when Giannozzo and his
wife pray in their bed-chamber to God for prosperity
in life and happiness in children. 1 There is not a
word about spiritual blessings, no allusion to Christ or
Madonna, though a silver statue of the Saint with
ivory hands and face is standing in his tabernacle over
them 2 nothing, indeed, to indicate that this grave
Florentine couple, whom we may figure to ourselves
like Van Dyck's merchant and wife in the National
Gallery, were not performing sacrifice and praying to
the Di Lares of a Roman household. The Renais-
sance had Latinized even the religious sentiments, and
the elder faiths of the middle ages were extinct in the
soundest hearts of the epoch. 3
A third group of Alberti's prose works consists of
his essays on the arts. 4 One of these, the Treatise on
Painting, was either written in Italian or translated by
Alberti soon after its composition in Latin. 6 The
Treatises on Perspective, Sculpture, Architecture and
the Orders are supposed to have been rendered by
their author from the Latin ; but doubt still rests upon
Alberti's share in this translation. It is not my pre
1 Op. Volg. vol. ii. pp. 320-322.
// Santo. Probably S. John.
3 Alberti in a Letter of Condolement to a friend (Op. Volg. v. 357)
chooses examples from the Bible. Yet the tone of that most strictly
pious of his writings is rather Theistic than Christian.
4 Op. Volg. vol. iv. See, too, Janitschek's edition cited above.
6 Bonucci believes it was composed in Italian. Janitschek gives rea-
sons tor the contrary theory (op. cit. p. Hi.).
208 RENAISSANCE IN ITALY.
sent business to inquire into the subject-matter of his
artistic essays, but rather to note the fact that Alberti
should have thought it fitting to use Italian for at least
the most considerable of them. We have already
seen that his chief motive to composition was utility,
and that he recognized the need of bringing the results
of learning within the scope of the unlettered laity.
We need not doubt that this consideration weighed
with him when he rehandled the matter of Vitruvius
and Pliny for the use of handicraftsmen. Nothing is
more striking in the whole series than the business-
like simplicity of style, the avoidance of rhetoric, and
the adaptation of each section to some practical end.
We have not here to do with aesthetical criticism, but
with the condensed experience of a student and work-
man. In his exposition of theory Alberti corresponds
to the practice of Florence, where Ghirlandajo kept a
bottega open to all comers, and Michelangelo began
his apprenticeship by grinding colors.
Though the subject of these essays lies beyond the
scope of my work, it is impossible to pass over the
dedication to Filippo Brunelleschi, which is prefixed
to the Italian version of the Pittitra. Alberti begins
by saying that the wonder and sorrow begotten in him
by reflecting on the loss of many noble arts and
sciences, had led him to believe that Nature, wearied
and out-worn, had no force left to generate the giant
spirits of her youth. " But when I returned from the
long exile in which we of the Alberti have grown old,
to this our mother-city, which exceeds all others in the
beauty of her monuments, I perceived that many
living men, but first of all you, Filippo, and our dear-
DISCOURSES ON LOVE AND MARRIAGE. 209
est friend the sculptor Donatello, and Lorenzo Ghiberti
and Luca della Robbia and Masaccio, were not of less
account for genius and noble work than any ancient
artist of great fame." After some remarks upon
industry and the advantages of scientific theory, he
proceeds: " Who is there so hard and envious of
temper as not to praise the architect Filippo, when
he saw so vast a structure, raised above the heavens,
spacious enough to cover with its shadow all the
Tuscan folks, built without any aid from beams and
scaffoldings, a miracle of art, if I judge rightly, which
might in this age have been deemed impossible, and
which even among the ancients was perhaps unknown,
undreamed of?" After this exordium, he commits to
Brunelleschi's care his little book on painting, quale a
tuo nome fed in lingua toscana. The interest of this
dedication lies not omy in the mention of the five chief
quattrocento artists by Alberti, and in the record of the
impression first produced on him by Florence, but also
in the recognition that, great as were the dead arts of
antiquity, the modern arts of Italy could rival them.
It is an intuition parallel to that which induced Alberti
to compose the Famiglia in Italian, and proves that he
could endure the blaze of humanism without blindness.
In the fourth group of Alberti's prose-works we
come across a new vein of semi-moral, semi-satirical
reflection. These are devoted to love and matrimony,
giving rhetorical expression to the misogynistic side
of the Novelle. Alberti professes himself a master in
the lore of love. He knows its symptoms, diagnoses
and describes the stages of the malady, and pretends
to intimate acquaintance with the foibles of both sexes,
IO RENAISSANCE IN ITALY.
Yet we seem to feel that his knowledge is rather liter-
ary than real, derived from books and pranked with a
scholastic show of borrowed learning. Two lectures,
addressed by women to their own sex on the art of
love, take the first place in this series. The one is
called Ecatomfila, or the lady of the hundred loves; the
other Amiria, or the lady of the myriad. 1 The former
tells her female audience what kind of lover to choose,
neither too young nor too old, not too rich nor yet
too handsome; how to keep him, and in what way to
make the most of the precious acquisition. She is
comparatively modest, and the sort of passion she
implies may pass for virtuous. Yet her large experi-
ence of men proves she has arrived at wisdom after
many trials. Her virtue is a matter of prudent ego-
ism. Amiria takes a different line. Heliogabalus
might have used her precepts in his Concio ad Mere-
trices. Her discourse turns upon the subsidiary aids
to beauty and the arts of coquetry. Recipes for hair-
dyes, depilatories, eye-lotions, tooth-powders, soaps,
lip-salves, ointments, cosmetics, skin-preservers, wart-
destroyers, pearl-powders, rouges, are followed up with
sound advice about craft, fraud, force, feigned passion,
entangling manoeuvres, crocodile tears, and secrecy in
self-indulgence. The sustained irony of this address,
and the minute acquaintance with the least laudable
secrets of an Italian lady's toilet it reveals, place it
upon the list of literary curiosities. Did any human
beings ever plaster their faces with such stuff as Amiria
gravely recommends ? 2
i Op. Volg. vols. iii. and v.
* Passages in the plays of our own dramatists warn us to be careful
SATIRE ON WOMEN. 211
The Deifira is a dialogue on the cure of a dis-
tempered passion, which adds but little to Ovid's
Remedium Amoris; while two short treatises on
marriage only prove that Alberti took the old Simon-
idean view of there being at least nine bad women
to one good one. 1 His misogyny, whether real or
affected, reaches its climax in an epistle to Paolo
Codagnello, which combines the worst things said by
Boccaccio in the Corbaccio with Lucian's satire on female
uncleanliness in the Amores? The tirade appears to
be as serious as possible, and, indeed, Alberti's genera-
lities might be illustrated ad libitum from the Novelle,
It is no wonder that women resented his treatment of
them; and one of his most amusing lesser tracts is a
dialogue between himself and a lady called Sofrona,
who took him to task for this very epistle. In answer
to her reproaches he is ceremoniously polite. He
also gives her the last word in the argument, not
without a stroke of humor. "It is all very well of
you, men of letters, to take our characters away, so
long as we can rule our husbands and make choice of
lovers when and how we choose. All you men run
after us; and if you do but see a pretty girl, you
how we answer in the negative. But here are some specimens of Amiria's
recipes (pp. tit. v. 282). " Radice di cocomeri spolverizzata, bollita in
orina, usata piu di, lieva dal viso panni e rughe. Giovavi sangue di tauro
stillato a ogni macula, stereo di colombe in aceto . . . insieme a stereo
di cervio . . . lumache lunghe . . . stereo di fanciullo . . . sangue d'
anguille." All these things are recommended, upon one page, for spots
on the skin. I can find nothing parallel in the very curious toilet book
called Gli Ornamenti delle Dame, scritti per M. Giov. Marinelli, Ve-
netia, Valgrisio, 1574.
i Op. Volg. vol. iii. 367; vol. i. 191, 215.
Op. Volg v. 2.33.
212 RENAISSANCE IN ITALY.
stand as stock still as a statue." 1 After this fashion
runs Sofrona's reply.
Alberti's misogynistic essays remind us how very
difficult it is to understand or explain the tone of
popular literature in that century with regard to
women. That the Novelle were written to amuse
both sexes seems clear; and we must imagine that
the women who read so much vituperation of their
manners, regarded it as a conventional play with words.
Like Sofrona, they knew their satirists to be fair
husbands, fathers, brothers, and, in the capacity of
lovers, ludicrously blind to their defects. The current
abuse of women, in which Petrarch no less than
Alberti and Boccaccio indulged, seems to have been a
scholastic survival of the coarse and ignorant literature
of the medieval clergy. Cloistered monks indulged
their taste for obscenity, and indemnified themselves
for self-imposed celibacy, by grossly insulting the mo-
thers who bore them and the institution they adminis-
tered as a sacrament. 2 Their invective tickled the
vulgar ear, and passed into popular literature, where
it held its own as a commonplace, not credited with
too much meaning by folk who knew the world.
The pretty story of Ippolito and Leonora, could we
believe it to be Alberti's, might pass for a palinode
to these misogynistic treatises. 3 It is the tale of two
Florentine lovers, born in hostile houses, and brought
after a series of misadventures, to the fruition of
' Op. Volg. \. 236.
I may refer to the Latin song against marriage, Sit Deo gloria
(Du Me"ril, Polsies Populaires Latines du Moyen Age, pp. 179-187), for
an epitome of clerical virulence and vileness on this topic.
Op, Volg. iii. 274.
ALBERTPS POEMS. 213
honorable love in marriage. The legend must have
been very popular. Besides the prose version, in
which the lovers are called Ippolito de' Buondclmonti
and Leonora de' Bardi, we have a poem in ottava
rima, where the heroine's name becomes Dianora. A
Latin translation of the same novel was produced by
Paolo Cortesi, with the title Hyppolyti et Deyanira
Historia. But since Alberti's authorship has not
been clearly proved, it is more prudent to class both
Italian versions among those anonymous products of
popular literature which will form the topic of my next
chapter.
Of Alberti's poems few survive; and these have
no great literary value. Out of the three serious sonnets,
one beginning lo vidi gib seder deserves to be studied
for a certain rapidity of movement and mystery of
emotion. 1 It might be compared to an allegorical
engraving by some artist of the sixteenth century
Robeta or the Master of the Caduceus. Two
burlesque sonnets in reply to Burchiello have this
interest, that they illustrate a point of literary contact
between the people and the cultivated classes. But,
on the whole, the Sestines and the Elegy of Agiletta
must be reckoned Alberti's best performances in verse. 2
Here his gnomic wisdom finds expression in pregnant,
almost epigrammatic utterances. There are passages
in the Agilctta y weighty with packed sentences,
which remind an English reader of Bacon's lines on
human life. 3 Still it is the poetry of a ma.i largely
gifted, but not born to be a singer. It may be worth
' Op. Volg. v. 352. J Ibid. pp. 355-359- 367-372.
J For example the lines beginning " Sospetto e cure." Ibid. p. 368,
214 RENAISSANCE IN ITALY.
adding to this brief notice of Alberti's rhymes, that he
essayed Latin meters in Italian. The following elegiac
couplet belongs to him l :
Questa per estremo miserabile epistola mando
A te che spregi miseramente noi.
It is not worth printing. But it illustrates that en-
deavor to fuse the forms of ancient with the material
of modern art, which underlay Alberti's practical ex-
periments in architecture.
It may seem that too much attention has already
been given to Alberti and his works. Yet when we
consider his peculiar position in the history of the
Renaissance, when we remember the singular beauty
of his character, and reflect that, first among the
humanists of mark, he deigned to labor for the pub-
lic and to cultivate his mother tongue, a certain dis-
proportion in the space allotted him may be excused.
What his immediate successors in the field of erudi-
tion thought of him, can be gathered from a passage
in Poliziano's preface to the first edition of his work
on Architecture. 2 "To praise the author is beyond
the narrow limits of a letter, beyond the poor reach of
my powers of eloquence. Nothing, however abstruse
in learning, however remote from the ordinary range
of scholarship, was hidden from his genius. One
might question whether he was better fitted for oratory
or for poetry, whether his speech was the more weighty
or the more polished." These great qualities Alberti
1 Op. Volg. \. Ixv. He was not alone in this experiment. Barbarous
Italian Sapphics and Hexameters are to be found in the Accademia Cor-
onaria on Friendship, of which more in the next chapter.
De Re ^Edificatoria, Florence, 1485. This preface is a letter ad
dressed to Lorenzo de' Medici.
ALBERTrS GENIUS. 215
placed freely at the service of the unlettered laity.
He is therefore the hero of that age which I have
called the period of transition.
In Alberti, moreover, we study the best type of the
Italian intellect as it was molded, on emergence from
the middle ages, by those double influences of hu-
manism and fine art which determined the Renais-
sance. Though his genius was rather artistic than
scientific, all problems of nature and of man attracted
him; and he dealt freely with them in the spirit of
true modern curiosity. His method shows no trace
either of mystical theology or of crooked scholas-
ticism. He surveyed the world with a meditative
but observant glance, avoiding the deeper questions
of ontology, and depicting what he noticed with the
realism of a painter. This powerful pictorial faculty
made his sketches from contemporary life the de-
scription of the gambler in the Deiciarchia; the portrait
of the sage in the Teogenio; the domestic colloquies
of Giannozzo with his wife in the Famiglia; the in-
terior of a coquette's chamber in the Amiria sur-
prising for sincerity and fullness. As a writer, he
has the same merit that we recognize in Masaccio and
Ghirlandajo among the fresco-painters of that age.
But Alberti's touch is more sympathetic, his humanity
more loving.
He was not eminent as a metaphysician. From
Plato he only borrowed something of his literary
art, and something of ethical elevation, leaving to
Ficino the mysticism which then passed for Platonic
science. His ideal of the virtuous man is a Floren-
tine burgher, honorable but keen in business, open
216 RENAISSANCE IN ITALY.
to culture of all kinds, untainted by the cynicism
that marred Cosimo de' Medici, lacking the licentious
traits of the Novelle. Alberti's Padre di Famiglia
might have stepped from the walls of the Riccardi
Chapel or the Choir of S. Maria Novella, in his grave
red lucco, with the cold and powerful features. The
life praised above all others by Alberti is the life of a
meditative student, withdrawn from State affairs, and
corresponding with men of a like tranquil nature.
This ideal was realized by Sannazzaro in his Mergel-
lina, by Ficino at Montevecchio, by Pico at Querceto.
Just as his science and his philosophy were aesthetic,
so were his religion and his morality. He conformed
to the ceremonies of the Catholic Church. But the
religious sentiment had already become in him rational
rather than emotional, and less a condition of the
conscience than of the artistic sensibility. Honor in
men, honesty in women, moved his admiration because
they are comely. The splendor of the stars, the love-
liness of earth, raised him in thought to the supreme
source of beauty. Whatever the genius of man brings
to perfection of grace, he called divine, realizing for
the first time the piety that finds God in the human
spirit. 1
The harmonious lines and the vast spaces of the
Florentine Duomo thrilled him like music, merging
the charm of art in the high worship of a cultivated
nature. "This temple," he writes in a passage that
might be quoted as the quintessential exposition of his
1 "Quicquid ingenio esset hominum cum quadam effectum elegantia,
id prope divinum dicebat," says the anonymous biographer. This sen-
tence is the motto of humanism as elaborated by the artistic sense. Its
discord with the religion of the middle ages is apparent
HIS SENSE OF HARMONY. 21 7
mind, 1 " has in it both grace and majesty, and I delight
to notice that union of slender elegance with full and
vigorous solidity, which shows that while every mem-
ber is designed to please, the whole is built for perpe-
tuity. Inside these aisles there is the climate of
eternal spring wind, frost, and rime without ; a quiet
and mild air within the blaze of summer on the
square; delicious coolness here. Above all things I
delight in feeling the sweetness of those voices busied
at the sacrifice, and in the sacred rites our- classic
ancestors called mysteries. All other modes and
kinds of singing weary with reiteration ; only religious
music never palls. I know not how others are affected;
but for myself, those hymns and psalms of the Church
produce on me the very effect for which they were
designed, soothing all disturbance of the soul, and in-
spiring a certain ineffable languor full of reverence
toward God. What heart of man is so rude as not to
be softened when he hears the rhythmic rise and fall
of those voices, complete and true, in cadences so
sweet and flexible ? I assure you that I never listen
in these mysteries and funeral ceremonies to the Greek
words which call on God for aid against our human
wretchedness, without weeping. Then, too, I ponder
\vhat power music brings with it to soften us and
soothe."
It would be difficult with greater spontaneity
and truth to delineate the emotions stirred in an
artistic nature by the services of a cathedral. It is
the language, however, not of a devout Christian, but
of one who, long before Goethe, had realized the
' OJ>. Volg. \. 8.
2l8 RENAISSANCE IN ITALY.
Goethesque ideal of " living with fixed purpose in the
Whole, the Good, the Beautiful."
Alberti both in his width of genius and in his limi-
tations in his all-embracing curiosity and aptitude for
knowledge, his sensitiveness to every charm, his strong
practical bias, the realism of his pictures, the objec-
tivity of his style, his indifference to theology and me-
taphysic, the largeness of his love for all things that
have grace, the substitution of sesthetical for moral
standards, the purity of his taste, the tranquillity and
urbanity of his spirit, his Stoic- Epicurean acceptance
of the world where man may be content to dwell and
build himself a home of beauty was a true represen-
tative of his age. What attracts us in the bronze-work
of Ghiberti, in the bass-reliefs of Delia Robbia, in Ros-
sellino's sleeping Cardinal di Portogallo, in Ghirlan-
dajo's portraits and the airy space of Mas ccio's back-
grounds, in the lives of Ficino and Pomponio Leto, in
the dome of Brunelleschi, in the stanzas of Poliziano,
arrives at consciousness in Alberti, pervades his writ-
ing, and finds unique expression in the fragment of
his Latin biography. Yet we must not measure the
age of Cosimo de' Medici and Roderigo Borgia by the
standard of Alberti. He presents the spirit of the
fifteenth century at its very best. Philosophical and
artistic sympathy compensate in his religion for that
period's lack of pious faith. Its political degradation
assumes in him the shape of a fastidious retirement
from vulgar strife. Its lawlessness, caprice, and vio-
lence are regulated by the motto "Nothing overmuch"
which forms the keystone of his ethics. Its realism
is tempered by his love for man and beast and tree
THE HYPNEROTOMACHIA. 219
that love which made him weep when he beheld the
summer fields and labors of the husbandman. Its
sensuality finds no place in his harmonious nature.
Many defects of the century are visible enough in
Alberti ; but what redeemed Italy from corruption and
rendered her capable of great and brilliant work
amid the chaos of States ruining in infidelity and vice
that free energy of the intellect, open to all influences,
inventive of ideas, creative of beauty, which ennobled
her Renaissance burned in him with mild and tranquil
radiance.
This is perhaps the fittest place to notice a re-
markable book, which, though it cannot be reckoned
among the masterpieces of Italian literature, is too
important in its bearing on the history of the Re-
naissance to be passed in silence. The Hypneroto-
machia Poliphili, or " Poliphil's Strife of Love in a
Dream," was written by Francesco Colonna, a Domini-
can monk, at Treviso in 1467.* There is some reason
to conjecture that he composed it first in Latin ; 2 but
when it appeared in print in 1499, it had already
assumed the garb of a strange maccaronic style, blend-
ing the euphuisms of affected rhetoric with phrases
culled from humanistic pedantry. The base of the
language professes to be Italian ; but it is an Italian
Latinized in all its elements, and interlarded with
scraps of Greek and Hebrew. The following descrip-
1 This we learn from the last words of the first edition, " Tarvisii
cum decorissimis Poliae amore lorulis distineretur miseilus Poliphilus
MCCCCLXVII." The author's name is given in the initial letters to the
thirty-eight chapters of the book.
a For this and other points about the Hypnerotomachia see Ilg's
treatise Ueber der Kunsthistorischen Werth der Hypnerotomachia Po
liphili, Wien, Braunmiiller, 1872.
330 RENAISSANCE IN ITALY.
tion of the Dawn, with which the book opens, may
serve as a specimen of its peculiar dialect l :
Phoebo in quel hora manando, che la fronte di Matuta Leucothea
candidava, fora gia dalle Oceans unde, le volubile rote sospese non
dimonstrava. Ma sedulo cum gli sui volucri cabaili, Pyroo primo, &
Eoo al quanto apparendo, ad dipingere le lycophe quadrige della
figliola di vermigliante rose, velocissimo inseguentila, non dimorava.
Et coruscante gia sopra le cerulee & inquiete undule, le sue irradiante
come crispulavano. Dal quale adventicio in quel puncto occidua da-
vase la non cornuta Cynthia, solicitando gli dui cabaili del vehiculo
suo cum il Mulo, lo uno candido & laltro fusco, trahenti ad lultimo
Horizonta discriminante gli Hemisperii pervenuta, & dalla pervia
Stella ari centare el di, fugata cedeva. In quel tempo quando che gli
Rhiphaei monti erano placidi, ne cum tanta rigidecia piu lalgente &
frigorifico Euro cum el laterale flando quassabondo el mandava gli
teneri ramuli, & ad inquietare gli mobili scirpi & pontuti iunci &
debili Cypiri, & advexare gli plichevoli vimini & agitare gli lenti
salici, & proclinare la fragile abiete sotto gli corni di Tauro lascivianti.
Quanta n el hyjjerno tempo spirare solea. Similmente el iactabondo
Orione cessando di persequire lachrymoso, lornato humero Taurino
delle sete sorore.
1 It ought, however, to be said that, being the first paragraph of the
whole book, its style is not so free and simple as in more level passages.
Though I do not pretend to understand the meaning clearly, I subjoin a
translation. " Phoebus advancing at that moment, when the forehead of
Matuta Leucothea whitened, already free from Ocean's waves, had not yet
shown his whirling wheels suspense. But bent with his swift chargers,
Pyrous first and Eous just disclosed to view, on painting the pale chariot
of his daughter with vermeil roses, in most vehement flight pursuing her,
made no delay. And sparkling over the azure and unquiet wavelets, his
light-showering tresses flowed in curls. Upon whose advent at that point
descending to her rest stayed Cynthia without horns, urging the two steeds
of her carriage with the Mule, the one white and the other dark, drawing
toward the furthest horizon which divides the hemispheres where she had
come, and, routed by the piercing star who lures the day, was yielding.
At that time when the Riphaean mountains were undisturbed, nor with
so cold a gust the rigid and frost-creating east-wind with the side-blast
blowing made the tender branches quake, and tossed the mobile stems
and spiked reeds and yielding grasses, and vexed the pliant tendrils, and
shook the flexible willows, and bent the frail fir-branches 'neath the horns
of Taurus in their wantonness. As in the winter time that wind was
wont to breathe. Likewise the boastful Orion was at the point of staying
to pursue with tears the beauteous Taurine shoulder of the seven sisters
ITS RELATION TO THE AGE. 211
Whether Francesco Colonna prepared the redaction
from which this paragraph is quoted, admits of doubt.
A scholar, Leonardo Crasso of Verona, defrayed the
cost of the edition. Manutius Aldus printed the vol-
ume and its pages were adorned with precious wood-
cuts, the work of more than one anonymous master
of the Lombardo- Venetian school. 1 It was dedicated
to Duke Guidobaldo of Urbino.
For the student of Italian literature in its transition
from the middle age to the Renaissance, the Hypneroto-
machia has special and many-sided interest. It shows
that outside Florence, where the pure Italian idiom
was too vigorous to be suppressed, humanistic fashion
had so far taken possession of the literary fancy as to
threaten the very existence of the mother tongue.
But, more than this, it represents that epoch of trans-
ition in its fourfold intellectual craving after the
beauty of antiquity, the treasures of erudition, the
multiplied delights of art, and the liberty of nature.
These cravings are allegorized in a romance of love,
which blends medieval mysticism with modern sensu-
ousness. Like the style, the matter of the book is
maccaronic, parti-colored and confused; but the pas-
sion which controls so many elements is genuine and
simple. The spirit of the earlier Renaissance reflects
itself, as in a mirror, in the Dream of Poliphil. So
essentially is it the product of a transitional moment
1 When the book was translated into French and republished at
Paris in the sixteenth century, the blocks were imitated, and at a later
epoch it became fashionable to refer them to Raphael. The mistake was
gross. Its only justification is the style adopted by the French imitators
in their rehandling of the illustrations to Poliphil's soul pleading before
Venus. These cuts seem to have felt the influence of the Farnesina
frescoes.
Z22 RENAISSANCE IN ITALY.
that when the first enthusiasm for its euphuistic ped-
antry and sesthetical rapture had subsided, the key to
its most obvious meaning was lost. In the preface to
the fourth French edition (1600), Beroald de Verville
hinted that the volume held deep alchemistic secrets for
those who could discover them. After this distortion,
the book passed into not altogether unmerited oblivion.
It had done its work for the past age. It now remains
an invaluable monument for those who would fain
reconstruct the century which gave it birth.
The Hypnerotomachia professes to relate its au-
thor's love for Polia, a nun, his search after her, and
their union, at the close of sundry trials and adventures,
in the realm of Venus. Poliphil dreams that he finds
himself in a wild wood, where he is assailed by mon-
strous beasts, and suffers great distress of mind. He
prays to Diespiter, and comes forthwith into a pleasant
valley, through which he wanders in the hope of find-
ing Polia. At the outset of his journey he meets five
damsels, Aphea, Offressia, Orassia, Achoe, Geussia,
who conduct him to their queen, Eleuterilyda. 1 She
understands his quest, and assigns the maidens, Logis-
tica and Thelemia, to be his guides into the palace of
Telosia. They journey together and arrive at the
abode of Dame Telosia, which has three gates sever-
ally inscribed in Hebrew, Greek, and Latin characters
1 Here is the description of Poliphil's reception by the damsels:
" Respose una lepidula placidamente dicendo. Da mi la mano. Hora si
tu sospite & il bene venuto. Nui al presento siamo cinque sociale comite
come il vedi, Et io me chiamo Aphea. Et questa che porta li buxuli &
gli bianchissimi liuteamini, e nominata Offressia. Et questaltra che dil
splendente speculo (delitie nostre) e gerula, Orassia e il suo nome. Cos-
tei che teiie la sonora lyra, e dicta Achoe. Questa ultima, che questc
vaso di pretiosissimo liquore baiula, ha nome Geussia."
THE ALLEGORY. 22$
\vith legends, the meaning whereof is God's Glory,
Mother of Love, and Worldly Glory. Poliphil enters
the first door, and finds the place within but little to
his liking. Then he tries the third, and is no better
pleased. Lastly he gains admittance to the demesne
of Love's Mother, where he is content to stay. Lovely
and lascivious maidens greet him kindly; and while
he surrenders to their invitation, one of his attendants,
Logistica, takes her flight. He is left with his beloved
Thelemia to enjoy the pleasures of this enchanting
region.
Thus far the allegory is not hard to read. Poliphil,
or the lover of Polia, escapes from the perils of the
forest where his earlier life was passed, by petition to
the Father of Gods and Men. He places himself in
the hands of the five senses, who conduct him to free-
will. Freewill appoints for his further guidance reason
and inclination, who are to lead him to the final choice
of lives. When he arrives at the point where this
choice has to be made, he perceives that God, the
world, and beauty, who is mother of love, compete
for his willing service. He rejects religion and am-
bition; and no sooner has his preference for love and
beauty been avowed, than the reasoning faculty deserts
him, and he is abandoned to inclination.
While Poliphil is dallying with the nymphs of
pleasure and his own wanton will, he is suddenly
abandoned by these companions, and pursues his
journey alone. 1 Before long, however, he becomes
1 A portion of the passage describing this dalliance may be extracted
as a further specimen of the author's style: "Cum lascivi vulti, et gli
pecti procaci, ochii blandienti et nella rosea fronte micanti e ludibondi.
Forme prae-excellente, Habiti incentivi, Moventie puellare, Risguardi
224 RENAISSANCE IN ITALY.
aware of a maiden, exceedingly fair to look upon, who
carries in her hand a lighted torch. With her for
guide, he passes through many pleasant places, arriving
finally at the temple of Venus Physizoe. This maiden,
though as yet he cannot recognize her, is the Polia he
seeks, and on their way together he feels the influences
of her love-compelling beauty. They enter the chapel
of Venus, and are graciously received by the prioress
who guards that sanctuary. Mystical rites of initiation
and consecration are performed. Polia lays down her
torch, and is discovered by her lover. Then they are
wedded by grace of the abiding goddess; and having
undergone the ceremony of spousal, they resume
their wanderings together. They pass through a
desolate city of tombs and ruins, named Polyandrion,
where are the sepulchers and epitaphs of lovers. Here,
too, they witness the pangs of souls tormented for
their crimes against the deity of Love. Afterwards they
reach a great water, where Cupid's barge comes sailing
by, and takes them to the island of Cythera. It is a
level land of gardens, groves and labyrinths, adorned
with theaters and baths, and watered by a mystic font
of Venus. Near the Tomb of Adonis in this demesne
of Love, Polia and Poliphil sit down to rest among the
nymphs, and Polia relates the story of their early passion.
morclenti, Exornato mundissimo. Niuna parte simulate, ma tutto dalla
natura perfecto, cum exquisita politione, Niente difforme ma tutto har-
monia concinnissima, Capi flavi cum le trece biondissime e crini insolari
tante erano bellissime complicate, cum cordicelle, o vero nextruli di
seta e di fili doro intorte, quanto che in tutto la operatione humana ex-
cedevano, circa la testa cum egregio componimento invilupate e cum
achi crinali detente, e la fronte di cincinni capreoli silvata, cum lascivula
mconstantia praependenti." There is an obvious study of Boccaccesque
phrase, with a no less obvious desire to improve upon its exquisiteness
of detail, masking an incapacity to write connectedly.
THE ROMANCE OF POLIA. 225
It is here, if anywhere, that we come across reality
in this romance. Polia tells how the town of Treviso
was founded, and of what illustrious lineage she came
and how she vowed herself to the service of Diana
when the plague was raging in the city. In Dian's
temple Poliphil first saw her, and fainted at the sight,
and she, made cruel by the memory of her vows,
left him upon the temple- floor for dead. But when
she returned home, a vision of women punished for
their hard heart smote her conscience; and her old
nurse, an adept in the ways of love, counseled her
to seek the Prioress of Venus, and confess, and enter
into reconcilement with her lover. What the nurse
advised, Polia did, and in the temple of Venus she
met Poliphil. He, while his body lay entranced upon
the floor of Dian's church, had visited the heavens
in spirit and obtained grace from Venus and Cupid.
Therefore, the twain were now of one accord, and
ready to be joined in bonds of natural affection. At
the end of Polia's story, the nymphs leave both lovers
to enjoy their new-found happiness. But here the
power of sleep is spent, and Poliphil, awakened by
the song of swallows, starts from dreams with " Fare-
well, my Polia ! " upon his lips.
Such is the frail and slender basis of romance,
corresponding, in the details of Polia's narrative, to an
ordinary novella, upon which the bulky edifice of the
Hypnerotomachia is built. This love-story, while it
gives form to the book, is clearly not the author's
main motive. What really concerns him most deeply
is the handling of artistic themes, which, though
introduced by way of digressions, occupy by far the
226 RENAISSANCE IN ITALY.
larger portion of his work. The Hypnerotomachia is
an encyclopaedia of curious learning, a treasure-house
of aethetical descriptions and discussions, vividly
reflecting the two ruling enthusiasms of the earlier
Renaissance for scholarship and art. Minute details
of inexhaustible variety, bringing before our imagina-
tion the architecture, sculpture, and painting of the
fifteenth century, its gardens, palaces and temples, its
processions, triumphs and ceremonial shows, its delight
in costly jewels, furniture, embroidery and banquets,
its profound feeling for the beauty of women, and its
admiration for the goodliness of athletic manhood, are
massed together with bewildering profusion. Not one
of the technical arts which flourished in the dawn of
the Renaissance but finds due celebration here; and
the whole is penetrated with that fervent reverence
for antiquity which inspired the humanists. Yet the
Hypnerotomachia, though sometimes tedious, is never
frigid. With the precision of a treatise and the mi-
nuteness of an inventory, it combines the ardor of
impassioned feeling, the rapture of anticipation, the
artist's blending with the lover's ecstasy. It is a
dithyramb of the imagination, inflamed by no Oriental
lust of mere magnificence, but by the fine sense of
what is beautiful in form, rare in material, just in
proportion, exquisite in workmanship.
Whether the Hypnerotomachia exercised a power-
ful influence over the productions of the Italian genius,
can be doubted. But that it presents an epitome or
figured abstract of tne Renaissance in its earlier luxu-
riance, is unmistakable. Reading it, we wander
through the collections of Paul II., rich with jewels,
THE ROMANCE OF ART. 227
intagli, cameos and coins; we enter Amadeo's chapels,
Filarete's palaces, Bramante's peristyles and loggie;
we pace the gardens of the Brenta and the Sforza's
deer-parks at Pavia; we watch Lorenzo's Florentine
trionfi and Pietro Riario's festivals in Rome; Gior-
gione's fetes champttres are set for us in framework
of the choicest fruits and flowers; we hear Ciriac of
Ancona discoursing on his epigraphs and broken
marbles; before our eyes, as in a gallery, are ranged
the bass-reliefs of Donatello wrought in bronze, Man-
tegna's triumphs, Signorelli's arabesques, the terra-cotta
of the Lombard and the stucco of the Roman schools,
the carved- work of Alberti's church at Rimini, the
tarsiatura of Fra Giovanni da Verona's choir-stalls,
doorways from Milanese and chimneys from Urbino
palaces, Vatican tapestries and trellis-work of beaten
iron from Prato all that the Renaissance in its bloom
produced, is here depicted with the wealth and warmth
of fancy doting on anticipated beauties.
Of the author, Francesco Colonna, very little is
known, except that he was born in 1433 at Venice,
that he attached himself to Ermolao Barbaro, spent a
portion of his manhood in the Dominican cloister of
S. Niccol6 at Treviso, and died at Venice in 1627.
Whether the love-tale of the Hypnerotomachia had a
basis of reality, or whether we ought to regard it
wholly from the point of view of allegory, cannot be
decided now. It is, however, probable that a sub-
stratum of experience underlay the vast mass of
superimposed erudition and enthusiastic reverie. The
references to Polia's name and race; her epitaph
appended to the first edition; the details of her narra-
228 RENAISSANCE IN ITALY.
tive, which somewhat break the continuity of style and
introduce a biographical element into the romance;
the very structure of the allegory which assigns so
large a part in life to sensuous instinct all these points
seem to prove that Poliphil was moved by memory of
what had really happened, no less than by the desire
to express a certain mood of feeling and belief. Such
mingling of actual emotion with ideal passion in a work
of imagination, dedicated to a woman who is also an
emblem, was consistent with the practice of medieval
poets. Polia belongs, under altered circumstances, to
the same class as Beatrice. The hypothesis that,
whoever she may have been, she had become for her
lover a metaphor of antique beauty, is sufficiently
attractive and plausible. If we adopt this theory,
we must interpret the dark wood where Poliphil first
found himself, to mean the anarchy of Gothic art;
while his emancipation through the senses and The-
lemia characterizes the spirit in which the Italians
achieved the Revival. The extraordinary care
lavished upon details, interrupting the course of
the romance and withdrawing our sympathy from
Polia, meet from this point of view with justification.
Veiling his enthusiasm for the renascent past beneath
the fiction of a novel, Francesco Colonna invests the
lady of his intellectual choice, the handmaid of Aphro-
dite, evoked from the sepulcher where arts and
sciences lie buried, with rich Renaissance trappings
of elaborate device. Beneath those exuberant ara-
besques, within that labyrinth of technically perfect
details, suave outlines, delicate contours devoid of
content, a real woman would be lost. But if Polia be
PASSION FOR ART AND SCHOLARSHIP. 229
not merely a woman, if she be, as her name ico\ia
seems to indicate, at the same time the vision of
resurgent classic beauty, then the setting which her
lover has contrived is adequate to the influences
which inspired him. The multiform and labored
frame-work of his picture acquires a meaning from the
spirit of the goddess whom he worships, and the pre-
siding genius of his age dwells in a shrine, each point
of which is brilliant with the splendor which that spirit
radiates.
It is, therefore, as an allegory of the Renaissance,
conscious of its destiny and strongest aspirations in
the person of an almost nameless monk, that we should
read the Hypnerotomachia. Still, even so, the mark of
indecision, which rests upon the many twy-formed
masterpieces of this century, is here discernible.
Francesco Colonna has one foot in the middle ages,
another planted on the firm ground of the modern era.
He wavers between the psychological realism of
romance and the philosophical idealism of allegory.
Polia is both too much and too little of a woman. At
one time her personality seems as distinct as that of
any heroine of fiction; at another we lose sight of her
in the mist of symbolism. Granting, again, that she is
a metaphor, she lends herself to more than one concep-
tion. She is both an emblem of passion, sanctified by
nature, and liberated from the bondage of asceticism,
and also an emblem of ideal beauty, recovered from
the past, and worshiped by a scholar-artist.
This confusion of motives and uncertainty of aim,
while it detracts from the artistic value of the
Hypnerotomachia, enhances its historical importance.
230 RENAISSANCE IN ITALY.
In form, the book has to be classed with the Visions
of the middle ages the Divine Comedy, the Am
orosa Visione, and the Quadriregio. But though the
form is medieval, the inspiration of this prose-poem
is quite other. We have seen already how Francesco
Colonna, traveling in search of Polia, prayed to Ju-
piter, and how the senses and freewill guided him
to the satisfaction of his deepest self in the service
of Beauty. It is in the temple of Venus Physizoe
(Venus the procreative source of life in Nature) that
he meets with his love and is wedded to her in the
bonds of mutual desire. 1 Christianity is wholly, we
might say systematically, ignored. The ascetic stand-
point of the middle age is abandoned for another,
antagonistic to its ruling impulses. A new creed,
a new cult, are introduced. Polia, whether we re-
gard her as the poet's mistress or as the spirit of
antiquity which has enamored him, is won by worship
paid to deities of natural appetite. In its essence,
then, the Hypnerotomachia corresponds to the most
fruitful instinct of the Renaissance to that striving
after emancipation which restored humanity to its
heritage in the realms of sense and reason. Old ideals,
exhausted and devoid of vital force, are exchanged for
fresh and beautiful reality. The spirituality of the
past, which has become consumptive and ineffective by
lapse of time and long familiarity, yields to vigorous
animalism. The cloister is quitted for the world,
1 The reiteration of sensuous phrases is significant. These inscrip-
tions, itavroov roxaSt, rtav Set itoieiv xara TTJY ctvrov <pv6iv, yovol
ttat evcpvia, together with the Triumphs of Priapus and Cupid, accord
with the supremacy of Venus Physizoe.
PASSION FOR NATURE. 131
religious for artistic ecstasy, celestial for -earthly par-
adise, scholasticism for humane studies, the ascetic
for the hedonistic rule of conduct. Criticised accord-
ing to its deeper meaning, the Hypnerotomachia is the
poem of which Valla's De Voluptate was the argument,
of which Lorenzo de' Medici's life was the realization,
and the life of Aretino the caricature. If it assumes
the form of a vision, reminding us thereby that the
author was born upon the confines of the middle ages
and the modern era, it deals with the vision in no
Dantesque spirit, but with the geniality of Apuleius.
Allegory is but a transparent veil, to make the nudity
of natural impulse fascinating. As in Boccaccio, so
here the hymn of il talento, simple appetite, is sung;
but the fusion of artistic and humanistic enthusiasms
with this ground-motive adds peculiar quality, distinc-
tive of the later age which gave it birth.
The secret of its charm, which, indeed, it shares
with earlier Renaissance art in general, is that this
yearning after freedom has been felt with rapture, but
not fully satisfied. The season of repletion and
satiety is distant. Venus Physizoe appears to Fran-
cesco Colonna radiant above all powers of heaven or
earth, because he is a monk and may not serve her.
Had he his whole will, she might have been for him
Venus Volgivaga, and he the author of another
Puttana Err ante. Nor has she yet assumed the
earnest mask of science. This element of unassuaged
desire, indulged in longings and outgoings of the fancy,
this recognition of man's highest good and happiness
in nature by one who has forsworn allegiance to the
laws of nature, adds warmth to his emotion and pene-
23 a RENAISSANCE IN ITALY.
trates his pictures with a kind of passion. The arts
and scholarship, which divide the empire of his soul
with beauty, have no less attraction of romance than
love itself. Nor are they separated in his mind from
nature. Nature and antiquity, knowledge and desire,
the reverence for abstract beauty and the instincts of a
lover are fused in one enthusiasm. Thus Francesco
Colonna makes us understand how Italy used both
art and erudition as instruments in the liberation of
human energies. For the thinkers and actors of that
period, antiquity and the plastic arts were aids to the
recovery of a paradise from which man had been
exiled. They could not dissociate the conception of
nature from studies which revealed their human dig-
nity and freedom, or from arts whereby they expressed
their vivid sense of beauty. The work they thus in-
augurated, had afterwards to be continued by the
scientific faculties.
One word may finally be said about the peculiar
delicacy of this book. The Hypnerotomachia is no
less an apotheosis of natural appetite than the Amoroso,
Visione. But it is more sentimental and imaginative,
because its author had not Boccaccio's crude experi-
ence. It anticipates the art of the great age the art
of Cellini and Giulio Romano, goldsmith-sculptors and
palace-builders; but it is more refined and passionate,
because its author enjoyed those beauties of consum-
mate craft in reverie instead of practice. It interprets
the enthusiasm of Ciriac and Poggio, discoverers of
manuscripts, decipherers of epigraphs; but it is more
naif and graceful than their work of erudition, because
its author dealt freely with his learning and subordinated
VISION OF RENAISSANCE.
233
scholarship to fancy. In short the Hypnerotomachia
is a foreshadowing of the Renaissance in its prime
the spirit of the age foreseen in dreams, embodied in
imagination, purged of material alloy, and freed from
the encumbrances of actuality.
CHAPTER IV.
POPULAR SECULAR POETRY.
Separation between Cultivated Persons and the People Italian despised
by the Learned Contempt for Vernacular Literature The Certamen
Coronarium Literature of Instruction for the Proletariate Growth
of Italian Prose Abundance of Popular Poetry The People in the
Quattrocento take the Lead Qualities of Italian Genius Arthurian
and Carolingian Romances IRealidi Francia Andrea of Barberino
and his Works Numerous Romances in Prose and Verse Positive
Spirit Versified Tales from Boccaccio Popular Legends Ginevra
degli Almieri Novel of// Grasso Histories in Verse Lamenti
The Poets of the People Cantatori in Banco, Antonio Pucci His
Sermintesi Political Songs Satires Burchiello His Life and
Writings Dance-Songs Derived from Cultivated Literature, or pro-
duced by the People Poliziano Love-Songs Rispetti&nA Stornelli
The Special Meaning of Strambotti Diffusion of this Poetry over
Italy Its Permanence Question of its Original Home Intercom-
munication and Exchange of Dialects Incatenature and Rappre
saglie Traveling in Medieval Italy The Subject-Matter of this
Poetry Deficiency in Ballad Elements Canti Monferrini The Bal-
lad of L'A-vvelenato and Lord Ronald.
DURING the fifteenth century there was an almost com-
plete separation between the cultivated classes and
the people. Humanists, intent upon the exploration
of the classics, deemed it below their dignity to use the
vulgar tongue. They thought and wrote in Latin, and
had no time to bestow upon the education of the
common folk. A polite public was formed, who in the
Courts of princes and the palaces of noblemen amused
themselves with the ephemeral literature of pamphlets,
essays, and epistles in the Latin tongue. For these
THE PEOPLE AND THE SCHOLARS. 235
well-educated readers Poggio and Pontano wrote their
Latin novels. The same learned audience applauded
the gladiators of the moment, Valla and Filelfo, when
they descended into the arena and plied each other
with pseudo-Ciceronian invectives. To quit this re-
fined circle, and address the vulgar crowd, was thought
unworthy of a man of erudition. Even Alberti, as
we have seen, felt bound to apologize for sending
his Teogenio in Italian to Lionello d' Este. Only here
and there a humanist of the first rank is found who,
like Bruni, devoted a portion of his industry to the
Italian lives of Dante and Petrarch, or like Filelfo,
lectured on the Divine Comedy, or again like Landino,
composed a Dantesque commentary in the mother
tongue. Moreover, Dante and Petrarch passed for
almost classical; and in nearly all such instances of
condescension, pecuniary interest swayed the scholar
from his wonted orbit. It was want of skill in Latin
rather than love for his own idiom which induced Ves-
pasiano to pen his lives of great men in Italian. Not
spontaneous inspiration, but the whim of a ducal
patron forced Filelfo to use terza rima for his worth-
less poem on S. John, and to write a commentary upon
Petrarch in the vernacular. 1 One of this man's let-
ters reveals the humanist's contempt for the people's
language, and his rooted belief in the immortality of
1 See Rosmini, Vita di Filelfo, vol. ii. p. 13, for Filelfo's dislike of
Italian. In the dedication of his Commentary to Filippo Maria Visconti
he says: "Tanto piti volentieri ho intrapreso questo comento, quanto
dalla tua eccellente Signoria non solo invitato sono stato, ma pregato,
lusingato et provocato." The first Canto opens thus:
O Philippo Maria Anglo possente,
PerchS mi strengi a quel che non poss' io ?
Vuoi tu ch' io sia ludibrio d' ogni gente ?
236 RENAISSANCE IN ITALY.
Latin. It is worth translating. 1 " I will answer you/'
he says, " not in the vulgar language, as you ask, but
in Latin and our own true speech; for I have ever had
an abhorrence for the talk of grooms and servants,
equal to my detestation of their life and manners.
You, however, call that dialect vernacular which, when
I use the Tuscan tongue, I sometimes write. All
Italians agree in praise of Tuscan. Yet I only employ
it for such matters as I do not choose to transmit
to posterity. Moreover, even that Tuscan idiom is
hardly current throughout Italy, while Latin is far and
wide diffused throughout the habitable world." From
this interesting epistle we gather that even professional
scholars in the middle of the fifteenth century recog-
nized Tuscan as a quasi-literary language, superior in
polish to the other Italian dialects, but not to be com-
pared for dignity and durability with Latin. It also
proves that the language of Boccaccio was for them
almost a foreign speech.
This attitude of learned writers produced a curious
obtuseness of critical insight. Niccol6 Niccoli, though
he was a Florentine, called Dante " a poet for bakers
and cobblers." Pico della Mirandola preferred Lorenzo
de' Medici's verses to Petrarch. Landino complained,
not, indeed, without good reason in that century, that
the vulgar language could boast of no great authors
Filippo Villani, in the proem to his biographies, apolo-
gized for his father Matteo, who exerted humble facul-
ties and scanty culture to his best ability. Lorenzo
de' Medici defended himself for paying attention to an
idiom which men of good judgment blamed for " low
1 Dated Milan. Feb. 1477. Rosmini, op. cit. p. 282.
DECADENCE OF ITALIAN. 237
ness, incapacity and unworthiness to deal with high
themes or grave material." Benedetto Varchi, who
lived to be an excellent though somewhat cumbrous
writer of Italian prose, gives this account of his early
training 1 : "I remember that when I was a lad, the
first and strictest rule of a father to his sons, and of a
master to his pupils, was that they should on no
account and for no object read anything in the vulgar
speech (non legesseno cose volgari, per dirlo barbara-
mente come lord); and Master Guasparre Mariscotti da
Marradi, who was my teacher in grammar, a man of
hard and rough but pure and excellent manners,
having once heard, I know not how, that Schiatta di
Bernardo Bagnesi and I were wont to read Petrarch
on the sly, gave as a sound rating for it, and nearly
expelled us from his school." Some of Varchi's own
stylistic pedantries may be attributed to this Latinizing
education.
Even when they wrote their mother tongue, it
followed that the men of humanistic culture had a false
conception of style. Alberti could not abstain from
Latinistic rhetoric. Cristoforo Landino went the
length of asserting that " he who would fain be a good
Tuscan writer, must first be a Latin scholar." The
Italian of familiar correspondence was mingled in
almost equal quantities with Latin phrases. Thus
Poliziano, writing from Venice to Lorenzo de' Medici,
employs the following strange maccaronic jargon 2 :
Visitai stamattina Messer Zaccheria Barbero; e mostrandoli io 1'
affezione vostra ec., mi rispose sempre lagrimando, et ut visum est,
> Ercolano (in Vinetia, Giunti, 1570), p. 185.
* Prose Volgari, etc.. edite da I. del Lungo (Firenze, Barbara, 1867).
p. 80.
238 RENAISSANCE IN ITALY.
dc cuore; risolvendosi in questo, in te uno spem esse. Ostendit sc
nosse quantum tibi debeat; sicchft fate quello ragionaste, ut favens
ad majora. Quello Legato che torna da Roma, et qui tecum locutus
cst Florentiae, non d punto a loro proposito, ut ajunt.
Poliziano, however, showed by his letters to the ladies
of the Medicean family, and by some sermons com-
posed for a religious brotherhood of which he was a
member, that he had no difficulty in writing Tuscan
prose of the best quality. 1 It seems to have been a
contemptuous fashion among men of learning, when
they used the mother tongue for correspondence, to
load it with Latin just as a German of the age of
Frederick proved his superiority by French phrases.
The acme of this affectation was reached in the Hypne-
rotdmachia, where the vice of Latinism sought perpetua-
tion through the printing press. Meanwhile, the genius
of the Florentine people was saving Italian literature
from the extreme consequences to which caricatures of
this kind, inspired by humanistic pedantry and sciolism,
exposed it.
A characteristic incident of the year 1441 brings
before us a set of men who, though obscure and
devoted to the service of the common folk, exercised
no slight influence over the destinies of the Italian
language. After the reinstatement of the Medici, and
while Alberti was resident in Florence, it occurred to
him to propose the prize of a silver crown for the
best poem upon Friendship, in the vulgar tongue.
Piero de' Medici approving of this scheme, it was
arranged that the contest for the prize should take
place in S. Maria del Fiore, the competitors reciting
1 Prose, etc., op. cit. pp. 45 et. seg. pp. 3 et seq.
PLEBEIAN LITERATURE. 239
their own compositions. The secretaries of Pope
Eugenius IV. consented to be umpires. Eight poets
entered the lists Michele di Noferi del Gigante,
Francesco d'Altobianco degli Alberti, and six others
not less unknown to fame. We still possess their com-
positions in octave stanzas, terza rima, sapphics, hexa-
meters and lyric strophes. 1 The poems were so bad
that even the judges of that period refused to award
the crown; nor could the most indulgent student of
forgotten literature arraign this verdict for severity.
Yet the men who engaged in Alberti's Certamen Caro-
narium, as it was called, fairly represented a class of
literary workers, who occupied a middle place between
the learned and the laity, and on whom devolved the
task of writing for the people.
Since that unique moment in the history of Tuscan
civilization when the lyrics of Dante and Guido
Cavalcanti were heard upon the lips of blacksmiths,
the artisans of Florence had not wholly lost their
thirst for culture. Style and erudition retired into the
schools of the humanists and the studies of the nobles.
But this curiosity of the volgo, as Boccaccio contempt-
uously called them, was satisfied by the production
of a vernacular literature, which brought the ruder
1 Alberti, Op. Volg. vol. i. pp. clxvii.-ccxxxiii. The qual.ty of these
Latin meters may be judged from the following hexameters:
Ma non prima sar che '1 Dato la musa corona
Invochi, allora subito cantando 1* avete,
Tal qual si gode presso il celeste Tonante.
Ot the Sapphics the following is a specimen:
Eccomi, i' son qui Dea degli amid,
Quella qual tutti li omini solete
Mordere, e falso fugitiva dirli,
Or la volete.
f 240 RENAISSANCE IN ITAL Y.
elements of knowledge within their reach. Mention has
already been made of Latini's Tesoro and Tesoretto.
Uberti's Dittamondo and similar encyclopaedic works
of medieval learning. To these may now be added
Leonardo Dati's cosmographical history in octave
stanzas, the Schiavo da Bari's aphorisms on morality,
and Pucci's terza rima version of Villani's Chronicle.
Genealogical poems on popes, emperors and kings;
episodes from national Italian history; novels, ro-
mances and tales of chivalry; pious biographies; the
rudiments of education, from the Dottrinale of Jacopo
Alighieri down to Feo Belcari's ABC, helped to
complete the handicraftsman's library. Further to
describe this plebeian literature is hardly necessary.
The authors advanced no pretensions to artistic
elegance or stateliness of style. They sought to ren-
der knowledge accessible to unlettered readers, or
to please an open-air audience with stirring and ro-
mantic narratives. Their language broke only at rare
intervals into poetry and rhetoric, when the subject-
matter forced a note of unaffected feeling from the
improvisatore. Yet it has always the merit of purity,
and, in point of idiom, is superior to the Latinistic
periods of Alberti. By means of the neglected labors
of these nameless writers, the style of the fourteenth
century, so winning in its infantine grace, was grad-
ually transformed and rendered capable of stronger
literary utterance. Those who have studied a single
prose- work of this period 1 Reali di Francia, for in-
stance, or Belcari's Vita del Beato Colombino, or the
Governo della Famiglia ascribed to Pandolfini will be
convinced that a real progress toward grammatical
POETRY AND FICTION. 241
cohesion and massiveness of structure was made
during those years of the fifteenth century which are
usually counted barren of achievement by literary
historians. Italian prose had entered on the period of
adolescence, leading to the manhood of Machiavelli.
The popular poetry of the quattrocento is still
more interesting than its prose. No period of Italian
history was probably more fruitful of songs poured
forth from the very heart of the people, on the fields
and in the city. The music of these lyrics still lingers
about the Tuscan highlands and the shores of Sicily,
where much that now passes for original composition
is but the echo of most ancient melody stored in the
retentive memory of peasants. To investigate the
several species of this poetry, together with kindred
works of prose fiction, under the several classes of (i)
epics and romances, (ii) histories in verse and satires,
(iii) love-poems, (iv) religious lyrics, and (v) dramas, will
be my object in the present and the following chapters^
This survey of popular literature forms a necessary
introduction to the renascence which was simulta-
neously effected for Italian at Florence, Ferrara and
Naples during the last years of the century. The
material prepared by the people was then resumed
and artistically elaborated by learned authors.
It has been well said that Italian poetry exhibits
a continual reciprocity of exchange between the culti-
vated classes and the proletariate. In this respect the
literature of the Italians corresponds to their fine art.
Taken together with painting, sculpture, and music, it
offers a more complete embodiment of the national
spirit than can be shown by any other modern race.
24* RENAISSANCE IN ITALY.
Dante's Francesca and Count Ugolino, Ariosto's golden
cantos, and the romantic episodes of the Gerusalemme
are known by heart throughout the length and breadth
of the Peninsula. The people have appropriated
these masterpieces of finished art. On the other hand,
the literary poets have been ever careful to borrow
subjects, forms, and motives from the populace. The
close rapport which thus connects the tastes and in-
stincts of the proletariate with the culture of the aris-
tocracy, is rooted in peculiar conditions of Italian
society. Traditions of a very ancient civilization,
derived without apparent rupture from the Roman age,
have penetrated and refined the whole nation. From
the highest to the lowest, the Italians are born with
sensibility to beauty. This people and its poets live
in sympathy so vital that, though their mutual good
understanding may have been suspended for .short
intervals, it has never been broken. The vibrations
of intercourse between the peasant and the learned
writer are incessant; and if we notice some inter-
mittency of influence on one side or the other, it is
only because at one epoch the destinies of the national
genius were committed to the people, at another to the
cultivated classes. In the fifteenth century, one of
these temporary ruptures occurred. The Revival of
Learning had to be effected by an isolation of the
scholars. Meanwhile, the people carried on the work
of literary transmutation, which was to connect
Boccaccio with Pulci and Poliziano. Their instinct
rejected all elements alien to the national tempera-
ment. Out of the many models bequeathed by the
fourteenth century, only those which suited the sen
SPIRIT OF POPULAR POETRY. 243
suous realism of the Florentines survived. The tradi-
tions of Ciullo d' Alcamo and Jacopone da Todi, of
Rustico di Filippo and Lapo Gianni, of Folgore da S.
Gemignano and Cene dalla Chitarra, of Cecco Angio-
lieri and Guido Cavalcanti, of Boccaccio and Sacchetti,
of Ser Giovanni and Alesso Donati, triumphed over
the scholasticism of those learned poets ''half Pro-
vengal and half Latin, half chivalrous, and half bour-
geois, half monastic and half sensual, half aristocratic
and half plebeian " l who had unsuccessfully experi-
mentalized in the dawn of Tuscan culture. The arti-
ficial chivalry, lifeless mysticism, barren metaphysics,
and hypocritical piety of the rhyming doctors were
eliminated. Common sense expressed itself in a reac-
tion against their conventional philosophy. Giotto's
blunt critique of Franciscan poverty, Orcagna's bur-
lesque definition of Love, not as a blind boy with
wings and arrows, but thus :
L' amore fc un trastullo;
Non 6 composto di legno n6 d* osso;
E a molta gente fa rompere il dosso:
struck the keynote of the new literature. 1 It is true
that much was sacrificed. Both Dante and Petrarch
seemed to be forgotten. Yet this was inevitable.
Dante represented a bygone age of faith and reason.
Petrarch's humanity was too exquisitely veiled. The
Florentine people required expression more simple
and direct, movement more brusque, emotion of a
coarser fiber. Meanwhile the Divine Comedy and
1 Carducci, "Delia Rime di Dante Aligrhieri." Studi, p. 154.
1 For Giotto's and Orcagna's poems, seeTrucchi, vol. ii. pp. 8 and 2$.
44 RENAISSANCE IN ITALY.
the Canzoniere were the inalienable possessions of
the nation. They had already taken rank as classics.
The Italians had no national Epic, if we except
the sEneid. We have seen how the romances of
Charlemagne and Arthur were imported with the
languages of France and Provence into Northern
Italy, and how they passed into the national litera-
ture of Lombardy and Tuscany. 1 Both cycles were
eminently popular. The Tavola Ritonda ranks among
the earliest monuments of Tuscan prose. 2 The Cento
Novelle contain frequent references to Merlin, Lance-
lot and Tristram. Folgore da S. Gemignano com-
pares the members of his Joyous Company to King
Ban's children. In the Laberinto d Amore Boccac-
cio speaks of Arthurian tales as the favorite studies
of idle women, and Sacchetti bids his blacksmith
turn from Dante to legends of the Round Table.
Yet there is no doubt that from a very early period
the Carolingian cycle gained the preference of the
Italian people. 3 It is also noticeable that, not the
main legend of Roland, but the episode of Rinaldo,
and other offshoots from the history of the Prankish
peers, furnished plebeian poets with their favorite
material. 4 MSS. written in Venetian and Franco-
' See above, pp. 17 et seq.
* The Tavola Ritonda has been reprinted, 2 vols., Bologna, Roma-
gnoli, 1864. It corresponds very closely in material to our Mart d* Ar-
thur, beginning with the history of Uther Pendragon and ending with
Arthur's wound and departure to the island of Morgan le Fay.
3 See above, p. 18. The subject of these romances has been ably
treated by Ho Rajna in his works, I Reali di Francia (Bologna, Roma-
gnoli, 1872), and Le Fonti dell' Orlando Furioso (Firenze, Sansoni, 1876)
* The Rinaldino, a prose romance recently published (Bologna,
Romagnoli, 1865), might be selected as a thoroughly Italian fioritvru
on the ancient Carolingian theme.
THE RE A LI DI FRANC/A.
245
Italian dialects before the middle of the fourteenth
century attest to the popularity of these subordinate
romances, and reveal an independent handling of the
borrowed subject. In form they do not diverge
widely from French originals. Yet there is one
prominent characteristic which distinguishes the Italian
rifacimenti. A Christian hero falls in love with a
pagan heroine on pagan soil. His pursuit of her,
their difficulties and adventures, and the evangeli-
zation of her people by the knightly lover, furnish a
series of incidents which recur with singular persis-
tence. 1 When the romances in question had been
translated into Tuscan, a destiny of special splendor
was reserved for two of them, in no way distinguished
by any apparent merit above the rest. These were
the tales of Buovo d' Antona, of which we possess an
early version in octave stanzas, and of Fioravante,
which exists in still older prose. About the beginning
of the fifteenth century, the Buovo and the Fioravante,
together with other material drawn from the Carolin-
gian epic, were combined into the great prose work
called I Reali di Francia.' 1 Since its first appearance
to the present day, this romance has never ceased to
be the most widely popular of all books written in
Italian. " There is nothing," says Signer Rajna, " so
assiduously read from the Alps to the furthest head-
lands of Sicily. Wherever a reader exists, there is it
certain to be found in honor." 3 Not the earliest but
1 We have here the germ of the Orlando and of the first part of the
Morgante.
* Rajna, I Reali, p. 320, fixes the date of its composition at a little
before 1420.
Ibid. p. 3.
246 RENAISSANCE IN ITALY.
the latest product of a long elaboration of romantic
matter by the people, it seems to have assimilated the
very essence of the popular imagination. When we
inquire into its authorship, we find good reason to
ascribe it to Andrea dei Mangalotti of Barberino in
the Val d' Elsa, one of the best and most indefatigable
workmen for the literary market of the proletariate. 1
It was he who compiled the Aspromonte, the Aiolfo>
the seven books of Storie Nerbonesi, the Ugone
d Avernia, and the Guerino il Meschino, reducing these
tales from elder poems and prose sources into Tuscan
of sterling lucidity and vigor, and attempting, it
would seem, to embrace the whole Carolingian cycle
in a series of episodical romances. 2 Guerino il Mes-
chino rivaled for a while the Reali in popularity; but
for some unknown reason, which would have to be
sought in the instinctive partialities of the people, it
was gradually superseded by the latter. The Reah
alone has descended in its original form through the
press to this century. 3
Andrea da Barberino, if we are right in ascribing
the Reali to his pen, conferred a benefit on the Italians
parallel to that which the English owed to Sir Thomas
Mallory in his " Mort d' Arthur." He not only col-
lected and condensed the scattered tales of numerous
unknown predecessors, but he also bequeathed to
the nation a monument of unaffected prose at a
* I Reali, pp. 311-319.
* The Storie Nerbonesi were published in two vols. (Bologna, Roma-
gnoli, 1877), under the editorship of I. G. Isola. The third volume forms
a copious philological and critical appendix.
* Guerino was versified in octave stanzas, by a poet of the people
called L'Altissimo, in the sixteenth century.
ANDREA DA BARBERINO. 247
moment when the language was still ingenuous and
plastic. It would be not uninteresting to compare the
fate of the Reali with that of our own " Mort d' Arthur."
The latter was the more artistic performance of the
two. It achieved a truer epical unity, and was com-
posed in a richer, more romantic style. The former
remained episodical and incomplete; and its language,
though solid and efficient, lacked the charm of
Mallory's all golden prose. Yet the Reali is still a
household classic. It is found in every contadinos
cottage, and supplies the peasantry with subjects for
their Maggi. The " Mort d' Arthur," on the contrary,
has become the plaything of medievalizing folk in
modern England. Read for its unique beauty by
students, it is still unknown to the people, and, in
the opinion of the dull majority, it is reckoned in-
ferior to Tennyson's smooth imitations.
When we come to consider the romantic poems
of Pulci, Boiardo, and Ariosto, we shall be able to
estimate the service rendered by men like Andrea da
Barberino to polite Italian literature. The popularity
of the cycle to which the Reali belonged, decided the
choice of the Carolingian epic by the poets of
Florence and Ferrara. Nor were the above-mentioned
romances by any means the only works of their kind
produced for a plebeian audience in the quattrocento.
It is enough to mention La Regina Ancroja, La
Spagna, Trebisonda con la Vita e Morte di Rinaldo.
Both in prose and verse an abundant literature of the
kind was manufactured. Without being positively
burlesqued, the heroes of chivalrous story were
travestied to suit the taste of artisans and burghers.
248 RENAISSANCE IN ITALY.
The element of the marvelous was surcharged ; comic
and pathetic episodes were multiplied; beneath the
armor of the Paladins Italian characters were substi-
tuted with spontaneous malice for the obsolete ideals
of feudalism. It only needed a touch of conscious
irony to convert the material thus elaborated by the
people into the airy fabric of Ariosto's art. At the
same time the form which the epic of romance was
destined to assume, had been determined. The streets
and squares of town and village rang with the chants
of improvisatori, turning the prose periods of Andrea
da Barberino and his predecessors into wordy octave
stanzas, rehandling ancient Chansons de Geste, and
adapting the mannerism of chivalrous minstrelsy to
the requirements of a subtle-witted Tuscan crowd.
The old-fashioned invocations of God, Madonna, or
some saint were preserved at the beginning of each
canto, while the audience received their conge from
the author at its close. When the poems thus pro-
duced were committed to writing, the plebeian author
feigned at least the inspiration of a bard.
While the traditions of medieval song were thus
preserved, the prose-romances followed, as closely as
possible, the style of a chronicle, and aimed at the
verisimilitude of authentic history. The Reali, for
example, opens with this sentence: "Fuvvi in Roma
un santo pastore della Chiesa, che aveva nome papy
Silvestro." The Fioravante, recently edited by Signor
Rajna, begins: " Nel tempo che Gostantino imperadore
regiea & mantenea corte in Roma grandissima."
This parade of historic seriousness, observed by the
subsequent romantic poets, contributed in no small
POSITIVE TONE. 245
measure to the irony at which they aimed. But with
the story-tellers of the quattrocento it was no mere
affectation. Like their predecessors of the fourteenth
century, they treated legend from the standpoint of
experience. It was due in no small measure to this
circumstance that the Italian prose - romances are
devoid of charm. Nowhere do we find in them that
magic touch of poetry which makes the forests, seas
and castles of the " Mort d' Arthur " enchanted ground.
Notwithstanding all their extravagances, they remain
positive in spirit, presenting the material of fancy in
the sober garb of fact. The Italian genius lacked a
something of imaginative potency possessed in over-
flowing measure by the Northern nations. It required
the stimulus of satire, the infusion of idyllic sentiment,
the consciousness of art, to raise the romantic epic to
the height it reached in Ariosto. Then, and not till
then, when the matter of the legend had become the
sport of the aesthetic sense, were the inexhaustible
riches of Italian fancy, dealing delicately and humor-
ously with a subject which could no longer be appre-
hended seriously, revealed to the world in a master-
piece of beauty. But that work of consummate art
was what it was, by reason of the master's wise em-
ployment of a style transmitted to him through genera-
tions of plebeian predecessors.
The same positive and workmanly method is dis-
cernible in the versified novelle of this period. 1 The
1 See I Novelheri Italiana in Verso by Giamb. Passano (Romagnoli,
1868). The whole Decameron was turned into octave stanzas by V.
Brugiantino, and published by Marcolini at Venice in 1554. Among
Novelle versified for popular reading may be cited, Masetto the Gar-
dener (Decatn. Giorn iii. i), Romeo and Juliet (Verona, 1553), // Grjsso
250 RENAISSANCE IN ITALY.
popular poets were wont to recast tales from th
Decameron and other sources in octave stanza!
Of such compositions we have excellent specimens ii,
Girolamo Benivieni's version of the novel of Tancredi,
and in an anonymous rhymed paraphrase of Patient
Grizzel. 1 The latter is especially interesting when we
compare it with the series of panels attributed to
Pinturicchio in the National Gallery, where a painter
of the same period has exercised his fancy in illustrat
ing the legend which the poet versified. Detachec
episodes of semi -mythical Florentine history weit
similarly treated. Allusion has already been made tt
the love-tale of Ippolito and Leonora, attributed 01
doubtful grounds to Alberti. 2 But by far the most
beautiful is the story of Ginevra degli Almieri, told in
octave stanzas by Agostino Velletti. 3 This poem has
rare value as a genuine product of the plebeian muse.
The heroine Ginevra's father was a pork-butcher, says
Legnaiuolo (by B. Davanzati, Florence, 1480), Prasildo and Lisbina
(from the Orlando Innamorato), Oliva, Fiorio e Biancifiore (the tale
of the Filocopd). Of classical tales we find Sesto Tarquinio et Lucretia,
Orpheo, Perseo, Piramo, Giasone e Medea.
1 Tancredi Principe di Salerno, Bologna, Romagnoli, 1863. II
Marchese di Saluzzo e la Griselda, Bologna, Romagnoli, 1862.
* See above, p. 212. The literary hesitations of an age as yet un-
certain of its aim might be illustrated from these romances. Of Ippolito
e Leonora we have a prose, an ottava rima, and a Latin version. Ot
Griselda we have Boccaccio's Italian, and Petrarch's Latin prose, in
addition to the anonymous ottava rima version. Of the Principe di
Salerno we have Boccaccio's Italian, and Lionardo Bruni's Latin versions
in prose, together with Filippo Beroaldo's Latin elegiacs, Francesco di
Michele Accolti's terza rima and Benivieni's octave stanzas. Lami in
his Novelle letterarie (Bologna, Romagnoli, 1859) prints an Italian
novella on the same story, which he judges anterior to the Decameron.
Later on, Annibal Guasco produced another ottava rima version; and
the tale was used by several playwrights in the composition of tragedies.
La Storia di Ginevra Almieri c he fu sepolta viva in Firenze
(Pisa, Nistri. 1863).
GINEVRA DEC LI ALMIERI. 251
the minstrel, and lived in the Marcato Vecchio, where
he carried on the best business of the sort in Florence.
It is also important for students of comparative litera-
ture, because it clearly illustrates the difference between
Italian and Northern treatment of an all but contem-
porary incident. The events narrated are supposed to
have really happened in the year 1396. On the
Scotch Border they would have furnished materials for
a ballad similar to Gil Morrice or Clerk Saunders. In
Florence they take the form of a novella, and the
novella is expanded in octave stanzas. 1 Ginevra had
two lovers, Antonio de' Rondinelli and Francesco
degli Agolanti. Antonio loved her the more tenderly;
but her parents gave her in marriage to Francesco.
Soon after the ceremony, she sickened and fell into a
trance; and since Florence was then threatened with
the plague, the girl was buried over-hastily in this
deep slumber. Her weeping parents laid her in a
cippus or avello between the two doors of S. Reparata,
where the workmen, unable to finish their job before
sunset, left the lid of her sepulcher unsoldered. In the
middle of the night Ginevra woke, and discovered
to her horror that she had been sent to the grave
alive. Happily the moon was shining, and a ray of
light fell through a chink upon her bier. She arose,
wrapped her shroud around her, and struggled from
her marble chest into the silent cathedral square.
Giotto's bell tower rose above her, silvery and beau-
tiful, and slender in the moonlight. Like a ghost,
> The same point is illustrated by the tales of the Marchese di Saluzzo
and the Principe di Salerno, which produced the novels of Griselda and
Tancredi. See notes to p. 250, above.
252 RENAISSANCE IN ITALY.
sheeted in her grave-clothes, Ginevra ran through the
streets, and knocked first at Francesco's door. He
was seated awake by the fireside, sorrowing for his
young bride's loss :
Andonne alia finestra c aprilla un poco:
Chi 6 la ? Chi batte ? lo son la tua Ginevra;
Non m' odi tu ? Col suo parlar persevera.
Her husband doubts not that it is a spirit calling to
him, bids her rest till masses shall be said for her re-
pose, and shuts the window. Then she turns to her
mother's house. The mother, too, is sitting sorrowful
by the hearth, when she is startled by Ginevra's
cry:
spaventata e piena di paura
Disse: va in pace, anima benedetta,
Bella figliuola mia, onesta e pura;
E riserro la finestra con fretta.
Rejected by husband and mother, Ginevra next tries
her uncle, and calls on him for succor in God's
name:
Fugli risposto; anima benedetta,
Va che Dio ti conservi in santa pace.
The poor wretch now feels that there is nothing left
for her but to lie down on the pavement and die of
cold. But while she is preparing herself for this fate,
she bethinks her of Antonio. To his house she hur-
ries, cries for aid, and falls exhausted on the doorstep.
Then comes the finest touch in the poem. Antonio
knows Ginevra's voice ; and loving her so tenderly, he
hurries with delight to greet her risen from the grave.
He alone has no fear and no misgiving; for love in
him is stronger than death. At the street door, when
IL GRASSO.
253
he reaches it, he finds no ghost, but his own dear lady
yet alive. She is half frozen and unconscious; yet
her heart still beats. How he calls the women of his
household to attend her, prepares a bed, and feeds her
with warm soups and wine, and how she revives, and
how Antonio claims her for his wife, and wins his cause
against her former bridegroom in the Bishop's court,
may be read at length in the concluding portion of the
tale. The intrinsic pathos of this story makes it a real
poem; for though the wizard's wand of Northern im-
agination lay beyond the grasp of the Italian genius,
the novelle are rarely deficient in poetry evoked by
sympathy with injured innocence and loyal love.
Of truly popular novelle belonging to the fifteenth
century, none is racier or more characteristic than the
anonymous tale of II Grasso, Legnaiuolol It is
written in pure Florentine dialect, and might be
selected as the finest extant specimen of homespun
Tuscan humor. We have already seen that the
point of Sacchetti's stories is nearly always a prac-
tical joke, where comedy combines with heartless
cruelty in almost equal parts. The theme of //
Grasso is a superlatively comic beffa of this sort,
played by Filippo Brunelleschi on a friend of his.
The incident is dated 1409, and is supposed to have
really occurred. Manetto Ammannatini, a tarsiatore
or worker in carved and inlaid wood, was called U
Grasso, because he was a fine stout fellow of twenty-
eight years. He had his bottega on the Piazza S.
Giovanni and lived with his brother in a house hard
by. Among his most intimate associates were Filippo
1 Raccolta dei Nuvellieri Italiani, vol. xiii.
254 RENAISSANCE IN ITALY.
di Ser Brunellesco, Donatello, intagliatore di
Giovanni di Messer Francesco Rucellai, and others,
partly gentlemen and partly handicraftsmen; for there
was no abrupt division of classes at Florence, and this
story shows how artisans and men of high condition
dwelt together in good fellowship. The practical joke
devised by Brunelleschi consisted in persuading Man-
etto that he had been changed into a certain Matteo.
The whole society of friends were in the secret, and
the affair was so cunningly conducted that at last they
attained the desired object. They caused Manetto to
be arrested for a debt of Matteo, sent Matteo's brothers
and then the clergyman of the parish to reason with
him on his spendthrift habits, and fooled him so that
he fairly lost his sense of identity. The whole series
of incidents, beginning with Manetto's indignant asser-
tion of his proper personality, passing through his
doubts, and closing with his mystification, is conducted
by fine gradations of irresistibly comic humor. At last
the poor man resolves to quit Florence and to seek
refuge with King Mathias Corvinus in Hungary; which
it seems he subsequently did, in company with a cer-
tain Lo Spano. There is no reason to suppose that
this practical joke did not actually take place.
I have enlarged upon the novella of H Grasso, be-
cause it is typical of the genuinely popular literature,
written to delight the folk of Florence, appealing to
their subtlest as well as broadest sense of fun, and
bringing on the scene two famous artists, Brunelleschi,
whose cupola is " raised above the heavens," and Dona-
tello, whose S. George seems stepping from his pedes-
tal to challenge all the evil of the world and conquer
STORIES AND LAMENTS. 255
it. Unfortunately, our published collections are not
rich in novels of this date; and next to the anony-
mous tale of // Grasso, Legnaiuolo it is difficult to cite
one of at all equal value, till we come to Luigi Pulci's
story of Messer Goro and Pius II. This is really a
satire on the Sienese, whom Pulci represents with
Florentine malice as almost inconceivably silly. The
Tuscan style is piquant in the extreme, and the picture
of manners very brilliant. 1
From epical and narrative literature to poems
written for the people upon contemporary events and
public history, is not an unnatural transition. These
compositions divide themselves into Storie and La-
menti. We have abundant examples of both kinds in
lyric measures and also in octave stanzas and terza
rima? A few of their titles will suffice to indicate
their scope. II Lamento di Giuliano de' Medici relates
the tragic ending of the Pazzi conspiracy; II Lamento
del Duca Galeazzo Maria tells how that Duke was
murdered in the church of S. Stefano at Milan; El
Lamento di Otranto is an echo of the disaster which
shook all Italy to her foundations in the year 1480;
El Lamento e la Discordia de Italia universale sounds
the death-note of Italian freedom in the last years of
the century. After that period the Pianti and La-
menti, attesting to the sorrows of a nation, increase in
frequency until all voices from the people are hushed
1 Op. tit. vol. xiii. An allusion to Masuccio in this novel is interest-
ing, since it proves the influence he had acquired even in Florence:
"Masuccio, grande onore della cittk di Salerno, molto imitatore del nostro
messer Giovanni Boccaccio," ib. p. 34. Pulci goes on to say that the
reading of the Novellino had encouraged him to write his tale.
1 See D'Ancona, La Poesia Popolare Italiana, pp. 64-79.
256 RENAISSANCE IN ITALY.
in the leaden sleep of Spanish despotism. 1 The Storie
in like manner are more abundant between the years
1494 and 1530, when the wars of foreign invaders
supplied the bards of the market-place with continual
matter for improvisation. Among the earliest may
be mentioned two poems on the Battle of Anghiari
and the taking of Serezana. 2 Then the list proceeds
with the tale of the Borgias, Guerre Orrende, Rotta di
Ravenna, Malideportamentide Franciosifato in Italia,
and so forth, till it ends with La Presa di Roma and
Rotta di Ferruccio. A last echo of these Storie and
Lamenti for alas! in Italy of the sixteenth century
history and lamentation were all one still sounds
about the hillsides of Siena 3 :
O Piero Strozzi, 'ndd sono i tuoi bravoni ?
Al Poggio delle Donne in que* burronl.
O Piero Strozzi, 'ndti sono i tuoi soldati ?
Al Poggio delle Donne in quei fossati.
O Piero Strozzi, 'ndti son le tue genti ?
Al Poggio delle Donne a cdr le lenti.
It may be well to say how these poems reached
the people, before they were committed to writing or
the press. There existed a professional class of
rhymsters, usually blind men, if we may judge by
the frequent affix of Cieco to their names, who tuned
their guitar in the streets, and when a crowd had
gathered round them, broke into some legend of
1 A fine example of these later Lamenti has been republished at Bologna
by Romagnoli, 1864. It is the Lamento di Fiorenza upon the siege and
slavery of 1529-30.
A medieval specimen of this species of composition is the Ballata
for the Reali di Napoli in the defeat of Montecatini. See Carducci's
Cino e Altri, p. 603.
* D'Ancona, op. cit. p. 78.
STREET SINGERS. 257
romance, or told a tale of national misfortune. The
Italian designation of these minstrels is Cantatore in
Banco, or Cantore di piazza. In the high tide of
Florentine freedom the Cantore di piazza exercised a
noble calling; for through his verse the voice of the
common folk made itself heard beneath the very win-
dows of the Signoria. In 1342, when the war with
Pisa turned against the Florentines owing to the in-
competence of their generals, Antonio Pucci, who was
the most celebrated Cantatore of the day, took his
lute and placed himself upon the steps beneath the
Palazzo, and having invoked the Virgin Mary, struck
up a Sermintese on the duty of making peace l :
Signor, pognam ch' i' sia di vil nascenra,
I' pur nacqui nel corpo di Firenza,
Come qua! c' e di pid sofficienza:
Onde 1 mi duole
Di lei, considerando che esser suole
Tenuta pid che madre da figliuole;
Oggi ogni bestia soggiogar la vuole
occuparc.
Other poems of the same kind by Antonio Pucci belong
to the year 1346, or celebrate the purchase of Lucca
from Mastino della Scala, or the victory of Messer
Piero Rosso at Padua, or the expulsion of the Duke
of Athens from Florence in 1348. It must not be sup-
posed that the Cantatori in Banca of the next century
Sermintese Storico di A. Pucci. Livorno, Vigo, 1876. It will be re-
membered that Dante in the Vita Nuova (section vi.) says he composed
a Strventese on sixty ladies of Florence, The name was derived from
Provence, and altered into Strmintese by the Florentines. We possess
a poem of this sort by A. Pucci on the Florentine ladies, printed by
D' Ancona in his edition of the Vita Nuova (Pisa, Nistri, p. 71), together
with a valuable discourse upon this form of poetry. Carducci in his Cino
9 Altri prints two Scrmintesi by Pucci on the beauties of women.
258 RENAISSANCE IN ITALY.
enjoyed so much liberty of censure or had so high a
sense of their vocation as Antonio Pucci. Yet the
people made their opinions freely heard in rhymes
sung even by the children through the streets, as
when they angered Martin V. in 1420 by crying
beneath his very windows l :
Papa Martino, Signor di Piombino,
Conte de Urbino, non vale un quattrino.
During the ascendency of Savonarola and the party -
struggles of the Medici the rival cries of Palle and
Viva Cristo Kb were turned into street songs 2 ; but
at last, after the siege and the victory of Clement,
the voice of the people was finally stifled by au-
thority. 3
The element of satire in these ditties of the people
leads me to speak of one very prominent poet of
the fifteenth century Domenico di Giovanni, called
II Burchiello, the rhyming barber. 4 He was born
1 D'Ancona, Poesia Popolare Italiana, pp. 47-50, has collected from
Leonardo Bruno and other sources many interesting facts about Pope
Martin's anger at this ditty. He seems to have gone to the length of
putting Florence under an interdict.
D'Ancona, op. cit. pp. 51-56.
One of the last plebeian rhymes on politics comes from Siena,
where, in the year 1552, the people used to sing this couplet in derision
of the Cardinal of the Mignanelli family sent to rule them:
Mignanello, Mignanello,
Non ci piace il tuo modello.
See Benci's Storia di Montepukiano (Fiorenza, Massi e Landi, 164.1),
p. 104. An anecdote from Busini (Lettere al Varchi, Firenze, Le Mon-
nier, p. 220) is so characteristic of the popular temper under the oppres-
sion of Spanish tyranny that its indecency may be excused. He says
that a law had been passed awarding, " quattro tratti di corda ad uno
che, tirando una c disse: Poi che non si pu6 parlare con la
bocca, io parlerb col c "
See the work entitled Sulle Poesie Toscane di Domenico
chiello nel secolo xv, G. Gargani, Firenze, Tip. Cenn. 1877.
IL BURCHIELLO. 259
probably in 1403 at Florence, where his father, who
was a Pisan, had acquired the rights of citizenship and
followed the trade of a barber. Their shop was
situated in Calimala, and formed a meeting-place for
the wits, who carried Burchiello's verses over the
town. The boy seems to have studied at Pisa, and
acquired some slight knowledge of medicine. 1 At
the age of four-and-twenty we find him married, with
three children and no property. 2 Soon after this
date, he separated from his wife ; or else she left him
on account of his irregular and dissolute habits. Peer-
ing through the obscurity of his somewhat sordid
history, we see him getting into trouble v/ith the
Inquisition on account of profane speech, and then
espousing the cause of the Albizzi against the Medi-
cean faction. On the return of Cosimo de' Medici in
1434, Burchiello was obliged to leave Florence. He
settled at Siena, and opened a shop in the Corso di
Camollia, hoping to attract the Florentines whose
business brought them to that quarter. Here he
nearly ruined his health by debauchery, and narrowly
escaped assassination at the hands of a certain Ser
Rosello. 3 Leaving Siena about 1440, Burchiello
spent the last years of his life in wandering through the
cities of Italy. We hear of him at Venice entertained
by one of the Alberti family, then at Naples, finally in
1 Intendi a me, che git studiai a Pisa,
E ogni mal conosco senza signo.
Sonetti del Burchiello, del Dellincioni, e d' altri, 1757, Londra, p. 125.
See, too, the whole sonnet Son medico in volgar.
3 Gargani, op. cit. p. 23, extract from the Catasto, 1427: " Domeni-
cho di Giovanni barbiere non ha nulla."
3 The parallel between these passages of Burchiello's life afnd Filel
io's at the same period is singular. See Revival of Learning, p. 275.
260 RENAISSANCE IN ITALY.
Rome, where he died in 1448, poisoned probably by
Robert, a bastard of Pandolfo Sigismondo Malatesta,
at the instigation of his ancient enemy, Cosimo de'
Medici. l Such long arms and such retentive memory
had the merchant despot.
Burchiello's sonnets were collected some thirty
years after his death and published simultaneously at
various places. 2 They owed their popularity partly to
their political subject-matter, but more to their strange
humor. A foreigner can scarcely understand their
language, far less appreciate their fun; for not only
are they composed in Florentine slang of the fifteenth
century, but this slang itself consists of detached
phrases and burlesque allusions, chipped as it were
from current speech, broken into splinters, and then
wrought into a grotesque mosaic. That Burchiello
had the merit of originality, and that he caught the
very note of plebeian Utterance, is manifest from the
numerous editions and imitations of his sonnets. 3 His
Muse was a volgivaga Venus bred among the taverns
and low haunts of vulgar company, whose biting wit
introduced her to the society of the learned. Yet her
utterances, at this distance of time, are so obscure and
their point has been so blunted that to profess an
admiration for Burchiello savors of literary affecta-
tion. 4 He was a poet of the transition; and the
1 Gargani, op. cit. p. 90.
8 The best edition bears the date Londra, 1757.
The edition cited above includes Sonetti alia Burchiellesca by a
variety of writers. The strange book called Pataffio, which used to be
ascribed to Brunette Latini, seems born of similar conditions.
4 Florentines themselves take this view, as is proved by the following
sentence from Capponi: " pure qui obbligo di registrare anche il Bur-
chiello, barbiere di nome rimasto famoso, perche fece d* un certo suo
POPULAR LYRICS. 26 1
burlesque style which he made popular was destined
to be superseded by the more refined and subtle
Bernesque manner. II Lasca, writing in the sixteenth
century, expressed himself strongly against those who
still ventured to compare Burchiello with the author
of Le Pesche. " Let no one talk to me of Burchiello ;
to rank him with Burni is no better than to couple
the fiend Charon with the Angel Gabriel." 1
Not the least important branch of popular poetry
in its bearing on the future of Italian literature was
the strictly lyrical. In treating of these Volkslieder,
it will be necessary to consider them under the two
aspects of secular and religious the former destined
to supply Poliziano and Lorenzo de' Medici with
models for their purest works of literary art, the latter
containing the germs of the Florentine Sacred Play
within the strophes of a hymn.
If we return to the golden days of the fourteenth
century, we find that Dante's, Boccaccio's and Sac-
chetti's Ballate descended to the people and were
easily adapted to their needs. 2 Minute comparison
of Dante's dance-song of the Ghirlandetta with the
version in use among the common folk will show what
slight alterations were needed in order to render it the
gergo poesia forse arguta ma triviale; oscura oggi, ma popolare nei tempi
suoi e che ebbe inclusive imitatori " (Storia della Rep. di Firenze, ii. 176).
1 See the Sonnet quoted in Note 59 to Mazzuchelli's Life of Berni,
Scrittori d' Italia, vol. iv.
* The Ballata or Canzone a Ballo, as its name implies, was a poem
intended to be sung during the dance. A musician played the lute while
young women executed the movements of the Carola (so beautifully de-
picted by Benozzo Gozzoli in his Pisan frescoes), alone or in the company
of young men, singing the words of the song. The Ballata consisted of
lyric stanzas with a recurrent couplet. It is difficult to distinguish the
Ballate from the Canzonette d' Amore.
262 RENAISSANCE IN ITALY.
property of 'prentice lads and spinning maidens, and
at the same time how subtle those changes were. 1
Dante's song might be likened to a florin fresh from
the mint; the popular ditty to the same coin after it
had circulated for a year or two, exchanging something
of its sharp lines for the smoothness of currency and
usage. The same is true of Boccaccio's Ballata, fl fior
che 7 valor perde; except that here the transformation
has gone deeper, and, if such a criticism may be
hazarded, has bettered the original by rendering the
sentiment more universal. 2 Sacchetti's charming song
O vaghe montanine pasturelle underwent the same
process of metamorphosis before it assumed the form
in which it passed for a composition of Poliziano. 3
Starting with poems of this quality, the rhymsters of
the market-place had noble models, and the use they
made of them was adequate. We cannot from the
wreck of time recover very many that were absolutely
written for the people by the people; but we can
judge of their quality by Angelo Poliziano's imitations. 4
He borrowed so largely from all sources, and his debts
can be so accurately traced in his rispetti, that it is fair
to credit the popular Muse with even such delicate work
as La Brunettina, while the disputed authorship of
the May-song Ben venga Maggio and of the Ballata
Vaghe le montanine e pastorelle is sufficient to prove
at least their widespread fame. 6 Whoever wrote them,
See Carducci, Cantilene e Ballate (Pisa, 1871), pp. 82, 83.
Ibid. pp. 171-173.
a Ibid. pp. 214-217.
* A volume of ancient Canxoni a Ballo was published at Florence
in 1562, by Sermatelli, and again in 1568.
6 Le Rime di Me*ser A. Poliziano, pp. 295, 346.
DANCE AND LOVE SONGS. 36$
they became the heirlooms of the people. If proof
were needed of the vast number of such compositions
in the fifteenth century erotic, humorous, and not
unfrequently obscene it might be derived from the
rubrics of the Laude or hymns, which were almost
invariably parodies of popular dance-songs and in-
tended to be sung to the same tunes. 1 Every festivity
May-morning tournaments, summer evening dances
on the squares of Florence, weddings, carnival proces-
sions, and vintage-banquets at the villa had their own
lyrics, accompanied with music and the Carola.
The dance-songs and canzonets, of which we have
been speaking, were chiefly of town growth and
Tuscan. Another kind of popular love-poem, com-
mon to all the dialects of Italy, may be regarded as a
special production of the country. Much has lately
been written concerning these Rispetti, Strambotti and
Stornelli? Ample collections have been made to
1 See Laude Spirituali di Feo Belcari e di Altri, Firenze, 1863. The
hymn Crocifisso a capo chino, for example, has this heading: " Cantasi
come Una donna d' amor fino," which was by no means a moral song
(ib. p. 16). D' Ancona in his Poesia Pop. It. pp. 431-436, has extracted
the titles of these profane songs, some of which are to be found in the
Canzoni a Ballo (Firenze, 1568), and Canti Carnascialeschi (Cosmo-
poli, 1750), while the majority are lost.
4 The books which I have consulted on this branch of vernaculat
poetry are (i) Tommaseo, Canti popolari toscani, corsi, illirici e greci,
Venezia, 1841. (2) Tigri, Canti popolari to scani, Firenze, 1869. (3) Pitrd,
Canti popolari siciliani, and Studi di poesia popolare, Palermo, 1870-
1872. (4) D' Ancona, La Poesia popolare italiana, Livorno, 1878. (5)
Rubieri, Storia della poesia popolare italiana, Firenze, 1877. Also
numerous collections of local songs, of which a good list is furnished in
D' Ancona's work just cited. Bolza's edition of Comasque poetry, Dal
Medico's of Venetian, Ferraro's of Canti Monferrini (district of Mont-
ferrat), Vigo's of Sicilian, together with Imbriani's of Southern and
Marcoaldo's of Central dialects, deserve to be specially cited. The lit-
erature in question is already voluminous, and bids fair to receive COD
siderable additions.
264 RENAISSANCE IN ITALY.
illustrate their local peculiarities. Their points of
resemblance and dissimilarity have been subjected to
critical analysis, and great ingenuity has been expended
on the problem of their origin. It will be well to
preface what has to be said about them with some
explanation of terms. There are, to begin with, two
distinct species. The Stornello Ritornello or Fiore,
called also Ciure in Sicily, properly consists of two
or three verses starting with the name of a flower.
Thus 1 :
Fior di Granato !
Bella, lo nome tuo sta scritto in cielo,
Lo mio sta scritto sull' onda del mare.
Rispetto and Strambotto are two names for the same
kind of song, which in the north-eastern provinces is
also called Villotta and in Sicily Canzune? Strictly
speaking, the term Strambotto should be confined to
literary imitations of the popular Rispetto. In Tuscany
the lyric in question consists, in its normal form, of four
alternately rhyming hendecasyllabic lines, followed by
what is technically called the ripresa, or repetition,
which may be composed of two, four, or even more
verses. Though not strictly an octave stanza, it
sometimes falls into this shape, and has then two pairs
of three alternate rhymes, finished up with a couplet.
1 I take this example at random from Blessig's Rdmische Ritornellt
(Leipzig, 1860), p. 48:
Flower of Pomegranate tree !
Your name, O my fair one, is written in heaven;
My name it is writ on the waves of the sea.
* The term Villotta or Vilota is special, I believe, to Venice and
the Friuli. D' Ancona identifies it with Rispetto, Rubieri with Stornello.
But it has the character of a quatrain, and seems therefore more prop-
erly to belong to the former.
RISPETTI AND STORNELL1. 265
In the following instance the quatrain and the riprcsa
are well marked 1 :
Quando sark quel benedetto giomo,
Che le tue scale salirb pian piano ?
I tuoi fratelli mi verranno intorno,
Ad un ad un gli toccherb la mano.
Quando sari quel di, cara colonna,
Che la tua mamma chiamerb madonna ?
Quando sark quel di, caro amor mio ?
lo sarb vostra, e voi sarete mio !
In Sicily the Canzune exhibits a stanza of eight lines
rhyming alternately throughout upon two sounds.
Certain peculiarities, however, in the structure of the
strophe render it probable that it was originally a qua-
train followed by a ripresa of the same length. Thus 2 :
Quannu nascisti tu, stidda lucenti,
*N terra calaru tri ancili santi;
Vinniru li Tri Re d' Orienti,
Purtannu cosi d' oru e di brillanti;
Tri aculi vularu prestamenti,
Dannu la nova a punenti e a livanti;
' Tigri, p, 123. Translated by me thus:
Ah, when will dawn that blissful day
When I shall softly mount your stair,
Your brothers meet me on the way,
And one by one I greet them there !
When comes the day, my staff, my strength,
To call your mother mine at length ?
When will the day come, love of mine,
I shall be yours and you be mine !
8 Pitre, vol. i. p. 185. Translated by me thus, with an alteration in
the last couplet:
When thou wert born, O beaming star !
Three holy angels flew to earth;
The three kings from the East afar
Brought gold and jewels of great worth;
Three eagles on wings light as air
Bore the news East and West and North,
O jewel fair, O jewel rare,
So glad was heaven to greet thy birth.
266 RENAISSANCE IN ITALY.
Bella, li to' billizzi su' putenti !
Avi nov 1 anni chi ti sugnu am ant i.
In the north-east the Villotta consists of a simple
quatrain. Of this form the following is an example 1 :
Quanti ghe n' e, che me sente a cantare,
E i disc; Custia canta dal bon tempo.
Che prego '1 ciel che me possa agiutare;
Quando che canto, alora me lamento,
Though these are the leading types of the Rispetto,
Canzune and Villotta, each district exhibits a variety
of subordinate and complex forms. The same may be
said about the Stornello, Ritornello and Ciure. The
names, too, are very variously applied; nor without
pedantry would it be possible to maintain perfect precis-
ion in their usage. 2 It is enough to have indicated the
two broad classes into which popular poetry of this
kind is divided. For the future I shall refer to the
one sort as Rispetti^ to the other as Stornelli.
Comparative analysis makes it clear that the Ri-
spetti and Stornelli scattered over all the provinces of
Italy, constitute a common fund. That is to say, we
do not meet with the Rispetti of each dialect confined
to their own region; but the same original Rispetto*
perhaps now lost to sight, has been adapted and trans
formed to suit the taste and idiom of the several prov-
1 Dalmedico, Canti Ven. p. 69:
Many there are who when they hear me sing,
Cry: There goes one whose joy runs o'er in song !
But I pray God to give me succoring;
For when I sing, 'tis then I grieve full strong.
For instance, Rispetti in the valley of the Po are called Roman-
tile. In some parts of Central Italy the Stornello becomes Mottetto or
Raccommandare. The little Southern lyrics known as Arii and Ariettt
at Naples and in Sicily, are elsewhere called Villanelle or Napolitant
and Siciliane. It is clear that in this matter of nomenclature great ex
actitude cannot be sought.
THE HOME OF THE RISPETTJ. 367
inces. To reconstitute the primitive type, to decide
with certainty in each case the true source of these
lyrics, is probably impossible. All we know for certain
is that beneath apparent dialectical divergences the
vulgar poetry of the Italians presents unmistakable
signs of identity. 1 Which province was the primitive
home of the Rispetti; whether Sicily, where the
faculty for reproducing them is still most vivid 2 ; or
Tuscany, where they certainly attain their purest form
and highest beauty; or whether all Italian country
districts have contributed their quota to the general
stock ; are difficult questions, as yet by no means satis-
factorily decided. Professor d' Ancona advances a
theory, which is too plausible to be ignored in silence.
Rispetti, he suggests, were first produced in Sicily,
whence they traveled through Central Italy, receiving
dialectical transmutation in Tuscany, and there also
attaining to the perfection of their structure. 3 Numer-
ous slight indications lead to the conclusion that their
original linguistic type was southern. The imagery
also which is common in verses sung to this day by the
peasants of the Pistoja highlands, including frequent
references to the sea with metaphors borrowed from
orange-trees and palms, seems to indicate a Sicilian
birthplace. 4 We have, moreover, the early evidence
1 The proofs adduced by D* Ancona in his Poesia popolare, pp. 177-
284, seem to me conclusive on this point.
See Pitre, Studi di Poesia pnpolare (Palermo, Lauriel, 1872), two
essays on " I Poeti del Popolo Siciliano," and " Pietro Fullone e le sfide
popolari," pp. 81-184. He gives particulars relating to contemporary
improvisations. See, too, the Essays by L. Vigo, Opere (Catania
1870-74), vol. 5i.
Op. cit. pp. 285, 288-294.
< I may refer at large to Tigri's collection, and to my translations
of these Rispetti in Sketches in Italy and Greece.
:68 RENAISSANCE IN ITALY.
of six Napolitane copied from a Magliabecchian MS
of the fourteenth century, which exhibit the transition
from southern to Tuscan idiom and structure. 1 One
of these still exists in several dialects, under the title
of La Rondinella importuna." 1 It is therefore certain
that many Rispetti are very ancient, dating from the
Suabian period, when Sicilian poetry, as we have seen,
underwent the process of toscaneggiamento. However,
D' Ancona's theory is too hypothetical, and it may also
be said, too neat, to be accepted without reservation.
One point, at any rate, may be considered certain.
Though the Rispetti are still alive upon the lips of
contadini; though we may hear them echoing from
farm and field through all the length and breadth of
Italy; though the voluminous collections we possess
have recently been gathered from viva voce recitation ;
yet they are perhaps as ancient as the dialects. The
proof of this antiquity lies in the fact that whether we
take the literary Strambotti of Poliziano for our
standard, or the pasticci, incatenature and intrecciature
of the sixteenth century for guides, we find the phrases
and the style that are familiar to us in the rural lyrics
of to-day. 3 Bronzino's Serenata and the Incatenatura
1 Curducci, Cantilene, p. 57.
* See Rubieri, Storia dclla poesia pofolare, pp. 352-356, for a selec-
tion of variants.
3 The terms employed above require some illustration. Poliziano's
Canzonet, La pastorella si leva per tempo, is a pasticcio composed of
fragments from popular songs in vogue at his day. We possess three
valuable poems one by Bronzino, published in 1567; one by II Cieco
Bianchino of Florence, published at Verona in 1629; the third by II Cieco
Britti of Venice, published in the same year which consist of extracts
from popular lyrics united together by the rhymster. Hence their name
incatenatura. See Rubieri, op. cit. pp. 121, 130, 212. See, too, D'Ancona,
op. cit. pp. 100-105, 146-172, for the text and copious illustrations from
contemporary sources of Bronzino's and II Cieco Bianchino's poems.
PROOFS OF ANTIQUITY. 269
of Bianchino contain, embedded in their structure,
ditties which were universally known in the sixteenth
century, and which are being sung still with unimpor-
tant alterations by the people. The attention of learned
men was directed in the renascence of Tuscan literature
to the beauty of these lyrics. Poliziano, writing to
Lorenzo de' Medici in 1488, and describing his journey
with Pietro through Montepulciano and Acquapendente
in the month of May, says that he and his companions
amused themselves with rappresaglie or adaptations
of the songs they heard upon the way. 1 His road
took him through what is still one of the best sources
of local verse and music; and we may believe that at
the close of the fifteenth century, the contadini of that
district were singing nearly the same words as now.
Now, when we examine the points of similarity and
difference in the Italian Rispetti and Stornelli, as they
now exist, is there anything improbable in this an-
tiquity. Nothing but great age can account for their
adaptation to the tone, feeling, fancy, habits and lan-
guage of so many regions. It must have taken more
than a century or two to rub down their original
angles, to efface the specific stamp of their birthplace,
and to make them pass for home productions in Ven-
ice no less than Palermo, in Tuscan Montalcino and
Ligurian Chiavari.
The retentiveness of the popular memory, before it
has been spoiled by education, is quite sufficient to
' Prose Volgari, etc., di A. A. Poliziano (Firenzc, Barbara, 1867), p.
74. "Siamo tutti allegri, e facciamo buona cera, e becchiamo per tutta
la via di qualche rappresaglia e Canzone di Calen di Maggio, che mi sono
parute piu fantastiche qui in Acquapendente, alia Romanesca, vel nota
ipsa vel argumento."
270 RENAISSANCE IN ITALY.
account for the preservation of these lyrics through
several hundred years. Nor need their wide diffusion
suggest difficulties. Italy in the middle ages offered
readier means of intercommunication between the in-
habitants of her provinces than she has done since the
settlement of the country in 1530. When the libera-
tion of the Communes gave a new impulse to intellec-
tual and commercial activity, there began a steady and
continually increasing movement from one city to
another. Commercial enterprise led the burghers of
Pisa, Lucca, Florence, Venice, Genoa, to establish
themselves as bankers and middle-men, brokers and
manufacturers, in Rome and Naples. Soldiers of
adventure flocked from the south, and made the north-
ern towns their temporary home. The sanctuaries
of Gargano, Loretto and Assisi drew pilgrims from all
quarters. Noblemen of Romagna acted as podesta
beyond the Apennines, while Lombards opened shops
in Palermo. Churchmen bred upon the Riviera wore
the miter in the March; natives of the Spoletano
taught in the schools of Bologna and Pavia. Men of
letters, humanists and artists had no fixed dwelling-
place, but wandered, like mercenary soldiers, from
town to town in search of better pay. Students
roamed from school to school according as the fame
of great professors drew them. Party-quarrels in the
commonwealths drove whole families, such as the
Florentine Uberti, Alberti, Albizzi, Strozzi, into exile.
Conquered cities, like Pisa, sent forth their burghers
by hundreds as emigrants, too proud to bear the yoke
of foes they had resisted. Nor were the Courts of
princes without their influence in mingling the natives
OPPORTUNITIES Of DIFFUSION. 271
of different districts. Whether, then, we study the
Novelle, or the histories of great houses, or the bio-
graphies of eminent Italians, or the records of the
universities, we shall be led to the conclusion that
from the year 1200 to the year i55o there was a per-
petual and lively intercourse by land and sea between
the departments of Italy. This reciprocity of influ-
ence did not cease until the two despotic races, Aus-
trian and Spaniard', threw each separate province into
solitary chains. Such being the conditions of social
exchange at the epoch when the language was in pro-
cess of formation, there is nothing strange in finding
the rural poetry of the south acclimatized in central
and northern Italy. But the very facility of com-
munication and the probable antiquity of these lyrics
should make us cautious in adopting any rigid
hypothesis about their origin. It is reasonable to
suppose that such transferable property as love-poems
might have been everywhere produced and rapidly
diffused, the best from each center surviving by a
natural process of selection. Lastly, whatever view
may be taken of their formation and their age, we
have every reason to believe that the fifteenth century
was a fruitful period of production and accumulation.
Toward the close of the quattrocento they attracted
the curiosity of lettered poets, who began to imitate
them, and in the next hundred years they were com-
mitted in large numbers to the press. 1
' See D'Ancona, op. cit. pp. 354-420, for copious and interesting no-
tices of the popular press in several Italian towns. The Avallone of Na-
ples, Cordelia of Venice, Marescandoli of Florence, Bertini and Baroni
of Lucca, Colombo, of Bologna, all served the special requirements of
the proletariate in town and country. G. B. Verini of Florence made
272 RENAISSANCE IN ITALY.
In addition to the influence exercised by these
popular lyrics over polite literature in the golden age
of the Renaissance, extraordinary interest attaches to
them as an indigenous species of verse, dating from
remote antiquity and still surviving in all corners of
the country. In them we analyze the Italian poetic
genius at its source and under its most genuine condi-
tions. Both from their qualities and their defects
inferences may be drawn, which find application and
illustration in the solemn works of laureled singers.
The one theme of Rispetti and Stornelli is love; but
love in all its phases and with all its retinue of
associated emotions expectation, fruition, disappoint-
ment, jealousy, despair, rejection, treachery, desertion,
pleading, scorn the joys of presence, the pangs of
absence, the ecstasy of union, the agony of parting
love, natural and unaffected, turbulent or placid, chaste
or troubled with desire, imperious or humble, tempes-
tuously passionate or toned to tranquil acquiescence
love varying through all moods and tempers, yet never
losing its note of spontaneity, sincerity and truth. The
instincts of the people are pure, and their utterances
of affection are singularly free from grossness. This
at least is almost universally the case with lyrics
gathered from the country. Approaching town-life,
they lose their delicacy; and the products of the city-
anthologies called L' Ardor d' Amore and Crudeltd d' Amore in the six-
teenth century, both of which are still reprinted. The same is true of the
Olimpia and Gloria of Olimpo degli Alessandri of Sassoferrato. The
subordinate titles commonly used in these popular Golden Treasuries
are, "Canzoni di amore," "di gelosia," "di sdegno," "di pace e di par-
tenza." Their classification and description appear from the following
rubrics: " Mattinate," " Serenate," " Partenze," " Strambotti," " Sdegni,'
"Sonetti," " Villanelle," " Lettere," " Affetti d' Amore," etc.
THE CHANT & AMOUR. 273
are not unfrequently distinguished by the crudest
obscenity. l The literary form of many of these master-
pieces exhibits the beauty of rhythm, the refinement
of outline, which we associate with melodies of the
best Italian period with chants of Pergolese, songs of
Salvator Rosa. When we compare their subject-
matter with that of our Northern Ballads, we notice a
marked deficiency of legend, superstition or grotesque
fancy. There are no witches, dragons, demon-lovers,
no enchanted forests, no mythical heroes, no noble
personages, few ghosts, few dreams and visions, in
these songs poured forth among the olive-trees and
myrtle-groves of Italy. Human nature, conscious of
pleasure and of pain, finding its primitive emotion an
adequate motive for verse subtly modulated through a
thousand keys, is here sufficient to itself. The echoes
imported from an outer world of passion and romance
and action into this charmed region of the lover's heart
are rare and feeble. Through all their national vicissi-
tudes, the Italian peasants followed one sole aim in
verse. The Rispetti of all times, localities and dialects
form one protracted, ever-varying Duo between Thou
and I, the dama and the damo, the eternal protagonists
in the play of youth and love.
This absence of legendary and historical material
marks a main difference between Italian and Teutonic
inspiration. Among the Italic communities the prac-
tical historic sense was early developed, and sustained
by the tradition of a classic past. It demanded a posi-
tive rather than imaginative treatment of contemporary
1 Upon this point consult Rubieri, op. cit. chap. xiv. In Sicily the
Gure, says Pitre, is reckoned unfit for an honest woman's mouth.
174 RENAISSANCE IN ITALY.
fact and mythus. Among the people this require-
ment was satisfied by Storie, Lamenti, and prose Chron-
icles. Very few, indeed, are the relics of either ro
mantic or actual history surviving in the lyrics of the
rural population. Only here and there, in dim allu-
sions to the Sicilian Vespers and the Norman Con-
quest, in the tale of the Baronessa di Carini, or in
the Northern legend of Rosmunda, under its popular
form of La Donna Lombarda, do we find a faint
analogy between the Italian and Teutonic ballads. l
Dramatic, mythical and epical elements are almost
wholly wanting in the genuine lyrics of the people.
This statement requires some qualification. The
four volumes of Fiabe, Novelle e Racconti recently
published by Signer Pitre, prove that the Sicilians in
prose at least have a copious literature corresponding
to German Marchen and Norse tales. 2 This litera-
ture, however, has not received poetic treatment in
any existing southern songs that have been published,
excepting in the few already noticed. At the same
time, it must be mentioned that the collections of lyrics
in north-western dialects especially the Canti Mon~
ferriniy Canzoni Comasche, and Canti Leccesi exhibit
specimens of genuine ballads. It would seem that
contact with French and German borderers along the
Alpine rampart had introduced into Piedmont and
Lombardy a form of lyric which is not essentially
Italian. Had I space sufficient at disposal, I should
1 The South seems richer in this material than the Center. See
Pitre's Canti Pop. Sic. vol. ii., among the Leggende e Storie, especially
La Comare, Minni-spartuti, Principessa di Carini, L Innamorata dfi
Diavolo, and some of the bandit songs.
Palermo, Lauriel, 1875.
BALLADS. 275
like to quote the Donna Lombarda, Moglie Tnfedele,
Giuseppina Parricida, Principessa Giovanna, Giuliano
delta Croce Bianca, Cecilia, R2 Carlino, Morando, and
several others from Ferraro's collection. 1 They illus-
trate, what is exceedingly rare in popular Italian
poetry, both the subject-matter and the manner pe-
culiar to the Northern Ballad. Let the following
verses from La Sposa per Forza suffice 2 :
Ra soi madona a r' ha brassaja
Suvra u so coffu a r' ha minee;
Uardee qui, ra me noiretta,
Le bele gioje che vi v6i dunee.
Mi n 1 ho csa fe die vostre gioje;
E mane ancur dla vostra ca;
Cma ca voja dir bel gioje
Ra me mama m' na mandira.
To comparative mythologists in general, and to
English students in particular, the most interesting of
these rare Italian Ballads is undoubtedly one known
as L Awelenato? So far as I am aware, it is unique
in the Italian language; nor had its correspondences
with Northern Ballad-literature been noticed until I
pointed them out in 1879.* In his work on popular
Italian poetry, Professor D' Ancona included the fol-
lowing song, which he had heard upon the lips of a
young peasant of the Pisan district 5 :
1 Canti Monferrini (Torino-Firenze, Loescher, 1870), pp. 1,6, 14, 26,
28, 34, 42. One of the ballads cited above, La Sisilia, is found in Sicily.
Ibid. p. 48.
It does not occur in the Canti Monferrini.
See my letter to the Rassegna Settimanale, March 9, 1879, on * ne
subject of this ballad. Though I begged Italian students for information
respecting similar compositions my letter only elicited a Tuscan version
of the Donna Lombarda.
4 Op. cit. p. 1 06.
276 RENAISSANCE IN ITALY.
Dov' eri 'ersera a cena
Caro mio figlio, savio e gentfl ?
Mi fai morire
Ohimfc !
Dov' eri 'ersera a cena
Gentile mio cavalier ?
Ero dalla mia clama;
Mio core stk male,
Che male mi sta !
Ero dalla mia dama;
'L mio core che se ne va.
Che ti dtenno da cena,
Caro mio figlio, savio e gentil ?
Mi fai morire,
Ohimfc !
Che ti dienno da cena,
Gentile mio cavalier ?
Un anguilletta arrosto,
Cara mia madre;
Mio core sta male,
Che male mi stk !
Un anguilletta arrosto,
'L mio core che se ne va.
Other versions of the same poem occur in the dialects of
Venice, Como and Lecco with such variations as prove
them all to be the offshoots from some original now
lost in great antiquity. That it existed and was
famous so far back as the middle of the seventeenth
century, is proved by an allusion in the Cicalata in
lode delta Padella e delta Frittura, recited before the
Accademia della Crusca by Lorenzo Panciatichi in
I656. 1 A few lines are also quoted in the incatenatura
of the Cieco Fiorentino, published at Verona in 1 629.2
Any one who is familiar with our Border Minstrelsy
will perceive at once that this is only an Italian version
of the Ballad of Lord Donald or Lord Randal. 3
' D'Ancona, op. cit. p. 106. * Ibid. pp. 99, 105.
3 See Child's English and Scottish Ballads, vol. ii. pp. 244, et sey.
VAVVELENATO. 37?
The identity between the two is rendered still more
striking by an analysis of the several Lombard
versions. In that of Como, for example, the young
man makes his will; and this is the last verse 1 :
Cossa lasse alia vostra dama,
Figliuol mio caro, fiorito e gentil,
Cossa lasse alia vostra dama ?
La fdrca da impiccarla,
Signora mama, mio cor sta mal I
La fdrca da impiccarla:
Ohime, ch' io moro, ohime !
The same version furnishes the episode of the poi-
soned hounds 2 :
Coss' avi ft dell* altra mezza.
Figliuol mio caro, fiorito e gentil ?
Cossa avi fS dell' altra mezza ?
L 1 h6 dada alia cagnola:
Signora mama, mio core sta mal 1
L' ho dada alia cagnola:
Ohime, ch' io moro, ohime !
Cossa avi f4 della cagnbla,
Figliuol mio caro, fiorito e gentil ?
Cossa avi ft della cagnola ?
L' e morta dre" la strada;
1 Bolza, Cam. Pop. Comasche, No. 49. Here is the Scotch version
from Lord Donald:
What will ye leave to your true-love, Lord Donald, my son ?
What will ye leave to your true-love, my jollie young man ?
The tow and the halter, for to hang on yon tree,
And lat her hang there for the poisoning o* me.
* This is the Scotch version, with the variant of Lord Randal:
What gat ye to your dinner, Lord Randal, my son ?
What gat ye to your dinner, my handsome young man ?
I gat eels boiled in broo; mother, make my bed soon,
For I'm weary wi' hunting, and fain wald lie down.
What became of your bloodhounds, Lord Randal, my son ?
What became of your bloodhounds, my handsome young man
O, they swelled and they died; mother, make my bed soon,
For I'm weary wi' hunting, and fain wald lie down.
278 RENAISSANCE IN ITALY.
Signora mama, mio core sta mal !
L* e morta dre" la strada:
Ohime, ch' io moro, ohime I
It is worth mentioning that the same Ballad
belongs under slightly different forms to the Germans,
Swedes, and other nations of the Teutonic stock; but
so far as I have yet been able to discover, it remains the
sole instance of that species of popular literature in
Italy. 1 The phenomenon is singular, and though con-
jectures may be hazarded in explanation, it is impos-
sible, until further researches for parallel examples
have been made, to advance a theory of how this
Ballad penetrated so far south as Tuscany.
1 In Passano's I Nwellieri Italiani in Verso I find, at p. 20, the notice
of a poem, in octave stanzas, which corresponds exactly to the Heir
of Lynn. Published at Venice, 1530, 1531, 1542, it bears this title: "Es-
sempio dun giovane ricchissimo; qual consumata la ricchezza: disperato
a un trave si sospese. Nel qual il padre previsto il suo fatalcorso gia
molti anni avanti infinito tesoro posto havea, et quello per il carico fra-
cassato, la occulta moneta scoperse." The young man's name is Fenitio.
I have not seen this poem, and since it is composed in ottava rima it can-
not be classed exactly with the Awelenato. Passano also catalogues
the Historia di tre Giovani disperati e di ire fate, and the Historia di Leon
Brunn which seem to contain ballad elements.
CHAPTER V.
POPULAR RELIGIOUS POETRY.
The Thirteenth Century Outburst of Flagellant Fanaticism The
Battuti, Bianchi, Disciplinati Acquire the name of Laudesi
Jacopone da Todi His Life His Hymns The Corrotto Fran-
ciscan Poetry Tresatti's Collection Grades of Spiritual Ecstasy
Lauds of the Confraternities Benivieni Feo Belcari and the Floren-
tine Hymn-writers Relation to Secular Dance-songs Origins of
the Theater Italy had hardly any true Miracle Plays Umbrian
Divozioni The Laud becomes Dramatic Passion Plays Medieval
Properties The Stage in Church or in the Oratory The Sacra
Rappresentazione A Florentine Species Fraternities for Boys
Names of the Festa Theory of its Origin Shows in Medieval Italy
Pageants of S. John's Day at Florence Their Machinery Floren-
tine Ingegnieri Forty-three Plays in D' Ancona's Collection Their
Authors The Prodigal Son Elements of Farce Interludes and
Music Three Classes of Sacre Rappresentazioni Biblical Subjects
Legends of Saints Popular Novelle Conversion of the Magdalen
Analysis of Plays.
THE history of popular religious poetry takes us back
to the first age of Italian literature and to the discords
of the thirteenth century. All Italy had been torn
asunder by the internecine struggle of Frederick II.
with Innocent III. and Gregory IX. The people
saw the two chiefs of Christendom at open warfare,
exchanging anathemas, and doing each what in him
lay to render peace and amity impossible. Milan
resounded to the shrieks of paterini, burned upon the
public square by order of an intolerant pontiff. Padua
echoed with the groans of Ezzelino's victims, doomed
to death by hundreds and by thousands in his dun-
280 RENAISSANCE IN ITALY.
geons, or cast forth maimed and mutilated to perish in
the fields. The southern provinces swarmed with
Saracens, whom an infidel Emperor had summoned to
his aid against a fanatical Pope. It seemed as though
the age, which had witnessed the assertion of Italian
independence and the growth of the free cities, was
about to end in a chaos of bloodshed, fire and frantic
cruelty. The climax of misery and fury was reached
in the Crusade launched by Alexander IV. against the
tyrants of the Trevisan Marches. When Ezzelino died
like a dog in 1269, the maddened populace believed
that his demon had now been loosed from chains of
flesh, and sent forth to the elements to work its will in
freedom. The prince of darkness was abroad and
menacing. Though the monster had perished, the
myth of evil that survived him had power to fascinate,
and was intolerable.
The conscience of the people, crazed by the sight of
such iniquity and suffering, bereft of spiritual guidance,
abandoned to bad government, made itself suddenly
felt in an indescribable movement of religious terror.
"In the year 1260," wrote the Chronicler of Padua, 1
" when Italy was defiled by many horrible crimes, a
sudden and new perturbation seized at first upon the
folk of Perugia, next upon the Romans, and lastly on
the population of all Italy, who, stung by the fear of
God, went forth processionally, gentle and base-born,
old and young, together, through the city streets and
squares, naked save for a waist-band round their loins,
holding a whip of leather in their hands, with tears
and groans, scourging their shoulders till the blood
i Muratori, Rer. Ital. Script. viiL 712.
THE FLAGELLANTS. 281
flowed down. Not by day alone, but through the
night in the intense cold of winter, with lighted torches
they roamed by hundreds, by thousands, by tens of
thousands, through the churches, and flung themselves
down before the altars, led by priests with crosses and
banners. The same happened in all villages and
hamlets, so that the fields and mountains resounded'
with the cries of sinners calling upon God. All
instruments of music and songs of love were hushed ;
only the dismal wail of penitents was heard in town
and country."
It will be noticed that this fanaticism of the Flagel-
lants began among the Umbrian highlands, the home
of S. Francis and the center of pietistic art, where the
passions of the people have ever been more quickly
stirred by pathos than elsewhere in Italy. The
Battuti) as they were called, formed no mere sect.
Populations of whole cities, goaded by an irresistible
impulse, which had something of the Dionysiac mad-
ness in it, went forth as though a migration of the
race had been initiated. Blind instinct, the intoxica-
tion of religious frenzy, urged them restlessly and
aimlessly from place to place. They had no Holy
Land, no martyr's shrine, in view. Only the ineffable
horror of a coming judgment, only the stings of
spiritual apprehension, the fierce craving after sym-
pathy in common acts of delirium, the allurements of
an exaltation shared by thousands, drove them on,
lugubrious herds, like Maenads of the wrath of God.
This insurgence of all classes, swelling upward from
the lowest, gaining the middle regions, and confound-
the highest in the flood of one promiscuous
282 RENAISSANCE IN ITALY.
multitude, threatened the very fabric of society. 1
Repentance and compunction, exhibited upon a scale
of such colossal magnitude, attended by incidents of
such impassioned frenzy, assumed the aspect of vice
and of insanity. Florence shut her gates to the half-
naked Battuti. At Milan the tyrants of the Delia
Torre blood raised 600 gibbets as a warning.
Manfred drew a military cordon round his southern
States to save them from contagion. The revival was
diagnosed by cold observers as an epidemic, or as a
craving akin to that which sets in motion droves of
bisons on a trackless plain. It needed drastic meas-
ures of Draconian justice to curb a disease which
threatened the whole nation. Gradually, the first fury
of this fanatical enthusiasm subsided. It was but the
symptom of moral and intellectual bewilderment, of
what the French would call ahurissement, in a race of
naturally firm and patient fiber. Yet, when it passed,
durable traces of the agitation remained. Lay frater-
nities were formed, not only in Umbria and Tuscany,
but in almost all provinces of the peninsula, who
called themselves Disciplinati di Gesu Cristo. These
societies aimed at continuing the ascetic practices of
the Flagellants, and at prolonging their passion of
penitence in a more sober spirit. Scourging formed
an essential part of their observances, but it was used
with decency and moderation. Their constitution was
strictly democratic, within limits sanctioned by the
clergy. They existed for the people, supplementing
' A curious letter describing the entrance of the Battuti into Rome in
1399 may be read in Romagnoli's publication Le Compagnie tie' Battuti
in Roma, Bologna, 1862. It refers to a period later by a century than
the first outbreak of the enthusiasm.
THE LAUDESI. 283
and not superseding the offices of the Church. From
the date of their foundation they seem to have paid
much attention to the recitation of hymns in the
vernacular. These hymns were called Laude. Writ-
ten for and by the people, they were distinguished
from the Latin hymns of the Church by greater spon-
taneity and rudeness. No limit of taste or literary art
was set to the expression of a fervent piety. The Lauds
dwelt chiefly on the Passion of our Lord, and were used
as a stimulus to compunction. In course of time this part
of their system became so prominent that the Battuti
or Disciplinati acquired the milder title of Laudesi. 1
From the Laudesi of the fourteenth century rose
one great lyric poet, Jacopone da Todi, whose hymns
embrace the whole gamut of religious passion, from
1 Some banners Gonfaloni or Stendardi of the Perugian fraterni-
ties, preserved in the Pinacoteca of that town, are interesting for their
illustration of these religious companies at a later date. The Gonfalone
of S. Bernardino by Bonfigli represents the saint between heaven and
earth pleading for his votaries. Their Oratory (Cappella di Giustizia) is
seen behind, and in front are the men and women of the order. That
of the Societas Annuntiatcz with date 1466, shows a like band of lay
brethren and sisters. That of the Giustizia by Perugino has a similar
group, kneeling and looking up to Madonna, who is adored by S. Fran-
cis and S. Bernardino in the heavens. Behind is a landscape with a
portion of Perugia near the Church of S. Francis. The Stendardo of
the Confraternity di S. Agostino by Pinturicchio exhibits three white-
clothed members of the body, kneeling and gazing up to their patron.
There is also a fine picture in the Perugian Pinacoteca by Giov. Boccati
of Camerino (signed and dated 1447) representing Madonna enthroned
in a kind of garden, surrounded by child-like angels with beautiful blonde
hair, singing and reading from choir books in a double row of semi-
circular choir-stalls. Below, S. Francis and S. Dominic are leading
each two white Disciplinati to the throne. These penitents carry their
scourges, and holes cut in the backs of their monastic cloaks show the
skin red with stripes. One on either side has his face uncovered: the
other wears the hood down, with eye-holes pierced in it. This picture
belonged to the Confraternity of S. Domenico.
284 RENAISSANCE IN ITALY.
tender emotions of love to somber anticipations of
death and thrilling visions of judgment. Reading him,
we listen to the true lyrical cry of the people's heart
in its intolerance of self-restraint, blending the lan-
guage of erotic ecstasy with sobs and sighs of soul-
consuming devotion, aspiring to heaven on wings sped
by the energy of human desire. The flight of his ine-
briated piety transcends and out-soars the strongest
pinion of ecclesiastical hymnology. Such lines as
Fac me plagis vulnerari,
Cruce hac inebriari
Ob amorem filii
do but supply the theme for Jacopone's descant. Vio-
lently discordant notes clash and mingle in his chords,
and are resolved in bursts of ardor bordering on
delirium. He leaps from the grotesque of plebeian
imagery to pictures of sublime pathos, from incoherent
gaspings to sentences pregnant with shrewd knowl-
edge of the heart, by sudden and spontaneous trans-
itions, which reveal the religious sentiment in its
simplest form, unspoiled by dogma, unstiffened by
scholasticism. None, for example, but a true child of
the people could have found the following expression
of a desire to suffer with Christ 1 :
O Signer per cortesia
Mandame la malsania
A me la freve quartana
la contina e la terzana,
la doppia cottidiana
Colla grande ydropesia.
1 Canticidi Jacopone da Todl (Roma, Salviano, 1558), p. 64. I quote
jvom this edition as the most authentic, and reproduce its orthography
J AGO PONE DA TODI. 285
A me venga mal de dente
Mai de capo e mal de ventre,
a lo stomaco dolor pungente
en canna 1' asquinantia.
Mal de occhi e doglia de fianco
e la postema al lato manco
tyseco me ionga enalco
e omne tempo la frenesia.
Agia el fegato rescaldato
la milza grossa el ventre enfiato,
lo polmone sia piagato
Con gran tossa e parlasta.
In order to understand Jacopone da Todi and to form
any true conception of the medium from which his
poems sprang, it is necessary to study the legend of
his life, which, though a legend, bears upon its face the
stamp of truth. It is an offshoot from the Saga of S.
Francis, a vivid utterance of the times which gave it
birth. 1 Jacopone was born at Todi, one of those
isolated ancient cities which rear themselves upon
their hill-tops between the valleys of the Nera and
the Tiber, on the old post-road from Narni to Perugia.
He belonged to the family of the Benedetti, who were
reckoned among the noblest of the district. In his
youth he followed secular studies, took the degree of
Doctor of Laws, and practiced with a keen eye for
gain and with not less, his biographer hints, than the
customary legal indifference for justice. He married a
beautiful young wife, whom he dressed splendidly and
sent among his equals to all places of medieval amuse-
ment. She was, however, inwardly religious. The
spirit of S. Francis had passed over her; and un-
1 This Life is prefixed to Salviano's Roman edition of Jacopone's
hymns, 1558.
286 RENAISSANCE IN ITALY.
known to all the crowd around her, unknown to hei
husband, she practiced the extremities of ascetic piety.
One day she went, at her husband's bidding, to a
merry-making of the nobles of Todi; and it so
happened that " while she was dancing and taking
pleasure with the rest, an accident occurred, fit to
move the greatest pity. For the platform whereupon
the party were assembled, fell in and was broken to
pieces, causing grievous injury to those who stood
upon it. She was so hurt in the fall that she lost
the power of speech, and in a few hours after died.
Jacopo, who by God's mercy was not there, no sooner
heard the sad news of his wife than he ran to the
place. He found her on the point of death, and
sought, as is usual in those cases, to unlace her; but
she, though she could not speak, offered resistance to
her husband's unlacing her. However, he used force
and overcame her, and unlaced and carried her to his
house. There, when she had died, he unclothed her
with his own hands, and found that underneath those
costly robes and next to her naked flesh she wore a
hair-shirt of the roughest texture. Jacopone, who up
to now had believed his wife, since she was young
and beautiful, to be like other women, worldly and
luxurious, stood as it were astonished and struck dumb
when he beheld a thing so contrary to his opinion.
Wherefore from that time forward he went among
men like to one who is stunned, and appeared no
longer to be a reasonable man as theretofore. The
cause of this his change to outward view was not a
sudden infirmity of health, or extraordinary sorrow for
the cruel death of his wife, or any such- like occur-
LEGEND OF JACO PONE'S LIFE. 287
rence, but an overwhelming compunction of the heart
begotten in him by this ensample, and a new recogni-
tion of what he was and of his own wretchedness.
Wherefore turning back to his own heart, and reckon-
ing with bitterness the many years that had been spent
so badly, and seeing the peril in which he had con-
tinued up to that time, he set himself to change the
manner of his life, and even as he had lived heretofore
wholly for the world, so now he resolved to live wholly
for Christ."
Jacopone's biographer goes on to tell us how, after
this shock, he became an altered man. He sold all
his goods and gave away his substance to the poor,
retaining nothing for himself, but seeking by every
device within his power to render himself vile and
ridiculous in the eyes of men. At one time he stripped
himself naked, and put upon his back the trappings of
an ass, and so appeared among the gentles of his
earlier acquaintance. On another occasion he entered
a company of merry-making folk in his brother's house
without clothes, smeared with turpentine and rolled in
feathers like a bird. 1 By these mad pranks he ac-
quired the reputation of one half-witted, and the people
called him Jacopone instead of Messer Jacopo de'
Benedetti. Yet there was a keen spirit living in the
man, who had determined literally to become a fool for
Christ's sake. A citizen once bought a fowl and bade
Jacopone carry it to his house. Jacopone took the
bird and placed it in the man's family vault, where it
was found. To all remonstrances he answered with a
' The biographer adds, " Ma fu si horribile e spiacevole a vedere che
conturho tutta quella festa, lasciando ogniuno pieno di amaritudinc."
288 RENAISSANCE IN ITALY.
solemnity which inspired terror, that there was the citi-
zen's real home. At the end of ten years spent in
self-abasement of this sort, Jacopone entered the low-
est rank of the Franciscan brotherhood. The com-
position of a Laud so full of spiritual fire that its
inspiration seemed indubitable, won for the apparent
madman this grace. There was something noble in
his bearing, even though his actions and his utterance
proved his brain distempered. No fear of hell nor
hope of heaven, says his biographer, but God's infinite
goodness and beauty impelled him to embrace the
monastic life and to subject himself to the severest
discipline. Meditating on the Divine perfection, he
came to regard himself as " entirely hideous, vile and
stinking, beyond the most abominable carrion." It
was part of his religious exaltation to prove this to
himself by ghastly penances, instead of seeking to ren-
der his body a fit temple for God's spirit by healthy
and clean living. He had a carnal partiality for
liver; and in order to mortify this vile affection he
procured the liver of a beast and hung it in his cell.
It became putrid, swarmed with vermin, and infected
the convent with its stench. The friars discovered
Jacopone rejoicing in the sight and odor of this
corruption. With sound good sense they then con-
demned him to imprisonment in the common privies;
but he rejoiced in this punishment, and composed one
of his most impassioned odes in that foul place. Still,
though he was clearly mad, he had the soul of a
Christian and a poet. His ecstasies were not always
repugnant to our sense of delicacy. Contemplating
the wounds of Christ, it entered into his heart to
y AGO PONE'S MADNESS. 289
desire all suffering which it could be possible for man
to undergo the pangs of all the souls condemned to
purgatory, the torments of all the damned in hell, the
infinite anguish of all the devils if only by this bear-
ing of the pains of others he might be made like
Christ, and go at length, the last of all the world, to
Paradise. Not only the passion but the love of Jesus
inflamed him with indescribable raptures. He spent
whole days in singing, weeping, groaning, and ejacula-
tion. " He ran," says the biographer, " in a fury of love,
and under the impression that he was embracing and
clasping Jesus Christ, would fling his arms about a
tree." It is not possible to imagine more potent work-
ings of religious insanity in a distempered and at the
same time nobly-gifted character. That obscene anti-
pathy to nature which characterized medieval asceti-
cism, becomes poetic in a lunatic of genius like Jaco-
pone. Nor was his natural acumen blunted. He
discerned how far the Papacy diverged from Chris-
tianity in practice, and assailed Boniface VIII. with
bitterest invectives. Among other prophetic sayings
ascribed to him, we find this, which corresponds most
nearly to the truth of history : " Pope Boniface, like a
fox thou didst enter on the Papacy, like a wolf thou
reignest, and like a dog shalt thou depart from it."
For his free speech Boniface had him sent to prison ;
and in his dungeon, rejoicing, Jacopone composed the
finest of his Canticles.
Such was the man who struck the key-note of re-
ligious popular poetry in Italy, and whose Lauds may
be regarded as the germ of a voluminous literature.
Passing from his life to his writings, it will suffice to
290 RENAISSANCE IN ITALY.
give a few specimens of those hymns which are most
characteristic of his temper. We have already seen
how he brought together the most repulsive details of
disease in order to express his desire to suffer with
Christ. 1 Here is the beginning of a canticle in praise
of the madness he embraced with a similar object 3 :
Senno me pare e cortesia
empazir per lo bel messia.
Ello me fa si gran sapere
a chi per dio vol empazire
en parige non se vidde
ancor si gran phylosofia.
These words found an echo after many years in Beni-
vieni's even more hysterical hymn upon divine mad
ness, which was substituted in Savonarola's Carnivals
for the Trionfi of Lorenzo de' Medici.
A trace of the Franciscan worship of poverty gives
some interest to a hymn on the advantages of pauper-
ism. The theme, however, is supported with solid
arguments after the fashion of Juvenal's vacuus viator*'.
Povertate muore en pace,
nullo testamento face,
lassa el mondo como jace
e la gente concordate.
Non a judice ne notaro
a corte non porta salaro,
ridese del omo avaro
che sta en tanta anxietate.
Truer to the inebriation of Jacopone's piety are the
following stanzas, incoherent from excess of passion,
which seem to be the ebullition of one of his most
frenzied moments 4 :
1 See above, p. 284. The seventeenth-century editor of Jacoponc
and his followers, Tresatti, has justly styled this repulsive but char
acteristic utterance, " invettiva terribile contro di se."
Op. cit. p. 109. > Ibid. p. 77. Ibid. p. 122. See Appendix
HYMNS OF DIVINE LOVE. 29!
Amore amore che si mai ferito
altro che amore non posso gridare,
amore amore teco so unito
altro non posso che te abbracciare,
amore amore forte mai rapito
lo cor sempre si spande per amore
per te voglio pasmare: Amor ch' io teco sia
amor per cortesia: Fammi morir d* amore.
Amor amor Jesu so gionto aporto
amor amor Jesu tu m' ai menato,
amor amor Jesu damme conforto
amor amor Jesu si m' ai enflammato,
amor amor Jesu pensa lo porto
fammete star amor sempre abracciato,
con teco trasformato: En vera caritate
en somma veritate: De trasformato amore.
Amor amore grida tuttol mondo
amor amore omne cosa clama,
amore amore tanto se profondo
chi piu t' abraccia sempre piu t' abrama,
amor amor tu se' cerchio rotondo
con tuttol cor chi c* entra sempre t' ama,
che tu se' stame e trama: chi t' ama per vestlre
cusi dolce sentire: Che sempre grida amore.
Amor amor Jesu desideroso
amor voglio morire a te abracciando,
amor amor Jesu dolce mio sposo
amor amor la morte 1'ademando,
amor amor Jesu si delectoso
tu me t' arendi en te transformando,
pensa ch' io vo pasmando: Amor non so o me sia
Jesu speranza mia: Abyssame en amore.
A still more mysterious depth is sounded in another
hymn in praise of self-annihilation the Nirvana of
asceticism l :
Non posso esser renato
s' io en me non so morto,
anichilato en tucto
Ibid. p. 45.
2Q2 RENAISSANCE IN ITALY.
el esser conservare,
del nihil glorioso
nelom ne gusta fructo,
se Dio non fal conducto
che otn non cia que fare,
o glorioso stare
en nihil quietato,
lontellecto posato
e laffecto dormirc.
Ciocho veduto e pensato
tutto e feccia e bruttura
pensando de laltura
del virtuoso stato,
nel pelago chio veggio
non ce so notatura
faro somergitura
del om che anegato
sommece inarenato
nonor de smesuranza
vincto de labundanza
del dolce mio sire.
One of Jacopone's authentic poems so far detaches
itself in character and composition from the rest, and
is so important, as will shortly be seen, for the history
of Italian dramatic art, that it demands separate con-
sideration. 1 It assumes the form of dialogue between
Mary and Christ upon the cross, followed by the
lamentation of the Virgin over her dead Son. A
messenger informs the Mother that Christ has been
taken prisoner:
Donna del Paradiso,
Lo tuo figliolo e priso,
Jesu Cristo beato.
Accurre, donna, e vide
Che la gente 1* all id c;
> It is printed in Salviano's, and reproduced in Tresatti's edition. 1
have followed the reading offered by D* Ancona, Origini del Teatro.
col. i. p. 142. See Translation in Appendix.
PASSION-POETRY. 293
Credo che Ho s* occide,
Tanto 1' on flagellato.
Attended by the Magdalen, whom she summons to
her aid, Mary hurries to the judgment-seat of Pilate,
and begs for mercy :
O Pilato, non fare
'L figlio mio tormentare,
Ch' io te posso mostrare
Como a torto e accusato.
But here the voices of the Chorus, representing the
Jewish multitude, are heard:
Crucifige, crucifige !
Omo che se fa rege,
Secondo nostra lege,
Contradice al Senato.
Christ is removed to the place of suffering, and Mary
cries :
O figlio, figlio, figlio,
Figlio, amoroso figlio,
Figlio, chi dk consiglio
Al cor mio angustiato !
Figlio, occhi giocondi,
Figlio, co* non rispondi ?
Figlio, perche t* ascondi
Dal petto o' se' lattato ?
They show her the cross :
Madonna, ecco la cruce
Che la gente 1' adduce,
Ove la vera luce
De' essere levato.
They tell her how Jesus is being nailed to it, sparing
none of the agonizing details. Then she exclaims :
30,4 RENAISSANCE IN ITALY.
E lo comcncio el corrotto;
Figliolo, mio deporto,
Figlio, chi mi t' & morto,
Figlio mio delicato !
Meglio averien fatto
Che '1 cor m* avesser tratto,
Che nella croce tratto
Starci desciliato.
Jesus now breaks silence, and comforts her, pointing
out that she must live for His disciples, and naming
John. He dies, and she continues the Corrotto^ :
Figlio, 1* alma t' e uscita,
Figlio de la smarrita,
Figlio de la sparita,
Figlio [mio] attossicato !
Figlio bianco e vermiglio,
Figlio senza simiglio,
Figlio, a chi m' apiglio,
Figlio, pur m' hai lassato 1
Figlio bianco e biondo.
Figlio, volto jocondo,
Figlio, perchfi t' el mondo,
Figlio, cusi sprezato !
Figlio dolce e piacente,
Figlio de la dolente,
Figlio, a te la gente
Malamente trattato t
Joanne, figlio novello,
Morto e lo tuo fratello;
Sentito aggio '1 coltello
Che fo profetizzato,
Che morto & figlio e mate,
De dura morte afferrate;
Trovarsi abbracciate
Mate e figlio a un cruciato.
Upon this note of anguish the poem closes. It is con
ducted throughout in dialogue, and is penetrated with
1 The word Corrotto, used by Mary, means lamentation for the dead
It corresponds to the Greek Threnos, Corsican Vocero, Gaelic Coronach
TRESATTrS COLLECTION. 395
dramatic energy. For Passion Music of a noble and
yet flowing type, such as Pergolese might have com-
posed, it is still admirably adapted.
Each strophe of Fra Jacopone's Canticles might
be likened to a seed cast into the then fertile soil of
the Franciscan Order, which bore fruit a thousand- fold
in its own kind of spiritual poetry. The vast collec-
tion of hymns, published by Tresatti in the seventeenth
century, bears the name of Jacopone, and incorporates
his genuine compositions. 1 But we must regard the
main body of the work as rather belonging to Jaco-
pone's school than to the master. Taken collectively,
these poems bear upon their face the stamp of con-
siderable age, and there is no reason to suppose that
their editor doubted of their authenticity. A critical
reader of the present time, however, discerns in-
numerable evidences of collaboration, and detects
expansion and dilution of more pregnant themes in
the copious outpourings of this cloistral inspiration.
What the Giotteschi are to Giotto, Tresatti 's collec-
tion is to Salviano's imprint of Jacopone. It forms a
Le Poesie spirituali del Beato Jacopone da Todi. In Venetia,
appresso Niccolb Miserrimi, MDCXVII. The book is a thick 410, con-
sisting of 1,055 P a g es . closely printed. It contains a voluminous run-
ning commentary. The editor, Tresatti, a Minorite Friar, says he had
extracted 211 Cantici of Jacopone from MSS. belonging to his Order,
whereas the Roman and Florentine editions, taken together, contained
102 in all. He divides them into seven sections: (i) Satires, (2) Moral
Songs, (3) Odes, (4) Penitential Hymns, (5) The Theory of Divine Love,
(6) Spiritual Love Poems, (7) Spiritual Secrets. This division corre-
sponds to seven stages in the soul's progress toward perfection. The
arrangement is excellent, though the sections in some places interpene-
trate. For variety of subjects, the collection is a kind of lyrical encyclo-
paedia, touching all needs and states of the devout soul. It might supply
material for meditation through a lifetime to a heart in harmony with
its ascetic and erotically enthusiastic tone.
2Q6 RENAISSANCE IN ITALY.
complete manual of devotion, framed according to the
spirit of S. Francis. In its pages we read the progress
of the soul from a state of worldliness and vice,
through moral virtue, into the outer court of religious
conviction. Thence we pass to penitence and the pro-
found terror of sin. Having traversed the region of
purgatory upon earth, we are introduced to the theory
of Divine Love, which is reasoned out and developed
upon themes borrowed from each previous step gained
by the spirit in its heavenward journey. Here ends
the soul's novitiate; and we enter on a realm of
ecstasy. The poet bathes in an illimitable ocean of
intoxicating love, summons the images of sense and
makes them adumbrate his rapture of devotion, repro-
ducing in a myriad modes the Oriental metaphors of
the soul's marriage to Christ suggested by the Canticle
of Canticles. A final grade in this ascent to spiritual
perfection is attained in the closing odes, which cele-
brate annihilation the fusion of the mortal in im-
mortal personality, the bliss of beatific vision, Nirvana
realized on earth in ecstasy by man. At this final
point sense swoons, the tongue stammers, language
refuses to perform her office, the reason finds no place,
the universe is whirled in spires of flame, we float in
waves of metaphor, we drown in floods of contempla-
tion, the whole is closed with an O Altitudo!
It is not possible to render scantiest justice to this
extraordinary monument of the Franciscan fervor by
any extracts or descriptions. Its full force can only be
felt by prolonged and, if possible, continuous perusal.
S. Catherine and S. Teresa attend us while we read;
and when the book is finished, we feel, perhaps for the
ETHICAL THEMES. 297
first time, the might, the majesty, the overmastering
attraction of that sea of faith which swept all Europe
in the thirteenth century. We understand how nau-
fragar in questo mar fu dolce.
Though the task is ungrateful, it behooves the his-
torian of popular Italian poetry to extract some
specimens from this immense repertory of anonymous
lyrics. Omitting the satires, which are composed
upon the familiar monastic rubrics of vanity, human
misery, the loathsomeness of the flesh, and contempt
of the world, I will select one stanza upon Chastity
from among the moral songs 1 :
OCastitabel fiore,
Che ti sostiene amore.
O fior di Castitate,
Odorifero giglio,
Con gran soavitate,
Sei di color vermiglio,
Et a la Trinitate
Tu ripresenti odore.
Chastity in another place is thus described 2 :
La Castitate pura,
Piti bella che viola,
Cotanto ha chiaro viso
Che par un paradiso.
Poverty, the Cardinal Virtues, and the Theological
Virtues receive their full meed of praise in a succession
of hymns. Then comes a long string of proverbs,
which contain much sober wisdom, with passages of
poetic feeling like the following 3 :
Li pesciarelli piccoli
Scampan la rete in mare;
1 Op. tit. p. 149. a Ibid. p. 244. a Ibid, p. 253.
2g9 RENAISSANCE IN ITALY.
Grand* ucel prende 1* aquila,
Non pub "1 moscon pigliare;
Enchinasi la vergola,
L' acqua lassa passare;
Ma fa giu cader 1' arbore,
Che non si pub inchinare.
Among the odes we may first choose this portion
of a carol written to be sung before the manger, or
presepe, which it was usual to set up in churches at
Christmas 1 :
Veggiamo il suo Bambino
Gammettare nel fieno,
E le braccia scoperte
Porgere ad ella in seno,
Ed essa lo ricopre
El meglio che pub almeno,
Mettendoli la poppa
Entro la sua bocchina.
Cioppava lo Bambino
Con le sue labbruccia;
Sol la dolciata cioppa
Volea, non minestruccia;
Stringeala con la bocca
Che non avea dentuccia,
II figliuolino bello,
Ne la dolce bocchina.
A la sua man manca,
Cullava lo Bambino,
E con sante carole
I Nenciava il suo amor fino . . .
Gli Angioletti d' intorno
Se ne gian danzando,
Facendo dolci versi
E d* amor favellando.
There is a fresco by Giotto behind the altar in the
Arena Chapel at Padua, which illustrates part of this
hymn. A picture attributed to Botticelli in our
i Op. fit. p. 266. See Translation in Appendix.
THEMES OF PASSION AND TERROR. 299
National Gallery illustrates the rest. The spirit of the
carol has been reproduced with less sincerity in a
Jesuit's Latin hymn, Dormi,jili t dormi, mater.
Close upon the joys of Mary follow her sorrows
The following is a popular echo of the Stabat Mater 1 :
Or si incomincia lo duro pianto
Che fa la Madre di Christo tanto;
Or intendete 1* amaro canto,
Fu crocifisso quel capo santo.
Ma quando che s' inchiodava,
Presso al figliuolo la Madre stava;
Quando a la croce gli occhi levava,
Per troppa doglia ci trangosciava.
La Madre viddelo incoronato,
Et ne la croce tutto piagato,
Per le pene e pel sangue versato
Sitibondo gridar Consummato.
Many of the odes are devoted to S. Francis. One
passage recording the miracle of the Stigmata deserves
to be extracted 3 :
La settima a Lavcrna,
Stando in orazione,
Nc la parte superna,
Con gran divozione,
Mirabil visione
Seraphin apparuto
Crucifisso e veduto,
Con sei ale mostrato:
Incorporotti stimmate
A lato piedi e mano;
Duro gik fora a credere
Se nol contiam di piano,
Staendo vivo et sano
Mold 1* ban mirate.
L' ha morte dichiarate,
Da molti fu palpato.
Op. cit. p. 306. * Ibid. p. 343.
300 RENAISSANCE IN ITALY.
La sua carne bianchiasixna
Pareva puerile;
Avanti era brunissima
Per gli freddi nevili;
La fe amor si gentile,
Parea glorificata,
Da ogni gente amtnirata
Del mirabil ornato.
The Penitential Hymns resound with trumpets of
Judgment and groans of lost souls. There is one
terrible lament of a man who repented after death;
another of one arising from the grave, damned.^ The
Day of Judgment inspires stanzas heavy with lugu-
brious chords and a leaden fall 2 :
Tutta la terra tornera a niente,
Le pietre piangeranno duramente,
Conturbaronsi tutti i monumente,
Per la sententia di Dio onnipotente
Che tutti sentiranno.
Allora udrai dal cicl trombe sonare,
Et tutti morti vedrai suscitare,
Avanti al tribunal di Christo andare,
E 1 fuoco ardente per 1* aria volare
Con gran velocitate.
Porgine aiuto, alto Signer verace,
E campane da quel foco penace,
E danne penitentia si verace
Che "n ciel possiam venir a quella pace
Dove in eterno regni.
This is the Dies Ira adapted for the people, and
expanded in its motives.
The exposition and the expression of Divine Love
occupy a larger space than any other section of the
J Op. cit. pp. 416, 420 * Ibid. p. 433.
ECSTATIC RAPTURE. 301
series. Mystical psychology, elaborated with scho-
lastic subtlety of argument and fine analysis of all the
grades of feeling, culminates in lyric raptures, only less
chaotic than the stanzas already quoted from Jaco-
pone. The poet breaks out into short ejaculations 1 :
O alta Nichilitate,
Dhe mi di dove tu stai !
He faints and swoons before the altar in the languors
of emotion 2 :
Languisco per amore
Di Gesti mio Amatore.
We see before our eyes the trances of S. Catherine, so
well portrayed with sensuous force by Sodoma. Then
he resumes the Song of Solomon in stanzas to be
counted by the hundred, celebrates the marriage of
Christ and the soul, or seeks crude carnal metaphors
to convey his meaning 3 :
Del tuo bacio, amore,
Degnami di baciare.
Dhe baciami, dolcezza
Di contrizione,
Et dolce soavezza
Di compunzione,
O santa allegrezza
Di devozione,
Per nulla stagione
Non m" abandonare.
Poi che '1 bacio sento,
Bevo a le mammelle
C hanno odore d* unguento;
Pur le tue scintilla
A bever non so lento
Con le mie maxille,
Piil che volte mille
Vb me inebriare.
' Op. fit. p. 703. Ibid. p. 741. a Ibid. p. 715.
302 RENAISSANCE IN ITALY.
Let this suffice. With the language of sweetness and
monastic love we are soon surfeited. Were it not
that the crescendo of erotic exaltation ends at last in
a jubilee of incomprehensible passion, blending the
incoherence of delirium with fragments of theosophy
which might have been imported from old Alexandrian
sources or from dim regions of the East, a student of
our century would shrink aghast from some of these
hermaphroditic hymns, as though he had been witness
of wild acts of nympholepsy in a girl he reckoned
sane.
Through the two centuries which followed Jaco-
pone's death (1306?) the Lauds of the Confraternities
continued to form a special branch of popular poetry ;
and in the fifteenth century they were written in
considerable quantities by men of polite education.
Like all hymns, these spiritual songs are less re-
markable for literary quality than devoutness. It is
difficult to find one rising to the height of Jacopone's
inspiration. Many of the later compositions even
lack religious feeling, and seem to have been written
as taskwork. Those, for example, by Lorenzo de'
Medici bear the same relation to his Canti Camascia-
leschi as Pontano's odes to the Saints bear to his
elegies and Baian lyrics. This was inevitable in an
age saturated with the adverse ideals of the classical
Revival, when Platonic theism threatened to supplant
Christianity, and society was clogged with frigid
cynicism. Yet even in the sixteenth century, those
hymns which came directly from the people's heart,
thrilling with the strong vibrations of Savonarola's
preaching, are still remarkable for almost frantic piety.
BENIVIENrs LAUDS. 303
Among the many Florentine hymn-writers who felt
that influence, Girolamo Benivieni holds the most
distinguished place, both for the purity of his style
and for the sincerity of his religious feeling. I will
set side by side two versions from his book of Lauds,
illustrating the extreme limits of devout emotion the
calmness of a meditative piety and the spasms of
passionate enthusiasm. The first is a little hymn to
Jesus, profoundly felt and expressed with exquisite
simplicity l :
Jesus, whoso with Thee
Hangs not in pain and loss
Pierced on the cruel cross,
At peace shall never be.
Lord, unto me be kind:
Give me that peace of mind,
Which in this world so blind
And false dwells but with Thee.
Give me that strife and pain,
Apart from which 'twere vain
Thy love on earth to gain
Or seek a share in Thee.
It, Lord, with Thee alone
Heart's peace and love be known,
My heart shall be Thine own,
Ever to rest with Thee.
Here in my heart be lit
Thy fire, to feed on it,
Till burning bit by bit
It dies to live with Thee.
Jesus, whoso with Thee
Hangs not in pain or loss,
Pierced on the cruel cross,
At peace shall never be.
1 Opere di Girolamo Benivieni (Venegia, G. de Gregori, 1524), p. 151
304 RENAISSANCE IN ITALY.
The second is an echo of Jacopone's eulogy of mad-
ness, prolonged and developed with amorous extrava-
gance l :
Never was there so sweet a gladness,
Joy of so pure and strong a fashion,
As with zeal and love and passion
Thus to embrace Christ's holy madness.
They who are mad in Jesus, slight
All that the wise man seeks and prizes;
Wealth and place, pomp, pride, delight,
Pleasure and fame, their soul despises:
Sorrow and tears and sacrifices,
Poverty, pain, and low estate,
All that the wise men loathe and hate,
Are sought by the Christian in his madness.
They who are fools for Christ in heaven,
Should they be praised peradventure, mourn,
Seeing the praise that to them is given
Was taken from God; but hate and scorn
With joy and gladness of soul are borne:
The Christian listens and smiles for glee
When he hears the taunt of his foe, for he
Glories and triumphs in holy madness.
Many collections of Lauds were early committed
to the press; and of these we have an excellent
modern reprint in the Laude spirituali di Feo Belcart
t di altri, which includes hymns by Castellano Cas-
tdlani, Bernardo Giambullari, Francesco Albizzi, Lo-
renzo de' Medici, Lucrezia Tornabuoni, and the Pulci
brothers. 2 Studying this miscellany, we perceive that
between the Laude and Ballate of the people there is
> Qp. cit. p. 143. I have only translated the opening stanzas of this
hymn.
Published at Florence by Molini and Cecchi, 1863. Compare the
two collections printed by Prof. G. Ferraro from Ferrarese MSS. Poesit
i religiose del secolo xiv. Bologna, Romagnoli, 1877.
HYMNS AND DANCE-SONGS. 305
often little but a formal difference. Large numbers are
parodies of amatory or obscene songs, beginning with
nearly the same words and intended to be sung to the
same tunes. Thus the famous ballad, O vaghe mon-
tanine e pastorelle becomes O vaghe di Gesil, o verginelle. *
The direction for singing Crucifisso a capo china is
Cantasi come Una donna di fino amore, which was
a coarse street song in vogue among the common folk. 2
Vergine, alia regina, is modeled upon Galantina,
morosina; /' son quella pecorella upon /' son quella
villanella; Giu per la mala via Vanima mia ne va on
Giu per la villa lunga la bella se ne va. 3 Others are
imitations of carnival choruses noted for their gross-
ness and lewd innuendoes. 4 It is clear that the Laudesi,
long before the days of Rowland Hill, discerned the
advantage of not letting the devil have all the good
tunes. Other parallels between the Florentine Lauds
and the revival hymns of the present century might be
pointed out. Yet in proportion as the Italian religious
sentiment is more sensuous and erotic than that of
the Teutonic nations, so are the Lauds more unre-
servedly emotional than the most audacious utterances
of American or English Evangelicalism. As an
excellent Italian critic has recently observed, the
amorous and religious poems of the people were only
distinguished by the difference of their object. Ex-
pression, versification, melody, pitch of sentiment,
remained unaltered. " Men sang the same strambottt
to the Virgin and the lady of their love, to the rose
1 Laude, etc p. 105.
a Op. cit. p. 1 6. See Carteont a Ballo, etc. (Firenze, 1568), p. 30,
or this song
Op cit. pp. 96, 227, 50. See op. cit. pp. 227. 234, and passim
306 RENAISSANCE IN ITALY,
of Jericho and the red rose of the balcony." 1 No
notion of impropriety seems to have been suggested
by this confusion of divergent feelings. Otherwise,
Savonarola would hardly have suffered his proselytes
to roam the streets chanting stanzas which are little
better than echoes from the brothel or travesties of
Poliziano's chorus of the Maenads. The Italians have
never been pious in the same sense as the Northern
nations. Their popular religious poetry is the lyric of
emotion, the lyric of the senses losing self-restraint in
an outpouring of voluptuous ecstasy. With them
" music is a love-lament or a prayer addressed to God ; "
and both constituents of music blend and mingle in-
distinguishably in their hymns. As they lack the
sublime Chorales of the Reformation period in Ger-
many, so they lack the grave and meditative psalms for
which Bach made his melodies.
The origins of the Italian theater were closely
connected with the services of the Laudesi. And
here it has to be distinctly pointed out that the evo-
lution of the Sacred Drama in Italy followed a dif-
ferent course from that with which we are familiar in
France and England. Miracle-plays and Mysteries,
properly so called, do not appear to have been common
among the Italians in the early middle ages. There
is, indeed, one exception to this general statement
which warns us to be cautious, and which proves that
the cyclical sacred play had been exhibited at least in
one place at a very early date. At Cividale, in the
district of Friuli, a Ludus Christi, embracing the
principal events of Christian history from the Passion
1 Carducci, Dello Svolgimento della Letteratura Nazionalc, p. 90.
MIRACLE PLAYS. 307
to the Second Advent, was twice acted, in 1298 and
1303. From the scanty notices concerning it, we are
able to form an opinion that it lasted over three days,
that it was recited by the clergy, almost certainly in
Latin, and that the representation did not take place
in church. 1 The Friulian Ludi Christi were, in fact,
a Mystery of the more primitive type, corresponding
to Greban's Mysttre de la Passion and to our Coventry
or Widkirk Miracles. But, so far as present know-
ledge goes, this sacred play was an isolated phenome-
non, and proved unfruitful of results. We are only
able to infer from it, what the close intercourse of the
Italians with the French would otherwise make evi-
dent, that Mysteries were not entirely unknown in the
Peninsula. Yet it seems clear, upon the other hand,
that the two forms of the sacred drama specific to
Italy, the Umbrian Divozione and the Florentine Sacra
Rappresentazione, were not a direct outgrowth from the
Mystery. We have to trace their origin in the reli-
gious practices of the Laudesi, from which a species of
dramatic performance was developed, and which placed
the sacred drama in the hands of these lay confra-
ternities.
At first the Disciplinati di Gesil intoned their
Lauds in the hall of the Company, standing before the
crucifix or tabernacle of a saint, as they are represented
in old wood-cuts. 2 From simple singing they passed
to antiphonal chanting, and thence made a natural
transition to dialogue, and lastly to dramatic action.
1 See Muratori, Rer. Ital. Script, xxiv. 1205, and ibid. 1209, Friuliar
Chronicle.
* See the frontispiece to Laudt di Feo Belcari t di altri.
308 RENAISSANCE IN ITALY.
To trace the steps of this progress is by no means
easy ; nor must we imagine that it was effected wholly
within the meeting-places of the confraternities without
external influence. Though the Italians may not have
brought the Miracle-play to the perfection it attained
among the Northern nations, they were, as we have
seen, undoubtedly aware of its existence. Further-
more, they were familiar with ecclesiastical shows but
little removed in character from that form of medieval
art. Representations of the manger at Bethlehem
made part of Christmas ceremonies in Umbria, as we
learn from a passage in the works of S. Bonaventura
referring to the year I223. 1 Nor were occasions
wanting when pageants enlivened the ritual of the
Church. Among liturgical dramas, enacted by priests
and choristers at service time, may be mentioned the
descent of the Angel Gabriel at the feast of the
Annunciation, the procession of the Magi at Epiphany,
the descent of the dove at Pentecost, and the Easter
representation of a sepulcher from which the body of
Christ had been removed. Thus the Laudesi found
precedents in the Liturgy itself for introducing a
dramatic element into their offices.
Having assumed a more or less dramatic form, the
Laud acquired the name of Divozione as early as the
middle of the fourteenth century. It was written in
various lyric meters, beginning with six-lined stanzas
in ottonari, passing through hendecasyllabic sesta
rima, and finally settling down into ottava rima, which
became the common stanza for all forms of popular
' D* Ancona, Or. del T. op. cit. voL i. p. 109.
DIVOZIONL 309
poetry in the fifteenth century. 1 The passion of our
Lord formed the principal theme of the Divozioni; for
the Laudesi were bound by their original constitution
to a special contemplation of His suffering upon the
cross for sinners. The Perugian Chronicles refer to
compositions of this type under the name of Corrotto,
or song of mourning. In its highest form it was the
passionate outpouring of Mary's anguish over her
crucified Son the counterpart in poetry to the Piefa
of painting, for which the Giottesque masters, the
Umbrian school, Crivelli, and afterwards Mantegna,
reserved the strongest exhibition of their powers as
dramatists. We have already seen with what a noble
and dramatic dialogue Jacopone da Todi initiated this
species of composition. 2 At the same time, the
Divozioni and the Lauds from which they sprang,
embraced a wide variety of subjects, following the
passages of Scripture appointed to be read in church
on festivals and Sundays. Thus the Laud for Advent
dramatized the Apocalypse and introduced the episode
of Antichrist. The story of the Prodigal furnished a
theme for the vigil when that parable was used. It
was customary to sing these compositions in the
oratories after the discipline of the confraternity had
been duly performed; and that they were sung, is a
1 The phases of this progress from oftonariio ottava rima have been
carefully traced by D' Ancona (op. cit. vol. i. pp. 151-165). Ottonan
are lines of eight syllables with a loose trochaic rhythm, in which great
licenses of extra syllables are allowed. The stanza rhymes a b a b c c.
The sesta rima of the transition has the same rhyming structure. The
Corrotto by Jacopone da Todi, analyzed above, shows a similar system
of rhymes to that of some Latin hymns: aaabcccb, the b rhyme in
ato being carried through the whole poem.
* See above, pp. 292-294, and Appendix.
310 RENAISSANCE IN ITALY.
fact of importance which must never be forgotten
Every Company had its own collection of dramatic
Lauds, forming a cycle of sacred melodramas, com-
posed with no literary end and no theatrical effect in
view, but with the simple purpose of expressing by
dialogue the substance of a Scripture narrative.
An inventory of the Perugian Confraternity of
S. Domenico, dated in the year 1339, includes wings
and crowns for sixty-eight angels, masks for devils, a
star for the Magi, a crimson robe for Christ, black
veils for the Maries, two lay figures of thieves, a dove
to symbolize the Holy Ghost, a coat of mail for
Longinus, and other properties which prove that not
Passion-plays alone but dramas suited to Epiphany,
Pentecost and the Annunciation must have been enacted
at that period. Yet we have no exact means of ascer-
taining when the Laudesi left their oratories and began
to recite Divozioni with action in church or on the
open square. The Compagnia del Gonfalone are said
to have presented a play to the Roman people in the
Coliseum in 1260; but though the brotherhood was
founded in that year, it is more than doubtful whether
their famous Passion dates from so early an epoch. 1
By the year 1376 it had become customary for Laudest
to give representations in church, accompanied by a
sermon from the pulpit. The audience assembled in
the nave, and a scaffold was erected along the screen
D' Ancona, op. cit. p. 108. At p. 282 he gives some curious details
relating to the Coliseum Passion in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries.
In 1539 it was suppressed by Paul III., because the Romans, infuriated
by the drama of the Crucifixion, were wont to adjourn from the Flavian
amphitheater to the Ghetto, and begin a murderous crusade against
the Jews !
THE STAGE IN CHURCH. 311
which divided the nave and transepts from the choir.
Here the brethren played their pieces, while the
preacher at appropriate intervals addressed the peo-
ple, explaining what they were about to see upon the
stage or commenting on what had been performed. 1
The actors were the Chorus, the preacher the Chore -
gus. The stage was technically called talamo? It had
a large central compartment, corresponding to the
" Logeion " of the Attic theater, with several smaller
rooms termed luoghi deputati, and galleries above re-
served for the celestial personages. The actors en-
tered from a central and two side doors called reggi.
These Umbrian Divozioni form a link between the
Laud of the thirteenth and the Sacra Rappresentazione
of the fifteenth century. They still in form at least,
if not in sacred character survive in the Maggi of
the Tuscan peasantry, which are yearly acted among
the villages of the Lucchese and Pistojese highlands.
It is difficult to say how far we are justified in regard-
ing them as wholly different in type from the Northern
Miracle-plays. That they originated in the oratories
of lay brotherhoods, and that they retained the char-
acter of Lauds to be sung after they had assumed
dramatic shape, may be reckoned as established points.
Moreover, they lack the cyclical extension and the
copious admixture of grotesquely comic elements which
1 In the directions for a " Devotione de Veneredi sancto," analyzed
by D' Ancona (op. cit. pp. 176-182), we read: "predict, e como fa sig.to
che Cristo sia posto in croce, li Judei li chiavano una mano e poi 1" altra"
. ..." a quello loco quando Pilato comanda che Cristo sia posto a la
colona, lo Predicatore tase"
Ducange explains thalamum by tabulatum.
3 See Appendix to vol. ii. of D' Ancona's Origin.i del Tea.tro.
312 RENAISSANCE IN ITALY.
mark the French and English Mysteries. Yet we have
already seen that such Mysteries were not entirely
unknown in Italy, and that the liturgical drama, per-
formed by ecclesiastics, had been from early times a
part of Church ceremonial on holy days. We are,
therefore, justified in accepting the Divozioni as the
Italian species of a genus which was common to the
medieval nations. The development of Gothic archi-
tecture in Central Italy might furnish an illustration.
Its differentiation from the grander and more perfect
type of French and English Gothic does not constitute
a separate style.
To bridge the interval between the Divozione, used
in Umbria, and the Sacra Rappresentazione, as it
appeared at Florence, is rendered impossible by the
present lack of documents. Still there seems sufficient
reason to believe that the latter was evolved from the
former within the precincts of the confraternities. In
the Sacra Rappresentazione the religious drama of Italy
reached its highest point of development, and produced
a form of art peculiar to Florence and the Tuscan
cities. Though it betrays certain affinities to the
Northern Miracle-play, which prove familiarity with
the French Mysfkres on the part at least of some
among the playwrights, it is clearly a distinct kind.
As in the case of the Umbrian Divozioni, so here the
absence of grotesque episodes is striking; nor do we
find connected series of Sacre Rappresentazioni, em-
bracing the Christian history in a cyclical dramatic
work. This species flourished for about fifty years,
from 1470 to 1 5 20. These dates are given approxi-
mately; for though we know that the Sacred Drama
SACRE RAPPRESENTAZIONI. 313
of Florence did not long survive the second decade of
the sixteenth century, we cannot ascertain the period
of its origin. The Sacre Rappresentazioni we possess
in print, almost all written within the last thirty years
of the fifteenth century, present so marked a similarity
of style and structure that they must have been pre-
ceded by a series of experiments which fixed and con-
ventionalized their form. Like the Divozioni, they
were in the hands of confraternities, who caused them
to be acted at their own expense. Since these Com-
panies were wealthy, and included members of the best
Florentine families, their plays were put upon the
stage with pomp. The actors were boys belonging to
the brotherhoods, directed by a Chorodidascalus called
Festajuolo. S. Antonino, the good archbishop, promoted
the custom of enrolling youths of all classes in religious
Companies, seeking by such influences to encourage
sound morality and sober living. The most fashion-
able brotherhoods were those of San Bastiano or Del
Freccione, Del Vangelista or Dell' Aquila, Dell' Arcan-
gelo RafTaello or Delia Scala the name of the saint
or his ensign being indifferently used. Representations
took place either in the oratory of the Company, or in
the refectory of a convent. Meadows at Fiesole and
public squares were also chosen for open-air perform-
ances. * The libretti were composed in octave stanzas,
with passages of terza rima, and were sung to a reci-
tative air. Interludes of part-songs, with accompani-
1 In the prologues of the later comedies of learning (commedia eru-
hta) allusions to the rude style of Fiesolan shows are pretty frequent.
The playwrights speak of them as our Elizabethan dramatists spoke ot
Bartholomew Fair. The whole method of a Fiesolan Sacra Rappresen-
tazione is well explained in the induction to the play of Abraam e Sara
314 RENAISSANCE IN ITALY.
ment of lute and viol, enlivened the simple cantilena ,
and there is no doubt, from contemporary notices, that
this music was of the best. The time selected was
usually after vespers. The audience were admitted
free of cost, but probably by invitation only to the
friends and relatives of the young actors. Sacra
Rappresentazione was, the generic name of the show;
but we meet with these subordinate titles, Festa, Mis-
tero, Storia, Vangelo^ Figura, Esemplo, Passione, Mar-
tirio, Miracolo, according to the special subject-matter
of the play in question.
D'Ancona, in his book on the Origins of the Italian
Drama, suggests that the Sacre Rappresentazioni were
developed by a blending of the Umbrian Divozioni
with the civic pageants of S. John's day at Florence.
This theory is plausible enough to deserve investiga-
tion; especially as many points relating to the nature
of the performances will be elucidated in the course of
the inquiry. We must, however, be cautious not to
take for granted that D' Ancona's conclusions have
been proved. The researches of that eminent literary
(Siena, 1581). A father and his son set out from Florence, at the boy's
request:
Et vo che noi andiamo
a Fiesolani poggi,
Ch' io mi ricordo c' hoggi
una festa non piu vista
Mai piu el Vangelista
vi fa e rappresenta.
On the road they wonder, will the booth be too full for them to find
places, will they get hot by walking fast up hill, will their clothes be de-
cent? They meet the Festajuolo at the booth-door, distracted because
manca una vocc
Et e ito un veloce
a Firenze per lui.
Voc was the technical name for the actor.
POPULAR DRAMATIC SHOWS. 315
antiquarian, in combination with those made by Pro-
fessor Monaci, are but just beginning to throw light
on this hitherto neglected topic.
From the Chroniclers of the fifteenth century we
have abundant testimony that in all parts of Italy
sacred and profane shows formed a prominent feature
of municipal festivals, and were exhibited by the
burghers of the cities when they wished to welcome a
distinguished foreigner, or to celebrate the election of
their chief magistrates. 1 Thus Sigismund, King of
the Romans, was greeted at Lucca in 1432 by a solemn
triumph. Perugia gratified Eugenius IV. in 1444
with the story of the Minotaur, the tragedy of Iphi-
genia, the Nativity and the Ascension. 2 The popular
respect for S. Bernardino found expression at
Siena in a pageant, when the Papal Curia, in 1450,
issued letters for his canonization. 3 Frederick III.
was received in 1462 at Naples with the spectacle of
the Passion. Leonora of Aragon, on her way through
Rome in 1473 to Ferrara, witnessed a series of panto-
mimes, profane and sacred, splendidly provided by
Pietro Riario, the Cardinal of San Sisto. 4 The
triumphs of the Popes on entering office filled the
streets of Rome with dramatic exhibitions, indifferently
borrowed from Biblical and classic history. At Parma
in 1414 the students celebrated the election of Andrea
di Sicilia to a chair in their university by a procession
1 See D* Ancona, op. cit. pp. 245-267. Compare the section on " Ge-
selligkeit und die Feste " in Burckhardt's Cultu^ der Renaissance in
Italien.
Graziani, Arch. Star. xvi. 344.
8 Allegretti, Muratori, xxxiii. 767.
Corio, quoted by me, Age of the Despots, p. 390
316 RENAISSANCE IN ITALY.
of the Magi. 1 When the head of S. Andrew entered
Rome in 1462, the citizens and prelates testified their
joy with figurative pomps. 2 Viterbo in the same year
enjoyed a variety of splendid exhibitions, Cardinal
vying with Cardinal in magnificence, upon the festival
of Corpus Domini. 3
The pageants above-mentioned formed but prolu-
sions to the yearly feast of S. John at Florence. 4
Florence had, as it were, the monopoly of such shows ;
and we know from many sources that Florentine
artists were employed in distant cities for the prepara-
tion of spectacles which they had brought to perfection
in their own town. An extract from Matteo Palmieri's
Chronicle, referring to the year 1464, brings this
Midsummer rejoicing vividly before the reader's mind. 6
It is an accurate description of the order followed at
that period in the exhibition of pantomimic pageants
by the guilds and merchants of the town. " On the
22d day of June the Cross of S. Maria del Fiore
moved first, with all the clergy and children, and
behind them seven singing men. Then the Com-
panies of James the wool-shearer and Nofri the shoe-
maker, with some thirty boys in white and angels.
1 See D* Ancona, op. cit. p. 245, and compare the account of a simi-
lar show in Galvano Flamma's Chronicle of Milan.
Pit Secundi Commentarii (Romas, 1584), viii. 365.
a Niccolb della Tuccia, Cron. di Viterbo (Firenze, Vieusseux, 1872)
p. 84.
* Look above in chapter i. pp. 50-53, for passages from Goro Dati's
Chronicle and other sources, touching on the summer festivals ot
Florence.
This passage from Palmieri's MS. will be found, together with full
information on the subject of S. John's Day, in Cambiagi, Memorit
istoriche riguardanti lefeste. etc. (Firenze, Stamp. Gran-ducale, 1766"),
0.65.
FLORENCE ON S. JOHN'S DAY. 3*7
Thirdly, the Tower (edifizio) of S. Michael, whereupon
stood God the Father in a cloud (nuvola)', and on the
Piazza., before the Signoria, they gave the show
( rappresentazione ) of the Battle of the Angels, when
Lucifer was cast out of heaven. Fourthly, the Com-
pany of Ser Antonio and Piero di Mariano, with some
thirty boys clothed in white and angels. Fifthly, the
Tower of Adam, the which on the Piazza gave the
show of how God created Adam and Eve, with the
Temptation by the serpent and all thereto pertaining.
Sixthly, a Moses upon horseback, attended by many
mounted men of the chiefs in Israel and others.
Seventhly, the Tower of Moses, which upon the Piazza
gave the show of the Delivery of the Law. Eighthly,
many Prophets and Sibyls, including Hermes Trismegis-
tus and others who foretold the Incarnation of our Lord."
With this list Palmieri proceeds at great length,
reckoning in all twenty-two Towers. The proces-
sion, it seems, stopped upon its passage to exhibit
tableaux ; and these were so arranged that the whole
Scripture history was set forth in dumb show, down to
the Last Day. The representation of each tableau and
the moving of the pageant through the streets and squares
of Florence lasted sixteen hours. It will be observed
that, here at least, a cyclical exposition of Christian
doctrine, corresponding to the comprehensive Mys-
teries of the North, was attempted in pantomime.
The Towers, we may remark in passing, were wooden
cars, surmounted with appropriate machinery, on which
the actors sat and grouped themselves according to
their subject. They differed in no essentials from the
Triumphal Chariots of carnival time, as described by
318 RENAISSANCE IN ITALY.
Vasari in his Lives of Piero di Cosimo and Pontormo
From an anonymous Greek writer who visited Flor-
ence in the train of John Palaeologus, we gather some
notion of the effect produced upon a stranger by these
pageants. 1 He describes the concourse of the Floren-
tines, and gives the measure of his own astonishment
by saying : " They work prodigies in this feast, and
miracles, or at least the representation of miracles."
Vasari in his life of II Cecca contributes much
valuable information concerning the machinery used
in the shows of S. John's Day. 2 The Piazza of the
Duomo was covered in with a broad blue awning
similar, we may suppose, to that veil of deeper and
lighter azure bands which forms the background to
Fra Lippi's " Crowning of the Virgin." This was sown
with golden lilies, and was called a Heaven. Beneath
it were the clouds, or Nuvole, exhibited by various
civic guilds. They were constructed of substantial
wooden frames, supporting an almond-shaped aureole,
which was thickly covered with wool, and surrounded
with lights and cherub faces. Inside it sat the person
who represented the saint, just as Christ and Madonna
are represented in the pictures of the Umbrian school.
Lower down, projected branches made of iron, bearing
children dressed like angels, and secured by waist-
bands in the same way as the fairies of our transfor-
mation scenes. The wood-work and the wires were
hidden from sight by wool and cloth, plentifully
' D* Ancona, op. cit. p. 205. This use of the term Miracle seems
to indicate that the Florentines applied to them the generic term for
Northern Sacred Plays.
Lemonnier's edition, vol. v.
THE INGEGNL 319
sprinkled with tinsel stars. The whole moved slowly
on the backs of bearers concealed beneath the frame.
Vasari attributes the first invention of these and similar
ingegni to Filippo Brunelleschi. Their similarity to
what we know about the pegmata of Roman triumphs,
renders this assertion probable. Brunelleschi's study
of ancient art may have induced him to adapt a
classical device to the requirements of Christian pa-
geantry. When designed on a colossal scale and sta-
tionary, these Nuvole were known by the name of
Paradiso. Another prominent feature in the Mid-
summer Show was the procession of giants and giant-
esses mounted upon stilts, and hooded with fantastic
masks. Men marched in front, holding a pike to
balance these unwieldy creatures; but Vasari states
that some specialists in this craft were able to walk
the streets on stilts six cubits high, without assistance.
Then there were spiritelli lighter and winged beings,
raised aloft to the same height, and shining down like
genii from their giddy altitude in sunlight on the crowd.
Whether we are right or not in assuming with
D' Ancona that the Sacra Rappresentazione was a
hybrid between the Umbrian Divozione and these
pageants, there is no doubt that the Florentine artists,
and Ingegnieri, were equal to furnishing the stage with
richness. The fraternities spared no expense, but
secured the services of the best designers. They also
employed versifiers of repute to compose their libretti.
It must be remembered that these texts were written
for boys, and were meant to be acted by boys. Thus
there came into existence a peculiar type of sacred
drama, displaying something childish in its style, but
J20 RENAISSANCE IN ITALY.
taxing the ingenuity of scene-painters, mechanicians,
architects, musicians, and poets, to produce a certain
calculated theatrical effect. When we remember how
these kindred arts flourished in the last decades of the
fifteenth century, we are justified in believing that the
Sacre Rappresentazioni offered a spectacle no less
beautiful than curious and rare.
An examination of a few of these plays in detail
will help us to understand one of the most original
products of the popular Italian literature. With this
object, I propose to consider the three volumes of
reprints, edited with copious illustrations by Professor
Alessandro d' Ancona. 1 But before proceeding to
render an account of the forty-three plays included in
this collection, it will be well to give some notice of
the men who wrote them, to describe their general
character, and to explain the manner of their presenta-
tion on the stage.
The authors of Sacre Rappresentazioni are fre-
quently anonymous ; but Lorenzo de' Medici, Antonio
Alamanni, Bernardo Pulci and his wife Monna Antonia
contribute each a sacred drama. The best were
written by Feo Belcari and Castellano Castellan i. Of
the latter very little is known, except that in the year
1 5 1 7 he exercised the priestly functions at Florence and
was a prolific writer of Lauds. Feo Belcari, a Floren-
tine citizen, born in 1410, held civic offices of distinc-
tion during the ascendency of Casa Medici. He was
a man of birth and some learning, who devoted him-
self to the production of literature in prose and verse
intended for popular edification. His Lauds are
1 Sacre Rappresentazioni, Florence. Lemonnier, 3 vols. 1872.
AUTHORS OF SACRED i'LAYS. 321
among the best which have descended from the
fifteenth century, and his translation of the Lives of
the Fathers into Tuscan is praised for purity of style.
When he died, in 1484, " poor, weak, and white-haired,"
Girolamo Benivieni, the disciple of Savonarola and the
greatest sacred singer of that age, composed his elegy
in verses of mingled sweetness and fervor 1 :
Tace il celeste suon, gik spenta e morta
E 1* armonia di quella dolce lira,
Che '1 mondo afflitto or lascia, e '1 ciel conforta.
E come parimenti si sospira
Qui la sua morte, cosi in ciel s'allegra
Chi alia nuova armonia si volge e gira.
Felice lui che dalla infetta e negra
Valle di pianti al ciel n* 6 gito, e 'n terra
Lasciata ha sol la veste inferma ed egra,
Ed or dal mondo e dall' orribil guerra
De' vizi sciolto, il suo splendor vagheggia
Nel volto di Colui che mai non erra.
As regards their form, the Sacre Rappresentaziom
are never divided into acts; but the copious stage-direc-
tions prove that the scenes were shifted, and in one or
two instances secular interludes are introduced in the
' It may be not uninteresting to compare this tersa rima with o
passage written fifty years later by Michelangelo Buonarroti on his fa-
ther's death, grander in style but less simply Christian:
Tu se* del morir morto e fatto divo,
Ne tern' or piu cangiar vita ne voglia;
Che quasi senza invidia non lo scrivo.
Fortuna e '1 tempo dentro a vostra soglia
Non tenta trapassar, per cui s' adduce
Fra no' dubbia letizia e cierta doglia.
Nube non e che scuri vostra luce,
L* ore distinte a voi non fanno forza,
Caso o necessity non vi conduce.
Yostro splendor per notte non s' ammorza,
N6 crescie ma' per giorno, benche chiaro,
Sie quand' el sol fra no' il caldo rin forza.
In the Appendix will be found translations.
32 RENAISSANCE IN ITALY.
pauses of the action. 1 The drama follows the tale 01
legend without artistic structure of plot; nor do the
authors appear to have aimed, except in subordinate
episodes, at much development of character. What
they found ready to their hand in prose, they versified.
The same fixed personages, and the same traditional
phrases recur with singular monotony, proving that a
conventional framework and style had become stereo-
typed. The end in view was religious edification.
Therefore mere types of virtue in saints and martyrs,
types of wickedness in tyrants and persecutors, sufficed
alike for authors, actors, and audience. True dramatic
genius emerges only in the minor parts, where a cer-
tain freedom of handling and effort after character-
drawing are discernible. The success of the play
depended on the movement of the story, and the
attractions of the scenery, costumes and music. It was
customary for an angel to prologize and to dismiss the
audience 2 ; but his place is once at least taken by a
young man with a lute. 3 A more dramatic opening
was occasionally attempted in a conversation between
two boys of Florence, the one good and the other
bad; and instead of the licenza the scene sometimes
closed with 'a Te Deum, or a Laud sung by the actors
1 Cecchi's Elevation of the Cross aims at the dignity ot a five-act
tragedy; but it was not represented until 1589. Santa Uliva illustrates
the interludes; and a very interesting example is supplied by the Mira-
colo di S. Maria Maddalena, where two boys prologize in dialogue,
comment at intervals upon the action, and conclude the exhibition with
a Laud.
8 " L'Angelo annunzia la festa," is the common stage-direction at
the beginning; and at the end " L'Angelo di licenza."
3 "Constantino Imperatore," Sacre Rappr. ii. 187. "Un Giovine
COD la citara annunzia."
DRAMATIC ELEMENTS. 323
and probably taken up by the spectators. Castellani
in his Figliuol Prodigo made good use of the dramatic
opening, gradually working the matter of his play out
of a dialogue which begins with a smart interchange of
Florentine chaff. * It would be useless even to attempt
a translation of this scene. The raciness of its obso-
lete street-slang would evaporate, and the fiber of the
piece is not strong enough to bear rude handling. It
must suffice to indicate its rare dramatic quality.
Students of our own Elizabethan literature may pro-
fitably compare this picture of manners with similar
passages in Hycke Scorner or Lusty Juventus. But
the Florentine interlude is more fairly represen-
tative of actual life than any part of our Moralities.
Castellani's Prodigal Son, however, rises altogether to
a higher artistic level than the ordinary; and the same
may be said about the Miracolo di S. Maria Madda-
lena, where a simple dramatic motive is interwoven
with the action of the whole piece and made to supply
a proper ending. 2
As a rule, the Sacre Rappresentazioni partook of
the character of a religious service. Their tone is uni-
formly pious. Yet the spirit of the age and the nature
of the Italians were alike unfavorable to piety of a
true temper. Here it is unctuous, caressing, senti-
mental anything but vigorous or virile. The monastic
virtues are highly extolled; and an unwholesome view
of life seen from the cloister by some would-be saint,
who " winks and shuts his apprehension up " to common
facts of experience, is too often presented. Vice is
' Op. fit. vol. i. pp. 357-359-
J Sacre Rappr. i. 391 . Cp. the Abraam quoted in a note abore, p. 313.
JJ4 RENAISSANCE IN ITALY.
sincerely condemned; yet the morality of these exhibi
tions cannot be applauded. Instead of the stern lessons
of humanity conveyed in a drama like that of Athens
or of England, the precepts of the pulpit and confes-
sional are enforced with a childish simplicity that
savors more of cloistral pietism than of true knowledge
of the world. Mere belief in the intercession of saints
and the efficacy of relics is made to cover all crimes ;
while the anti-social enthusiasms of dreamy boys and
girls are held up for imitation. We feel that we are
reading what a set of feeble spiritual directors wrote
with a touch of conscious but well-meaning insincerity
for children. The glaring contrast between the pro-
fessed asceticism of the fraternities and the future con-
duct of their youthful members in the world of the
Renaissance leaves a suspicion of hypocrisy. 1 This
impression is powerfully excited by Lorenzo de' Me-
dici's Rappresentaziom di S. Giovanni e Paolo, which
was acted by his children. The tone is not, indeed, so
unctuous as that of Castellani. Yet when we remem-
ber what manner of man was Lorenzo ; when we reflect
what parts were played by his sons, Piero and Leo X.,
upon the stage of Italy; the sanctimonious tone of its
frigid octave stanzas fails to impose on our credulity.
An adequate notion of the scenic apparatus of th^
Rappresentazioni may be gathered from the stage-di-
rections to S. Uliva and from the interludes described
in Giovanmaria Cecchi's Esaltazione delta Croce? The
latter piece was acted in Florence on the occasion of
1 Compare, for example, Vespasiano's naive astonishment at the
virginity of the Cardinal di Portogallo with the protestations of chastity
in the Tre Pellegrini (Sacre Rappr. iii. 467).
s Sacre Rappr. iii. p. 235 and p. i.
SCENIC APPARATUS. 325
Ferrando de' Medici's marriage to Cristina of Lorraine,
in 1589. It belongs, therefore, to the very last of these
productions. Yet, judging by Vasari's account of the
Ingegni, we may assume that the style of presentation
was traditional, and that a Florentine Company of the
fifteenth century might have put a play upon the stage
with at least equal pomp. The prose description of
the apparatus and the interludes reads exactly like
the narrative portion of Ben Jonson's Masks at
Court, in which the poet awards due praise to the
" design and invention " of Master Inigo Jones and to
the millinery of Signer Forobosco. 1 It was indeed, a
custom derived by England from Italy for the poet to
set forth a minute record of his own designs together
with their execution by the co-operating architects,
scene-painters, musicians, dress-makers, and morris-
dancers. The architect, says Cecchi, was one Taddeo
di Leonardo Landini, a member of the Compagnia,
skilled in sculpture as well as an excellent machinist.
He arranged the field, or prato, of the Compagnia di
S. Giovanni in the form of a theater, covered with a
red tent, and painted with pictures of the Cross con-
sidered as an instrument of shameful death, as a pre
cious relic, and as the reward of virtue in this life.
Emblems, scrolls and heraldic achievements completed
the adornment of the theater. When the curtain rose
for the first time, Jacob was seen in a meadow, "asleep
with his head on certain stones, dressed in costly furs
slung across his shoulder, with a thin shirt of fine linen
beneath, cloth-of-silver stockings and fair buskins on
his feet, and in his hand a gilt wand." While he
1 Sucre Rappr. p. 121. Shakespeare Soc, T*ubl vol. xvil.
326 RENAISSANCE IN ITALY.
slept, heaven opened, and seven angels appeared
seated upon clouds, and making " a most pleasant noise
with horns, greater and less viols, lutes and organ
.... the music of this and all the other interludes
was the composition of Luca Bati, a man in this art
most excellent." When they had played and sung, the
cloud disclosed, and showed a second heaven, where
sat God the Father. 1 All the angels worshiped Him,
and heaven increased in splendor. Then a ladder
was let down, and God, leaning upon it, turned to
Jacob and " sang majestically to the sound of many
instruments, in a sonorous bass voice." Thereupon
angels descended and ascended by the ladder, singing
a hymn in honor of the Cross; and at last the clouds
closed round, heaven disappeared and Jacob woke
from sleep. Such was the introduction to the drama.
Between the first and second acts was shown, with no
less exuberance of scenical resources, the exodus of
Israel from Egypt; between the second and third, the
miracle of Aaron's rod that blossomed; between the
third and fourth, the elevation of the Brazen Serpent;
between the fourth and fifth, the ecstasy of David
dancing before the ark " to the sound of a large lute,
a violin, a trombone, but more especially to his own
harp." After the fifth act the play was concluded with
a pageant of religious chivalry the Knights of Malta,
S. James, S. Maurice, and the Teutonic Order who
had fought for the Cross, and to whom, amid thunder-
ings and lightnings, as they stood upon the stage, was
granted the vision of " Religion, habited in purest white,
full of majesty, with the triple tiara and the crossed
' For the technical terms Nuvola and Paradise see above, pp. 318, 319
INTERLUDES AND MASKS. 327
keys of S. Peter, holding in her hand a large and
most resplendent cross, adorned with diamonds, rubies
and emeralds." The resources of a theater which
could place so many actors on the stage at once, and
attempt the illusion of clouds and angels, bringing
into play the machinery of transformation scenes, and
enriching the whole with a varied accompaniment of
music, must have been considerable. Those who have
spent an hour in the Teatro Farnese at Parma, erected
of wood for a similar occasion, may be able to sum-
mon by the aid of the imagination a shadow of this
spectacle before their eyes. That the effect was not
wholly grotesque, though the motives were so hazard-
ous, can be understood from Milton's description of
the descent of Mercy in his Christmas Ode. 1
For the play of 61 Uliva> though first known to us
in a Florentine reprint of i568, we may assume a
more popular origin than that of Cecchi's Mystery of
the Cross. It abounds in rare Renaissance combina-
tions of pagan with Christian mythology. The action
extended over two days and was interrupted at inter-
vals by dumb shows and lyrical interludes connected
only by a slight thread with the story. At one time
a chase was brought upon the stage. On other occa
sions pictures, described with minute attention to de
tails, were presented to the audience in Tableaux
1 It is probable that the painting of the period yields a fair notion of
the scenic effects attempted in these shows. Or, what is perhaps a better
analogue, we can illustrate the pages of the libretti by remembering the
terra-cotta groups of the Sacro Monte at Varallo. Designed by excellent
artists and painted in accordance with the traditions of the Milanese
school, it is not impossible that these life-size representations of Christ'"
Birth and Passion reproduce the Sacred Drama with fidelity.
328 RENAISSANCE IN ITALY.
Vivants. These pictures vividly recall the style of
Florentine masters, Piero di Cosimo or Sandro Botti-
celli. " In the interval," say the stage-directions to the
players, "you will cause three women, well-beseen, to
issue, one of them attired in white, one in red, the
other in green, with golden balls in their hands, and
with them a young man robed in white ; and let him,
after looking many times first on one and then on
another of these damsels, at last stay still and say the
following verses, gazing at her who is clad in green."
This is the Mask of Hope. In another part the fable
of Narcissus has to be presented, and directions are
given for the disappearance of Echo, who is to re-
peat the final syllables of the boy's lament. " After he
has uttered all these complaints, let him thrice with
a loud voice cry slowly Ahime, Ahime, Ahime! and
let the nymph reply, and having thus spoken let him
stretch himself upon the ground and lie like one dead ;
and within a little space let there issue forth four or
more nymphs clad in white, without bows and with
dishevelled hair, who, when they have come where
the youth lies dead, shall surround him in a circle
and at last having wrapped him in a white cloth,
carry him within, singing this song 1 :
Fly forth in bliss to heaven,
Thou happy soul and fair,
To find thy planet there, and haunt the skies;
Leaving the tears and sighs
Of this low-lying earth,
Where man hath sorry mirth, as thou dost know 1
Bask in the fervent glow
Of that pure light divine,
' Sacre Rappr. iii. 270.
SANTA ULIVA. 329
Which on thy path shall shine, and be thy guide.
Nay, soul, thou hast not died,
But still more life hast thou,
Albeit unbodied now thou art at rest.
O soul, divinely blest,
Enjoy the eternal mind,
There dwelling unconfined through nights and days !
Heaven's angels stand and gaze
Upon thy glorious eyes,
Up there in Paradise ! In crowds they come I
Now hast thou found thy home:
Now art thou blithe and blest:
Dwell now for aye at rest, pure placid soul 1
For another interlude a May-day band of girls
attired in flower-embroidered dresses and youths with
crowns of ivy on their heads are marshaled by Dan
Cupid. They sing a song of which the following is a
free translation:
Let earth herself adorn
With grasses and fresh flowers,
And let cold hearts, these hours, in love's fire burn.
Let field, let forest turn
To bloom this morn of May,
That the whole world to-day may leap and sing.
Let love within us spring,
Banishing winter's smart,
Waking within our heart sweet thoughts and fair.
Let little birds in air
Sing yonder boughs above;
Each young man tell his love to his own maid;
And girls through mead and glade,
With honest eyes and meek
Fixed on their lovers, seek true troth to plight.
From field and mountain height
To-day cold snows are fled;
No clouds sail overhead; up springs clear morn.
Let violets be born,
Let leaves and grasses sprout.
330 RENAISSANCE IN ITALY.
And children wander out, garlands to twine.
In every dingle shine
Flowers white and blue and red,
Roses and lilies shed perfume around.
Maidens with May-blooms crowned
Through copse and meadow stray,
Singing their thoughts to-day, their sweet thoughts pure.
Let none be too demure;
Innocence marries mirth,
And from the jocund earth green laurels spring.
Come, Love, and blessings bring;
Chase sorrow, scatter care;
Make all men happy there, soul-full of ease.
Soothe pain, soothe jealousies,
That with their restless flame
Feed on man's heart: no shame, no grief be near.
Night and the God of Sleep again amuse the audience
with an allegorical mask; and the seven deadly sins,
figured as men, women and beasts, march across the
stage. At no great distance from a vision of Judg-
ment, the Sirens are introduced after this fashion:
" Now goes the King to Rome; and you, meanwhile ;
make four women, naked, or else clothed in flesh-
colored cloth, rise waist-high from the sea, with tresses
to the wind, and let them sing as sweetly as may be
the ensuing stanzas twice; in the which while shall
two or three of you come forth, and seem to fall asleep
on earth at the hearing of the song, except one only,
who shall be armed, and with closed ears shall pass
the sea unstayed, and let the said women take those
who sleep and cast them in the waves." When we
reach Uliva's wedding, we meet with the following
quaint rubric: " If you wish to beguile the weariness
caused by the length of the show, aud to make the
spectators take more delight in this t%an in any other
FORTY-THREE SACRED PLAYS. 331
interlude, then you must give them some taste of these
bridals by providing a general banquet; but if you
mislike the expense, then entertain the players only."
It would seem that 6*. Uliva was acted on the/r#& of
the confraternity, where a booth had been erected.
The forty-three plays comprised in D'Ancona's
volumes may be arranged in three classes those
which deal with Bible stories or Church doctrine based
on Scripture; dramatized Legends of the saints; and
Novelle transformed into religious fables. Among the
first sort may be mentioned plays of Abraham and
Isaac, Joseph, Tobias and Raphael, and Esther; the
Annunciation, the Nativity, S. John in the Desert,
Christ preaching in the Temple, the Conversion of the
Magdalen, the Prodigal Son, the Passion and Resur-
rection of our Lord, and the Last Judgment. The
Nativita di Cristo opens with a pastoral reminding us
of French Mysferes and English Miracle-plays. 1 The
shepherds are bivouacking on the hills of Bethlehem
when the angel appears to them. For Tudde, Harvye,
Houcken, and Trowle of our Chester play, we find
these southern names, Bobi di Farucchio, Nencio di
Pucchio, Randello, Nencietto, and so forth. But the
conduct of the piece is the same. The Italian hinds
discuss their cheese and wine and bread just as the
clowns of Cheshire talk about "ale of Hatton," "sheep's
head sowsed in ale," and " sour milk." Such points of
similarity are rare, however; for the Rappresentazioni
were the growth of more refined conditions, and showed
their origin in sentiment and pathos. The anonymous
play of Mary Magdalen rises to a higher level of dra-
1 Sacrf Rappr. i. 193. See Shakespeare Society's Publications, i. 1 19
33 a RENAISSANCE IN ITALY.
matic art than any sacred play in English. 1 Her story,
as told in these scenes, is the versified novella of a
Vittoria Accoramboni or a Bella Imperia converted
by the preaching of S. Bernardino or Savonarola. It
might have happened in Rome or Florence or Perugia.
Magdalen, the lady of noble blood but famous with ill-
fame, fair of person and of heaven-bright countenance,
who dresses splendidly and lives with many lovers,
spending her days in the pleasure of rich banquets and
perfumed baths, delighting her heart with the music of
lyres and flutes and the voices of young men, appears
before us with a reality that proves how deep a hold
upon the poet's fancy her picturesque tale had taken.
Martha, her good but commonplace sister, forms a foil
to the more impassioned and radiant figure of Mag-
dalen. She has been cured by Christ, and has heard
Him preach. Now she entreats her sister but to go
and listen, for never man spake words like His. Mag-
dalen scoffs: "Why should I be damned because I do
not follow your strange life ? There is time for me to
enjoy my youth, and then to make my peace with God,
and Paradise will open wide for me at last." Her friend
Marcella enters with another argument: "O Magdalen,
if you did but know how fair and gracious are his eyes !
Surely he has come forth straight from heaven ; could
you but see him once, your heart would never be
divided from him." This touches the right spring in
Magdalen's mind. She will not go to hear the words
of Christ, but the face and form that came from Para-
dise allure her. Besides, in the church where Christ
will preach, there will be found new lovers and men in
i Sucre Kappr. \. 255.
MARY MAGDALEN. 333
multitudes to gaze at her. Her maidens array her in
gold and crimson, and bind up her yellow hair; and
forth she rides in all her bravery surrounded by her
suitors. What follows may best be told by a trans-
lation of the stage-directions and a passage of the play
itself.
And at these last verses Jesus enters the temple; and having
gone up into the pulpit, he begins to preach and to say with a loud
voice, " Homo quidam peregre proficiscens vocavit servos suos et tra-
didit illis bona sua." Now comes Magdalen with her company, and
her young men prepare for her a seat before the pulpit, and she in
all her pomp takes her place upon it, regarding her own pleasure, nor
paying heed as yet to Jesus. Afterward, Jesus looks at her and goes
on preaching, always keeping his most holy gaze bent upon her; and
she, after the first stanza of the sermon, looks at him, and her eyes
meet those of Jesus. Then he goes on preaching, and says as
follows:
A certain lord who on a journey went,
Called unto him each of his serving men,
And of his goods gave them arbitrament:
To one he dealt five talents, to one ten,
To another two, to try their heart's intent,
And see how far they should be careless; then
Unto the last he left but one alone:
According to their powers, he charged each one,
And when he had departed, instantly
That servant unto whom he gave the five,
Went forth, and laboring with much industry,
Increased them, and therewith so well did thrive
That other five he gained immediately,
To render when his master should arrive;
He who received but twain, did even so,
And added to his sum another two.
But he on whom one talent was bestowed,
Went forthwith and concealed it in the soil:
Careless, unthankful for the debt he owed,
While he hath peace, he seeks but strife and toil:
Called like his fellows in that lord's abode,
He answers not, hut doth himself despoil;
334 RENAISSANCE IN ITALY.
And, as a worthless steward, hides away
The money of his master day by day.
Woe to thee, slothful servant and remiss,
That hast thy talent buried in the ground!
When reckoning comes, thou'lt yield account for this
Nay, think how stern and rigorous he'll be found 1
Weep, then, in time for what thou'st done amiss,
Before the trumpets of the judgment sound:
O soul, I tell thee thou hast gone astray,
Hiding thy talent in the earth away!
He who on earth sets his affections still,
Forgetful of the promised heavenly treasure;
He who loves self more than his Maker's will,
And in ill-doing finds continual pleasure;
He who remembers not that sin must kill,
Nor thinks how Hell will plague him above measure;
He who against himself makes fast heaven's gate ;
Hideth in earth his talent till too late.
He who loves father, mother, more than God,
Not reckoning His great gifts bestowed on man;
He who the path of worldly gain hath trod,
Publishes for himself damnation's ban:
Woe, woe to that bad servant sunk in fraud,
Who leaves the good and doth what ill he can!
He who on this world seeks his joy to find,
His talent hides in earth, perversely blind.
He who is grasping, proud, discourteous, base,
Who dreameth not that he may come to want,
Who seeks for flattery, praise, and pride of place,
Lording it with high airs and arrogant;
Who to the world gives all, and still doth chase
Delight in songs and pomps exorbitant;
Who in this life is fain to rest and sleep-
His talent in the earth lies hidden deep.
Woe for that servant who through negligence
Hath hearkened not to the command divine!
Yea, he shall hear the dreadful doom: Go hence.
Go forth, accursed, in endless fire to pine!
There shall be then no time for penitence:
Bouml hand and foot with punishment condign,
He shall abide among lost souls beneath,
j. Where is grea? \\-eepinjj and great gnashing of teeth.
CfffffST'S SERMON. 335
O soul, so full of sins, what shalt thou do ?
Of all thy countless crimes abominable,
Look to the end! Look to it! Hell for you
Lies open, with damned folk innumerable!
Whence thou shalt never issue, ever rue
In vain remorse and pangs intolerable!
Weep, soul, ah weep for thy most vile estate,
Now that repentance need not come too late!
Seek in this life to feel sincere contrition,
Before the judge so just and so severe
Summons thee to his throne, for inquisition
Into each sin, each thought that wandered here:
There shalt thou find no merciful remission,
But justice shall be dealt with truth austere;
And he who fails shall go to burn with shame
For ever, ever, in eternal flame.
Quis ex vobis centum oves habeas,
Si forte unam ex illis perdiderit,
Nonne nonagintas novem dimittens
Et illam querit, donee ipsam invenerit ?
Et cum invenerit, in humeros ponens,
Gaudens, in domum suam cito venerit,
And calls his kinsfolk and his friends to make
Festival for the new-found wanderer's sake ?
The soul, she is that lost and wandering sheep;
Eternal God is the true shepherd: He
Seeks her, lest on his lamb the wolf should leap,
The fiend, who slays with guile and treachery.
He spends his life, her safe to seek and keep,
And leaves those ninety-nine in bliss to be;
And when he finds her, makes great joy in heaven,
With all the angelic host, o'er one forgiven.
There was a father who had children twain;
The younger son began to speak and pray
That he might take his share, for he was fain,
Furnished therewith, from home to wend his way:
The father gently urged him to remain,
But at the last was bounden to obey:
Far, far away he roamed, and spent his all,
Sad wretch, on carnal joys and prodigal.
330 RENAISSANCE IN ITALY.
But when he came to want, repenting sore,
Unto his father, all ashamed, he knelt;
His father clothed him with new robes, and bore
Even more tender love than first he felt:
So doth high God, who lives for evermore,
Unto the souls that with repentance melt;
Let them but seek his love with contrite will,
He is most merciful, and pardons still.
Soul, thou hast wounded many hearts, I wis,
Dwelling in delicate and vain delight;
With many a lover thou wouldst toy and kiss
And art o'erfull of evil appetite;
Thy heart is big with strifes and jealousies:
Turn unto me; 1 wait to wash thee white;
That with the rest thy talent thou mayst double,
And dwell with them in heaven secure from trouble.
After the blessing of Jesus, Magdalen, weeping, and with her head
covered, can have no rest for the great confusion that she felt; and
all the people wept, and in great astonishment were waiting agaze to
see what should ensue.
O alma peccatrice> che far ai? Christ's voice with
its recurrences of gravely sweet persuasion melts
Magdalen's heart. She may not speak one word,
until her sister has led her home and comforted her a
space. Then she answers:
Deh, priega Iddio che in' allumini il core 1
After this, left alone with her own soul, awakened to
the purer consciousness that Christ has stirred, she
takes the box of ointment, and, despoiled of all her
goodly raiment, with her hair disheveled, goes to the
house of the Pharisee. There at last, with the breaking
of the alabaster, she dissolves in tears, and her heart
finds peace. In these scenes, if anywhere, we have the
stuff from which the drama might have been evolved.
PARABLES AND CHRIST'S LIFE. 337
Magdalen is a living woman, such as Palma might
have painted; and Christ is a real man gifted with
power to penetrate the soul.
The Figliuol Prodigo illustrates the same effort on
the poet's part to steep an old-world story in the vivid
colors of to-day. 1 In the Prodigal himself we find a
coarse- hearted villain, like Hogarth's Idle Apprentice
vain, silly, lustful, gluttonous, careless of the honor
and love that belong to him in his father's home.
The scenes with the innkeeper, the gamblers, and the
ruffians, among whom he runs to ruin, portray the
vulgar dissipations of Florence, and justify the com-
mon identification of taverns with places of ill-fame. 2
There is a touch of true pathos at the end of the play
in the grief of the father who has lost his son. The
conflict of feelings in the heart of the elder brother,
vexed at first with the prodigal's reception, but melting
into love and pity at the fervor of his penitence, is
also not without dramatic spirit. At the very end " a
boy with the lyre " enters and " speaks the moral of
the parable." 8
The movement of these two plays is not impeded
by the sanctity of the subject. When, however, the
legend belongs more immediately to the narrative of
Christ's life, the form of the Representation is more
> Sacre Rappr. i. 357.
All the novelists might be cited to illustrate this point.
3 At the end of the Rappresentazione di un Pellegrinc (Sacre Rappr.
iii. 430) a little farce is printed, bearing no relation to the play. It is a
dialogue between a good and bad apprentice, who discuss the question
of gambling. Here and in the Figliuol Prodigo and the induction to
the Miracolo di S. Maddalena we have the elements of comedy, which,
however, unfortunately came to nothing. These scenes remind us of
Heywood's tavern pictures, Marston's " Eastward Ho!" and other pre-
cious pieces of English Elizabethan farce.
338 RENAISSANCE IN ITALY.
severe. This is especially true of Castellani's Cena e
Passicne, where the incidents of the Last Supper, the
Agony in the Garden, the trials before Pilate and
Caiaphas, the Flagellation, and the Crucifixion are
narrated with reverential brevity. 1 In reading these
scenes, we must summon to our memory Luca della
Robbia's bass-reliefs or the realistic groups of the
Lombard Sacri Monti. The colored terra-cotta fig-
ures in those chapels among the chestnut trees above
the Sesia are but Castellani's poetry conveyed in
tableaux, while the Florentine actors undoubtedly
aimed at presenting by their grouping, dresses and
attitudes a living image of such plastic work. But
the peculiar pathos of the Italians found finer expres-
sion in picture or fresco in Luini's " Flagellation "
at S. Maurizio or the pallid anguish of Tintoretto's
women sunk beneath the Cross in the Scuola di San
Rocco than in the fluent stanzas of the sacred play-
wrights. On the walls of church or oratory the sweet-
ness and languor of emotion became as dignified in
beauty as the melodies of Pergolese, and its fervor
touched at times the sublimity of tragic passion. Not
words but plastic forms were ever the noblest vehicle
of Italian feeling. Yet each kind of art may be profit-
ably used to illustrate the other, and the simple phrases
of the Rappresentazioni are often the best comments
on finished works of painting. Here, for example, is
Raphael's Lo Spasimo in words a :
Oime, figliuol, 6 questo il viso
Ch' era tanto formoso e tanto bello ?
Om, dove si specchia el paradise
i Sacrt Rappr. \. 304. * Ibid. p. 319.
SCRIPTURE HISTORIES. 339
Oggi 6 percosso in tanto gran flagello 1
lo vengo a morte, figliuol mio diletto,
Se non ti tengo nelle braccia stretto.
Mary faints, and the Magdalen supports her, weep-
ing i;
Ome, che per dolor Maria vien meno:
Noi perderem la madre col figliuolo.
Pallido e il volto gia tanto sereno,
Quale e tutto mutato pel gran duolo.
1 polso manca, e nel sacrato seuo
El cuor suo resta respirante solo.
Soccorso, aiuto; ognun gli dia conforto,
Sendo aghiacciato il corpo e quasi morto.
The hearts of these rude poets were very tender
for Mary, Mother of our Lord. There is a touching
passage in the Disputa al Tempio, when Joseph and
the Virgin are walking toward the temple with the
boy who is to them a sacred charge 2 ;
Josef. I" guido e son guidato, e reggo quello
Che regge me, e muovo chi mi muove:
Pastor mi fo di quel ch' io son agnello;
O quanta grazia in questo servo piove !
Maria, S" i' alzo gli occhi alquanto per vederlo,
Contemplo nel mirar cose alte e nuove.
Per la virtu di sua divina forma
L* amante ne 1' amato si trasforma.
Something artless and caressing in these words
i Sacre Rappr. i. 229.
This play ends with a pretty moralization of the episode that forms
its motive, addressed by Mary to the people (ib. p. 240).
Figliuo' diletti, che cercate in terra
Trovar il figliuol mio, pietoso Iddio,
Non vi fermate in questa rozza terra,
Che Jesu non ista nel mondo rio.
Chi vel crede trovar, fortement' erra,
E come stolto morra nel disio.
Al tempio, chi lo vuol, venghi oggi drcnto,
Ch6 '1 viver vostro 6 come foglia al vento.
340 RENAISSANCE IN ITALY.
brings before us Luini's Joseph with his golden-brown
robes and white hair, Mary in her blue and crimson
with the beautiful braided curls of gold. The Magda-
len, again, moves through all these solemn scenes with
a grace peculiar to her story. The poet, like the
painter, never forgets that her sins were forgiven quia
multum amavit. She who in Luini's fresco at Lugano
kneels with outstretched arms and long fair rippling
loosened hair, beneath the Cross, is shown in the
Resurrezione di Gesu Cristo upon her knees before the
gardener whose one word tells her that she sees her
risen Lord. 1 It is a scene from Fra Angelico, a touch
of tenderness falling like a faint soft light athwart the
mass of orthodox tradition.
The sympathy between these shows and the plastic
arts may be still further traced in Belcari's Di del
Giudizio? After the usual prologue an angel thrice
blows the trumpet blast that wakes the dead, crying
aloud Surgite! Minos assembles his fiends, and
Christ bids the archangel separate the good from the
bad. 3 Michael, obedient to this order, seeks a hypo-
crite hidden among the just and sets him on the left
hand, while Trajan is taken from the damned and
placed among the saved. Solomon rises alone, 4 and
remains undecided in the middle space, till Michael,
charging him with carnal sin, forces him to take his station
1 Sucre Rappr. i. 342. 8 Ibid. Hi. 439.
3 For these incidents we may think of Signorelli's huge angels and
swarming devils at Orvieto. What follows suggests the Lorenzetti fresco
at Pisa, and the Orcagna of the Strozzi Chapel. Fra Angelico and Fra
Bartolommeo also supply pictorial parallels.
* Poetry forced Castellani to decide where Solomon should go; Lo-
renzetti left it vague.
MONASTIC LEGENDS. 341
with the goats. S. Peter now disputes with wicked
friars who think to save themselves by pointing to their
cowls and girdles. The poor appeal to S. Francis,
but he answers that poverty is no atonement for a
sinful life. Magdalen refuses help to women who have
lived impenitent. Christ and Mary reply that the
hour of grace is past. Then the representatives of the
seven deadly sins step forth and reason with the
virtuous the proud man with the humble, the glutton
with the temperate. Sons upbraid their fathers for
neglect or evil education. Others thank God for the
discipline that saved them in their youth. At the last
Christ awards judgment, crying to the just: " Ye saw
me hungry and ye fed me, naked and ye clothed me ! "
and to the unjust: " I was hungry and ye fed me not,
naked and ye clothed me not." Just and unjust an-
swer, as in Scripture, with those words whereof the
double irony is so dramatic. The damned are driven
off to Hell, and angels open for the blessed the doors
of Paradise.
The Rappresentazioni of the second class offer fewer
points of interest; almost the sole lesson they inculcate
being the superiority of the monastic over the secular
life. S. Anthony leaves the world in which he has
lived prosperous and wealthy, incarcerates his sister in
a convent, and becomes a hermit. 1 Satan assembles
the hosts of hell and makes fierce war upon his resolu-
tion; but the temptation is a poor affair, and Anthony
gets through it by the help of an angel. The play
ends with an assault of the foiled fiend of Avarice
' Sacre Rappr. 1L 33.
342 RENAISSANCE IN ITALY.
upon three rogues Tagliagambe, Scaramuccia, and
Carabello who cut each other's throats over their ill-
gotten booty. 6*. Guglielmo Gualtero, like S. Francis,
sells all that he possesses, embraces poverty, and be-
comes a saint. 1 S. Margaret subdues the dragon, and
is beheaded by a Roman prefect for refusing homage
to the pagan deities. 2 55. Giovanni e Paolo are Latin
confessors of the conventional type. 3 The legends of
the Seven Sleepers, S. Ursula, and S. Onofrio are
treated after a like fashion. 5. Eufrasia still further
illustrates the medieval ideal of monastic chastity. 4 She
leaves her betrothed husband and her mother to enter
a convent. Nothing befalls her, and her life is good
for nothing, except that she exhales the odor of con
ventual sanctity and dies. 51 Teodora is a variation
on the same theme. 6 She refuses Quintiliano, the
governor of Asia, in marriage; and is sent to a bad
house, whence Eurialo, a Christian, delivers her. Both
are immediately dispatched to execution. It is prob-
able that the two last-mentioned plays were intended
for representation within the walls of a nunnery. 51
Barbara presents the same motive, with a more
marked theological bias. 6 Dioscoro, the father of
the saint, hears from his astrologers that she is
fated to set herself against the old gods of his wor-
ship. To avert this calamity, he builds a tower with
two windows, where he shuts her up in the company
of orthodox pagan teachers. Barbara becomes learned
in her retirement, and refuses, upon the authority of
Plato, to pay homage to idols. Faith, instead of Love,
' Sacre Rappr. Hi. 140. Ibid. ii. 124. Ibid. ii. 235.
Ibid. ii. 269. Ibid. ii. 323. Ibid. ii. 71.
TREATMENT OF ROMANCE. 343
finds this new Danae, in the person, not of Zeus, but
of a priest dispatched by Origen from Alexandria to
convert her to Christianity. The princess learns her
catechism, is baptized, and adds a third window to her
tower, in recognition of the Trinity. It only remains
for her father to torture her cruelly to death.
The outline of these stories is often singularly
beautiful, and capable of poetic treatment. Remem-
bering what Massinger and Decker made of the
Virgin Martyr, we turn with curiosity to S. Teodora
or S. Ursula. Yet we are doomed to disappointment.
The ingenuous charm, again, which painters threw over
the puerilities of the monastic fancy, is absent from
these plays. Sodoma's legend of S. Benedict in fresco
on the walls of Monte Oliveto, Carpaccio's romance of
S. Ursula painted for her Scuola at Venice, are touched
with the grace of a child's fairy-story. The Rappre-
sentazioni eliminate all elements of mystery and magic
from the fables, and reduce them to bare prose. The
core of the myth or tale is rarely reached ; the depths
of character are never penetrated; and still the
wizardry of wonderland is gone. In the hands of
these Italian playwrights the most pregnant story of
the Orient or North assumed the thin slight character
of ordinary life. Its richness disappeared. Its beauty
evanesced. Nothing remained but the dry bones of a
novella. Indeed, the prose legends of the fourteenth
century are far more fascinating than these dramatized
tales of the Renaissance, which might be used to prove,
if further proof were needed, that the Italian imagina-
tion is not in the highest sense romantic or fantastic, not
far-reaching by symbol or by vision into the depths of
344 RENAISSANCE IN ITALY.
nature human and impersonal. The sense of infinity
which gives value to Northern works of fancy, is un-
known in Italy. Sir Thomas Mallory wrote of
Arthur's passage into dreamland l : " And when they
were at the water's side, even fast by the banke hoved
a little barge with many faire ladies in it, and among
them all was a queene, and all they had blacke hoods,
and they wept and shriked when they saw King
Arthur." The author of the Tavola Ritonda makes the
event quite otherwise precise 2 :
E stando per un poco, ed ecco per lo mare venire una navicella,
tutta coperta di bianco ... e la nave s' accostb allo re, e alquante
braccia uscirono della nave che presono lo re Artu, e visibilemente il
misono nella nave, e portarollo via per mare ... si crede che la
fata Morgana venisse per arte in quella navicella, e portbllo via in
una isoletta di mare; e quivi mori di sue ferite, e la fata il sopelli
in quella isoletta.
This anxiety after verification and distinctness is
almost invariable in Italian literature. The very
devil becomes a definite and oftentimes prosaic per-
sonage. External Nature is credited with no inner
spirit, reaching forth from wood or wave or cloud to
touch the soul of man in reverie or trance, or breaking
on his charmed senses in the form of gnome or water-
sprite or fairy. Men and women move in clear sun-
light, disenchanted of the gloom or glory, as of star-
irradiate vapor, which a Northern mytho-poet wraps
around them, making their humanity thereby more
poignant.
Those who care to connect the genius of a people
with the country of their birth, may find the source of
La Mori d* Arthur (Wright's edition), vol. iii. p. 331.
* Polidori's edition, vol. i. p. 542.
ITALIAN IMAGINATION. 345
these mental qualities in the nobly beautiful, serene
and gracious, but never mystical Italian land. The
Latin Camcense have neither in ancient nor in modern
years evoked the forms of mythic fable from that land-
scape. Far less is there the touch of Celtic or
Teutonic inspiration the light that never was on sea
or land. The nightingales of Sorrento or Nettuno in
no poet's vision have
Charmed magic casements, opening on the foam
Of perilous seas, in faery lands forlorn.
Down the hillsides between Lucca and Pistoja, where
the cypresses stand in rows and olives cast their
shadows on the gray tilled soil, no lover has dreamed
he met Queen Guinevere in spring riding through
flowers with Lancelot. Instead of Morgan le Fay,
turning men to lichened and mist-moistened stones
upon the heath, the Italian witch was ever Locusta,
the poison-brewer, or Alcina, the temptress.
This peculiarity of the Italian genius made their
architects incapable of understanding Gothic. This
deprived Italian art of that sublimity which needs a
grain of the grotesque for its perfection, a touch of the
uncouth for its accomplishment. The instinct of poets
and artists alike induced them to bring mystery within
the sphere of definition, to limit the marvelous by
reducing it to actual conditions, and to impoverish the
terrible by measuring its boundaries. But since every
defect has its corresponding quality, this same instinct
secured for the modern age a world of immaculate
loveliness in art and undimmed joyousness in poetry.
If the wonderland of fancy is eliminated, the monstrous
346 RENAISSANCE IN ITALY.
and unshaped have disappeared. With the grotesque
vanishes disproportion. Humanity, conscious of its
own emotion, displaces the shadowy people of the
legends. We move in a well-ordered world of cheer-
fulness and beauty, made for man, where symmetry of
parts is music. Ariosto's jocund irony is no slight
compensation for the imagery of a Northern mythus.
Returning to the Rappresentazioni, we are forced to
admit that the defect of the Italian fancy is more appar-
ent than its quality, in a species of dramatic art which,
being childish, needed some magic spell to reconcile an
adult taste to its puerility. 1 They were written at the
most prosaic moment of the national development, by
men who could not afford to substitute the true Italian
poetry of irony and idyllic sensuousness for the ancient
religious spirit. The bondage of the middle ages was
upon them. They were forced to take the extrava-
gance of the monastic imagination for fact. But they
did not really believe; and so the fact was apprehended
frigidly, prosaically. Instead of poetry we get rhetoric;
instead of marvels, gross incredibilities are forced upon
us in the lives of men and women fashioned like the
The greater maturity of the plastic than of the poetic arts in the
fifteenth century is apparent when we contrast the Rappresentazionivi\\\\
Masaccio's, Ghirlandajo's, Mantegna's, or Carpaccio's paintings. Art, as
I have frequently had to observe, emancipated the human faculties, and
humanized the figments of the middle age by investing them with cor-
poreal shape and forms of aesthetic beauty. The deliverance of the
Italian genius was thus effected in painting earlier than in poetry, and in
those very spheres of religious art where the poets were helpless to attain
true freedom. Italian poetry first became free when it turned round and
regarded the myths with an amused smile. I do not say that this was
absolutely necessary, that an heroic Christian poetry might not have
been produced in the fifteenth century by another race. Bu for the
Italians it was necessary.
TEOFILO. 347
folk who crowd the streets we know. Another step
in the realistic direction would have transformed all
these religious myths into novelle; and then a new
beauty, the beauty of the Decameron and Novellino,
would have been shed upon them. But it was
precisely this step that Castellani and Belcari dared
not take, since their purpose remained religious edifi-
cation. Nay, their instinct led them in the opposite
direction. Unable to escape the influence of the
novella, which was the truest literary form peculiar to
Italy in that age, they converted it into a sacred legend
and treated it with the same rhetorical and insincere
pietism as the stories of the Saints. From S. Barbara
to the third-class Rappresentazioni the transition is
easy.
The interest of this group of stories, as illustrating
the psychological conditions of the Italian imagination,
is great. Stripped of medieval mystery, reduced
to the proportions of a novella, but not yet invested
with its worldly charm, denuded of the pregnant
symbolism or tragic intensity of their originals, these
plays reveal the poverty of the fifteenth century, the
incapacity of the Florentine genius at that moment to
create poetry outside the sphere of figurative art, and
in a region where irony and sensuality and natural
passion were alike excluded. They might be com-
pared to dead bones awaiting the spirit-breath of
mirth and sarcasm to rouse them into life. Teofilo is
the Italian Faustus. 1 A devil accuses him to the
Bishop he is serving. Outcast and dishonored, he
seeks Manovello, a Jewish sorcerer, who takes him
Sacre Rappr. ii. 447.
348 RENAISSANCE IN ITALY.
to a cross -way and raises the fiend, Beelzebub. Teofilo
abjures Christ, adores the devil, and signs a promise
to be Satan's bondsman. In return, Beelzebub dis-
patches a goblin, Farfalletto, to the Bishop, who
believes that an angel has come to bid him restore
Teofilo to honor. Consequently Teofilo regains his
post. But in the midst of his prosperity the renegade
is wretched. Stung by conscience, he throws himself
upon the mercy of our Lady. She pleads for him with
Christ, summons the devil, and wrests from his grasp
the parchment given by Teofilo. Poetic justice is
satisfied by Manovello's descent to hell. Such is the
prosaic form which the Faust legend assumed in Italy.
Instead of the lust for power and knowledge which
consumed the doctor of Wittenberg, making him ex-
claim :
Had I as many souls as there be stars,
I'd give them all for Mephistophilis 1
we have this commonplace story of a bishop's
almoner, driven by a vulgar trial of his patience to
abjure the faith. The intercession of Mary introduces
a farcial element into the piece: the audience is
amused by seeing the devil's contract snatched from
him after a jocular altercation with the Queen of
Heaven. Our Mephistophilis is either fantastical!)'
grotesque, as in the old prose-legend, or tragically
saturnine, as in Marlowe's tragedy. The fiend of this
Florentine play is a sort of supernatural usurer, who
lends at a short date upon exorbitant interest, and is
nonsuited for fraud in the supreme court of appeal.
To charge the Italian imagination in general with this
dwarfing and denning of a legend that had in it such
THE Jf SUPERB 'O AND BARLAAM. 349
elements of grandeur, might be scarcely fair. The
fault lies more perhaps with Florence of the fifteenth
century; yet Florence was the brain of Italy, and if
the people there could find no more of salt or savor
in a myth like that of Theophilus, this fact gives food
for deep reflection to the student of their culture.
In the Kb Superbo we have one of those stories
which traveled from the far East in the middle ages
over the whole of Europe, acquiring a somewhat dif
ferent form in every country. 1 The proud king in the
midst of his prosperity falls sick. He takes a short
day's journey to a watering-place, and bathes. By
night an angel assumes his shape, dons his royal robes,
summons his folk, and fares homeward to his palace.
The king, meanwhile, is treated by the innkeeper as
an impudent rascal. He begs some rags to cover his
nakedness, and arrives in due time at the city he had
left the day before. There his servants think him
mad; but he obtains an audience with the angel, who
reads him a sermon on humility, and then restores him
to his throne. In this tale there lay nothing beyond
the scope of the Italian imagination. Consequently the
treatment is adequate, and the situations copied from
real life are really amusing. The play of Barlaam c
Josafat by Bernardo Pulci is more ambitious. 2 Josa-
fat's father hears from his astrologers that the child
will turn Christian. Accordingly he builds a tower,
and places his son there, surrounded with all things
pleasant to the senses and cheering to the heart of man.
His servants receive strict orders that the boy should
never leave his prison, lest haply, meeting with old
' Sacre Rappr, ii ; . 177. Ibid. ii. 163.
350 RENAISSANCE IN ITALY.
age or poverty or sickness, he should think of Christ
On one occasion they neglect this rule. Josafat rides
forth and sees a leper and a blind man, and learns
that age and death and pain are in store for all. This
stiis reflection, and prepares him to receive the
message of one Barlaam, who comes disguised as a
merchant tc the tower. Barlaam offers him a jewel
which restores sight to the blind, hearing to the deaf,
speech to the dumb, and which turns a fool to wisdom.
The jewel is the faith of Christ. Josafat is instantly
converted and baptized; nor can the persuasions of
wise men or the allurements of women overcome his
fixed resolve. So firmly rooted is his new faith, so
wonderful his eloquence, that he converts his father and
the Court, and receives for his great wisdom the crown
of his ancestors. Yet an earthly throne savors too
much in his eyes of worldly pride. Therefore he re-
nounces it, and lives thenceforth a holy hermit. This
legend, it will be perceived, is a dim echo of the won-
derful history of Siddartha, the founder of Buddhism.
Beautiful as are the outlines, too beautiful to be spoiled
by any telling, Pulci has done his best to draw it from
the dream-world of romance into the sphere of prose.
At the same time, while depriving it of romance, he
has not succeeded in dramatizing it. We do not feel
the psychological necessity for the changes in any of
the characters; the charm of each strange revolution
is destroyed by the clumsy preparation of the motives.
We are forced to feel that the playwright was working
on the lines of a legend he did not understand and
could not vitalize. The wonder is that he thought of
choosing it and found it ready to his hand.
THE TALE OF ULIVA. 351
Few of the Rappresentazioni are so interesting as
S. Uliva}- Uliva is no saint of the Catholic calendar
but a daughter of world-old romance. Her legend
may be read in the Gesta Romanorum, in Philip de
Beaumanoir's Roman de la Mannelline, in Ser Gio-
vanni's Pecorone> in Chaucer's Man of Laws Tale, in
Grimm's Handless Maiden, and in Russian and Servian
variations on the same theme. It is in truth the relic
of some very ancient myth, used by the poets of all
ages for the sake of its lesson of patience in affliction,
its pathos of persecuted innocence. The form the
tale assumed in Italy is this. Uliva, daughter of the
Roman Emperor, Giuliano, is begged in marriage by
her own father, who says she has more beautiful
hands than any other princess. She cuts her hands off,
and Giuliano sends her to Britain to be killed. But
her murderers take pity on her, and leave her in a
wood alone. There the King of Britain finds her
and places her under the protection of his queen.
After many misfortunes the Virgin Mary restores her
hands, and she is married to the King of Castile.
She bears him a son ; but by this time she has roused
the jealousy and hatred of the queen-mother, who
takes the opportunity of the king's absence to poison
his mind against her by letters, and shortly after drives
her forth with her child. Uliva reaches Rome, and
lives there twelve years unknown, till her husband, who
has discovered and punished his mother's treason, and
has sought his wronged wife sorrowing, at last rejoins
ner and recognizes in her son his heir. The play ends
1 Sacre Rappr. iii. 235. Also edited separately with an introduc-
tion by D' Ancona
352 RENAISSANCE IN ITALY.
with a reconciliation scene between the Emperor, the
King, and Uliva, the Pope pronouncing benedictions
on the whole party. It will be seen from this brief
abstract of the legend that the Rappresentazione is a
^chivalrous novella dramatized. Several old pathetic
stories have been woven into one, and the heroine has
been dignified with the title of saint because of the
pity she inspires. Uliva belongs to the sisterhood of
Boccaccio's Griselda, Ariosto's Ginevra, and the Queen
in our old ballad of Sir Aldingar. The medieval
imagination, after creating types of stateliness like
Guinivere, of malice like Morgana, of love like Iseult,
turned aside and dwelt upon the tender delicacy of a
woman, whose whole strength is her beauty, gentle-
ness, and patience; who suffers all things in the spirit of
charity ; whom the angels love and whom our Lady
cherishes ; who wins all hearts of men by her goodli-
ness; and who, like Una, passes unscathed through
peril and persecution until at last her joy is perfected
by the fruition of her lawful love. It was precisely
this element of romance that touched the Italian fancy ;
and the playwright of S. Uliva has shown consider-
able skill in his treatment of it. Piteous details are
accumulated with remorseless pertinacity upon the head
of the unfortunate Uliva, in order to increase the
pathos of her situation. There is no mitigation of her
hardships except in her own innocence, and in the
loving compassion wrung by her beauty from her rude
tormentors. This want of relief, together with the
brusque passage from one incident to another, betrays
a lack of dramatic art. But the poet, whoever he was.,
succeeded in sustaining the ideal of purity and beauty
STELLA AND ROSANA. 353
he conceived. He shows how all Uliva's sufferings as
well as her good fortune were due to the passions her
beauty inspired, and how it was her purity that held
her harmless to the end.
Stella is the same story slightly altered, with a
somewhat different cast of characters and an evil-
hearted step-mother in the place of the malignant
queen. 1 If we compare both fables with Grimm's
version of the " Handless Maiden," the superiority
of the Northern conception cannot fail to strike us.
The Italian novella, though written for the people,
exhibits the external pomp and grandeur of royalty.
All its motives are drawn from the clash of human
passions. Yet these are hidden beneath a superincum-
bent mass of trivialities. The German tale has a back-
ground of spiritual mystery good and evil powers
striving for the possession of a blameless soul. When
the husband, who has been deceived by feminine mal-
ice, takes his long journey without food as a penitent
to find his injured wife, how far deeper is the pathos
and the poetry of the situation than the Italian ap-
paratus of couriers with letter-bags, chancellors, tour-
naments, and royal progresses undertaken with a vast
parade, can compass ! The Northern fancy, stimulated
by the simple beauty of the situation, confines itself to
the passionate experience of the heart and soul. The
Florentine playwright adheres to the material facts of
life, and takes a childish pleasure in passing the splen-
dors of kings and princes in review. By this method
he vulgarizes the legend he handles. Beneath his
t Sacrf Rappr. iii. 319.
354 RENAISSANCE IN ITALY.
touch it ceases to be holy ground. The enchantment
of the myth has evanesced.
Rosana is simply the story of Floire et Blanchefleur^
which Boccaccio had already worked into his Filocopo^
Austero, King of Rome, goes with his wife on pilgrim-
age to Holy Land. He falls into the hands of the
King of Cesaria, and is slain with all his folk, except
the queen. She is taken captive to Cesaria, where she
gives birth to Rosana on the same day that Ulimeno
is born to her master. When Ulimeno grows up, he
loves the daughter of his father's slave. His parents
seek to cure this passion by sending him to France,
and at the same time sell Rosana to some merchants,
who convey her to the Sultan's harem. Ulimeno re-
turns to Cesaria in deep distress, and vows that he will
never rest till he has regained his love. After a
proper number of adventures, he finds Rosana in the
seraglio, where notwithstanding the Sultan's admira-
tion of her beauty, she has preserved her virginity.
They are married, and Ulimeno is converted, with his
realm, to Christianity. The prettiest parts of this play
are the scenes in the seraglio, where Rosana refuses
comfort from the Sultan's women, and the contrivances
devised by Ulimeno to get speech with her. Except
that Rosana and her parents are Christian and that the
saints protect her, there is nothing to justify the title
of Sacra Rappresentazione. It is a love-romance, like
Shakspere's Pericles.
Another novella of less poetic interest is drama-
tized in Agnolo Ebreo? Agnolo, the Jew, has a Chris-
tian wife, who persuades him instead of putting out
his money at usury to lend it to Christ by giving
Sacre Kaffir, iii. 362. Ibid, Hi. 485,
THREE PILGRIMAGE PLAYS. 355
it away in alms. Having thus cast his bread upon the
waters, he recovers it again after not many days by
picking up money in the streets and finding a jewel in
a fish's belly. He is baptized, because he sees clearly
that the God of the Christians can make him rich.
Only its tedious solemnity prevents this play from
being a farce.
Three Rappresentazioni are written upon incidents
of pilgrimage to the shrine of S. James ot Compostella
II Santo Barone, as he is always called. The first of
these is entitled Rappresentazione di un Pellegrino. 1
It tells the tale of a certain Guglielmo who vowed the
journey to Compostella on his sick bed. Upon the
road he meets with a fiend in the disguise of S. James,
who persuades him to commit suicide. No sooner is he
dead, than the devil grasps his soul, as may be seen in
Lorenzetti's fresco of the Campo Santo, and makes
away with it toward hell. S. James stops him, and a
voluble altercation takes place between them, at the
end of which the soul, who keeps crying misericordia
at intervals, is rescued and restored to its body.
Then Guglielmo completes his vow, and returns
joyfully to his wife. I due Pellegrini is more complex. 2
Arrigo Coletta leaves his wife and son at Rome
Constantino Constante leaves his wife and three sons
at Genoa; and both set forth to Compostella. On
the way they meet and make friends ; but the Genoese
dies before they have got far upon their journey. His
Roman friend carries the dead body to Compostella,
where S. James restores it to life, and both return in
safety to their homes. After sojourning some time in
> Sacre Rappr. iii. 416. * Ibid. iii. 439.
356 RENAISSANCE IN ITALY.
Rome, Arrigo falls sick of leprosy, and has to go forth
and wander up and down the earth. Chance brings
him to the house of the Genoese who had received
such benefits from him upon their pilgrimage. They
consult doctors and wise men together, who assure
them that no cure can be wrought unless the leper
bathe from head to foot in the blood of virgins. This
determines Constantino to sacrifice all that he holds
dearest in the world. He kills his three sons, and
prepares a bath of their blood, which restores his old
benefactor to health. But the Saint of Compostella
has still his eye upon his servants. A miracle brings
the three boys back to life. They are found with
golden apples in their hands, and the play ends with a
general thanksgiving. The prosy bluntness with
which the incidents of this strange story are treated as
matter of fact, is scarcely less remarkable than the
immorality which substitutes mere thaumaturgy for
the finer instincts of humanity. The exaggerated
generosity of Constantino might be paralleled from
hundreds of nauelle. This one virtue seems to have
had extraordinary fascination for the Italians. / tre
Pellegrini is based upon a legend of medieval celebrity,
versified by Southey in his " Pilgrimage to Compostella." ]
A father, a mother, and a son of great personal beauty
set forth together for the shrine of S. lago. On the
road they put up at an inn, where Falconetta, the host's
daughter, falls in love with the boy and tempts him.
Thwarted in her will, she vows to ruin him ; and for
this purpose, puts a silver cup into his traveling bag.
In the morning the pilgrims are overtaken by the
1 Sacrt Rappr. Hi. 466.
INADEQUACY OF RESULTS. 357
police, who find the cup and hang the beautiful young
man. The parents complete their vow, and on the
way back discover their son upon the gallows alive
and well. Falconetta is burned, and her parents are
hanged the old host remarking, not without humor,
that, though he was innocent of this crime, he had
murdered enough people in his day to have deserved
his fate. The style of this play merits more praise
than can be bestowed on the Rappresentazioni in
general. Falconetta is a real theatrical character, and
the bustle of the inn on the arrival of the guests is
executed with dramatic vigor.
In their Sacre Rappresentazioni the Florentines
advanced to the very verge of the true drama. After
adapting the Miracle-plays of medieval orthodoxy to
their stage, they versified the Legends of the Saints,
and went so far as to dramatize novels of a purely
secular character. The Figliuol Prodi go and the
farce appended to the Pellegrino contain the germs of
vernacular comedy. S. Maddalena is a complete
character. S. Uliva is delicately sketched and well
sustained. The situation at the opening of the Tre
Pellegrini is worked out with real artistic skill.
Lastly, in the Esaltazione della Croce a regular five-
act tragedy was attempted.
From the oratories of the Compagnie and the
parlors of the convents this peculiar form of art was
extended to the Courts and public theaters. Poliziano
composed a Rappresentazione on the classical fable of
Orpheus, and Niccolo da Correggio another on the
myth of Cephalus and Procris. 1 Other attempts to
The date of the former is probably 1472, ot the latter 1486.
358 RENAISSANCE IN ITALY.
i
secularize the religious drama followed, until, in i52i,
Francesco Mantovano put the contemporary history of
the French General Lautrec upon the boards.
Still the fact remains that the Sacre Rappresen-
tazioni did not lead to the production of a national
Italian theater. If we turn to the history of our
Elizabethan stage, we shall find that, after the age of
the Miracles and Moralities had passed, a new and
independent work of art, emanating from the creative
genius of Marlowe and Shakspere, put England in
the possession of that great rarity, a Drama commen-
surate with the whole life of the nation at one of its
most brilliant epochs. To this accomplishment of the
dramatic art the Italians never attained. The causes
of their failure will form the subject of a separate
inquiry when we come to consider the new direction
taken by the playwrights at the Courts of Ferrara and
Rome.
As an apology for the space here devoted to the
analysis of plays childish in their subject-matter,
prosaic in their treatment, and fruitless of results, it
may be urged that in the Sacre Rappresentazioni
better than elsewhere we can study the limitations
of the popular Italian genius at the moment when the
junction was effected between humanism and the spirit
of the people.
CHAPTER VI.
LORENZO DE* MEDICI AND POLIZIANO.
Period from 147010 1530 Methods of treating it By Chrono:ogy By
Places By Subjects Renascence of Italian At Florence, Ferrara,
Naples The New Italy Forty Years of Peace Lorenzo de
Medici His Admiration for and Judgment of Italian Poetry His
Privileges as a Patron His Rime The Death of Simonetta
Lucrezia Donati Lorenzo's Descriptive Power The Selve The
Ambra La Nencia I Beoni His Sacred Poems Carnival and
Dance Songs Carri and Trionfi Savonarola The Mask of Peni-
tence Leo X. in Florence, 1513 Pageant of the Golden Age
Angelo Poliziano His Place in Italian Literature Le Stanze
Treatment of the Octave Stanza Court Poetry Mechanism and
Adornment The Orfeo Orpheus, the Ideal of the Cinque Cento
Its Dramatic Qualities Chorus of Maenads Poliziano's Love Poems
Rispetti Florentine Love La Bella Simonetta Study and Coun-
try Life.
IN dealing with the mass of Italian literature between
the dates 1470 and 1530, several methods suggest
themselves, each of which offers certain advantages,
while none is wholly satisfactory. In the first place
we might adopt a chronological division, and arrange
the chief authors of whom we have to treat, by periods.
Lorenzo de' Medici, Poliziano, Luigi, Pulci, Boiardo,
and Sannazzaro would be the leading names in the
first group. In the second we should place Ariosto,
Machiavelli, Guicciardini and the minor historians of
Florence. Bembo would lead a third class, including
Castiglione, La Casa, and the Petrarchistic poets of the
Academies. A fourth would be headed by Pietro
360 RENAISSANCE IN ITALY.
Aretino, and would embrace the burlesque writers and
minor critical prosaists of the decadence. The advan-
tage of this method is that it corresponds to a certain
regular progression in the evolution of Italian genius
during that brief space of brilliant activity. Yet the
chronological stages are not sufficiently well marked to
justify its exclusive adoption. The first group is
separated from the rest by a real interval, since the
men who compose it died, with one exception, before
the close of the fifteenth century, about the year of
Charles VIII. 's entrance into Italy. 1 But the authors
of the second, third, and fourth groups lived almost
contemporaneously, covering the whole period of
Italy's greatest literary glory and deepest national
discomfiture, and witnessing the final extinction of her
liberty in the settlement effected by the policy of
Charles V. 2 Nor, again, can we trace in the several
phases of literature they represent, so clear a process
of expansion as may be detected in the successive
stages of artistic or humanistic development. When
the work effected by the first group was accomplished,
both the language and the literature of Italy became
in a true sense national, and the cultivated classes of
all districts, trained in the common discipline of
humanistic studies, set themselves with one accord and
simultaneously to the task of polishing the mother
tongue. This fact in the history of Italian literature
1 Lorenzo de* Medici, b. 1448, d. 1492. Poliziano, b. 1454, d. 1494.
Luigi Pulci, b. 1432, d. about 1487. Boiardo, b. about 1434, d. 1494.
Sannazzaro, b. 1458, d. 1530.
* Machiavelli, b. 1469, d. 1527. Anosto, b. 1474, d. 1533. Guicciar-
dini, b. 1482, d. 1540. Bembo, b. 1470, d. 1547. Castiglione, b. 1478, d.
1529. LaCasa, b. 1503, d. 1556. Pietro Aretino, b. 1492, d. 1557.
METHODS OF CLASSIFICATION. 361
suggests a second method of classification. We might
take the three chief centers of renascence at the close
of the fifteenth century Florence, Ferrara, Naples
and show how the local characteristics of these cities
affected their great writers. Rome during the ponti-
ficate of Leo X.; Urbino under the rule of Guidubaldo
Montefeltre ; Milan in the days of the last Sforzas;
Venice at the epoch of Aide's settlement ; might next
be chosen to illustrate the subsequent growth of
Italian culture, when it ceased to be Tuscan, Neapo-
litan, and Ferrarese. Yet though this local method
of arrangement offers many advantages, and has the
grand merit of fixing the attention upon one important
feature of intellectual life in Italy its many-sidedness
and diversity, due to the specific qualities of cities
vying with each other in a common exercise of energy
still it would not do for the historian of Italian
culture at one of its most brilliant moments to accen-
tuate minor differences, when it ought to be his object
to portray the genius of the people as a whole. In a
word, this classification has the same defect as the
treatment of the arts by Schools. 1 Moreover, it cannot
fail to lead to repetition and confusion ; for though the
work we have to analyze was carried on in several
provinces, yet each Court and each city produced
material of the same general character. Novels, for
example, were written at Florence as well as Milan.
Rome saw the first representation of comedies no less
than Ferrara. The romantic epic was not confined to
the Court of the Estensi, nor dissertations on the
gentle life to that of Urbino. We are led by the
See Ffnt Arts, p. 183.
362 RENAISSANCE IN ITALY.
foregoing considerations to yet a third method of
arrangement. Would it not be scientific to divide the
literature of the Renaissance into its chief branches,
and to treat of the romantic epic, the novella, the stage,
the idyll, lyric verse, essays in prose, histories, and so
forth, under separate chapters? Undoubtedly there is
much to say for such a treatment of the subject. Yet
when we consider that it necessitates our bringing the
same authors under review in several successive sec-
tions, confuses chronology, and effaces local distinctions,
it will be seen that to follow this system exclusively
would be unwise. It is too strictly analytical for our
purpose. That purpose is to draw a portrait of the
Italian spirit as expressed in the vernacular literature
of about seventy years of exceptional splendor; and
perhaps it will be conceded by the student that instinct,
conscious of the end in view, conscious also of these
several methods, but unwilling to be hampered by any
one of them too rigorously followed out, will be a safer
guide than formal accuracy.
I therefore propose in the remaining chapters of
this book to adopt a mixed method, partaking of the
chronological in so far as I shall attempt to show a
certain process of evolution from the renascence led
by Lorenzo de' Medici to the decadence typified in
Pietro Aretino, insisting upon local peculiarities where
it can be clearly proved that these contributed an
important element to the total result, and relying on
the classification by subjects for bringing scattered
details under general consideration. Five men of the
highest eminence mark stages in the history we have
to review. These are Poliziano, Ariosto and Machi-
MEN AND CITIES. 363
avelli, Bembo and Pietro Aretino. Chronologically,
they represent four moments of development the
initial, the consummate, the academical, and the deca-
dent. But if we discard chronology and regard their
intellectual qualities alone, we might reduce them
to three. Merging Poliziano and Bembo in Ariosto,
retaining Machiavelli and Pietro Aretino, we obtain
the three prominent phases of Renaissance culture in
Italy firstly, serene, self -satisfied, triumphant art,
glorying in the beauty of form for form's sake, and
aiming at perfection in style of sunny and delightful
loveliness; secondly, profound scientific analysis, taking
society for its object, dissecting human history and
institutions without prejudice or prepossession, un-
qualified by religious or ethical principles, pushing its
logical method to the utmost verge of audacity, and
startling the world with terror by the results of its
materialistic philosophy; thirdly, moral corruption un-
abashed and unrestrained, destitute of shame because
devoid of conscience, boldly asserting itself and claim-
ing the right to rule society with cynical effrontery.
Round Ariosto are grouped the romantic and idyllic
poets, the novelists and comic playwrights, all the
tribe of joyous merry-makers, who translated into
prose and verse the beauty found in painting of the
golden age. With Machiavelli march the historians
and political philosophers, the school of Pomponazzi
and the materialistic analysts, who led the way for a
new birth of science in the Baconian speculations of
the Cosentine academy. Aretino is the coryphaeus of
a multitude of scribes and courtiers, literary gladiators,
burlesque authors of obscene Capitoli, men of evil
364 RENAISSANCE IN ITALY.
character, who used the pen for poniard, and were
the fit successors of invective-writers.
If we turn from men to cities, and seek to define
the parts played by the several communities in this
work of creating an Italian literature, we shall find
that Florence fixes the standard of language, ar.d
dominates the nation by the fame of her three poets
of the fourteenth century. Florence, moreover, gives
birth to Machiavelli, Guicciardini, and the political
theorists who form a group around them. Florentine
wit and humor lend a certain pungency to all the
products of the golden age. Naples adds the luxury
of southern color, felt in Sannazzaro's waxen para-
graphs and Pontano's voluptuous hendecasyllables.
Ferrara develops the chivalrous elements of the ro-
mantic epic, shelters Ariosto, and produces the pas-
toral drama, that eminently characteristic product of
the late Renaissance. Milan is the home of Bandello,
who takes the first rank among the novelists and leads
a school of Lombard writers in that style. Rome
does little for the general culture of the nation, except
that in the age of Leo the Papal Court formed a cen-
ter for studious men of all classes and qualities. Her
place in literature is therefore analogous to that she
occupies in art and scholarship. 1 Aretino chooses the
city of the lagoons for his retreat, not without a certain
propriety; for Venice had become the Paris of the six-
teenth century, and here the press was more active
than elsewhere in Italy. His instinct led the master
of lampoon, the prince of pamphleteers, to the city
which combined the utmost license of printing with
1 See Revival of Learning, pp. 215 et seq.\ Fine Arts, pp. 183 et seq
RENASCENCE OF ITALIAN. 365
the most highly developed immorality of manners.
Thus, seen from many points of view and approached
with different objects of study, men, places, and matter
alike furnish their own pivots for treatment. Italy,
unlike England and France, has no political and in-
tellectual metropolis, no London and no Paris, where
the historian may take his stand securely to survey
the manifold activities of the race as from a natural
center. He must be content to shift his ground and
vary his analytic method, keeping steadily in mind
those factors which by their interaction and combina-
tion determine the phenomena he has in view.
We are now at length upon the threshold of the true
Renaissance. The division between popular literature
and humanistic culture is about to end. Classic form,
appropriated by the scholars, will be given to the
prose and poetry of the Italian language. The fusion,
divined and attempted, rather than accomplished by
Alberti, will be achieved. Men as great as Machia-
velli and Ariosto henceforth need not preface their
cose volgari with apologies. The new literature is no
longer Tuscan, but Italian national in the widest and
deepest sense of the word, when Venetian Bembo,
Neapolitan Sannazzaro, Ariosto from Reggio, Boiardo
Count of Scandiano, Castiglione the Mantuan and
Tasso the Bergamasque vie with Tuscan Pulci and
Poliziano, Machiavelli and Guicciardini, in the creation
of the golden age.
The renascence of Italian took place almost simul-
taneously in three centers: at Florence under the
protection of the Medici, at Ferrara in the castle of the
Estensi, and at Naples in the Aragonese Court
366 RENAISSANCE IN ITALY.
Rome from the pontificate of Innocent VIII. to that
of Leo X. was almost dumb and deaf to literature
Venice waited till the period of the press. Milan
produced nothing. It was but gradually that the wave
of national culture reached the minor states. The
three cities to which Italy owed the resurrection of
her genius were ruled by princes, and the new litera-
ture felt the influence of Courts from the commence-
ment. Indeed, the whole conditions of Italy had
been altered since the death of Boccaccio in 1376.
The middle ages had been swept away. Of their
modes of thought, religious beliefs, political ideals,
scholastic theories, scarcely a vestige remained. Among
the cities which had won or kept their independence
during the fourteenth century, only one remained free
from a master's yoke; and even Venice, though she
showed no outward signs of decadence, had reached
the utmost verge of her development. . The citizens
who had fought the battles of the Communes round
their banners and their sacred cars, were now quiet
burghers, paying captains of adventure to wage mimic
warfare with political or commercial rivals in neigh-
boring States. A class of professional diplomatists
corresponding to these mercenary war-contractors
had arisen, selected from the ranks of the scholars for
their rhetorical gifts and command of Latin style.
The humanists themselves constituted a new and
powerful body, a nation within the nation, separated
from its higher social and political interests, selfish,
restless, greedy for celebrity, nomadic, disengaged
from local ties, conscious of their strength, and sway-
ing with the vast prestige of learning in that age
SOCIAL CONDITIONS. 367
the intellectual destinies of the race. Insolent and
ambitious in all that concerned their literary preten-
sions, these men were servile in their private life.
They gained their daily bread by flatteries and
menaces, hanging about the Courts of petty despots,
whose liberality they paid with adulation or quickened
with the threat of infamy in libels. At the same time
the humanists, steeped in the best and worst that
could be extracted from the classics, confounding the
dross of Greek and Roman literature with its precious
metal in their indiscriminate worship of antiquity, and
debarred through want of criticism from assimilating
the noblest spirit of the pagan culture, had created a
new mental atmosphere. The work they accom-
plished for Italy, though mixed in quality, had two un-
deniable merits. Not only had they restored the
heritage of the past and broken down the barrier
between the ancient and the modern world, bringing
back the human consciousness from the torpor of the
middle ages to a keen and vivid sense of its own unity:
but they so penetrated and imbued each portion of the
Italian nation with their enthusiasm, that, intellectually
at least, the nation was now one and ready for a simul-
taneous progress on the path of culture. 1
It so happened that at this very moment, when
the unity of Italy in art and scholarship had been
achieved, external quiet succeeded to the discords of
three centuries. The ancient party-cries of Emperor
and Church, of Guelf and Ghibelline, of noble and
1 It is right to say here that considerable portions of Southern Italy
the Marches of Ancona and Romagna, Piedmont and Liguria, remained
outside the Renaissance movement at this period.
368 RENAISSANCE IN ITALY.
burgher, of German and Latin ingredients within the
body politic had gradually ceased and been forgotten.
The Italic element, deriving its instincts from Roman
civilization, triumphed over the alien and the feudal ;
and though this victory was attended with the decay
of the Communes that had striven to achieve it, yet
the final outcome was a certain homogeneity of condi-
tions in all the great centers of national life. Italy
became a net-work of cultivated democracies, ruled
by tyrants of different degrees. The middle of the
fifteenth century witnessed the commencement of that
halcyon period of forty years' tranquillity, destined to
be broken by the descent of Charles VIII., in 1494,
upon which Machiavelli and Guicciardini from amid
the tempests of the next half century looked back with
eyes of wonder and of envy. Constantinople fell,
and the undoubted primacy of the civilized races
came to the Italians. Lorenzo de* Medici was
regarded as the man who, by his political ability and
firm grasp of the requisite conditions for maintaining
peace in the peninsula, had established and secured
the equilibrium between mutually jealous and antago-
nistic States. Whether the merit of that repose, so
fruitful of results in art and literature for the Italians,
was really due to Lorenzo's sagacity, or whether the
shifting forces of the nation had become stationary for
a season by the operation of circumstances, may fairly
be questioned. Yet there is no doubt that the un-
precedented prosperity of the people coincided with
his administration of Florence, and ended when he
ceased to guide the commonwealth. It was at any
rate a singular good fortune tfrat connected the name
LORENZ&S PLACE IN HISTORY. 369
of this extraordinary man with the high-tide of
material prosperity in Italy and with the resurrection
of her national literature.
The figure of Lorenzo de' Medici has more than
once already crossed the stage of this history. 1
Whether dealing with the political conditions, or the
scholarship, or the fine arts of the Renaissance, it is
impossible to omit his name. There is therefore now
no need to sketch his character or to inquire into the
incidents of his Florentine administration. It will
suffice to remind the readers of this book that he finally
succeeded in so clinching the power of the Casa Medici
that no subsequent revolutions were able to destroy it.
The part he played as a patron of artists and scholars,
and as a writer of Italian, was subordinate to his
political activity in circumstances of peculiar difficulty.
While controlling the turbulent democracy of Florence
and gaining recognition for his tyranny from jealous
princes, he still contrived to lead his age in every
branch of culture, deserving the magnificent eulogium
of Poliziano, who sang of him in the Nutricia*:
Tu vero aeternam, per avi vestigia Cosmi
% Perque patris (quis enim pietate insignior illo ?),
Ad famam eluctans, cujus securus ad umbram
Fulmina bellorum ridens procul aspicit Arnus,
Maeoniae caput, o Laurens, quern plena senatu
Curia quemque gravi populus stupet ore loquentem
Si fas est, tua nunc humili patere otia cantu
Secessusque sacros avidas me ferre sub auras.
Namque, importunas mulcentem pectine curas,
Umbrosas recolo te quondam vallis in antrum
1 See Age of the Despots, pp. 277, 520, 542; Revival of Learning,
pp. 314-323; Fine Arts, pp. 263, 387. See also Sketches and Studies fn
Italy t Article on Florence and the Medici.
Op. Laf. p. 423.
370 RENAISSANCE IN ITALY.
Monticolam traxisse deam: vidi ipse corollas
Nexantem, numerosque tuos prona aure bibentem. . . .
Quodque alii studiumque vocant durumque laborem,
Hie tibi ludus erit: fessus civilibus actis,
Hue is emeritas acuens ad carmina vires.
Felix ingenio ! felix cui pectore tantas
Instaurare vices, cui fas tarn magna capaci
Alternare animo, et varias ita nectere curas f
Lorenzo de' Medici was the last apologist for the
mother speech, as he was the first and chief inaugurator
of the age when such apologies were no longer to be
needed. He took a line somewhat different from
Alberti's in his defense of Italian, proving not merely
its utility but boldly declaring its equality with the
classic languages. We possess a short essay of his,
written with this purpose, where he bestows due praise
on Dante, Boccaccio and Guido Cavalcanti, and affirms
in the teeth of the humanists that Petrarch wrote
better love-poems than Ovid, Tibullus, Catullus or
Propertius. 1 Again, in his epistle to Federigo of
Aragon, sent with a MS. volume containing a collec-
tion of early Tuscan poetry, he passes acute and sym-
pathetic judgments on the lyrists from Guittone of
Arezzo to Cino da Pistoja, proving that he had studied
their works to good purpose and had formed a correct
opinion of the origins of Italian literature. 2 Lorenzo
does not write like a man ashamed of the vernacular or
forced to use it because he can command no better. He
is sure of the justice of his cause, and determined by pre-
cept and example and by the prestige of his princely
rank to bring the literature he loves into repute again.
' Poesie di Lorenzo de 1 Medici (Firenze, Barbera, 1859), PP-
- Did. pp. 24-34. Notice especially the verdict on Cino and Dante,
p. 33-
HIS FEELING FOR ITALIAN. 371
No one could have been better fitted for the task.
Unlike Albert'., Lorenzo was a Florentine of the
Florentines, Tuscan to the backbone, imbued with the
spirit of his city, a passionate lover of her customs and
pastimes, a complete master of her vernacular. His
education, though it fitted him for Platonic discussions
with Ficino and rendered him an amateur of humanistic
culture, had failed to make a pedant of him. Much as
he appreciated the classics, he preferred his Tuscan
poets; and what he learned at school, he brought to
bear upon the study of the native literature. Conse-
quently his style is always idiomatic ; whether he seeks
the elevation of grave diction or reproduces the talk
of the streets, he uses language like a man who has
habitually spoken the words which he commits to paper.
His brain was vigorous, and his critical faculty acute.
He lived, moreover, in close sympathy with his age,
never rising above it, but accurately representing its
main tendencies. At the same time he was sufficiently
a poet to delight a generation that had seen no great
writer of verse since Boccaccio. Though hisjyork is
in no sense absolutely first rate, he wrote nothing that
a man of ability might not have been pleased to own.
Lorenzo's first essays in poetry were sonnets and
canzoni in the style of the trecento. It is a mistake
to classify him, as some historians of literature have
done, with the deliberate imitators of Petrarch, or to
judge his work by its deflection from the Petrarchistic
standard of pure style. His youthful lyrics show the
appreciative study of Dante and Guido Cavalcanti no
less than of the poet of Vaucluse; and though they
affect the conventional melancholy of the Petrarchistic
37* RENAISSANCE IN ITALY.
mannerism, they owe their force to the strong objective
spirit of the fifteenth century. Lorenzo's originality
\ consists in the fusion he effected between the form of
the love-lyric handed down from Petrarch and the
realistic genius of the age of Ghirlandajo. This is
especially noticeable in the sonnets that describe the
beauties of the country. They are not penetrated with
emotion permeating and blurring the impressions made
by natural objects on the poet's mind. His landscapes
are not hazy with the atmosphere, now luminous, now
somber, of a lover's varying mood. On the contrary,
every object is defined and classified ; and the lady sits
like a beautiful figure in a garden, painted with no less
loving care in all its details tfian herself. 1 These pic-
tures, very delicate in their minute and truthful touches,
affect our fancy like a panel of Benozzo Gozzoli, who
omits no circumstance of the scene he undertakes to
reproduce, crowds it with incidents and bestows the
same attention upon the principal subjects and the
accessories. The central emotion of Lorenzo's verse
is scarcely love, but delight in the country the Floren-
H tine's enjoyment of the villa, with its woods and rivulets,
the pines upon the hillsides, the song-birds, and the
pleasures of the chase.
The following sonnet might be chosen as a fair
specimen of the new manner introduced into literature
by Lorenzo. Its classical coloring, deeply, felt and yet
somewhat frigid, has the true stamp of the quattrocento 2 .
1 Read for instance No. xii. in the edition cited above, " Vidi ma-
donna sopra un fresco rio; " No. xviii. "Con passi sparti," etc.; No
xlvii., " Belle fresche c purpuree viole."
* Ibid. p. 97.
HIS LOVE AND SENSE OF NATUKE. 373
Leave thy beloved isle, thou Cyprian queen;
Leave thine enchanted realm so delicate,
Goddess of love! Come where the rivulet
Bathes the short turf and blades of tenderest green 1
Come to these shades, these airs that stir the screen
Of whispering branches and their murmurs set
To Philomel's enamored canzonet:
Choose this for thine own land, thy loved demesne!
And if thou com'st by these clear rills to reign,
Bring thy dear son, thy darling son, with thee;
For there be none that own his empire here.
From Dian steal the vestals of her train,
Who roam the woods at will, from danger free,
And know not Love, nor his dread anger fear.
That Lorenzo was incapable of loving as Dante or
Petrarch or even Boccaccio loved, is obvious in every
verse he wrote. The spirit in him neither triumphs
over the flesh nor struggles with it, nor yet submits a
willing and intoxicated victim. It remains apart and
cold, playing with fancies, curiously surveying the car-
nival of lusts that hold their revel in the breast
whereof it is the lord. Under these conditions he
could take the wife his mother found for him at Rome,
and record the fact in his diary l ; he could while away
his leisure with venal beauties or country girls at his
villas; but of love in the poet's sense he had no knowl-
edge. It is true that, nurtured as he was in the tradi
tions of fourteenth-century verse, he thought it neces
sary to establish a titular mistress of his heart. The
account he gives of this proceeding in a commentary
on his own sonnets, composed after the model of the
Vita Nuova, is one of his best pieces of writing. He
describes the day when the beautiful Simonetta
1 " Tolsi donna . . . owero mi fu data," from the Ricordt printed
in the Appendix to Roscoe's Life.
374 RENAISSANCE IN ITALY.
Cattaneo, his brother Giuliano's lady, was carried to
her grave with face uncovered, lying beneath the sun-
light on her open bier. All Florence was touched to
tears by the sight, and the poets poured forth elegies.
The month was April, and the young earth seemed to
have put on her robe of flowers only to make the
pathos of that death more poignant. Then, says
Lorenzo: " Night came; and I with a friend most dear
to me went communing about the loss we all had suf-
fered. While we spoke, the air being exceedingly
serene, we turned our eyes to a star of surpassing
brightness, which toward the west shone forth with such
luster as not only to conquer all the other stars, but
even to cast a shadow from the objects that inter-
cepted its light. We marveled at it a while; and
then, turning to my friend, I said: ' There is no need
for wonder, since the soul of that most gentle lady has
either been transformed into yon new star or has joined
herself to it. And if this be so, that splendor of the
star is nowise to be wondered at; and even as her
beauty in life was of great solace to our eyes, so now
let us :omfort ourselves at the present moment with
the sight of so much brilliance. And if our eyes be
weak and frail to bear such brightness, pray we to the
god, that is to her deity, to give them virtue, in order
that without injury unto our sight we may awhile con-
template it.' . . . Then, forasmuch as it appeared to
me that this colloquy furnished good material for a
sonnet, I left my friend and composed the following
verses, in which I speak about the star aforesaid:
O lucid star, that with transcendent light
Quenchest of all those neighboring stars the gleam,
LA SIMONETTA AND LUCREZIA. 375
Why thus beyond thine usage dost thou stream,
Why art thou fain with Phoebus still to fight?
Haply those beauteous eyes, which from our sight
Death stole, who now doth vaunt himself supreme,
Thou hast assumed: clad with their glorious beam,
Well mayst thou claim the sun-god's chariot bright
Listen, new star, new regent of the day,
Who with unwonted radiance gilds our heaven,
O listen, goddess, to the prayers we pray!
Let so much splendor from thy sphere be riven
That to these eyes, which fain would weep alway,
Unblinded, thy glad sight may yet be given!
From that moment Lorenzo began to write poems.
He wandered alone and meditated on the sunflower,
playing delightfully unto himself with thoughts of
Love and Death. Yet his heart was empty; and like
Augustine or Alastor, he could say: " nondum amabam,
sed amare amabam, quaerebam quod amarem amans
amare." When a young man is in this mood it is not
long before he finds an object for his adoration. Lo-
renzo went one day in the same spring with friends to
a house of feasting, where he met with a lady lovelier
in his eyes even than La Simonetta. After the fashion
of his age, he describes her physical and mental per-
fections with a minuteness which need not be enforced
upon a modern reader. l Suffice it to say that Lucrezia
Donati such was the lady's name supplied Lorenzo
with exactly what he had been seeking, an object for
his literary exercises. The Sonetti, Canzoni, and Selve
(CAmore were the fruits of this first passion.
Though Lorenzo was neither a poet nor a lover
after the stamp of Dante, these juvenile verses and the
" Innamoramento," Poesie, pp. 58-62. Compare "Selve d' Amorc '
ib. pp. 172-174.
376 RENAISSANCE IN ITALY.
prose with which he prefaced them, show him in a light
that cannot fail to interest those who only know the
statesman and the literary cynic of his later years.
There is sincere fervor of romantic feeling in the pic
ture of the evening after Simonetta's funeral, even
though the analytical temper of the poet's mind is re-
vealed in his exact description of the shadow cast by
the planet he was watching. The first meeting with
Lucrezia, again, is prettily described in these stanzas
of the Selve:
What time the chain was forged which then I bore,
Air, earth, and heavens were linked in one delight;
The air was never so serene before,
The sun ne'er shed such pure and tranquil light;
Young leaves and flowers upon the grassy floor
Gladdened the earth where ran a streamlet bright,
While Venus in her father's bosom lay
And smiled from heaven upon the spot that day.
She from her brows divine and amorous breast
Took with both hands roses of many a hue,
And showered them through the heavens that slept in rest,
Covering my lady with their gracious dew;
Jove, full of gladness, on that day released
The ears of men, that they might hear the true
Echoes of melody and dance divine,
Which fell from heaven in songs and sounds benign.
Fair women to that music moved their feet,
Inflamed with gentle fire by Love's breath fanned:
Behold yon lover with his lady sweet
Her hand long yearned for clasped in his loved hand;
Their sighs, their looks, which pangs of longing cheat;
Brief words that none but they can understand;
The flowers that she lets fall, resumed and pressed,
With kisses covered, to his head or breast.
Amid so many pleasant things and fair,
My loveliest lady with surpassing grace
Eclipsed and crowned all beauties that were there;
Her robe was white and delicate as lace;
ANALYTICAL IMAGINATION. 377
And still her eyes, with silent speech and rare,
Talked to the heart, leaving the lips at peace:
Come to me, come, dear heart of mine, she said:
Here shall thy long desires at rest be laid.
The impression of these verses is hardly marred by
the prosy catalogue of Lucrezia's beauties furnished
in the Innamoramento. Lorenzo was an analyst. He
could not escape from that quality so useful to the
observer, so fatal to artists, if they cannot recompose
the data furnished by observation in a new subjective
synthesis. When we compare his description of the
Age of Gold in the Selve^ justly celebrated for its
brilliancy and wealth of detail, with the shorter passage
from Poliziano's Stanze, we measure the distance be-
tween intelligent study of nature and the imagination
which unifies and gives new form of life to every
detail. The same end may be more briefly attained
by a comparison of this passage about roses from
Lorenzo's Corinto with a musical Bcdlata of Poliziano 2 :
Into a little close of mine I went
One morning, when the sun with his fresh light
Was rising all refulgent and unshent.
Rose-trees are planted there in order bright,
Whereto I turned charmed eyes, and long did stay
Taking my fill of that new-found delight.
Red and white roses bloomed upon the spray;
One opened, leaf by leaf, to greet the morn,
Shyly at first, then in sweet disarray;
Another, yet a youngling, newly born,
Scarce struggled from the bud, and there were some
Whose petals closed them from the air forlorn;
Another fell, and showered the grass with bloom;
Thus I beheld the roses dawn and die,
And one short hour their loveliness consume.
1 Poesic, pp. 206-213. ' Ibid. p. 236.
378 RENAISSANCE IN ITALY.
But while I watched those languid petals He
Colorless on cold earth, I could but think
How vain a thing is youthful bravery.
Trees have their time to bloom on winter's brink;
Then the rathe blossoms wither in an hour,
When the brief days of spring toward summer sink;
The fruit, as yet unformed, is tart and sour;
Little by little it grows large, and weighs
The strong boughs down with slow persistent power;
Nor without peril can the branches raise
Their burden; now they stagger 'neath the weight
Still growing, and are bent above the ways;
Soon autumn comes, and the ripe ruddy freight
Is gathered: the glad season will not stay;
Flowers, fruits, and leaves are now all desolate.
Pluck the rose, therefore, maiden, while 'tis May!
I*hat is good. It is the best kind of poetry within
Lorenzo's grasp. But here is Poliziano's dance-song:
I went a-roaming, maidens, one bright day,
In a green garden in mid month of May.
Violets and lilies grew on every side
Mid the green grass, and young flowers wonderful,
Golden and white and red and azure-eyed;
Toward which I stretched my hands, eager to pull
Plenty to make my fair curls beautiful,
To crown my rippling curls with garlands gay.
I went a-roaming, maidens, one bright day,
In a green garden in mid month of May.
But when my lap was full of flowers I spied
Roses at last, roses of every hue;
Therefore I ran to pluck their ruddy pride,
Because their perfume was so sweet and true
That all my soul went forth with pleasure new,
With yearning and desire too soft to say.
I went a-roaming, maidens, one bright day,
In a green garden in mid month of May.
I gazed and gazed. Hard task it were to tell
How lovely were the roses in that hour;
CORINTO AND SELVE D' AMORR. 379
One was but peeping from her verdant shell.
And some were faded, some were scarce in flower.
Then Love said: Go, pluck from the blooming bower
Those that thou seest ripe upon the spray.
I went a-roaming, maidens, one bright day,
In a green garden in mid month of May.
For when the full rose quits her tender sheath,
When she is sweetest and most fair to see,
Then is the time to place her in thy wreath,
Before her beauty and her freshness flee.
Gather ye therefore roses with great glee,
Sweet girls, or ere their perfume pass away.
I went a-roaming, maidens, one bright day,
In a green garden in mid month of May.
Both in this Ballata and also in the stanzas on the Age
of Gold, it might almost seem as though Poliziano had
rewritten Lorenzo's exercise with a view to showing
the world the difference between true poetry and what
is only very like it.
The Selve (f Amore and the Corinto belong to
Lorenzo's early manner, when his heart was yet fresh
and statecraft had not made him cynical. The latter
is a musical eclogue in terza rima; the former a dis-
cursive love-poem, with allegorical episodes, in octave
stanzas. Up to the date of the Selve the ottava rima
had, so far as I know, been only used for semi-epical
poems and short love-songs. Lorenzo proved his
originality by suiting it to a style of composition
which aimed at brilliant descriptions in the manner of
Ovid. He also handled it with an ease and brightness
hitherto unknown. The pageant of Love and Jealousy
and the allegory of Hope in the second part are both
such poetry as only needed something magical from
380 RENAISSANCE IN ITALY.
the touch of Ariosto to make them perfect. 1 As it is,
Lorenzo's studies in verse produce the same impres-
sion as Bronzino's in painting. They are brilliant,
but hard, cold, calculated, never fused by the final
charm of poetry or music into a delightful vision
What is lacking is less technical skill or invention than
feeling in the artist, the glow of passion, or the charm
of spiritual harmony. Here is a picture of Hope's
attendant train:
Following this luckless dame, where'er she goes,
Flit dreams in crowds, with auguries and lies,
Chiromants, arts that cozen and impose,
Chances, diviners, and false prophecies,
Spoken or writ in foolish scroll and glose,
Whose forecast brings time flown before our eyes,
Alchemy, all who heaven from our earth measure,
And free conjectures made at will and pleasure.
'Neath the dark shadow of her mighty wings
The whole deluded world at last must cower:
O blindness that involves all mortal things,
Frail ignorance that treads on human power !
He who can count the woes her empire brings,
Could number every star, each fish, each flower,
Tell all the birds that cross the autumnal seas,
Or leaves that flutter from the naked trees.
His Ambra is another poem in the same style as
the Selve. It records Lorenzo's love for that Tuscan
farm which Poliziano afterwards made famous in the
sonorous hexameters he dedicated to the memory of
Homer. 2 Following the steps of Ovid, Lorenzo
feigns that a shepherd Lauro loved the nymph Ambra,
whom Umbrone, the river-god, pursued through vale
i Poesie, pp. 190-194, 200-204.
9 See the peroration to Ambra, in the Sylvasj Poliziano, Prose Vol
gari e Potsie Latine, etc. (Firenze, 1867), p. 365: Et nos ergo illi, etc.
RUSTIC POEMS. 381
and meadow to the shores of Arno. There he would
have done her violence, but that Diana changed her to
a rock in her sore need :
Ma pur che fussi gia donna ancor crcdi;
Le membra mostran, come suol figura
Bozzata e non finita in pietra dura.
This simile is characteristic both of Lorenzo's love for
familiar illustration, and also of the age that dawned
on Michelangelo's genius. In the same meter, but in
a less ambitious style, is La Caccia col Falcone. This
poem is the simple record of a Tuscan hawking-party,
written to amuse Lorenzo's guests, but never meant
assuredly to be discussed by critics after the lapse of
four centuries. These pastorals, whether trifling like
La Caccia, romantic like Corinto, or pictorial like
Ambra, sink into insignificance beside La Nencia da
Barberino a masterpiece of true genius and humor,
displaying intimate knowledge of rustic manners, and
using the dialect of the Tuscan contadini. 1 Like the
Polyphemus of Theocritus, but with even more of racy
detail and homely fun, La Nencia versifies the love -
lament of a hind, Vallera, who describes the charms
of his sweetheart with quaint fancy, wooing her in a
thousand ways, all natural, all equally in keeping with
rural simplicity. It can scarcely be called a parody of
village life and feeling, although we cannot fail to see
that the town is laughing at the country all through
the exuberant stanzas, so rich in fancy, so incomparably
vivid in description. What lifts it above parody is the
truth of the picture and the close imitation of rustic
popular poetry 2 :
i Poesie, p. 238. 2 Ibid. p. 239.
382 RENAISSANCE IN ITALY.
Le labbre rosse paion di corallo:
Ed havvi drento due filar di denti
Che son piu bianchi che quei di cavallo:
E d' ogni lato ella n' ha piu di venti.
Le gote bianche paion di cristallo
Senz* altri lisci ower scorticamenti:
Ed in quel mezzo ell' e come una rosa.
Nel mondo non fu mai si bella cosa.
Ben si potra tenere avventurato
Che sia marito di si bella moglie;
Ben si potra tener in buon di nato
Chi ara quel fioraliso senza foglie;
Ben si potra tener santo e beato,
Che si contenti tutte le sue voglie
D' aver la Nencia e tenersela in braccio
Morbida e bianca che pare un sugnaccio.
These lines, chosen at random from the poem, might
be paralleled from Rispetti that are sung to-day in
Tuscany. The vividness and vigor of La Nencia
secured for it immediate popularity. It was speedily
imitated by Luigi Pulci in the Beca da Dicomano> a
village poem that, aiming at cruder realism than
Lorenzo's, broke the style and lapsed into vulgarity.
La Nencia long continued to have imitators ; for one
of the principal objects of educated poets in the Renais-
sance was to echo the manner of popular verse. None,
however, succeeded so well as Lorenzo in touching the
facts of country life and the truth of country feeling
with a fine irony that had in it at least as much of
sympathy as of sarcasm.
1 Beoni is a plebeian poem of a different and more
displeasing type. Written in terza rima, it distinctly
parodies the style of the Divine Comedy, using the
same phrases to indicate action and to mark the turns of
dialogue, introducing similes in the manner of Dante ;
I BEONI AND THE LAUDS. 383
burlesquing Virgil and Beatrice in the disgusting
Bartolino and Nastagio. 1 The poem might be called
The Paradise of Drunkards, or their Hell ; for it con-
sists of a succession of scenes in which intoxication in
all stages and topers of every caliber are introduced
The tone is coldly satirical, sardonically comic. The
old man of Tennyson's "Vision of Sin" might have
written / Beoni after a merry bout with the wrinkled
ostler. When Lorenzo composed it, he was already
corrupt and weary, sated with the world, worn with
disease, disillusioned by a life of compromise, hypo-
crisy, diplomacy, and treason to the State he ruled.
Yet the humor of this poem has nothing truly sinister
or tragic. Its brutality is redeemed by no fierce
Swiftian rage. If some of the descriptions in Lorenzo's
earlier work remind us of Dutch flower and landscape-
painters, Breughel or Van Huysum, the scenes of /
Beoni recall the realism of Dutch tavern -pictures and
Kermessen. It has the same humor, gross and yet
keen, the same intellectual enjoyment of sensuality, the
same animalism studied by an acute aesthetic spirit. 2
To turn from / Beoni to Lorenzo's Lauds, written
at his mother's request, and to the sacred play of
51 Giovanni e Paolo ', acted by his children, is to make
one of those bewildering transitions which are so com-
mon in Renaissance Italy. Without rating Lorenzo's
sacred poetry very high, either for religious fervor or
aesthetic quality, it is yet surprising that the author of
the Beoni and the Platonic sage of Careggi should have
1 Poesie, p. 294.
If anything had to be quoted from I Beoni, I should select the
episode of Adovardo and his humorous discourse on thirst, cap. ii #.
p. 299. For a loathsome parody of Dante see cap. v. ib. p. 315.
384 RENAISSANCE IN ITALY.
caught so much of the pietistic tone. We know that
S. Giovanni e Paolo was written when he was advanced
in years 1 ; and the latent allusions to his illness and
the cares of state which weighed upon him, give it an
interest it would not otherwise excite. This couplet,
Spesso chi chiama Costantin felice
Sta meglio assai di me e '1 ver non dice,
seems to be a sigh from his own weariness. Lorenzo
may not improbably have envied Constantine, the
puppet of his fancy, at the moment of abdication. And
yet when Savonarola called upon him ere his death to
deal justly with Florence, the true nature of the man
was seen. Had he liked it or not, he could not then
have laid down the load of care and crime which it had
been the business of his whole life to accumulate by
crooked ways in the enslavement of Florence and the
perdition of his soul's peace. The Lauds, which may
be referred to an earlier period of Lorenzo's life, when
his mother ruled his education, and the pious Bishop
of Arezzo watched his exemplary behavior in church
with admiration, have here and there in them a touch
of profound feeling 2 ; nor are they in all respects
inferior to the average of those included in the Floren-
tine collection of 1863. The men of the Renaissance
were so constituted that to turn from vice, and cruelty,
and crime, from the deliberate corruption and enslave-
ment of a people by licentious pleasures and the perse-
cution of an enemy in secret, with a fervid and im-
The date is 1489.
Especially " O Dio, o sommo bene," and " Poi ch* io gustai, Gesfc; '
ib. pp. 444, 447. Likewise " Vieni a me; " ib. p. 449.
LORENZO'S POPULAR LYRICS. 385
passioned movement of the soul to God, was nowise
impossible. Their temper admitted of this anomaly,
as we may plainly see in Cellini's Autobiography.
Therefore, though it is probable that Lorenzo culti-
vated the Laud chiefly as a form of art, we are not
justified in assuming that the passages in which we
seem to detect a note of ardent piety, are insincere.
The versatility of Lorenzo's talent showed itself to
greater advantage when he quitted the uncongenial
ground of sacred literature and gave a free rein to his
fancy in the composition of Ballate and Carnival
songs. This species of poetry offered full scope to a
temperament excessive in all pleasures of the senses. 1
It also enabled him to indulge a deeply-rooted sym-
pathy with the common folk. Nor must it be sup-
posed that Lorenzo was following a merely artistic im-
pulse. This strange man, in whose complex nature
opponent qualities were harmonized and intertwined,
made his very sensuality subserve his statecraft. The
Medici had based their power upon the favor of
the proletariate. Since the days of the Ciompi riot
they had pursued one line of self-aggrandizement by
siding with the plebeians in their quarrels with the
oligarchs. The serious purpose which underlay Lo-
renzo's cultivation of popular poetry, was to amuse the
1 Guicciardini, in his Storia Fiorentina (Op. Ined. vol. iii. 88), writes
of Lorenzo: " Fu libidinoso, e tutto venereo e constante negli amori suoi,
che duravano parecchi anni; la quale cosa, a giudicio di molti, gli inde-
boli tanto il corpo, che lo fece morire, si pub dire, giovane." Then, after
describing his night-adventures outside Florence, he proceeds: "Cosa
pazza a considerare che uno di tanta grandezza, riputazione e prudenza,
di eta di anni quaranta, fussi si preso di una dama non bella e gia piena
di anni, che si conducessi a fare cose, che sarebbono state disonestc a
ogni fanciullo."
j86 RENAISSANCE IN ITALY.
crowd with pageantry and music, to distract theii
attention from State concerns and to blunt their poli-
tical interest, to flatter them by descending to their
level and mixing freely with them in their sports, and
to acquire a popularity which should secure him from
the aristocratic jealousies of the Acciaioli, the Fresco-
baldi, the Salviati, Soderini, and other ancestral foemen
of his house. The frontispiece to an old edition of
Florentine carnival songs shows him surrounded with
maskers in quaint dresses, leading the revel beneath
the walls of the Palazzo, while women gaze upon them
from the windows. 1 That we are justified in attribu-
ting a policy of calculated enervation to Lorenzo is
proved by the verdict of Machiavelli and Guicciardini,
both of whom connect his successful despotism with
the pageants he provided for the populace, 2 and also
by this passage in Savonarola's treatise on the Govern-
ment of Florence: "The tyrant, especially in times of
peace and plenty, is wont to occupy the people with
shows and festivals, in order that they may think of
their own pastimes and not of his designs, and, grow-
ing unused to the conduct of the commonwealth, may
leave the reins of government in his hands." 3 At the
'same time he would err who should suppose that
'Lorenzo's enjoyment of these pleasures, which he found
1 Canzone per andart in maschera,facte da piii persone. Noplace
or date or printer's name; but probably issued in the lifetime of Lorenzo
from Mongiani's press. There is a similar woodcut on the title-page ot
the Canzone a Ballo, Firenze, 1568. It represents the angle of the Medi-
cean Palace in the Via Larga, girls dancing in a ring upon the street,
one with a wreath and thyrsus kneeling, another presenting Lorenzo
with a book.
1 1st. Fior. viii.; Star. Fior. ix.
Trattato circa il Reggimento e Governo della, Cittd di Firc*xt
(Florence, 1847), H. 2.
CANZONI A BALLO. 387
in vogue among the people, was not genuine. He
represented the worst as well as the best spirit of his
age ; and if he knew how to enslave Florence, it was
because his own temperament shared the instincts of
the crowd, while his genius enabled him to clothe
obscenity with beauty.
We know that it was an ancient Florentine custom
for young men and girls to meet upon the squares and
dance, while a boy sang with treble voice to lute or
viol, or a company of minstrels chanted part-songs.
The dancers joined in the refrain, vaunting the plea
sures of the May and the delights of love in rhythms
suited to the Carola. Taking this form of poetry from
the people, Lorenzo gave it the dignity of art. Some-
times he told the tale of an unhappy lover, or pre-
tended to be pleading with a coy mistress, or broke
forth into the exultation of a passion crowned with
success. Again, he urged both boys and girls to stay
the flight of time nor suffer the rose-buds of their
youth to fade unplucked. In more wanton moods, he
satirized the very love he praised, or, casting off the
mask of decency, ran riot in base bestiality. These
Canzoni a Ballo, though they lack the supreme beauty
of Poliziano's style, are stylistically graceful. Their
tone never rises above sensuality. Not only has the
gravity of Dante's passion passed away from Florence,
but Boccaccio's sensuous ideality is gone, and the
naivete of popular erotic poetry is clouded with gross
innuendoes. We find in them the aesthetic immorality,
the brilliant materialism of the Renaissance, conveyed
with careless self-abandonment to carnal impulse.
The name of Lorenzo de' Medici is still more
388 RENAISSANCE IN ITALY.
closely connected with the Canti Carnascialeschi or
Carnival Songs, of which he is said to have been the
first author, than with the Ballate, which he only used
as they were handed to him. In Carnival time it
was the custom of the Florentines to walk the streets,
masked and singing satiric ballads. Lorenzo saw that
here was an opportunity for delighting the people,
with the magnificence of pageantry. He caused the
Triumphs in which he took a part to be carefully pre-
pared by the best artists, the dresses of the maskers
to be accurately studied, and their chariots to be
adorned with illustrative paintings. Then he wrote
songs appropriate to the characters represented on
the cars. Singing and dancing and displaying their
costumes, the band paraded Florence. II Lasca in
his introduction to the Triumphs and Carnival Songs
dedicated to Don Francesco de' Medici gives the
history of their invention * : " This festival was in-
vented by the Magnificent Lorenzo de' Medici. Be-
fore his time, when the cars bore mythological or
allegorical masks, they were called Trionfi ; but
when they carried representatives of arts and trades,
they kept the simpler name of Carri" The lyrics
written for the Triumphs were stately, in the style of
antique odes; those intended to be sung upon the
Carri, employed plebeian turns of phrase and dealt
in almost undisguised obscenity. It was their wont,
says II Lasca, " to go forth after dinner, and often they
lasted till three or four hours into the night, with a
multitude of masked men on horseback following, richly
' TUtti i Trionfi, Carri, etc., Fircnzc, 1559. See also the edition
dated Cosmopoli. 1750.
CARNIVAL SONGS. 389
dressed, exceeding sometimes three hundred in num-
ber, and as many men on foot with lighted torches.
Thus they traversed the city, singing to the accom-
paniment of music arranged for four, eight, twelve, or
even fifteen voices, supported by various instruments."
Lorenzo's fancy took the Florentine mind. From
his days onward these shows were repeated every year,
the best artists and poets contributing their genius to
make them splendid. In the collection of songs written
for the Carnival, we find Masks of Scholars, Arti-
sans, Frog-catchers, Furies, Tinkers, Women selling
grapes, Old men and Young wives, Jewelers, German
Lansknechts, Gypsies, Wool-carders, Penitents, Devils,
Jews, Hypocrites, Young men who have lost their
fathers, Wiseacres, Damned Souls, Tortoiseshell Cats,
Perfumers, Masons, Mountebanks, Mirror -makers,
Confectioners, Prudent persons, Lawyers, Nymphs in
love, Nuns escaped from convent not to mention the
Four Ages of Man, the Winds, the Elements, Peace,
Calumny, Death, Madness, and a hundred abstractions
of that kind. The tone of these songs is uniformly
and deliberately immoral. One might fancy them
composed for some old phallic festival. Their wit is
keen and lively, presenting to the fancy of the student
all the humors of a* brilliant bygone age. A strange
and splendid spectacle it must have been, when Flor-
ence, the city of art and philosophy, ran wild in
Dionysiac revels proclaiming the luxury and license
of the senses! Beautiful maidens, young men in rich
clothes on prancing steeds, showers of lilies and violets,
triumphal arches of spring flowers and ribbons, hail-
storms of comfits, torches flaring to the sallow evening
390
RENAISSANCE IN ITALY.
sky we can see the whole procession as it winds across
the Ponte Vecchio, emerges into the great square, and
slowly gains the open space beneath the dome of
Brunelleschi and the tower of Giotto. The air rings
with music as they come, bass and tenor and shrill
treble mingling with the sound of lute and cymbal.
The people hush their cheers to listen. It is Lorenzo's
Triumph of Bacchus, and here are the words they
sing:
Fair is youth and void of sorrow;
But it hourly flies away.
Youths and maids, enjoy to-day;
Naught ye know about to-morrow.
This is Bacchus and the bright
Ariadne, lovers true!
They, in flying time's despite,
Each with each find pleasure new;
These their Nymphs, and all their crew
Keep perpetual holiday.
Youths and maids, enjoy to-day;
Naught ye know about to-morrow.
These blithe Satyrs, wanton-eyed,
Of the Nymphs are paramours:
Through the caves and forests wide
They have snared them mid the flowers.
Warmed with Bacchus, in his bowers,
Now they dance and leap away.
Youths and maids enjoy to-day;
Naught ye know about to-morrow.
These fair Nymphs, they are not loth
To entice their lovers' wiles.
None but thankless folk and rough
Can resist when Love beguiles.
Now enlaced with wreathed smiles,
All together dance and play.
Youths and maids, enjoy to-day;
Naught ye know about to-mornw.
TRIUMPH OF BACCHUS. 391
See this load behind them plodding
On the ass, Silenus he,
Old and drunken, merry, nodding,
Full of years and jollity;
Though he goes so swayingly,
Yet he laughs and quaffs alway.
Youths and maids, enjoy to-day;
Naught ye know about to-morrow.
Midas treads a wearier measure:
All he touches turns to gold:
If there be no taste of pleasure,
What's the use of wealth untold ?
What's the joy his fingers hold,
When he's forced to thirst for aye ?
Youths and maids, enjoy to-day;
Naught ye know about to-morrow.
Listen well to what we're saying;
Of to-morrow have no care !
Young and old together playing,
Boys and girls, be blithe as air !
Every sorry thought forswear !
Keep 'perpetual holiday.
Youths and maids, enjoy to-day;
Naught ye know about to-morrow.
Ladies and gay lovers young !
Long live Bacchus, live Desire 1
Dance and play, let songs be sung;
Let sweet Love your bosoms fire;
In the future come what may !
Youths and maids, enjoy to-day;
Naught ye know about to-morrow.
On rolls the car, and the crowd closes round it, rending
the old walls with shattering hurrahs. Then a corner
of the street is turned; while soaring still above the
hubbub of the town we hear at intervals that musical re-
frain. Gradually it dies away in the distance, and fainter
and more faintly still the treble floats to us in broken
waves of sound the echo of a lyric heard in dreams.
Such were the songs that reached Savonarola's ears,
392 RENAISSANCE JN ITALY.
writing or meditating in his cloister at S. Marco. Such
were the sights that moved his indignation as he trod the
streets of Florence. Then he bethought him of his
famous parody of the Carnival, the bonfire of Vanities,
and the hymn in praise of divine madness sung by
children dressed in white like angels. 1 Yet Florence,
1 In this place should be noticed a sinister Carnival Song, by an un-
known author, which belongs, I think, to the period of Savonarola's de-
mocracy. It is called Trionfo del Vaglio, or " Triumph of the Sieve '
(Cant. Cam. p. 33):
To the Sieve, to the Sieve, to the Sieve,
Ho, all ye folk, descend 1
With groans your bosoms rend I
And find in this our Sieve
Wrath, anguish, travail, doom for all who lire 1
To winnow, sift and purge, full well we know,
And grind your souls like corn:
Ye who our puissance scorn,
Come ye to trial, ho !
For we will prove and show
How fares the man who enters in our Sieve.
Send us no groats nor scrannel seed nor rye,
But good fat ears of grain,
Which shall endure our strain.
And be of sturdy stuff.
Torment full stern and rough
Abides for him who resteth in our Sieve.
Who comes into this Sieve, who issues thence,
Hath tears and sighs, and mourns:
But the Sieve ever turns,
And gathers vehemence.
Ye who feel sin's offence,
Shun ye the rage, the peril of our Sieve.
A thousand times the day, our Sieve is crowned;
A thousand times 'tis drained:
Let the Sieve once be strained,
And, grain by grain, around
Ye shall behold the ground
Covered with folk, cast from the boltering Sieve
Yc who are not well-grained and strong to bear,
Abide ye not this fate !
Penitence comes too late !
Seek ye some milder doom J
Nay, better were the tomb
Than to endure the torment of our Steve !
TRIUMPH OF DEATH. 393
warned in vain by the friar, took no thought for the
morrow; and the morrow came to all Italy with war,
invasion, pestilence, innumerable woes. In the last
year of Pier Soderini's Gonfalonierato (i5i2) it seemed
as though the Italians had been quickened to a con-
sciousness of their impending ruin. The siege of
Brescia, the battle of Ravenna, the League of Cam-
bray, the massacres of Prato, the sack of Rome, the
fall of Florence, were all imminent. A fascination of
intolerable fear thrilled the people in the midst of
their heedlessness, and this fear found voice and form
in a strange Carnival pageant described by Vasari 1 :
" The triumphal car was covered with black cloth, and
was of vast size; it had skeletons and white crosses
painted upon its surface, and was drawn by buffaloes,
all of which were totally black: within the car stood
the colossal figure of Death, bearing the scythe in his
hand; while round him were covered tombs, which
opened at all the places where the procession halted,
while those who formed it, chanted lugubrious songs,
when certain figures stole forth, clothed in black cloth,
on whose vestments the bones of a skeleton were de-
picted in white; the arms, breast, ribs, and legs, namely,
all which gleamed horribly forth on the black beneath.
At a certain distance appeared figures bearing torches,
and wearing masks presenting the face of a death's
head both before and behind; these heads of death as
well as the skeleton necks beneath them, also ex-
hibited to view, were not only painted with the utmost
fidelity to nature, but had besides a frightful expression
1 Life of I'iero di Cosimo.
394 RENAISSANCE IN ITALY.
which was horrible to behold. At the sound of a
wailing summons, sent forth with a hollow moan from
trumpets of muffled yet inexorable clangor, the figures
of the dead raised themselves half out of their tombs,
and seating their skeleton forms thereon, they sang
the following words, now so much extolled and ad-
mired, to music of the most plaintive and melancholy
character. Before and after the car rode a train of
the dead on horses, carefully selected from the most
wretched and meager animals that could be found:
the caparisons of those worn, half- dying beasts were
black, covered with white crosses; each was conducted
by four attendants, clothed in the vestments of the
grave; these last - mentioned figures, bearing black
torches and a large black standard, covered with
crosses, bones, and death's heads. While this train
proceeded on its way, each sang, with a trembling
voice, and all in dismal unison, that psalm of David
called the Miserere. The novelty and the terrible
character of this singular spectacle, filled the whole
city, as I have before said, with a mingled sensation
of terror and admiration; and although at the first
sight it did not seem well calculated for a Carnival
show, yet being new, and within the reach of every
man's comprehension, it obtained the highest encomium
for Piero as the author and contriver of the whole,
and was the cause as well as commencement of
numerous representations, so ingenious and effective
that by these things Florence acquired a reputation
for the conduct of such subjects and the arrangement
of similar spectacles such as was never equaled by
any other city."-
CHORUS OF PENITENCE. 395
Of this Carnival song, composed by Antonio Ala-
manni, I here give an English version.
Sorrow, tears, and penitence
Are our doom of pain for aye;
This dead concourse riding by
Hath no cry but Penitence.
Even as you are, once were we:
You shall be as now we are:
We are dead men, as you see:
We shall see you dead men, where
Naught avails to take great care
After sins of penitence.
We too in the Carnival
Sang our love-song through the tovm;
Thus from sin to sin we all
Headlong, heedless, tumbled down;
Now we cry, the world around.
Penitence, oh penitence!
Senseless, blind, and stubborn fools!
Time steals all things as he rides:
Honors, glories, states, and schools,
Pass away, and naught abides;
Till the tomb our carcass hides,
And compels grim penitence.
This sharp scythe you see us bear,
Brings the world at length to woe;
But from life to life we fare;
And that life is joy or woe;
All heaven's bliss on him doth flow.
Who on earth does penitence.
Living here, we all must die;
Dying, every soul shall live,
For the King of kings on high
This fixed ordinance doth give:
Lo! you all are fugitive
Penitence, cry penitence!
396 RENAISSANCE IN ITALY.
Torment great and grievous dole
Hath the thankless heart mid you:
But the man of piteous soul
Finds much honor in our crew;
Love for loving is the due
That prevents this penitence.
These words sounded in the ears of the people, already
terrified by the unforgotten voice of Savonarola, like a
trump of doom. The pageant was, indeed, an acted
allegory of the death of Italy, the repentance after
judgment of a nation fallen in its sins. Yet a few
months passed, and the same streets echoed with the
music of yet another show, which has also been de-
scribed by Vasari. 1 If the Car of Death expressed
the uneasy dread that fell on the Italians at the open-
ing of the century, the shows of 1 5 1 3 allegorized their
mad confidence in the fortune of the age, which was
still more deeply felt and widely shared. Giovanni
de' Medici had just been elevated to the Papal Chair,
and was paying a holiday visit to his native city.
Giuliano de' Medici, his brother, the Duke of
Nemours, was also resident in Florence, where he
had formed a club of noble youths called the Diamond.
Lorenzo, Duke of Urbino, the titular chief of the
house, presided over a rival Company named II
Broncone with a withered laurel-branch, whence
leaves were sprouting, for its emblem. The Diamond
signified the constancy of Casa Medici; the withered
branch their power of self- recovery. These two men.
Giuliano and Lorenzo, are the same who now confront
each other upon their pedestals in Michelangelo's
Sacristy of S. Lorenzo. Both were doomed to an
i Life of Pontormo.
PAGEANT OF THE GOLDEN AGE. 397
untimely death; but in the year 1613, when Leo's
election shed new luster on their house, they were still
in the heyday of prosperity and hope. Giuliano
resolved that the Diamond should make a goodly
show Therefore he intrusted the invention and the
poems to Andrea Dazzi, who then held Poliziano's
chair of Greek and Latin literature. Dazzi devised
three Cars after the fashion of a Roman triumph. For
the construction of each chariot an excellent architect
was chosen; for their decoration the painter Pontormo
was appointed. In the first rode beautiful boys; in
the second, powerful men; in the third, reverend
grandsires. Lorenzo, in competition with his uncle,
determined that the Laurel branch should outrival the
Diamond. He applied to Jacopo Nardi, the historian
of Florence and translator of Livy. Nardi composed
a procession of seven chariots to symbolize the Golden
Age, and wrote appropriate poems for each, which are
still extant. In the first car rode Saturn and Janus,
attended by six shepherds of goodly form, naked, on
horses without harness. In the second sat Numa
Pompilius, surrounded by priests in antique raiment.
The third carried Titus Manlius, whose consulship
beheld the close of the first Punic war. In the fifth
Augustus sat enthroned, accompanied by twelve
laureled poets. The horses that drew him, were
winged. The sixth carried Trajan, the just emperor,
with doctors of the law on either side. All these
chariots were adorned with emblems painted by Pon-
tormo. The seventh car held a globe to represent the
world. Upon it lay a dead man in a suit of rusty iron
armor, from the cloven plates of which emerged a
398 RENAISSANCE IN 1TALV.
living child, naked and gilt with glistering leaf of gold
This signified the passing of the Iron, and the opening
of the Golden Age the succession of the Renaissance
to feudalism the fortunes of Italy reviving after her
disasters in the sunlight of the smiles of Leo. Magnus
scedorum nascitur ordo! "The world's great age
begins anew; the golden years return!" Thus the
artists, scholars, and poets of Florence symbolized in a
Carnival show the advent of the Renaissance. The
boy who represented the Golden Age, died of the
sufferings he endured beneath his gilding; and his
father, who was a baker, received ten scudi of in-
demnity. A fanciful historian might read in this little
incident the irony of fate, warning the Italians that the
age they welcomed would perish for them in its bloom.
In the year 1613 Luther was already thirty years of
age, and Charles V. in the Low Countries was a boy
of thirteen, accumulating knowledge under the direc-
tion of the future Adrian VI. Whatever destiny of
gold the Renaissance, might through Italy be offering
to Europe, it was on the point of pouring blood and
fastening heavier chains on every city of the sacred
land.
In my desire to bring together these three repre-
sentative festivals Lorenzo's Triumph of Bacchus,
Alamanni's Car of Death, and Pontormo's Pageant of
the Golden Age marking three moments in the
Florentine Renaissance, and three diverse moods of
feeling in the people I have transgressed the chrono-
logical limits of this chapter. I must now return to the
year 1464, when a boy of ten years old, destined to
revive the glories of Italian literature with far greater
ANGELO POLIZIANO. 399
luster than Lorenzo, came from Montepulciano to
Florence, and soon won the notice of the Medicean
princes. Angelo Ambrogini, surnamed Poliziano from
his home above the Chiana, has already occupied a
prominent place in this work. 1 It is not, therefore,
needful to retrace the history of his uneventful life, or
again to fix his proper rank among the scholars of the
fifteenth century. He was the greatest student, and
the greatest poet in Greek and Latin, that Italy has
produced. In the history of European scholarship, he
stands midway between Petrarch and Erasmus, taking
the post of honor at the moment when erudition had
acquired ease and elegance, but had not yet passed on
into the final stage of scientific criticism. What con-
cerns us here, is Poliziano's achievement as an Italian
poet. In the history of the vulgar literature he fills a
place midway between Petrarch and Ariosto, corre-
sponding to the station of distinction I have assigned
to him in humanistic culture. Of few men can it be
said that they have held the same high rank in poetry
and learning; and had the moral fiber of Poliziano,
his intellectual tension and his spiritual aim, been at
all commensurate with his twofold ability, the Italians
might have shown in him a fourth singer equal in mag-
nitude to their greatest. As it was, the excellence of
his work was marred by the defect of his temperament,
and has far less value for the general reader than for
the student of versification.
Lorenzo de' Medici could boast of having restored
the mother tongue to a place of honor among the
learned. But he was far from being the complete
i Revival of Learning, pp. 345-357. 452-465.
400 f RENAISSANCE IN ITALY.
artist that the age required. " That exquisite flower
of sentiment we call good taste, that harmony of
intellect we call judgment, lies not within the grasp of
power or riches." 1 A man was needed who should
combine creative genius with refined tact in the use of
language; who should be competent to carry the tradi-
tion of Italian poetry beyond the point where Boccaccio
dropped it, while giving to his work the polish and the
splendor of a classic masterpiece. It was further nec-
essary that this new dictator of the literary common-
wealth should have left the Middle Age so far behind
as not to be aware of its stern spirit. He must have
acquired the erudition of his eminently learned century
a century in which knowledge was the pearl of great
price; not the knowledge of righteousness; not the
knowledge of nature and her laws ; but the knowledge
of the life that throbbed in ancient peoples, the life that
might, it seemed, yet make the old world young again.
Moreover, he must be strong enough to carry this eru-
dition without bending beneath its weight; dexterous
enough to use it without pedantry ; exuberant enough
in natural resources to reduce his stores of learning, his
wealth of fancy, his thronging emotions, to one ruling
harmony fusing all reminiscences in one style of pure
and copious Italian. He must be gifted with that
reverent sense of beauty, which was the sole surviving
greatness of his century, animating the imagination of
its artists, and justifying the proud boast of its students.
This man was found in Angelo Poliziano. He, and
only he, was destined, by combining the finish of the
1 Carducci, Preface to his edition of Le Stanze, L'Orfeo e Le Rim
di Mess er Angelo Ambrogini Poliziano (Firenze, 1863), p. xxiii.
POLIZIANO'S QUALIFICATIONS. 401
classics with the freshness of a language still in use, to
inaugurate the golden age of form. Faustus, the
genius of the middle ages, had wedded Helen, the
vision of the ancient world. Their son, Euphorion,
the inheritor of all their gifts, we hail in Poliziano.
When Poliziano composed Le Stanze he was nearly
twenty-four years of age. * He had steeped himself in
the classic literatures. Endowed with a marvelous
memory, he possessed their spirit and their substance.
Not less familiar with Tuscan poetry of the fourteenth
century, he commanded the stores of Dante's, Pet-
rarch's and Boccaccio's diction. Long practice in
Greek and Latin composition had given him mastery
over the metrical systems of the ancient languages. 2
The daily habit of inditing songs for music to please
the ladies of the Medicean household, had accustomed
him to the use of fluent Italian. The translation of
the Iliad, performed in part before he was eighteen,
had made him a faithful imitator, while it added dignity
and fullness to his style. 3 Besides these qualifications
for his future task of raising Italian to an equality
with Latin poetry, he brought with him to this achieve-
1 This poem must have been written between 1476, the date of Si
monetta's death, and 1478, the date of Giuliano's murder, when Poliziano
was about twenty-four. Chronology prevents us from regarding it as the
work of a boy of fourteen, as Roscoe thought, or of sixteen, as Hallam
concluded.
* His Latin elegies on Simonetta and on Albiera degli Albizzi, and
those Greek epigrams which Scaliger preferred to the Latin verses of his
maturity, had been already written.
s From Le Stanze, i. 7, we learn that he interrupted the translation
of the Iliad in order to begin this poem in Italian. He never took it up
again. It remains a noble torso, the most splendid extant version of a
Greek poem in Latin by a modern hand.
403 RENAISSANCE IN ITALY.
ment a genius apt to comprehend the spirit of the
Renaissance in its pomp and liberty and tranquil
loveliness. The noble and yet sensuous manner
of the great Venetian painters, their dignity of form,
their luxury of color, their boldness and decision,
their imperturbable serenity of mundane joy the
choicer delicacy of the Florentine masters, their re-
finement of outline, selection of type, suggestion of
restrained emotion the pure design of the Tuscan
sculptors, the suavity and flexibility of the Lombard
plasticatori all these qualities of Italian figurative
art appear, as it were in bud, in the Stanze. Poli-
ziano's crowning merit as a stylist was that he knew
how to blend the antique and the romantic, correct
drawing with fleshly fullness. Breadth of design and
harmony of color have rarely been produced in more
magnificent admixture. The octave stanza, which in
the hands of Boccaccio was languid and diffuse, in the
hands of Lorenzo harsh, in the hands of Pulci rugged,
became under Poliziano's treatment an inexhaustible
instrument of varying melodies. At one time, beneath
his touch, the meter takes an epic dignity; again it
sinks to idyllic sweetness, or mourns with the elegy, or
"exults with the ode. Its movement is rapid or re-
laxed, smooth or vibrating, undulatory or impetuous,
as he has chosen. When we reflect how many genera-
tions cf poets it required to bring the Sonnet to com-
pleteness, we may marvel at this youth, in an age
when scholarship absorbed inventive genius, who
was able at one stroke to do for the octave stanza
what Marlowe did for our Blank Verse. Poliziano
gave to Ariosto the Italian epical meter perfected,
FORM SUPERIOR TO MATTER. 403
and established a standard of style amid the anarchy
which threatened the literature of Italy with ruin.
Yet it must be confessed that, after all, it is chiefly
the style of Poliziano that deserves praise. Like so
much else of Renaissance work like the Farnesina
frescoes in Rome, or Giulio Romano's luxuriant ara-
besques at Mantua, or the efflorescence of foliage and
cupids in the bass-reliefs of palace portals at Venice
there is but little solid thought or serious feeling un-
derneath this decorative richness. Those who cannot
find a pleasure in form for its own sake, independent
of matter, will never be able to do Poliziano justice.
This brings us to the subject of the Stanze. They
were written to celebrate the prowess of Giuliano de'
Medici, Lorenzo's brother, in a tournament held at
Florence in the beginning of the year 1478. This
fact is worth consideration. The poem which opened
a new age for Italian literature, had no nobler theme
than a Court pageant. Dante had been inspired to
sing the epic of the human soul. Petrarch finished
a portrait of the life through love of an impassioned
man. Boccaccio bound up in one volume a hundred
tales, delineating society in all its aspects. Then the
Muse of Italy fell asleep. Poliziano aroused her with
the full deep intonations of a golden instrument. But
what was the burden of his song ? Giuliano de' Me-
dici loved the fair Simonetta, and bore away the prize
in a toy-tournament.
This marks the change effected by a century of
prince-craft. Henceforth great poets were to care less
for what they sang than for the style in which they
sang. Henceforth poetry in Italy was written to_
404 RENAISSANCE IN ITALY.
please to please patrons who were flattered with false
pedigrees and absurd mythologies, with the imputa-
tion of virtues they never possessed, and with the
impudent palliation of shame apparent to the world.
Henceforth the bards of Ausonia deigned to tickle
the ears of lustful boys and debauched cardinals, buy-
ing the bread of courtly sloth how salt it tasted let
Tasso and Guarini tell with jests or panegyrics.
Liberty could scarcely be named in verse when natives
and strangers vied together in enslaving Italy. To
praise the great deeds of bygone heroes within hear-
ing of pusillanimous princes, would have been an insult,
Even satires upon a degraded present, aspirations
after a noble future, prophecies of resurrection from
the tomb those last resorts of a national literature
that retains its strength through evil days were un-
known upon the lips of the Renaissance poets. Art
had become a thing of pleasure, sometimes infamous,
too often nugatory. The fault of this can scarcely
be said to have rested with one man more than with
another; nor can we lay the blame on Poliziano,
though he undoubtedly represented the class who were
destined to continue literature upon these lines. It
was the combined result of scholarship, which for a
whole century had diverted the minds of men to the
form and words of literature; of court-life, which had
enfeebled the recipients of princely patronage; of
tyranny, which encouraged flattery, dissimulation, and
fraud; of foreign oppression, which already was be-
ginning to enervate a race of slaves; of revived pagan-
ism, which set the earlier beliefs and aspirations of
the soul at unequal warfare with emancipated lusts and
DEBASEMENT OF THE AGR. 405
sensualities; of indolence, which loved to toy with
trifles, instead of thinking and creating thought; of
social inequalities, which forced the poet to eat a
master's bread, and turned the scholars of Italy into a
crowd of servile and yet arrogant beggars. All these
circumstances, and many more of the same kind, were
slowly and surely undermining the vigor of the Italian
intellect. Over the meridian splendor of Le Stanze
we already see their influences floating like a vaporous
miasma.
Italy, though never so chivalrous as the rest of
Europe, yet preserved the pompous festivities of feudal-
ism. Jousts were held in all great cities, and it was
reckoned part of a courtier's business to be a skillful
cavalier. At Florence the custom survived of celebrat-
ing the first of May with tournaments, and on great
occasions the wealthy families spent large sums of
money in providing pastimes of this sort. February
7, 1468, witnessed a splendid spectacle, when Lorenzo
de' Medici, mounted successively on chargers presented
to him by the Duke of Ferrara and the King of
Naples, attired in armor given by the Duke of Milan,
bearing the fleurs de lys of France conferred upon the
Medici by Louis XL, and displaying on his pennon
for a motto Le Terns revient, won the prize of valor
before the populace assembled in the square of S.
Croce. Luca Pulci, the descendant of an ancient
house of Tuscan nobles, composed an adulatory poem
in octave stanzas on this event. So changed were
the times that this scion of Florentine aristocracy felt
no shame in fawning on a despot risen from the people
to enslave his city. Yet the spectacle was worthy
406 RENAISSANCE IN ITALY.
celebration. Lorenzo, the banker's son, the Platonist,
the diplomatist and tyrant, charging in the lists of
feudalism beneath Arnolfo's tower, with the lilies of
France upon his shield and the device of the Renais-
sance on his banner this figured symbol of the meet-
ing of two ages in a single man was no mean subject
for a poem !
From Poliziano's Stanze we learn no such charac-
teristic details concerning Giuliano's later tournament.
Though the poem is called La Giostra, the insigni-
ficant subject disappears beneath a wealth of illustra-
tion. The episodes, including the pictures of the
Golden Age and of the garden and palace of Venus,
form the real strength of a masterpiece which blent the
ancient and the modern world in a work of art glowing
with Italian fancy. That La Giostra has no subject-
matter, no theme of weight to wear the poet thin
through years of anxious toil, no progress from point
to point, no chain of incidents and no romantic evolu-
tion, is a matter of little moment. When Giuliano de'
Medici died before the altar by the hand of an assassin
on April 26, 1478, Poliziano laid down his pen and
left the Stanze unfinished. 1 It cannot be said that the
poem suffered, or that posterity lost by this abrupt
termination of a work conceived without a central
thought. Enough had been already done to present
Italy with a model of the style she needed; and if
we ask why La Giostra should have become imme-
1 By a strange coincidence this was the anniversary of his love, Simon-
etta's, death in 1476. The close connection between her untimely end
celebrated by Lorenzo de' Medici in his earlier Rime, by Poliziano in his
Latin Elegy and again in \.\\&Giostra and the renascence of Italian poetry,
makes her portrait by Botticelli della Francesca in the Pitti interesting
LA GIOSTRA. C*7x
^ *^
liately popular in spite of its peculiar texture and its
ibrupt conclusion, the answer is not far to seek.
Poliziano incarnated the spirit of his age, and gave
the public what satisfied their sense of fitness. The
three chief enthusiasms of the fifteenth century for
classical literature, for artistic beauty, and for nature
tranquilly enjoyed were so fused and harmonized
within the poet's soul as to produce a style of unmis-
takable originality and charming ease. Poliziano felt
he delights of the country with serene idyllic rapture,
lot at second hand through the ancients, but with the
'oluptuous enjoyment of the Florentine who loved his
r illa. He had, besides, a sense of form analogous
to that possessed by the artists of his age, which
guided him in the selection and description of the
scenes he painted. Again, his profound and refined
erudition enabled him " to shower," as Giovio phrased
it, "the finest flowers of antique poetry upon the
people." Therefore, while he felt nature like one who
worshiped her for her own sake and for the joy she
gave him, he saw in her the subjects of a thousand
graceful pictures, and these pictures he studied through
a radiant haze of antique reminiscences. Each stanza
of La Giostra is a mimic world of beauty, art, and
scholarship; a painting where the object stands before
us modeled with relief of light and shade in finely
modulated hues; a brief anthology of daintily-culled
phrases, wafting to our memories the perfume of
Greece, Rome, and Florence in her prime. These
delicate little masterpieces are, turn by turn, a picture
of Botticelli, a fresco by Giulio Romano, an engraving
of Mantegna, a bass-relief of young Buonarroti, or a
408 RENAISSANCE IN ITALY.
garden-scene of Gozzoli, expressed in the purest dic-
tion of all literatures by a poet who, while imitating,
never ceased to be original. 1 Nothing more was
needed by a nation of idyllic dreamers, artists and
scholars.
What Poliziano might have achieved, if he had
found a worthy theme for the employment of his
powers, it would be idle to ask. It is perhaps the
condemnation of the man and of his age that the
former did not seek heroic subjects for song, and the
latter did not demand them in a word that neither
poet nor public had in them anything heroic whatso-
ever. The fact is undeniably true; but this does not
deprive Poliziano of the merit of such verses as the
following:
After such happy wise, in ancient years,
Dwelt the old nations in the age of gold;
Nor had the font been stirr'd of mothers' tears
For sons in war's fell labor stark and cold;
Nor trusted they to ships the wild wind steers,
Nor yet had oxen groaning plowed the wold;
Their houses were huge oaks, whose trunks had store
Of honey, and whose boughs thick acorns bore.
Nor yet, in that glad time, the accursed thirst
Of cruel gold had fallen on this fair earth:
' I must refer my readers to the original, and to the translations pub
lished by me in Sketches and Studies in Italy, pp. 217-224. The descrip-
tion of Simonetta in the meadow (Giostra, i. 43 and following) might be
compared to a Florentine Idyll by Benozzo Gozzoli; the birth of Venus
from the waves (i. 99-107) is a blending of Botticelli's Venus in the Uffizzi
with his Primavera in the Belle Arti; the picture of Venus in the lap of
Mars (i. 122-124) might be compared to work by Piero di Cosimo, or,
since poetry embraces many suggestions, to paintings from the schools
of Venice. The metamorphoses of Jupiter (i. 104-107) remind us of
Giulio Romano. The episode of Ariadne and the Bacchic revel (i. 1 10-
112) is in the style of Mantegna's engravings. All these passages will
be found translated by me in the book above quoted.
THE ORFEO. 409
Joyous in liberty they lived at first;
Unplowed the fields sent forth their teeming birth:
Till fortune, envious of such concord, burst
The bond of law, and pity banned and worth;
Within their breasts sprang luxury and that rage
Which men call love in our degenerate age.
A somewhat earlier composition than La Giostra
was La Favola di Orfeo, a dramatic poem similar in form*
to the Sacra Rappresentazione, with a classical instead
of a religious subject. 1 To call it a tragedy would be
to dignify it with too grand a title. To class it with
pastorals is equally impossible, though the songs of the
shepherds and wood-nymphs may be said to have
anticipated the style of Tasso's Aminta and Guarini's
Pastor Fido. Nor again is it properly speaking an
opera, though it was undoubtedly meant for music.
The Orfeo combined tragedy, the pastoral, and the
opera in a mixed work of melodramatic art, which by
its great popularity inspired the poets of Italy to
produce specimens of each kind, and prepared the
public to receive them. 2 Still, in form and movement,
it adhered to the traditions of the Sacra Rappresenta-
1 I believe the Favola di Orfeo, first published in 1494, and repub-
lished from time to time up to the year 1776, was the original play acted
at Mantua before the Cardinal Gonzaga. It is not divided into acts,
and has the usual " Annunziatore della Festa," of the Sucre Rappre-
sentazioni. The Orphei Tragaedia, published by the Padre Ireneo Affd
at Venice in 1776, from two MSS. collated by him, may be regarded
as a subsequent recension of his own work made by Poliziano. It is
divided into five acts, and is far richer in lyrical passages. Carducci
prints both in his excellent edition of Poliziano's Italian poems. I may
refer English readers to my own translation of the Orfeo and the note
upon its text, Studies and Sketches in Italy, pp. 226-242, 429, 430.
* The popularity of Poliziano's poems is proved by the frequency
410 RENAISSANCE IN ITALY.
zionc, and its originality consisted in the substitution
of a Pagan for a Christian fable.
Unerring instinct guided Poliziano in the choice of
his subject. Orpheus was the proper hero of Renais-
sance Italy the civilizer of a barbarous world by art
and poetry, the lover of beauty, who dared to invade
Hell and moved the iron heart of Pluto with a song.
Long before the composition of Orfeo, Boccaccio had
presented the same conception of society humanized by
culture in his Ninfale Fiesolano. This was the ideal
of the Renaissance; and, what is more, it accurately
symbolized the part played by Italy after the dissolution
of the middle ages. In the myth of Orpheus the
humanism of the Revival became conscious of itself.
This fable was the Mystery of the new age, the allegory
of the work appointed for the nation. Did we dare
to press a metaphor to the verge of the fantastic, we
might even read in the martyrdom of Orpheus by the
Maenads a prophecy of the Italian doom. Italy, who
had aroused Europe from lethargy with the voice of
poetry and learning, who had inaugurated a new age
of civil and social refinement, who thought she could
resist the will of God by arts and elegant accom-
plishments, after triumphing over the rude forces of
nature was now about to violate the laws of nature
in her vices, and to fall a victim to the Maenads of in-
current barbarism, inebriate with wine and blood,
indifferent to the magic of the lyre, avengers blindly
following the dictates of a power that rules the destinies
published at Florence in 1558 for the use ot the common people. It
was entitled La Historia e Favola d' Orfeo alia dolce lira. This nar-
rative version of Poliziano's play is still reprinted from time to time foi
the Tuscan contadini. Carducci cites an edition of Prato, 1860.
MYTH OF ORPHEUS. 41;
Df nations. Of this Italy, Poliziano, the author of
Orfeo, was himself the representative hero, the pro-
tagonist, the intellectual dictator. 1
The Orfeo was sent with a letter of dedication to
Messer Carlo Canale, the obsequious husband of that
Vannozza, who bore Cesare and Lucrezia Borgia to the
Pope Alexander VI. Poliziano says that he " wrote
this play at the request of the Most Reverend the
Cardinal of Mantua, in the space of two days, among
continual disturbances, and in the vulgar tongue, that
it might be the better comprehended by the spectators."
He adds : " This child of mine is of a sort to bring
more shame than honor on its father."
There is good reason to believe that the year 1472,
when the Cardinal Francesco Gonzaga returned from
Bologna to Mantua, and was received with " triumphs
and pomps, great feasts and banquets," was the date of
its composition. If so, the Orfeo was written at the
age of eighteen. It could not have been played later
than 1483, for in that year the Cardinal died. At
eighteen Poliziano was already famous for his trans-
lation of the Iliad. He had gained the title of Homer-
icus JuventS) and was celebrated for his powers of
improvization. 2 That he should have put the Orfeo
together in forty-eight hours is hardly so remarkable
as that he should have translated Herodian in the
1 No one who has read Poliziano's Greek epigrams on Chrysocomus,
or who knows the scandal falsely circulated regarding his death, will
have failed to connect the sentiments put into the mouth of Orpheus
(Cardu:ci, pp. 109-110) with the personality of the poet-scholar. That
the passage in question could have been recited with applause before a
Cardinal, is a fact of much significance.
8 Perhaps Ficino was the first to give him this title. In a letter of his
to Lorenzo de* Medici we read: " Nutris domi Homericum ilium adoles-
centem Angelum Politianum qui Graecam Homeri personam Latinis
41 a RENAISSANCE IN ITALY.
space of a few days, while walking and dictating
For the Orfeo is but a slight piece, though beautiful and
pregnant with the germs of many styles to be de-
veloped from its scenes. The plot is simple, and the
whole play numbers no more than 434 lines.
To do the Orfeo justice, we ought to have heard
it with its own accompaniment of music. Viewed as
a tragedy, judged by the standard of our Northern
drama, it will always prove a disappointment. That
mastery over the complex springs of human nature
which distinguished the first efforts of Marlowe, is
almost wholly absent. A certain adaptation of the
language to the characters, in the rudeness of Thyrsis
when contrasted with the rustic elegance of Aristseus ;
a touch of feeling in Eurydice's outcry of farewell ; a
discrimination between the tender sympathy of Proser-
pine and Pluto's stern relenting ; a spirited representa-
tion of Bacchanalian enthusiasm in the Maenads; an
attempt to model the Satyr Mnesillus as apart from
human nature and yet conscious of its anguish these
points constitute the chief dramatic features of the
melodrama. But where there was the opportunity of
a really tragic movement, Poliziano failed. We have
only to read the lament uttered by Orpheus for the
loss of Eurydice, in order to perceive how fine a situa-
tion has been spoiled. The pathos which might have
made us sympathize with the lover in his misery, the
passion approaching frenzy which might have justified
coloribus exprimat. Exprimit jam; atque, id quod mirum est ita tener
setate, ita exprimit ut nisi quivis Graecum fuisse Homerum noverit dubi-
taturus sit e duobus uter naturalis sit et uter pictus Homerus " (Ep, ed.
Flor. 1494, lib. i. p. 6). Ficino always addressed Poliziano as " Poeta
Homericus."
DRAMATIC AND LYRIC QUALITIES. 413
his misogyny, are absent. Poliziano seems to have
already felt the inspiration of the Bacchic chorus
which concludes the play, and to have forgotten his
duty to his hero, whose sorrow for Eurydice is stulti-
fied and made unmeaning by the prosaic expression of
a base resolve. Yet, when we return from these criti-
cisms to the real merit of the piece, we find in it a
charm of musical language, a subtlety of musical
movement, which are irresistibly fascinating. Thought
and feeling seem alike refined to a limpidity that suits
the flow of melody in song. The very words evapo-
rate and lose themselves in floods of sound. Orpheus
himself is a purely lyrical personage. Of character,
he can scarcely be said to have anything marked; and
his part rises to its height precisely in the passage
where the singer has to be displayed. Thus the Orfeo
is a good poem only where the situation is less dra-
matic than lyrical, and its finest scene was, fortunately
for the author, one in which the dramatic motive could
be lyrically expressed. Before the gates of Hades
and the throne of Proserpine, Orpheus sings, and his
singing is the right outpouring of a musician-poet's
soul. Each octave resumes the theme of the last
stanza with a swell of utterance, a crescendo of intona-
tion, that recalls the passionate and unpremeditated
descant of a bird upon the boughs alone. To this
true quality of music is added the persuasiveness of
pleading. Even while we read, the air seems to vi-
brate with pure sound, and the rich recurrence of the
tune is felt upon the opening of each successive stanza.
That the melody of this incomparable song is lost,
must be reckoned a misfortune. We have reason to
414 RENAISSANCE IN ITALY.
believe that the part of Orpheus was taken by Messer
Baccio Ugolini, singing to the viol. 1
Space does not permit me to detach the whole
scene in Hades from the play and print it here; to
quote a portion of it would be nothing less than muti-
lation. 2 I must content myself with this Chorus of the
Maenads, which contains, as in a kernel, the whole
dithyrambic poetry of the Italians:
Bacchus! we all must follow thee!
Bacchus! Bacchus! Ohe! Ohtf!
With ivy coronals, bunch and berry,
Crown we our heads to worship thee!
Thou hast bidden us to make merry
Day and night with jollity!
Drink then! Bacchus is here! Drink free,
And hand ye the drinking-cup to me!
Bacchus! we all must follow thee!
Bacchus! Bacchus! Ohe"! Ohe"!
See, I have emptied my horn already;
Stretch hither your beaker to me, I pray;
Are the hills and the lawns where we roam unsteady?
Or is it my brain that reels away?
Let every one run to and fro through the hay,
As ye see me run! Ho! after me!
Bacchus! we all must follow thee!
Bacchus! Bacchus! Ohe"! OheM
1 Among the frescoes by Signorelli at Orvieto there is a tondo in
monochrome, representing Orpheus before the throne of Pluto. He is
Pressed like a poet, with a laurel crown, and he is playing on a violin
ot antique form. Medieval demons are guarding the prostrate Eurydice.
It would be curious to know whether a rumor of the Mantuan pageant
had reached the ears of the Cortonese painter, or whether he had read
the edition of 1494.
2 The original should be read in the version first published by the
Padre AfTo (Carducci, pp. 148-154). My translation will be found it
Studies and Sketches in Italy, pp. 235-237.
LOVE SONGS. 415
Mothinks I am dropping in swoon or slumber;
Am I drunken or sober, yes or no?
What are these weights my feet encumber?
You too are tipsy, well I know!
Let every one do as ye see me do,
Let every one drink and quaff like me!
Bacchus! we all must follow thee!
Bacchus! Bacchus! OheM Oh<S!
Cry Bacchus! Cry Bacchus! Be blithe and merry,
Tossing wine down your throats away!
Let sleep then come and our gladness bury:
Drink you, and you, and you, while ye may!
Dancing is over for me to-day.
Let every one cry aloud Evohe"!
Bacchus! we all must follow thee!
Bacchus! Bacchus! One*! Ohe"!
It remains to speak of the third class of poems
which the great scholar and supple courtier flung like
wild flowers with a careless hand from the chariot of
his triumph to the Capitolian heights of erudition.
Small store, indeed, he set by them these Italian love-
songs, hastily composed to please Donna Ippolita
Leoncina, the titular mistress of his heart; thrown off
to serve the turn of Giuliano and his younger friends ;
or improvised, half jestingly, to meet the humorof his
princely patron, when Lorenzo, quitting the laurel-
crowned bust of Plato, or the groves of Careggi, or
the audience- chamber where he parleyed with the
envoys of the Sforza, went abroad like King Manfred
of old with lute and mandoline and viol to serenade
the windows of some facile beauty in the twilight of a
night of June. 1 Little did Poliziano dream that his
1 "La notte esceva per Barlctta (re Manfredi) cantando strambotti e
canzoni, che iva pigliando lo frisco, e con isso ivano due musici Sicilian!
ch* erano gran romanzatori." M. Spinello, in Scr. Rer. Ital. vii. Spin-
ello's Chronicles are, however, probably a sixteenth-century forgery.
416 RENAISSANCE IN ITALY.
learning would pass away almost unreckoned, but that
men of after time would gather the honey of the golden
days of the Renaissance from these wilding gar-
lands. 1 Yet, however slightly Poliziano may have
prized these productions of his early manhood, he
proved that the Canzone, the Rispetto, and the Ballata
were as much his own in all their multiformity of lyric
loveliness, as were the rich sonorous measures of the
octave stanza. Expressing severally the depths of
tender emotion, the caprices of adoring passion, and
the rhythmic sentiment that winds in myriad move-
ments of the dance, these three kinds of poem already
belonged to the people and to love. Poliziano dis-
played his inborn taste and mastery of art in nothing
more than in the ease with which he preserved the
passionate simplicity of the Tuscan Volkslied, while
giving it a place among the lyrics of the learned. We
have already seen how that had been achieved by
Boccaccio and Sacchetti, and afterwards in a measure
by Lorenzo de' Medici. But the problem of writing
love-poetry for the people in their own forms, without
irony a'nd innuendo, was not now so easy as it had been
in the fourteenth century, when no barrier had yet arisen
between educated poets and the folk. Nor had even
Boccaccio, far less Lorenzo, solved it with the exqui-
site tact and purity of style we find in all Poliziano's
1 A letter addressed by Poliziano to Lorenzo in 1488 from Acqua-
pendente justifies the belief that the cultivation of popular poetry had
become a kind of pastime in the Medicean circle. He says: " Yesterday
we set off for Viterbo. We are all gay, and make good cheer, and all
along the road we whet our wits at furbishing up some song or May-day
ditty, wl ich here in Acquapendente with their Roman costume seem to
me more fanciful than those at home." See Del Lungo's edition of the
Prose Volgari, etc., p. 75.
RISPETTI IN OTTAVA RIMA. 47
verses. In order to comprehend their charm, we must
transfer ourselves to Florence on a summer night,
when the prince is abroad upon the streets attended
by singing-boys as beautiful as Sandro's angels. The
professor's chair is forgotten, and Plato's spheres are
left to turn unheeded. Pulci and Poliziano join hands
with girls from the workshop and the attic. Lorenzo
and Pico figure in the dance with 'prentice-lads and
carvers of wood- work or marble. All through the
night beneath the stars the music of their lutes is
ringing; and when the dancing stops, they gather
round some balcony, or hold their own upon the
square in matches of improvised melody with the un-
known rhymsters of the people. What can be prettier
than the ballad of roses made for " such a night," by
Angelo Poliziano ? l
Poliziano's Rispetti are written for the most part
in ottava rima. This form alone suffices to mark them
out as literary reproductions of the poetry upon which
they are modeled. In the Rispetti more than the
Ballate we notice a certain want of naivete, which dis-
tinguishes them from the racier inspirations of the
popular Muse. That passionate insight into the soul
and essence of emotion which rarely fails the peasant
in his verse however rude, is here replaced by concetti
rounded into pearls of fancy with the daintiest art.
Those brusque and vehement images that flash the
light of imagination on the movements of the heart,
throbbing with intensest natural feeling, yield to care-
fully selected metaphors developed with a strict sense
1 See above, p. 378. For translations of several Ballate by Poliz
iano I may refer to my Sketches and Studies in Italy, pp. 190-225.
418 RENAISSANCE IN ITALY.
of economy. Instead of the young contadtno willing
to mortgage Paradise for his dama, worshiping her
with body, will and soul, compelling the morning and
the evening star and the lilies of the field and the bells
that swing their notes of warning over Rome, to serve
the bidding of his passion, we have the scholar-court-
ier, who touches love with the finger-tips for pastime,
and who imitates the gold of the heart with baser
metal of fine rhetoric. Still we find in these Rispetti
a quality which their rustic models lack. This is the
roseate fluency and honeyed rapture of their author
an exquisite limpidity and ease of diction that reveal
the inborn gift of art. Language in Poliziano's hand
is plastic, taking form like softest wax, so that no
effort of composition, no labor of the file can be
discerned.
Nee pluteum ca*.dit nee demorsos sapit ungues.
This line of Persius denotes the excellences no less
than the faults of his erotic poetry, so charming in its
flow, so fit to please a facile ear, so powerless to
stir the depth of the soul or wring relenting from
reluctant hearts. Compared with the love-poetry of
elder poets, these Rispetti are what the artificial
epigrams of Callimachus or the Anacreontics of the
Alexandrian versifiers were to the ardent stanzas of
Sappho, the impassioned scolia of Pindar. While
they fail to reflect the ingenuous emotions of youth
exulting in the Paradise of love without an after-
thought, they no less fail to embody philosophy or
chivalrous religion or the tragedy of passions in con-
RISPETTI CONT1NUAT1. 419
flict. They are inspired by Aphrodite Pandemos, and
the joys of which they tell are carnal. 1
What has been said about the detached Rispetti, is
true of those longer poems which consist of many
octave stanzas strung together with a continuity of
pleading rhetoric. The facility bordering on negli-
gence of their construction is apparent. Verses that
occur in one, reappear in others without alteration.
All repeat the same arguments, the same enticements
to a less than lawful love. The code of Florentine
wooing may be conveniently studied in the rambling
paragraphs, while the levity of their declarations and
the fluency of their vows, doing the same service on
different occasions, show them to be " false as dicers'
oaths," mere verses of the moment, made to sway a
yielding woman's heart. 2 Yet who can help enjoying
them, when he connects their effusiveness of fervent
language with the episodes of the Novelle, illustrated
by figures borrowed from contemporary frescoes ?
Those sinewy lads of Signorelli and Masuccio, in
parti-colored hose and tight jackets, climbing mul-
berry-tree or vine beneath their lady's window; those
girls with the demure eyes of Lippo Lippi and Ban-
dello, suspending rope-ladders from balconies to let
their Romeo escape at daybreak: those lovers rush-
ing, half-clad in shirt or jerkin, from bower and bed-
chamber to cross their swords with jealous husbands at
1 For translations of detached Rispetti, see my Sketches and Studies
in Italy, p. 197.
* I have translated one long Rispetto Continuato or Lettera in Is-
trambotti; see Sketches and Studies in Italy, pp. 198-201. It is prob-
able that Poliziano wrote these love-poems for his young friends, which
may excuse the frequent repetitions of the same thoughts and phrases.
420 RENAISSANCE IN ITALY.
street corners; rise before us and sing their love -songs
in these verses of Poliziano, written for precisely such
occasions to express the very feelings of these heroes
of romance. After all, too, there is a certain sort of
momentary sincerity in their light words of love.
Three lyrics of higher artistic intention and of
very different caliber mark the zenith of Poliziano's
achievement. These are the portrait of the country
girl, La brunettina mia; the canzone to La Bella
Simonetta, written for Giuliano de' Medici; and the
magnificent imitation of Petrarch's manner, beginning
Monti, valli, antri e colli^ They are three studies in
pictorial poetry, transparent, limpid, of incomparable
freshness. A woman has sat for the central figure of
each, and the landscape round her is painted with the
delicacy of a quattrocento Florentine. La Brunettina
is the simple village beauty, who bathes her face in the
fountain, and crowns her blonde hair with a wreath of
wild flowers. She is a blossoming branch of thorn in
spring. Her breasts are May roses, her lips are
strawberries. The portrait is so ethereally tinted and
so firmly modeled that we seem to be looking at a
study painted by a lover from the life. Simonetta
moves with nobler grace and a diviner majesty 2 :
1 In Carducci's edition, pp. 342, 355, 363. The first seems to me un-
translatable. The second and third are translated by me in Sketches
and Studies, etc., pp. 202-207.
* But she who gives my soul sorrow and mirth,
Seemed Pallas in her gait, and in her face
Venus; for every grace
And beauty of the world in her combined.
Merely to think, far more to tell my mind,
Of that most wondrous sight, confoundeth me;
For mid the maidens she
THREE CANZONL 421
In lei sola raccolto
Era quant' e d* onesto e bello al mondo.
Un' altra sia tra Ic belle la prima:
Costei non prima chiamesi, ma sola;
Che '1 giglio e la viola
Cedono e gli altri fior tutti alia rosa.
Pendevon dalla testa luminosa
Scherzando per la fronte e suoi crin d' oro,
Mentre ella nel bel coro
Movea ristretti al suono e dolci passi.
She is the lady of the Stanze, whom Giuliano found
among the fields that April morning 1 :
Candida e ella, e Candida la vesta,
Ma pur di rose e fior dipinta e d' erba;
Lo inanellato crin dall' aurea testa
Scende in la fronte umilmente superba.
Who most resembled her was found most rare.
Call ye another first among the fair;
Not first, but sole before my lady set:
Lily and violet
And all the flowers below the rose must bow.
Down from her royal head and lustrous brow
The golden curls fell sportively unpent.
While through the choir she went
With feet well lessoned to the rhythmic sound.
White is the maid, and white the robe around her,
With buds and roses and thin grasses pied;
Enwreathe"d folds of golden tresses crowned her,
Shadowing her forehead fair with modest pride:
The wild wood smiled; the thicket, where he found her,
To ease his anguish, bloomed on every side:
Serene she sits, with gesture queenly mild,
And with her brow tempers the tempests wild.
Reclined he found her on the swarded grass
In jocund mood; and garlands she had made
Of every flower that in the meadow was,
Or on her robe of many hues displayed;
But when she saw the youth before her pass,
Raising her timid head awhile she stayed;
Then with her white hand gathered up her dress,
And stood, lap full of flowers, in loveliness.
432 RENAISSANCE IN ITALY.
Ridegli attorno tutta la foresta,
E quanto pub sue cure disacerba,
Nell' atto regalmente e mansueta;
E pur col ciglio le tempeste acqueta.
Ell' era assissa sopra la verdura
Allegra, e ghirlandetta avea contesta
Di quanti fior creasse mai natura,
De' quali era dipinta la sua vesta.
E come prima al giovan pose cura,
Alquanto paurosa alzo la testa;
Poi con la bianca man ripreso il lembo,
Levossi in pie con di fior pieno un grembo.
All the defined idealism, the sweetness and the purity
of Tuscan portraiture are in these stanzas. Simonetta
does not pass by with a salutation in a mist of spiri-
tual glory like Beatrice. She is surrounded with no
flames of sensual desire like the Griselda of Boccaccio.
She sits for her portrait in a tranquil light, or moves
across the canvas with the dignity of a great lady:
Lei fuor di guisa umana
Mosse con maesta 1' andar celeste,
E con man sospendea 1' ornata veste
Regale in atto e portamento altero.
It was a rare and fugitive moment in the history
of art when Poliziano could paint La Simonetta in
these verses, and Lippo Lippi showed her likeness on
cathedral walls of Prato. Different models of femi-
nine beauty, different ideals of womanly grace served
the painters and poets of a more developed age ;
Titian's Flora and Dosso Dossi's Circe illustrating the
Alcina of Ariosto and the women of Guarini. Once
more, it is the thought of Simonetta which pervades
the landscape of the third canzone I have mentioned.
Herself is absent; but, as in a lyric of Petrarch, her
LA BELLA SIMONETTA. 423
spirit is felt, and we are made to see her throned
beneath the gnarled beech-branches or dipping her
foot in the too happy rivulet. Something just short
of perfection in the staccato exclamations of the final
strophe reminds us of Poliziano's most serious defect.
Amid so much tenderness of natural feeling, he fails to
make us believe in the reality of his emotion. Not
passion, not thought, but the refined sensuousness of a
nature keenly alive to plastic beauty, educated in the
schools of classical and Florentine art, and gifted with
inexhaustible facility of language, is the dominant
quality of Poliziano's Italian poetry. The same
quality is found in his Latin and Greek verse in the
plaintive elegies for La Bella Simonetta and Albiera
degli Albizzi, in the Viola and in that ode In puellam
suam, 1 which is the Latin sister of La brunettina.
The Sylves add a new element of earnestness to his
style; for if Poliziano felt deep and passionate emo-
tion, it was for Homer, Virgil and the poets praised in
the Nulricia, while the Rusticus condenses in one
picture of marvelous fullness the outgoings of genuine
emotion stimulated by his love of the country.
Hanc, o ccelicolae magni, concedite vitam !
Sic mihi delicias, sic blandimenta laborum,
Sic faciles date semper opes; hac improba sunto
Vota tenus. Nunquam certe, nunquam ilia precabor,
Splendeat ut rutilo frons invidiosa galero,
Tergeminaque gravis surgat mihi mitra corona.
Mhat is the heart-felt prayer of Poliziano. Give
me the tranquil scholar's life among the pleasures of
Praised for their incomparable sweetness by Scaliger, and trans
lated into softest Italian by Firenzuola
424 RENAISSANCE IN ITALY.
the fields; my books for serious thought in studious
hours; the woods and fields for recreation; with
moderate wealth well-gotten without toil ; no bishop's
miter or triple tiara to vex my brows. It is the same
ideal as Alberti's. From this background of the
modest rural life emerge three splendid visions the 1
Golden Age, when all was plenitude and peace;
Orpheus of the dulcet lyre, evoking harmony from
discord in man's jarring life; and Venus rising from
the waves to bless the world with beauty felt through
art. Such was the programme of human life sketched
by the representative mind of his century, in an age
when the Italians were summoned to do battle with
France, Germany and Spain invasive of their borders.
Poliziano died before the great catastrophe. He
sank at the meridian of his fame, in the same month
nearly as Pico, two years later than Lorenzo, a little
earlier than Ficino, in the year 1494, so fatal to his
country, the date that marks the boundary between
two ages in Italian history.
CHAPTER VII.
PULCI AND BOIARDO.
The Romantic Epic Its Plebeian Origin The Popular Poet's Standpoint
The Pulci Family The Carolingian Cycle Turpin Chanson dc
Roland Historical Basis Growth of the Myth of Roland Causes
of its Popularity in Italy Burlesque Elements The Morgante
Maggiore Adventures in Paynimry Roncesvalles Episodes intro-
duced by the Poet Sources in older Poems The Treason of Gano
Pulci's Characters His Artistic Purpose His Levity and Humor
Margutte Astarotte Pulci's bourgeois Spirit Boiardo His Life
Feudalism in Italy Boiardo's Humor His Enthusiasm for
Knighthood His Relation to Renaissance Art Plot of the Orlando
Innamorato Angelica Mechanism of the Poem Creation of Char-
acters Orlando and Rinaldo Ruggiero Lesser Heroes The
Women Love Friendship Courtesy Orlando and Agricane at
Albracca Natural Delineation of Passions Speed of Narration
Style of Versification Classical and Medieval Legends The Pun-
ishment of Rinaldo The -Tale of Narcissus Treatment of Mythol-
ogy Treatment of Magic Fate of the Orlando Innamorato.
LORENZO DE' MEDICI and Angelo Poliziano reunited
the two currents of Italian literature, plebeian and
cultivated, by giving the form of refined art to popular
lyrics of divers kinds, to the rustic idyll, and to the
sacred drama. Another member of the Medicean
circle, Luigi Pulci, aided the same work of restoration
by taking up the rude tales of the Cantori da Piazza
and producing the first romantic poem of the Re-
naissance.
Of all the numerous forms of literature, three seem
to have been specially adapted to the Italians of this
period. They were the Novella, the Romantic Epic.
426 RENAISSANCE IN ITALY.
and the Idyll. With regard to the Novella and the
Idyll, it is enough in this place to say that we may
reckon them indigenous to modern Italy. They
suited the temper of the people and the age; the
Novella furnishing the fit artistic vehicle for Italian
realism and objectivity; the Idyll presenting a point
of contact with the literature of antiquity, and ex-
pressing that calm sensibility to natural beauty which
was so marked a feature of the national character
amid the distractions of the sixteenth century. The
Idyll and the Novella formed, moreover, the most
precious portion of Boccaccio's legacy.
Concerning the Romantic Epic it is necessary to
speak at greater length. At first sight the material of
the Carolingian Cycle, which formed the basis of the
most considerable narrative poems of the Renaissance,
seems uncongenial to the Italians. Feudalism had
never taken a firm hold on the country. Chivalry was
more a pastime of the upper classes, more consciously
artificial than it had been in France or even England.
The interest of the Italians in the Crusades was rather
commercial than religious, and the people were not
stirred to their center by the impulse to recover the
Holy Sepulcher. The enthusiasm of piety which
animated the Northern myth of Charlemagne, was not
characteristic of the race that earlier than the rest of
Europe had indulged in speculative skepticism and
sarcastic raillery; nor were the marvels of the legend
congenial to their positive and practical imagination,
turned ever to the beauties of the plastic arts. Charle-
magne, again, was not a national hero. It seemed as
though the great foreign epics, which had been trans-
POPULAR TREATMENT OF ROMANCE. 427
ported into Italy during the thirteenth century, would
find no permanent place in Southern literature after
the close ot the fourteenth. The cultivated classes in
their eagerness to discover and appropriate the ancient
authors lost sight of peer and paladin. Even Boc-
caccio alluded contemptuously to chivalrous romance,
as fit reading only for idle women ; and when he
attempted an epical poem in octave stanzas, he chose
a tale of ancient Greece. Still, in spite of these ap-
parent drawbacks, in spite of learned scorn and
polished indifference, the Carolingian Cycle had
taken a firm hold upon the popular fancy. We have
seen how a special class of literary craftsmen repro-
duced its principal episodes in prose and verse for the
multitudes gathered on the squares to hear their reci-
tations, or for readers in the workshop and the country
farm. Now, in the renascence of the native literature,
poets of the highest rank were destined to receive the
same material from the people and to give it a form
appropriate to their own culture. This fact must not
be forgotten by the student of Pulci, Boiardo, Berni,
and Ariosto. The romantic epics of the golden age
had a plebeian origin ; and the masters of verse who
devoted their best energies to that brilliant series of
poems, were dealing with legends which had taken
shape in the imagination of the people, before they
applied their own inventive faculties to the task of
beautifying them with art unrivaled for splendor and
variety of fancy. This, and this alone, explains the
anomalies of the Italian romantic epic the mixture of
burlesque with seriousness, the irony and sarcasm
alternating with gravity and pathos, the wealth of
428 RENAISSANCE IN ITALY.
comic episodes, the interweaving of extraneous inci-
dents, the antithesis between the professed importance
of the subject-matter and the spirit of the poet who
plays with it as though he felt its puerility all the
startling contrasts, in a word, which have made this
glittering Harlequin of art in the Renaissance so
puzzling to modern critics. If we remember that the
poets of the sixteenth century adopted their subjects
from the people, finding them already impregnated
with the plebeian instincts of improvisatori> who felt
no real sympathy with knighthood, and whose one aim
was to amuse and gratify an audience eager for ex-
citement; if we further recollect that these poets
approached their own task in the same spirit, adding
yet another element of irony proper to men who
stood aloof and laughed, and who desired to entertain
the Courts of Italy with masterpieces of humor and
fantastic beauty; we shall succeed in comprehending the
peculiarities of their productions.
The romances of Orlando must be regarded as
works of pure art, wrought by courtly singers from a
previously existing popular literature, which in its turn
had been fashioned from the Prankish legends to suit
the tastes of a non-chivalrous, but humorous and
marvel-loving multitude. In passing from the Song of
Roland or Turpin's Chronicle to the Orlando Furioso
we can trace two separate processes of transmutation.
By the earlier process the materia di Francia was
adapted to the Italian people ; by the second the new
material thus obtained was reconstructed for the
Italian Courts. The final product is a masterpiece
of refined art, retaining something of the French
ARTISTIC TREATMENT OF ROMANCE. 4*9
originals, something of the popular Italian rifacimento,
but superadding the wisdom, the irony, and the poetry
of one of the world's brightest geniuses. We might
compare the growth of a romantic epic of the sixteenth
century to the art of Calimala, whereby the rough
stuffs of Flanders were wrought at Florence into finer
cloths, and the finished fabric was tinted with the
choicest dyes, and made fit for a king's chamber.
Hitherto I have spoken as though Pulci, Boiardo,
Ariosto, Berni, and the lesser writers of romantic epics
could be classed together in one sentence. The justi
fication of so broad a treatment at the outset lies in
this, that their relation to the popular romances they
rehandled was substantially the same. But it will be
the special purpose of the following pages to point out
their essential differences, not only as poets, but alsc
with regard to the spirit in which they viewed then
common subject-matter.
Boccaccio, in his desire to fuse the classic and the
medieval modes of thought and style, not merely
adapted the periods of Latin to Italian prose, but also
sought to treat an antique subject in the popular
measure of the octave stanza. His Teseide is a narra-
tive poem in which the Greek hero plays a prominent
part, while all the chiefs of Theban and Athenian
legend are brought upon the scene. Yet the main
motive is a tale of love, and the language is as modern
as need be Writing to please the mistress of his heart,
and emulous of epic fame. Boccaccio rejected the usual
apostrophes and envoys of the Cantori da Banca y and
constructed a poem divided into books. Poliziano
approached the problem of fusing the antique and
430 RENAISSANCE IN ITALY.
modern from a different point of view. He adorned
a courtly theme of his own day with phrases and
decorative details borrowed from the classic authors,
presenting in a series of brilliant pictures an epitome
of ancient art. It remained for Pulci to develop, with-
out classical admixture, the elements of poetry existing
in the popular Italian romances. The Morgante
Maggiore is therefore more thoroughly and purely
Tuscan than any work of equal magnitude that had
preceded it. This is its great merit, and this gives it
a place apart among the hybrid productions of the
Renaissance.
The Pulci were a noble family, reduced in circum
stances and attached to the Casa Medici by ties ol
political and domestic dependency. Bernardo, the
eldest of three brothers, distinguished himself in litera
ture by his translations of Virgil's Eclogues, by his
elegies on Cosimo de' Medici, by a Sacra Rappresenta-
zione on the tale of Barlaam, and by a poem on the
Passion of Christ which he composed at the instance of
a devout nun. Luca wrote the stanzas on the Tour-
nament of Lorenzo de' Medici above mentioned, 1 and
took some part at least in the composition of an obscure
poem called the Ciriffo Calvaneo? But the most
famous of the brothers was Luigi, whose correspon-
1 See p. 406.
This poem relates the adventures of Ciriffo and II Povero Aweduto,
bastards of two noble ladies, and gives the history of a crusade of Louis
against the Soldan of Egypt. It was published as the work, as far as
the first Book, of Luca Pulci, completed and restored by Bernardo
Giambullari. " II Ciriffo Calvaneo, diviso in iv. Canti, col primo Libro
di Luca Pulci, ed il resto riformato per Bernardo Giambullari " (Roma,
Mazzocchio, 1514). Luigi Pulci claims a share in it, if not the whole
in the Aforgante, xxviii. 118, 129.
POETS OF THE PULCI FAMILY. 431
dence with Lorenzo de' Medici proves him to have
been a kind of Court-poet in the Palace of the Via
Larga, while the sonnets he exchanged with Matteo
Franco breathe Burchiello's plebeian spirit. 1 He had
a wild fantastic temperament, inclining to bold specu-
lations on religious topics; tinctured with curiosity that
took the form of magic art; bizarre in expression, yet
withal so purely Florentine that his prose and verse
are a precious mine of quattrocento idioms gathered
from the jargon of the streets and squares. Of
humanistic culture he seems to have possessed but
little. Still the terms of familiar intercourse on which
he lived with Angelo Poliziano, Matteo Palmieri, and
Paolo Toscanelli enabled him to gather much of the
learning then in vogue. The theological and scientific
speculations of the age are transmitted to us in his
comic stanzas with a vernacular raciness that renders
them doubly precious. 2
Before engaging with the Morgante Maggiore, it is
needful to inquire into the source of this and all the
other Italian romantic poems, and to account for the
fact that they were confined, so far as their subject
1 See Letters di Luigi Pulci a Lorenzo II Magnifico, Lucca, Giusti
1868. Sonetii di Matteo Franco f Luigi Pulci, 1759. The sonnets are
indescribably scurrilous, charged with Florentine slang, and loaded with
the filthiest abuse. The point of humor is that Franco and Pulci under-
took (it is said, for fun) to heap scandals on each other's heads, ransack-
ing the language of the people for its vilest terms of invective. If they
began in joke, they ended in earnest; and Lorenzo de' Medici, who had
a low taste for buffoonery, enjoyed the scuffle of his Court-fools. It was
a combat of humanists transferred from the arena of the schools to the
market-place, where two men of parts degraded themselves by assum-
ing the character of coal-heavers.
The poetical talents of th Pulci family were hereditary. Cellini
tells us of a Luigi of that name who improvised upon the market-place
of Florence.
432 RENAISSANCE IN ITALY.
went, within the circle of the Carolingian epic. In
i 122 a prose history in monkish Latin, purporting to be
the Chronicle of the last years of the reign of Charles
the Great written by Turpin, Archbishop of Rheims,
was admitted among the canonical books by Calixtus II.,
who in his Bull cursed those who should thenceforward
listen to the " lying songs of Jongleurs." This Chron-
icle was merely a sanctimonious and prosaic version of
the Songs of Roland and of Roncesvalles. 1 The object
of the scribe who compiled it, and of the Pope who
canonized it, was to give an ecclesiastical complexion
to the martial chants which already possessed the ear
of the public. 2 Accordingly, while he left untouched
the tales of magic, the monstrous marvels and the
unchristian ethics of the elder fable, this pseudo-Turpin
interspersed prayers, confessions, vows, miracles, homi-
lies, and pulpit admonitions. In order to secure veri-
similitude for his narrative, he reversed the old account
of Roncesvalles, according to which Turpin perished
on the field, anathematized all previous poets, and pre-
tended that his Chronicle was written by the hands
of the Archbishop. 3 What he effected for the Song
of Roland, Geoffrey of Monmouth did, without a sacer
dotal bias, for the romance of Arthur.
1 Turpin's Chronicle consists of thirty-two chapters, relating the wars
of Charlemain with the Spanish Moors, the treason of Ganelon, and
Roland's death in Roncesvalles. The pagan knight, Ferraguto, and
the Christian peers are mentioned by name, proving that at the date
of its compilation the whole Carolingian myth was tolerably perfect in
the popular imagination.
It has been conjectured by M. Ggnin, editor of the Chant de Ro-
land, not without substantial grounds, that Gui de Bourgogne, bishop
of Vienne, afterwards Pope Calixtus II., was himself the pseudo-Turpin
1 See Chanson de Roland, line 804, and compare Morg, Magg. xxvii.
79-
TURPIN AND THE SONG OF ROLAND. 433
We possess a MS. of the Chanson de Roland in
Norman French. It was discovered in the Bodleian
Library and published first in 1837 by M. Michel,
afterwards in i85i by M. Ge"nin. The date of the
MS. has been fixed by some critics as early as the
eleventh, by others as late as the thirteenth, century.
Purporting to be the work of one Turold, its most
enthusiastic admirers claim it as the genuine production
of The*roulde, tutor to William the Conqueror, which,
after passing through the hands of Taillefer, the
knightly bard of Senlac field, was deposited in his MS.
chest by a second The"roulde, abbot of Peterborough. 1
Be that as it may, we can assume that the Bodleian
MS. presents the ancient battle-song in nearly the
same form as when the Normans followed Taillefer at
Hastings, and heard him chanting of " Charlemain and
Roland and Oliver who died in Roncesvalles." This
song reverberated throughout medieval Europe.
Poggio in the Facetice compares a man who weeps
over the fall of Rome, to one who in Milan shed tears
over Roland's death at Roncesvalles. Dante may
have heard it on the lips of the Cantores Francige-
narum in Lombard towns, or in the halls of Fosdinovo
above the Tyrrhene Sea; for he writes with an energy
of style scarcely inspired by the pseudo-Turpin:
Dopo la dolorosa rotta, quando
Carlo Magno perdfc la santa gesta,
Non sonb si terribilmente Orlando.
Orlando and Oliver (or Ogier) are carved upon the fagade
of the Duomo at Verona Dietrich's town of Bern,
> See Ludlow's Popular Epics of the Middle Ages, vol. i. p. 412
and M. Gtfnin's Introduction to the Chanson dg Roland, Paris, 1851.
434 RENAISSANCE IN ITALY.
where Northern traditions of chivalry long lingered. 1
Like the Spanish legend of the Cid, or the climax of
the Niebelungenlied, this Song of Roland, in dignity
and strength of style, in tragic heroism and passionate
simplicity, is worthy to be ranked with a Canto of the
Iliad. Like all medieval romantic poetry, it is but a
fragment the portion of a cycle never wrought by
intervention of a Homer into epical completeness.
But its superiority over Turpin's Chronicle in all the
qualities that could inspire a singer is immeasurable.
Two questions have now to be asked. What his-
torical basis can be found for the Carolingian myth ?
and how did it happen that the Italians preferred this
legend of French Paladins to any other of the feudal
romances? The history of Charlemagne and his peers
of Roland, Oliver, Ogier, Turpin, Ganilo the traitor,
Pinabel, Marsilius the Moorish king of Spain, and all
the rest, of whom we read in the Norman Song, and
who receive numerous additions from the Italian
romancers must not be sought in Eginhard. It is a
Myth. But like all myths, it has some nucleus of
reality, round which have crystallized the enthusiasms
of a semi-barbarous age, the passionate memories of
the people looking back to bygone greatness, the
glowing fancies of poets intent on visions of the future.
This nucleus of fact is little more than the name of
1 See Ge"nin (pp. cit. pp. xxix., xxx.) for the traces of the Roland
myth in the Pyrenees, at Rolandseck, in England, and at Verona; also
for gigantic statues in Germany called Rolands (ib. pp. xxi. xxii.). At
Spello, a little town of Umbria between Assist and Foligno, the people
of the place showed me a dint in their ancient town wall, about breast-
high, whicn passes for a mark made by Orlando's knee. There is
learned tradition of a phallic monument named after Roland in thai
place; but I could find no trace of it in local memory.
MYTH OF CHARLEMAGNE. 435
Charles the Prankish Emperor. All the legends of
the cycle represent him as conducting a crusade,
defeating the Saracens in mighty battles, besieged by
them in Paris, betrayed by his own subject Ganilo,
and bereft of Jiis noblest paladins in the Pass of
Roncesvalles. History knows nothing of these events.
Nor can history account for the traditional character of
the Emperor, who is feeble, credulous, browbeaten by
lawless vassals, incapable of strenuous action, and yet
respected as the conqueror of the world and the
anointed of the Lord. 1 It is therefore clear that the
myth has blent together divers incongruous elements,
and that the spirit of the crusades has been at work,
giving a kind of unity to scarce remembered acts of the
chief of Christendom. We hear from Eginhard that
Charlemagne in 778 advanced as far as Saragossa into
Spain, and during his retreat had his rearguard cut off
by the Basques. 2 Among the slain was " Roland, prefect
of the Breton Marches." We read again in Eginhard
(anno 824) how Louis le Debonair lost two of his
counts, who were returning from Spain through the
Pass of Roncesvalles. Furthermore, the Merovingian
Chronicles tell us of a Pyrenean battle in the days of
Dagobert, when twelve Prankish chiefs were sur-
rounded in those passes and slain. These are sufficient
data to account for the Pass of Roncesvalles becoming
a valley dolorous, the vale of the great woe. For
1 The Song of Roland does not give this portrait of Charlemagne's
dotage. But it is an integral part of the Italian romances, a fixed point
in all rifacimenti of the pseudo-Turpin.
Ludlow (op. tit. i. 358) translates the Basque Song of Atta-bi?ar
which relates to some destruction of chivalrous forces by the Pyrenean
mountaineers.
436 RENAISSANCE IN ITALY.
the crusading exploits of Charlemagne we have to
look to his predecessor, Charles Martel, who defeated
the Saracens at Tours and stemmed the tide of Mussul-
man invasion. His successors, the feeble monarchs of
the Prankish line, several of whom bore the name of
Charles, explain the transformation of the Emperor
into a vacillating monarch, infirm of purpose and in-
capable of keeping his peers in order; for the distin-
guishing surnames of history are later additions, and
Chronicles, though written, were not popularly read.
The bard, therefore, mixed his materials without care
for criticism, and the myth produced a hybrid Charle-
magne composed of many royal Karls. As for the
traitor Gano, we hear of Lupus, Duke of Gascony,
who dealt treasonably with Charlemagne, and of one
Ganilo, Ganelon, or Wenelon, Archbishop of Sens,
who played the same part toward Charles the Bald in
864. l This portion of the myth may possibly be re-
ferred to these dim facts. Yet it would be wiser not to
insist upon them; for the endeavor to rationalize an
entire legend is always hazardous, and it is enough to
say that a traitor was needed for the fight of Ronces-
valles no less than Mordred for the death of Arthur
in the plain of Glastonbury. To explain the legen-
dary siege of Paris by the Saracens, so important an
incident in the Italian romances, it has been ingeniously
remarked that, though the Moors never menaced the
French capital, the Normans did so repeatedly, while
both Saracens and Normans were Pagans. 2 It may also
1 See Gnm (op. cit. pp. xxv.-xxviii.).
* Introduction to Panizzi's edition of the Orlando Innamorato and
Orlando Furioso (London, Pickering, 1830), vol. i. pp. 126-128.
ITALIAN PREFERENCE FOR THIS MYTH. 437
be remembered that Saracens had pillaged Rome, and
the Saracen forays were a common incident of Italian
experience. The gathering of great armies from the
far East and the incursions of hideous barbarian hordes,
which form an integral element of Boiardo's and
Ariosto's scheme, can be referred to the memory of
Tartar, Hun, and Turk; while the episodes of Chris-
tian knights enamored of Pagan damsels are incidents
drawn from actual history in the intercourse of Italy
with the Levant. Allowing for this slight framework
of fact, but not pressing even the few points that have
been gathered by antiquarian research, it may be
briefly said that the bulk of the Carolingian romance,
with its numerous subordinate legends of knights and
ladies, is purely mythical.
In the next place we have to consider what led the
Italians to select the romances of Charlemagne for
special development rather than those of Arthur, with
which they were no less familiar. 1 We have seen that
on the first introduction of the materia di Francia into
Italy, the Arthurian Cycle became the property of the
nobles, who found in it a mirror of the feudal manners
they affected, whereas the people listened to Chansons
de Geste upon the market-place. 2 When, therefore,
1 See Dante, Inf. xxxii. 61, v. 67, v. 128. Galeotto, Lancelot's go-
between with Guinevere, gave his name to a pimp in Italy, as Pandarus
to a pander in England. Boccaccio's Novelliere was called // Principe
Galeotto. Pe'rarch in the Trionfi and Boccaccio in the Amoroso, Vis-
ione make frequent references to the knights of the Round Table. The
latter in his Corbaccio mentions the tale of Tristram as a favorite book
with idle women. The Fiammetta might be quoted with the same ob-
ject of proving its wide-spread popularity. The lyrics of Folgore da
San Gemignano and other trecentisti would furnish many illustrative
allusions.
See above, p. 17,
438 RENAISSANCE IN ITALY.
the polite poets of the fifteenth century adopted the
romantic epic from the popular rhymers, they found
a mass of Carolingian tales in vogue, to which they
had themselves from infancy been used. But this pre-
ference of the multitude for Charlemagne and Roland
requires further explanation. It must be remarked in
the first place that the Empire exercised a fascination
over the Italians in the middle ages, paralleled by no
other power except the Papacy. They regarded it as
their own, as their glory in the past, as their pride in
the future, if only the inheritor of the Caesars would do
his duty and rule the world from Rome with equal
justice. The pedigree of the Christian Emperors from
Constantine to Charles the Great formed an integral
part of the Carolingian romance as it took form in
Italy. 1 It was something for the Italians that Charles
had been crowned at Rome, a ceremony from time to
time repeated by his German successors during the
centuries which made his legend famous. Nor, though
the people were but little influenced by the crusading
fanaticism, was it of no importance that in the person
of this Emperor Christendom had been imperiled by the
infidels, and Christendom through him had triumphed.
The Chronicle of Turpin, again, had received authori
tative sanction. Add to it as the romancers chose,
attribute nonsense to the Archbishop as they pleased,
they always relied, in show at least, on his canonical
> The Reali di Francia sets forth this legendary genealogy at great
length, and stops short at the coronation of Charles in Rome and the
discovery of Roland. Considering the dryness of its subject-matter, it is
significant that this should have survived all the prose romances of the
fifteenth century. We may ascribe the fact perhaps to the tenacious
Italian devotion to the Imperial idea.
ROMAN FEELING FOR ORLANDO. 439
"\
veracity. Pulci, Bello, Boiardo, and Ariosto appeal to
his authority with mock seriousness; and even the
burlesque Berni, while turning Turpin into ridicule,
adopts the style:
Perche egli era Arcivescovo, bisogna
Credergli, ancor che dica la menzogna. 1
The fashion lasted till the days of Folengo and Forti-
guerra. It may further be mentioned that Orlando
at an early date had been made a Roman by the
popular Italian mythologists. They said that he was
born at Sutri, and that Oliver was the son of the
Roman prefect for the Pope. The sentiment of the
people for this strange Senator Romanus expressed
itself touchingly and pithily in his supposed epitaph :
" One God, One Rome, One Roland." 2 Orlando was
so rooted in the popular consciousness as a hero, that
to have substituted for him another epical character
would have been impossible.
When we further investigate the naturalization of
Orlando in Italy, we find that all the romantic poems
written on his legend inclined to the burlesque. The
chivalrous element of love which pervades the Arthurian
Cycle, had been extracted and treated after their own
1 Or/. Inn. Rifac. i. 18, 26. Niccolb da Padova in the thirteenth
century quoted Turpin as his authority for the history of Charlemagne
which he composed in Northern French. This proves the antiquity of
the custom. See Bartoli Storia della Lett. It. vol. ii. p. 44. To believe
in Turpin was not, however, an article of faith. Thus Bello in the
Afambriano, c. viii.:
Ma poi che 'I non e articolo di fede,
Tenete quella parte che vi piace,
Che 1' autor libramente vel concede.
' " Un Dio, uno Orlando, e una Roma." Morg. Magg. xxvii. 220
Compare this with Arthur's " Flos regum Arthurus, rex quondam
rexque futurus."
440 RENAISSANCE IN ITALY.
fashion by the lyrists of the fourteenth century. That
was no immediate concern of the people, nor had the citi-
zens any sympathy with the chivalry of arms. To deal as
solemnly with medieval romance as the Northern bards
had done, was quite beside the purpose of the improvi-
satori who refashioned the Chansons de Geste for Italian
townsfolk. When, therefore, Pulci undertook to amuse
Lucrezia Tornabuoni, the mother of Lorenzo de' Medici
with a tale of Roland, he found his material already
stripped of epical sobriety ; nor was it hard for him to
handle his theme in the spirit of Boccaccio, bent on
exhausting every motive of amusement which it might
suggest. He assumed the tone of a street-singer, open-
ing each canto with the customary invocation to
Madonna or a paraphrase of some Church collect, and
dismissing his audience at the close with grateful thanks
or brief good wishes. But Pulci was no mere Canta-
storie. The popular style served but for a cloak to
cover his subtle-witted satire and his mocking levity.
Sarcastic Tuscan humor keeps up an obbligato accom-
paniment throughout the poem. Sometimes this
humor is in harmony with the plebeian spirit of the
old Italian romances ; sometimes it turns aside and
treats it as a theme of ridicule. In reading the Mor
gante, we must bear in mind that it was written, canto
by canto, to be recited in the Palace of the Via Larga,
at the table where Poliziano and Ficino gathered with
Michelangelo Buonarroti and Cristoforo Landino.
Whatever topics may from time to time have occupied
that brilliant circle, were reflected in its stanzas ; and
this alone suffices to account for its tender episodes and
its burlesque extravagances, for the satiric picture of
PULCrS ATTITUDE. 441
Margutte and the serious discourses of the devil
Astarotte. The external looseness of construction and
the intellectual unity of the poem, are both attributable to
these circumstances. Passing by rapid transitions from
grave to gay, from pathos to cynicism, from theological
speculations to ribaldry, it is at one and the same time
a mirror of the popular taste which suggested the form,
and also of the courtly wits who listened to it laughing.
The Morgante is no naive production of a simple age,
but the artistic plaything of a cultivated and critical
society, entertaining its leisure with old-world stories,
accepting some for their beauty's sake in seriousness,
and turning others into nonsense for pure mirth.
A careful study of the Morgante Maggiore reveals
to the critic three separate strains of style. To begin
with, it is clear that we are dealing with two poems
fused in one '-the first ending with the twenty-third
canto, the second consisting of the last five cantos.
Between these two divisions a considerable period of
time is supposed to have elapsed. The first poem
consists of a series of romantic adventures in strange
countries, whither Orlando, Uliviero, Rinaldo and
Astolfo have been driven by the craft of Gano, and
where they fight giants, liberate ladies, and fall in love
with Pagan damsels, after the jovial fashion of knights
errant. The second assumes a more heroic tone, and
tells in truly thrilling verse the tale of Roncesvalles.
But over and above this double material, different in
matter and in manner, we trace throughout the whole
romance a third element, which seems to be more
essentially the poet's own than either his fantastic tissue
of adventures or his serious narrative of Roland's death.
44 J XMNAISSANCM IN ITALY.
This third element consists of half-ironical half-sober
dissertations, reflective digressions, and brilliant inter-
polated incidents, among which we have to reckon the
splendid episodes of Astarotte and Margutte. So much
was clear to my mind when I first read the Morgante^
and attempted to comprehend the difficulties it pre-
sented to critics like Ginguene" and Hallam. Since
then the truth of this view has been substantiated by
the eminent Italian scholar, Pio Rajna, who has proved
that the Morgante is the rifacimento of two earlier
popular poems, the first existing in MS. in the Lauren-
tian library, the second entitled La Spagna.* Pulci
availed himself freely of his popular models, at times
repeating the old stanzas with no alteration, but oftener
rehandling them and adding to their comic spirit, and
interpolating passages of his own invention. Since the
two originals differed in character, v his rifacimentc
retained their divers peculiarities, notwithstanding those
master- touches which betray the same hand in both of
its main sections. But the most precious . part of the
poem remains Pulci's own. v Nothing can deprive him
of Margutte and Astarotte; nor without his clever
transmutation of the old material would the bulk of
the Morgante Maggiore deserve more attention than
many similar romances buried in condign oblivion.
Between the two parts we may notice a considerable
difference of literary merit. The second and shorter is
by far the finer in poetic quality, earnestness, and
power of treatment. The first is tedious to read. The
second inthralls and carries us along. 2
i See Pmpugnatore (Anni ii., Hi., iv.). La, Sfagna was itself two
popular compilations.
* This is only strictly true of Cantos xxiv., xxv., xxvi., xxvii. The last
SOURCES AND PLOT OF THE MORGANTE. 443
The poem takes its title from the comic hero
Morgante, a giant captured and converted by Orlando
in the first Canto. 1 He dies, however in the twentieth,
and the narrative proceeds with no interruption. If
we seek for epical unity, in a romance so loosely put
together from so many divers sources, we can find it
in the treason of Gano. The action turns decisively
and frequently upon this single point, returns to it from
time to time for fresh motives, and reaches its conclu-
sion in the execution of the traitor after the great deed
of crime has been accomplished in the valley dolorous.
An Italian of the fifteenth century could not have chosen
a motive more suited to the temper and experience of
his age, when conspiracies like that of the Pazzi at
Florence and the Baglioni at Perugia were frightfully
freqent, and when the successful massacre of Sini-
gaglia made Cesare Borgia the hero of historical
romance. H tradimento, il traditore, the kiss of Judas,
the simile of the fox, recur with fatal resonance through
all the Cantos of the poem. The style assumes a
rugged grandeur of tragic realism, not unworthy of poets
of the stamp of our own Webster or Marston, in the
passage which describes the tempest by the well at
Saragossa, where Gano met Marsilio to plan theii
fraud, and where the locust-tree let fall its fruit upon
Canto, in fact the whole poem after the execution of Marsilio, is a dull
historical epitome, brightened by Pulci's personal explanations at the
ending.
1 It is called Morgante Maggiore because the pan relating to him
was published separately under the title of Morgante. This character
Pulci derived from the MS. poem called by Signor Rajna the Orlando
to distinguish it. In the year 1500 we find one of the Baglioni called
Morgante, which proves perhaps the popularity of this giant.
444 RENAISSANCE IN ITALY.
the traitor s head. 1 The Morgante is, in truth, the epic
of treason, and the character of Gano, as an accom-
plished yet not utterly abandoned Judas, is admir-
ably sustained throughout. The powerful impression
of his perversity is heightened by contrast with the
loyalty of his son Baldovino. In the fight at Ronces-
valles Baldovino carries a mantle given to Gano by
the Saracen king, without knowing for what purpose
his father made him wear it ; and wherever he charges
through the press of men, the foes avoid him.
Orlando learns that he is protected by this ensign of
fraud, and accuses him of partaking in Gano's treason.
Then the youth flings the cloak from his shoulders,
and plunges into the fight with an indignant repudia-
tion of this shame upon his lips. The scene is not
unworthy of the ttiad; 2 and his last words, as he falls
1 Canto xxv. 73-78. The locust-tree, according to the tradition of the
South, served Judas when he hanged himself. Northern fancy reserved
this honor for the elder, not perhaps without a poetic sense of the outcast
existence of the plant and its worthlessness for any practical use. On the
same locust-tree Marsilio was afterwards suspended (c. xxvii. 267). The
description of the blasted pleasure -garden in the latter passage is also
rery striking. For the translation of these passages see Appendix.
* xxvii. 5-7 and 47. Note in particular (translated in Appendix):
Rispose Baldovin: Se il padre mio
Ci ha qui condotti come traditore,
S f io posso oggi campar, pel nostro Iddio,
Con questa spada passer6gli il core !
Ma traditore, Orlando, non sou io,
Ch' io t' ho seguito con perfetto amore;
Non mi pot res ti dir maggiore ingiuria I
Poi si straccib la vesta con gran furia,
E disse: Io torner6 nella battaglia,
Poi che tu m' hai per traditore scorto;
Io non son traditor, se Dio mi vaglia,
Non mi vedrai piu oggi se non morto !
E inverse 1' oste de* Pagan si scaglia,
Dicendo sempre: Tu m' hai fatto torto!
Orlando si pentea d' aver ci6 detto
Chd disperato vide il giovinetto.
GANO'S TREASON; CHARACTER-DRAWING. 445
pierced in the breast with two lances, Or non son io pito.
traditore / are dramatic.
Pulci deserves credit for strong delineation of
character. Through all the apish tricks and fantastic
arabesque-work of his style, the chief personages retain
firmly-marked types. Never since the Chanson de
Roland was first sung, has a more heroic portrait of
Orlando, the God-fearing knight, obedient to his liege-
lord, serene in his courage and gentle in his strength,
courteous, pious and affectionate, been painted. 1 Close
adherence to the popular conception of Orlando's
character here stood Pulci in good stead; nor was he
hampered with the difficulties which beset Boiardc
and Ariosto, when they showed the champion of
Christianity subdued to madness and to love. Thus
one work at least of the Renaissance maintained tor
the Italians an ideal of chivalrous heroism, first con-
ceived by Franco-Norman bards, and afterwards
transmitted through the fancy of the people, who are
ever ready to discern and to preserve the lineaments of
greatness. Oliver the true friend and doughty warrior,
Rinaldo the fiery foe and reckless lover, to whom the
press of men was Paradise, 2 and Malagigi the magician,
are drawn with no less skill. Charles is such as the
traditions of the myth and the requirements of the plot
1 Of all the Paladins only Orlando is uniformly courteous to Charle-
magne. When Rinaldo dethrones the Emperor and flies to his cousin
(c. xi. 114), Orlando makes him return to his obedience (ib. 127). See,
too, c. xxv. 100:
Or oltre in Roncisvalle Orlando va,
Per obbedir, com' e' fe f sempre, Carlo.
126:
Rinaldo, quando e* fu nella battaglia,
Gli parve esser in ciel tra' cherubini
Tra suoni e canti.
446 RENAISSANCE IN ITALY.
obliged Pulci to make him. Yet in spite of the feeble
ness which exposes him to the treasonable arts of
Gano, he is not deficient in a certain nobility. In the
conduct of these characters, amid the windings of the
poet's freakish fancy, we trace the solidity of his plan,
his faculty for earnest art. But should there still be
found critics who, after a careful study of Gano,
Orlando, Uliviero, Rinaldo and Carlo, think that Pulci
meant his poem for a mere burlesque, this opinion
cannot but be shaken by a perusal of the twenty-fifth,
twenty-sixth and twenty-seventh Cantos. The refusal
of Orlando to blow his horn :
Non sonerb perchft e' m' aiuti Carlo,
Che per vilta mai non volli sonarlo:
his address to the knights when rushing into despe-
rate battle at impossible odds 1 ; the scene of his
death, so tender in its pathos, so quaint in its piety;
the agony of Charles when he comes, too late, to find
him slain, and receives his sword from the Paladin's
dead hands; these passages must surely be enough to
convince the most incredulous of doctrinaires.
It has been customary to explain the apparent
contradictions of the Morgante Maggiore Pulci's
1 Canto xxvi. 24-39. These two touches, out of many that are noble
might be chosen:
Stasera in paradiso cenerete;
Come disse quel Greco anticamente
I.ieto a' suoi gia, ma disse Nello inferno:
and:
La morte e da temere, o la partita,
Quando 1* anima e 1 corpo muore insieme;
Ma se da cosa finita a infinita
Si va qui m ciel fra tante diademe,
Questo cambiar la vita a miglior vita.
PULCrS PROFANITY. 447
brusque transitions from piety to ribaldry, from pathos
to satire by reference to the circumstances of Flo-
rence at the date of its composition. The republic was
at war with Sixtus IV., who had taken part in the
Pazzi conspiracy. To his Bull of excommunication
the Signoria had retorted by terming it " maledictam
maledictionem damnatissimi judicis," and had de-
scribed the Pope himself as " delirum senem," " leno
matris suse, adulterorum minister, diaboli vicarius/'
It was not to be expected that even an orthodox
Christian should be tender toward the vices of the
clergy or careful in guarding his religious utterances at
such a moment. Yet we need not go far afield to
account for Pulci's profanity. The Italians of the
age in which he lived, were freethinkers without ceas-
ing to be Catholics. To begin a Canto with a prayer,
and to end it with speculations on the destiny of the
soul after death, was consistent with their intellectual
temper. The schools and private coteries of Florence
were the arena in which Platonism and Averroism
waged war with orthodoxy, where questions of free-
will and creation, the relation of man to God, and the
essence of the human spirit, were being discussed with
a philosophic indifference and warmth of curiosity that
prepared the way for Pomponazzi's materialism. Criti-
cism, the modern Hercules, was already in its cradle,
strangling the serpents of sacerdotal authority: and
as yet the Inquisition had not become a power of terror;
the Council of Trent and the Spanish tyranny had not
turned Italians into trembling bigots or sleek hypo-
crites. Externally they remained tenacious of theii
old beliefs; and from the ooint of view of art at least
448 RENAISSANCE IN ITALY.
they were desirous of adhering to tradition. Foi
Pulci to have celebrated Orlando without assuming the
customary style of the cantastorie, would have been
beside his purpose. Therefore, the mixture of magic,
theology, impiety, speculation and religious fervor
which perplexes a reader of the present day in the
Morgante, corresponded to the mental attitude of the
educated majority at Pulci's date. On the border-
land between the middle ages and the modern world
the keen Italian intellect loved to entertain itself with
a perpetual perhaps, impartially including in the sphere
of doubt old dogmas and novel hypotheses, and finding
satisfaction in an insecurity that flattered it with the
sense of disengagement from formulae. 1 With some
minds this volatile questioning was serious; with
others it assumed a Rabelaisian joviality. Pulci
ranked with those who made the problems of the
world material for humorous debate.
A few instances of Pulci's peculiar levity might be
selected from the last Cantos of the Morgante, where
no one can maintain that his intention was burlesque.
We have just heard from the minstrel's lips how Ro-
land died, recommending his soul to God and deliver-
ing his glove in sign of feudal fealty to Gabriel. The
sound of his horn has startled Charlemagne from the
' This pervasive doubt finds its noblest and deepest expression in
some lines spoken by Orlando just before engaging in the fight at Ron-
cesvalles (xxvi. 31):
Tutte cose mortal vanno ad un segno;
Mentre 1* una sormonta, un' altra cade:
Cosi fia forse di Cristianitade.
This is said not from the hero's but the author's point of view. Pom
ponazzi afterwards gave philosophical utterance to the same disbcliel
in the permanence of Christianity.
PULCrS HUMOR. 449
sleep of false tranquillity, and the Emperor is on his
way to Roncesvalles. But time is short. He prays
Christ that as of old for Joshua, so now for him in his
sore need, the sun may be stayed and the day be pro-
longed 1 :
O crucifisso, il qual, gia sendo in croce,
Oscurasti quel sol contra natura;
lo ti priego, Signor, con umil voce
Infin ch' io giunga in quella valle oscura,
Che tu raffreni il suo corso veloce.
The prayer is worthy, in its solemn tone, of this exor-
dium; and the desired effect soon follows. But now
Pulci changes his note from grave to gay 2 :
E disse: Pazienzia, come Giobbe;
Or oltre in Roncisvalle andar si vuole.
Che come savio il partito conobbe,
Per non tenere in disagio pi& il sole.
A few lines further he describes the carnage in the
dolorous valley, and finds this comic phrase to ex-
press the confusion of the field 3 :
Chi mostra sanguinosa la percossa,
Chi il capo avea quattro braccia discosto,
Da non trovarli in Giusaffd si tosto.
Pulci's grotesque humor gives an air of false absur-
dity to many incidents which, together with his hearers,
he undoubtedly took in good faith. During the
slaughter of the Christians he wishes to impress the
audience with the multitude of souls who crowded into
Paradise. S. Peter is tired to death with opening the
door for them and deafened with their jubilations 4 :
' Canto xxvii. 172. * Ibid. 196. s ibid. 198.
Canto xxvi. 91.
450 RENAISSANCE IN ITALY.
E cosi in ciel si faceva apparccchio
D* ambrosia e nettar con celeste manna,
E perche Pietro alia porta e pur vecchio,
Credo che molto quel giorno s' affanna;
E converri ch' egli abbi buono orecchio,
Tanto gridavan quelle anime Osanna
, Ch' eran portate dagli angeli in cielo;
Sicche la barba gli sudava e '1 pelo.
In the same spirit is the picture of the fiends seated
like hawks upon the bell-towers of a little chapel, wait-
ing to pounce upon the souls of Pagans. 1
Sometimes a flash of purely Bernesque humor
appears in Pulci; as when he says that the Saracens:
Bestemmiavano Dio divotamente,
or when Oliver, after a pathetic love-lament, complains
that it is impossible :
Celar per certo 1' amore e la tossa,
According to modern notions his jokes not unfre-
quently savor of profanity. Rinaldo and Ricciardetto
are feasting upon ortolans, and give this punning
reason for their excellence 2 :
Cioe che Cristo a Maddalena apparv
In ortolan, che buon sozio gli parve.
\
On the same occasion Rinaldo is so pleased with his
fare that he exclaims :
Quest i mi paion miracoli;
Facciam qui sei non che tre tabernacoli.
Such expressions flash forth from mere Florentine
sense of fun in passages by no means deliberately
comic.
Canto nrvt 89. Canto xxv. 217, 218.
MARGUTTE. 451
The most diverting character of the Morgante is
Margutte, an eccentric heteroclite creature, the proto-
type of Folengo's Cingar and Rabelais' Panurge, whom
the giant met upon his wanderings and adopted for
a comrade. It has been supposed with some reason
that Pulci here intended to satirize the Greeks who
flocked to Florence after the fall of Constantinople,
and that either Marullo, the personal enemy of
Poliziano, or Demetrius Chalcondylas, his rival in
erudition, sat for Margutte's portrait. The character
of the rogue, described by himself in thirty stanzas of
fantastic humor, contains a complete epitome of the
abuse which the scholars of those days used to vomit
forth in their reciprocal invectives. 1 Part of the
comic effect produced by his speech is due to this
self-attribution of qualities which supplied the arsenals
of humanistic combatants with poisoned arrows. But
Margutte has far more than a merely illustrative or
temporary value. He is the first finished humoristic
portrait sketched in modern literature, the first
broadly-conceived and jovially- executed Rabelaisian
study. Though it is very improbable that Pulci had
any knowledge of Aristophanes, though he died eight
years or thereabouts before the Cure" of Meudon
was born, his Margutte is cqusin-german of the Sau-
sage-seller and Panurge. 2 Margutte takes an impish
pride in reckoning up his villanies and vices. When
1 Canto xviii. 114, et seq.
* I have placed in the Appendix a rough plaster cast rather than a
true copy of Margutte's admirable comic autobiography. My stanzas
cannot pretend to exactitude of rendering or interpretation. The Mor-
gante has hitherto been very imperfectly edited; and there are many
passages in this speech which would, I believe, puzzle a good Floren-
tine scholar, and which, it is probable, I have misread.
45* RENAISSANCE IN ITALY.
Morgante asks him whether he believes in Christ 01
Appollino, he replies :
A dirtel tosto,
10 non credo pid al nero ch' all* azzurro,
Ma nel cappone, o lesso, o vuogli arrosto . . .
credo nella torta e nel tortello,
L* una e la madre, e 1' altro e il suo figliuolo;
11 vero paternostro e il fegatello,
possono esser tre, e due, ed un solo,
diriva dal fegato almen quello.
He explains his disengagement from all creeds by re
ferring to his parentage :
Che nato son d' una monaca greca,
d' un papasso in Bursia la in Turchia.
Beginning life by murdering his father, he next set out
to seek adventures in the world :
per compagni ne menai con meco
Tutt* i peccati o di turco o di greco,
Anzi quanti ne son giu nell' inferno:
lo n* ho settanta e sette de' mortali,
Che non mi lascian mai la state o 1 verno;
Pensa quanti io n* ho poi de' veniali !
Margutte's humor consists in the baboon-like self-con-
tentment of his infamous confessions, and in the effect
they produce upon Morgante, who feels that he has
found in him a finished gentleman. After amusing his
audience with this puppet for a while, Pulci flings him
aside. Margutte, like Pietro Aretino, dies at last of
immoderate laughter. 1
Another of Pulci's own creations is Astarotte, the
proud and courteous fiend, summoned by Malagigi
to bring Rinaldo from Egypt to Roncesvalles. This
> Canto xix. 148.
ASTAROTTE. 453
feat he accomplishes in a few hours by entering the
body of the horse Baiardo. The journey consists of
a series of splendid leaps, across lakes, rivers, moun-
tains, seas and cities; and when the paladin hungers,
Astarotte spreads a table for him in the wilderness or
introduces him invisible into the company of queens
at banquet in fair Saragossa. The humor and the
fancy of this magic journey are both of a high order. 1
Yet Astarotte is made to serve a second purpose.
Into his mouth Pulci places all his theological specula-
tions, and makes him reason learnedly like Mephisto-
philis:
Of Providence, foreknowledge, will, and fate,
Fixed fate, free will, foreknowledge absolute.
He is introduced in these lines 2 :
Uno spirto chiamato e Astarotte,
Molto savio, terribil, molto fero,
Questo si sta giu nell' infernal grotte;
Non 6 spirto folletto, egli e piti nero.
Of his noble descent from the highest of created in-
telligences Astarotte is well aware 3 :
Io era Serafin de' principali . . .
lo fui gia Serafin piO di te degno.
He is in earnest to prove that courtesy exists in
HelH:
i Cantos xxv. xxvi.
* xxv. 119. This distinction between the fallen angels and the spirit*
follitti deserves to be noticed. The latter were light and tricksy spirits,
on whom not even a magician could depend. Marsilio sent two of them
in a magic mirror to Charlemagne (xxv. 92), and Astarotte warned Mal-
agigi expressly against their vanity (xxv. 160, 161). a.\r\es,feuxfollets.
and the lying spirits of modern spiritualists seem to be of this family
Translations from Astarotte's dialogue will be found in the Appendix.
* xxv. 159, 208. * xxv. 161; xxvi. 83.
454 RENAISSANCE IN ITALY.
Chft gentilezza e bene anche in inferno . . .
Non creder, nello inferno anche fra noi
Gentilezza non sia.
When Malagigi questions him concerning divine fore-
knowledge and his own state in Hell, he replies with
a complete theory of sin and punishment founded upon
the doctrine of freewill. 1 The angels sinned with
knowledge. Therefore for them there is no redemp-
tion. Adam sinned in ignorance. Therefore there is
hope for all men, and a probability of final restitution
for the whole human race 2 :
Forse che '1 vero dopo lungo errore
Adorerete tutti di concordia.
E troverete ognun misericordia.
Astarotte's own torment in Hell causes him bitter
anguish; but he recognizes the justice of God; and
knowing that the sentence of damnation cannot be
canceled, he is too courageous to complain. When
Rinaldo offers to intercede for him, he answers s :
II buon volere accetto;
Per noi fien sempre perdute le chiavi,
Maesta lesa, infinite e il difetto:
felici Cristian, voi par che lavi
Una lacrima sol col pugno al petto,
E dir; Signer, tibi soli peccavi;
Noi peccammo una volta, e in sempiterno
Rilegati siam tutti nello inferno.
Che pur se dopo un milione e mille
Di secol noi sperassim rivedere
Di quell* Amor le minime faville,
Ancor sarebbe ogni peso leggiere:
Ma che bisogna far queste postille ?
Se non si pub, non si debbe volere;
Ond' io ti priego, che tu sia contento
Che noi mutiamo altro ragionamento.
1 Canto xxv. 141-158; translation in Appendix.
Ibid. 233. 3 ibid. 284.
PHILOSOPHICAL DIGRESSIONS. 455
There is great refinement in this momentary sadness
of Astarotte, followed by his return to more cheerful
topics. He is the Italian counterpart of Marlowe's
fiend, that melancholy demon of the North, who
tempts his victim by the fascination of mere horror. 1
Like Mephistophilis, again, Astarotte is ready to
satisfy the curiosity of mortals, and condescends to
amuse them with elfish tricks. 2 He explains to
Rinaldo that it is quite a mistake to suppose that there
are no inhabited lands beyond the Straits of Gibraltar.
The earth, he says, is round, and can be circumnavi-
gated; and cities full of people, worshiping our planets
and our sun, are found in the antipodes. Hercules
ought to blush for having fixed his pillars where he
did. 3 The good understanding established between
1 Doctor Faustus, act i. Scene with Mephistophilis in a Francis-
can's habit.
* The scene in the banquet-hall at Saragossa (xxv. 292-305) is very
similar to some of the burlesque scenes in Doctor Faustus.
3 xxv. 228-231. Astarotte's discourses upon theology and physical
geography are so learned that this part of the Morgante was by Tasso
ascribed to Ficino. It is not improbable that Pulci derived some of the
ideas from Ficino, but the style is entirely his own. The sonnets he
exchanged with Franco prove, moreover, that he was familiar with the
treatment of grave themes in a burlesque style. In acknowledging the
help of Poliziano he is quite frank (xxv. 115-117, 169; xxviii. 138-149).
What that help exactly was, we do not know. But there is nothing
whatever to justify the tradition that Poliziano was the real author of
the Morgante. Probably he directed Pulci's reading; and I think it not
impossible, judging by one line in Canto xxv. (stanza 115, line 4), that he
directed Pulci's attention to the second of the two poems out of which
the narrative was wrought. If we were to ascribe all the passages in
the Morgante that display curious knowledge to Pulci's friends, we might
claim the discourse on the antipodes for Toscanelli and the debates on
the angelic nature for Palmieri. Such criticism is, however, far-fetched
and laboriously hypothetical. Pulci lived in an intellectual atmosphere
highly charged with speculation of all kinds, and his poem reflected the
opinion of his age. His own methods of composition and the relation in
which he stood to other poets of the age are explained in two passages
456 RENAISSANCE IN ITALY.
Astarotte and Rinaldo on their journey is one of
the prettiest incidents of this strange poem. When
they part, the fiend and the paladin have become firm
friends. Astarotte vows henceforth to serve Rinaldo
for love; and Rinaldo promises to free him from
Malagigi's power. 1
Pulci dealt with the Carolingian Cycle in what may
be termed a bourgeois spirit. Whether humorous or
earnest, he maintained the tone of Florentine society:
and his Morgante reflects the peculiar conditions of the
Medicean circle at the date of its composition. The
second great poem on the same group of legends,
Boiardo's Orlando Innamorato, transports us into a
very different social and intellectual atmosphere, The
highborn Count of Scandiano, reciting his cantos in the
huge square castle surrounded by its moat, which
still survives to speak of medieval Italy in the midst
of Ferrara, had but little in common with Luigi Pulci,
whose Tuscan fun and satire amused the merchant-
princes of the Via Larga. The value of the Orlando
Innamorato for the student of Italian development is
principally this, that it is the most purely chivalrous
poem of the Renaissance. Composed before the
of the Morgante (xxv. 117, xxviii. 138-149), where he disclaims all share
of humanistic erudition, and expresses his indifference to the solemn
academies of the learned. See translation in Appendix.
1 xxvi 82-38. We may specially note these phrases:
Astarotte, e' mi duole
II tuo partir, quanto fussi fratello;
E nell' inferno ti credo che sia
Gentilezza, amicizia e cortesia.
Che di servirti non mi fia fatica;
E basta solo Astarotte tu dica,
Ed io ti sentirb sin dello inferno.
MATTEO MARIA BOIAKDO. 457
French invasion, and while the classical Revival was
still unaccomplished, we find in it an echo of an earlier
semi-feudal civility. Unlike the other literary per-
formances of that age, which were produced for the
most part by professional humanists, it was the work of
a nobleman to whom feats of arms and the chase were
familiar, who disdained the common folk {popolaccio,
canaglia, as he always calls them), and whose ideal
both of life and of art was contained in this couplet ! :
E raccontare il pregio e '1 grande onore
Che donan 1' armi giunte con 1* amore.
Matteo Maria Boiardo was almost an exact con-
temporary of Pulci. He was born about 1434 at his
hereditary fief of Scandiano, a village seven miles from
Reggio, at the foot of the Apennines, celebrated for
its excellent vineyards. His mother was Lucia Strozzi,
a member of the Ferrarese house, connected by de-
scent with the Strozzi of Florence. At the age of
twenty-eight he married Taddea Gonzaga, daughter of
the Count of Novellara. He lived until 1494, when
he died at the same time as Pico and Poliziano, in the
year of Charles VIII.'s invasion, two years after the
death of Lorenzo de' Medici, and four years before
Ficino. These dates are not unimportant as fixing the
exact epoch of Boiardo's literary activity. At the
Court of Ferrara, where the Count of Scandiano en
joyed the friendship of Duke Borso and Duke Ercole,
this bard of chivalry held a position worthy of his
noble rank and his great talents. The princes of the
House of Este employed him as embassador in diplo-
matic missions of high trust and honor. He also
' Book II. canto viH. I. All references will be made to Paniui's
of the Orlando Innamorato, London Pickering, 1830.
458 RENAISSANCE IN ITALY.
administered for them the government of Reggio and
Modena, their two chief subject cities. As a ruler, he
was celebrated for his clemency and for his indiffer-
ence to legal formalities. An enemy, Panciroli, wrote
of him: " He was a man of excessive kindness, more
fit for writing poems than for punishing crimes." He
is even reported to have held that no offense deserved
capital punishment an opinion which at that period
could only have been seriously entertained in Italy,
and which even there was strangely at variance with
the temper of the petty tyrants. Well versed in Greek
and Latin literature, he translated Herodotus, parts of
Xenophon, the Golden Ass of Apuleius, and the Ass
of Lucian into Italian. He also versified Lucian's
Timon for the stage, and wrote Latin poems of fair
merit. His lyrics addressed to Antonia Caprara prove
that, like Lorenzo de' Medici, he was capable of fol-
lowing the path of Petrarch without falling into
Petrarchistic mannerism. 1 But his literary fame de-
pends less upon these minor works than on the
Orlando Innamorato, a masterpiece of inventive genius,
which furnished Ariosto with the theme of the Orlando
Furioso. Without the Innamorato the Furioso is
meaningless. The handling and structure of the ro-
, mance, the characters of the heroes and heroines, the
conception of Love and Arms as the double theme of
romantic poetry, the interpolation of novelle in the
1 Sonetti e Canzone [sic] del poeta clarissimo Matteo Maria Boiardo
Conte di Scandiano, Milano, 1845. The descriptions of natural beauty,
especially of daybreak and the morning star, of dewy meadows, and of
flowers, in which these lyrics abound, are very charming and at all
ooints worthy of the fresh delightful inspiration of Boiardo's epic verse.
Nor are they deficient in metrical subtlety; notice especially the intricate
rhyming structure of a long Canto, pp. 44-49.
BOI ARDORS LIFE AND SPIRIT. 459
manner of Boccaccio, and the magic machinery by
which the poem is conducted, are due to the origin-
ality of Boiardo. Ariosto adopted his plot, continued
the story where he left it, and brought it to a close: so
that, taken together, both poems form one gigantic
narrative, of about 100,000 lines, which has for its
main subject the love and the marriage of Ruggiero
and Bradamante, mythical progenitors of the Estensi.
Yet because the style of Boiardo is rough and provin-
cial, while that of Ariosto is by all consent " divine,"
Boiardo has been almost forgotten by posterity.
( Chivahy at no time took firm root in Italy, where
the first act of the Communes upon their achievement
of independence had been to suppress feudalism by
forcing the nobles to reside as burghers within their
walls. The true centers of national vitality were the
towns. Here the Latin race assimilated to itself the
Teutonic elements which might, if left to flourish in
the country, have given a different direction to Italian
development. During the fourteenth and fifteenth
centuries the immense extension of mercantile activity,
the formation of tyrannies, the secular importance of
the Papacy, and the absorption of the cultivated
classes in humanistic studies, removed the people ever
further from feudal traditions. Even the new system
of warfare, whereby the scions of noble families took
pay from citizens and priests for the conduct of mili-
tary enterprises, tended to destroy the stronghold of
chivalrous feeling in a nation that grew to regard the
profession of arms as another branch of commerce.
Still Italy could not wholly separate herself from the
rest of Europe, and there remained provinces where a
460 RENAISSANCE IN ITALY.
kind of semi-feudalism flourished. The most important
of these undoubtedly was the kingdom of Naples, sub-
ject to alternate influence from France and Spain, and
governed by monarchs at frequent warfare with their
barons. The second was Ferrara, where the House of
Este had maintained unbroken lordship from the
period when still the Empire was a power in Italy.
Here the ancient Lombard traditions of chivalry, the
customs of the Marca Amorosa, and the literature of
the troubadours still lingered. 1 Externally at least,
the manners of the Court were feudal, however far
removed its princes may have been in spirit from the
ideal of knighthood. In Ferrara, therefore, more than
in Florence and Venice, those cities of financiers and
traders, could the romance of chivalry be seriously
treated by a poet who admired the knightly virtues,
and looked back upon the days of Arthur and of
Roland as a golden age of honor, far removed but
real. While the humanists of Florence indulged their
fancy with dreams of Virgil's Saturnian reign, the
baron of Ferrara refashioned a visionary world from
the wrecks of old romance. 2
Boiardo did not disdain to assume the style of a
minstrel addressing his courtly audience with compli-
ments and conges at the beginning and ending of each
canto. The first opens with these words:
Signori e cavalieri che v* adunati
Per odir cose dilettose e nuove,
State attenti, quieti, ed ascoltati
La bella istoria che '1 mio canto muove.
i See above, p. 15.
* See the exordium to the second Book, where it appears that the
gentle poet caressed a vain hope that the peace of Italy in the second
naif of the fifteenth century was destined to revive chivalry.
HIS CONCEPTION OF CHIVALRY. 461
But his spirit is always knightly, and he refrains from
the quaint pietism of Pulci's preambles. He is no
mere jongleur or Cantatore da Banca, but a new Sir
Tristram, celebrating in heroic verse the valorous
deeds and amorous emotions of which he had himself
partaken. Nor does he, like Ariosto, appear before
us as a courtier accomplished in the arts of flattery, or
as a man of letters anxious above all things to refine
his style. Neither the Court-life of Italy nor the
humanism of the revival had destroyed in him the
spirit of old-world freedom and noble courtesy. At
the same time he was so far imbued with the culture
of the Renaissance as to appreciate the value of poetic
unity and to combine certain elements of classic learn-
ing with the material of romance. Setting out with
the aim of connecting all the Prankish legends in one
poem, he made Orlando his hero; but he perceived
that the element of love, which added so great a
charm to the Arthurian Cycle, had hitherto been
neglected by the minstrels of Charlemagne. He there-
fore resolved to tell a new tale of the mighty Roland ;
and the originality of his poem consisted in the fact
that he treated the material of the Chansons de Geste
in the spirit of the Breton legends. 1 Turpin, he
asserts with a grave irony, had hidden away the secret
of Orlando's love; but he will unfold the truth, be-
lieving that no knight was ever the less noble for his
love. Accordingly the passion of Orlando for " the
fairest of her sex, Angelica," like the wrath of Achilles
in the Iliad, is the mainspring of Boiardo's poem. To
' See the opening of Book II. Canto xviii. where Boiardo compares
the Courts of Arthur and of Charlemagne.
463 RENAISSANCE IN ITALY.
his genius we owe the creation of that fascinating
princess of the East, as well as the invention of the
fountains of Cupid and Merlin, which cause the alter-
nate loves and hates of his heroes and heroines the
whole of that closely-woven mesh of sentiment in
which the adventures and the warlike achievements of
Paladins and Saracens alike are involved.
In dealing with his subject Boiardo is serious -as
serious, that is to say, as a writer of romance can be. 1
His belief in chivalry itself is earnest, though the
presentation of knightly prowess runs jnto intentional
extravagance. A dash of Italian merriment mingles
with his enthusiasm; but he has none of Pulci's
skeptical satiric humor, none of Ariosto's all-per-
vasive irony. The second thoughts of the burlesque
poet or of the humorous philosopher do not cross the
warp of his conception, and his exaggerations are
romantic. Such a poem as the Orlando Innamorato
could not have been planned or executed in Italy at
any other period or under any other circumstances.
A few years after Boiardo's death Italy was plunged
into the wars that led to her enslavement. Charles V.
was born and Luther was beginning to shake Germany.
The forces of the Renaissance were in full operation
destroying the faiths and fervors of the medieval
1 The acute and learned critic Pio Rajna, whose two massive works
of scholarlike research, I Reali di Francia (Bologna, 1872), and Le Fonti
deir Orlando Furioso (Firenze, 1876), have thrown a flood of light upon
Chivalrous Romance literature in Italy, is at pains to prove that the
Orlando Innamorato contains a vein of conscious humor. See Le Fonti,
etc., pp. 24-27. I agree with him that Boiardo treated his subject play-
fully. But it must be remembered that he was far from wishing tc
indulge a secret sarcasm like Ariosto, or to make open fun of chivalry
like Fortiguerra.
yOYOUSNESS OF HIS ORLANDO. 463
world, closing the old aeon with laughter and lamenta-
tion, raising new ideals as yet imperfectly apprehended.
Meanwhile Boiardo, whose life coincided with the final
period of Italian independence, uttered the last note of
the bygone age. His poem, chivalrous, free, joyous,
with not one stain of Ariosto's servility or of Tasso's
melancholy, corresponded to a brief and passing
moment in the evolution of the national art. In the
pure and vivid beauty which distinguish it, the sun-
set of chivalry and the sunrise of modern culture blend
their colors, as in some far northern twilight of mid-
summer night. Joyousness pervades its cantos and is
elemental to its inspiration the joy of open nature, of
sensual though steadfast love, of strong limbs and
eventful living, of restless activity, of childlike security.
Boiardo's style reminds us somewhat of Benozzo
Gozzoli in painting, or of Piero di Cosimo, who used
the skill of the Renaissance to express the cheerful
naivete of a less self-conscious time. It is sad to read
the last stanza of the Innamorato, cut short ere it was
half completed by the entry of the French into Italy,
and to know that so free and freshly-tuned a " native
wood-note wild" would never sound again. 1 When
Ariosto repieced the broken thread, the spirit of the
times was changed. Servitude, adulation, irony, and
the meridian splendor of Renaissance art had suc-
ceeded to independence, frankness, enthusiasm and the
poetry of natural enjoyment. Far more magnificent is
i Mentre che io canto, o Dio redentore,
Vedo 1' Italia tutta a tiaimna e foco.
Per questi Galli, che con gran valore
Vengon, per disertar non so che loco.
Compare II. xxxi. 50; III. i. 2.
464 RENAISSANCE IN ITALY.
Ariosto's Muse; but we lack the spontaneity of the
elder poet. And as the years advance, the change is
more apparent toward decay. The genius of Boiardo
might be compared to some high-born lad, bred in the
country, pure-hearted, muscular, brave, fair to look
upon. That of Ariosto is studious and accomplished
with the smile of worldly sarcasm upon his lips. The
elegances of Bembo and the Petrarchisti remind one
of a hectic scented fop, emasculate and artificial.
Aretino resembles his own bardassonacci, paggi da
taverna, flaunting meretricious charms with brazen
impudence. Tasso in the distance wears a hair shirt
beneath his armor of parade; he is a Jesuit's pupil,
crossing himself when he awakes from love-dreams
and reveries of pleasure. It was probably the discord
between Boiardo's spirit and the prevailing temper of
the sixteenth century, far more than the roughness of
his verse or the provinciality of his language, that
caused him to be so strangely and completely forgotten.
In the Italy of Machiavelli and the Borgias, of R^ichel-
angelo and Julius II., his aims, enthusiasms and
artistic ideals found alike no sympathy. To class him
with his own kind, we must go beyond the Alps and
seek his brethren in France or England.
Boiardo's merit as a constructive artist can best be
measured by the analysis of his plot. Crowded as the
Orlando Innamorato is with incidents and episodes,
and inexhaustible as may be the luxuriance of the
poet's fancy, the unity of his romance is complete.
From the moment of Angelica's appearance in the first
canto, the whole action depends upon her movements.
She withdraws the Paladins to Albracca, and forces
STRUCTURE OF THE INNAMORATO. 465
Charlemagne to bear the brunt of Marsilio's invasion
alone. She restores Orlando to the French host before
Montalbano. It is her ring which frees the fated
Ruggiero from Atlante's charms. The nations of the
earth are in motion. East, West, and South and
North send forth their countless hordes to combat ; but
these vast forces are controlled by one woman's
caprice, and events are so handled by the poet as to
make the fate of myriads waver in the balance of her
passions. We might compare Boiardo's romance to an
immense web, in which a variety of scenes and figures
are depicted by the constant addition of new threads.
None of the old threads are wasted ; not one is merely
superfluous. If one is dropped for a moment and lost
to sight, it reappears again. The slightest incidents
lead to the gravest results. Narratives of widely
different character are so interwoven as to aid each
other, introducing fresh agents, combining these with
those whom we have learned to know, but leaving the
grand outlines of the main design untouched.
The miscellaneous details which enliven a tale of
chivalry, are grouped round four chief centers Paris,
where the poem opens with the tournament that intro-
duces Angelica, and where, at the end of the second
book, all the actors are assembled for the supreme
struggle between Christendom and Islam ; Albracca,
where Angelica is besieged in the far East; Biserta,
where the hosts of pagan Agramante muster, and the
hero Ruggiero is brought upon the scene; Montal-
bano, where Charlemagne sustains defeat at the hands
of Agramante, Rodamonte, Marsilio, and Ruggiero.
In order to combine such distant places in one action,
466 . RENAISSANCE IN ITALY.
Boiardo was obliged to set geography and time at
defiance. Between Tartary and Circassia, France and
Spain, Africa and Hungary, the knights make marches
and countermarches within the space of a few weeks or
even days. All arrive at the same dangerous gates and
passes, the same seductive lakes and gardens ; for the
magical machinery of the romance was more important
to the poet's scheme than cosmographical conditions.
His more than dramatic contempt for distance was in-
dispensable in the conduct of a romance which admitted
of no pause in the succession of attractive incidents,
and was also pardonable in an age devoid of accurate
geography. His chief aim was to secure novelty,
excitement, variety, ideal unity.
Boiardo further showed his grasp of art by the
emphatic presentation of the chief personages, whose
action determined the salient features of his tale. It is
impossible to forget Angelica after her first entrance on
the scene at Paris. In like manner Marfisa at Albracca,
Rodamonte in the council- chamber at Biserta, Ruggiero
on the heights of Mount Carena, Orlando entering the
combat before Albracca, Mandricardo passing forth
unarmed and unattended to avenge his father's death,
are brought so vividly before our eyes, that the earliest
impression of each character remains with us in all their
subsequent appearances. The inferior actors are intro-
duced with less preparation and diminished emphasis,
because they 'have to occupy subordinate positions, and
to group themselves around the heroes ; and thus the
whole vast poem is like a piece of arras-work, where
the strongest definition of form, and the most striking
colors, serve to throw into relief the principal figures
PRESENTATION OF CHARACTERS. 467
amid a multitude of minor shapes. Not less skill is
manifested in the preservation of the types of character
outlined in these first descriptions. To vary the
specific qualities of all those knights engaged in the
same pursuit of love and arms, was extremely difficult.
Yet Boiardo, sometimes working on the lines laid down
by earlier romancers, sometimes inventing wholly new
conceptions (as in the case of Rodamonte, Ruggiero,
Marfisa, Brandiamante), may be said to have succeeded
in this master-stroke of art. The Homeric heroes are
scarcely less firmly and subtly differentiated than his
champions of chivalry.
Orlando is the ideal of Christian knighthood, fearless,
indifferent to wealth, chaste, religious, respectful in his
love, courteous toward women, swift to wrath, but
generous even in his rage, exerting his strength only
when the occasion is worthy of him. 1 His one weakness
is the passion for Angelica. Twice he refuses for her
sake to accompany Dudone to the help of his liege-lord,
and in the fight at Montalbano he is careless of Christen-
dom so long as he can win his lady. 2 Studying Boiardo's
delineation of love-lunacy in Orlando, we understand
how Ariosto was led by it to the conception of the
Furioso. Rinaldo is cast in a somewhat inferior mold.
Lion-hearted, fierce, rebellious against Charles, prone
to love and hate excessively, he is the type of the
feudal baron, turbulent and troublesome to his suzerain.
Astolfo, slight, vain, garrulous, fond of finery and flirt-
ing, boastful, yet as fearless as the leopards on his
1 Orlando was not handsome (II. iii. 63):
avea folte le ciglia,
E P un de gli occhi alquanto stralunava.
* Sec his prayer, II. xxix. 36, 37.
468 RENAISSANCE IN ITALY.
shield, and winning hearts by his courtesy and grace
offers a spirited contrast to the massive vigor of
Rinaldo. It was a master-stroke of humor to have
provided this fop of a Paladin with the lance of
Argalia, whereby his physical weakness is supplemented
and his bravery becomes a match for the muscles oi
the doughtiest champions. 1 Brandimarte presents
another aspect of the chivalrous ideal. Fidelity is his
chief virtue loyality to his love, Fiordelisa, and his
hero, Orlando, combined with a delightful frankness
and the freshness of untainted youth. He is not wise,
but boyish, amorous, of a simple, trustful soul; a kind
of Italian Sir Bors. Ferraguto, on the contrary, is all
fire and fury, as petulantly fierce in love as in arms, so
hot in his temerity that even at times he can forget
the laws of honor. 2 Mandricardo's distinctive quality
(beside that of generous daring, displayed in his solitary
and unarmed quest of Orlando, and in the achievement
of Hector's armor) is singular good fortune. Ruggiero
has for his special mark victorious beauty, blent with
a courtesy and loftiness of soul, that opens his heart to
romantic love, and renders him peerless among youthful
warriors. Boiardo has spared no pains to impress our
imagination with the potency of his unrivaled comeli-
ness. 3 He moves before our eyes like the angelic
1 See the description of him in the tournament (I. ii. 63, iii. 4), when
he saves the honor of Christendom to the surprise of everybody includ-
ing himself. Again (I. vii. 45-65), when he defies and overthrows Gra-
aasso, and liberates Charles from prison. The irony of both situations
reveals a master's hand.
For instance, when he attacks Argalia with his sword, contrary to
stipulation, after being unhorsed by him (I. i. 71-73). The fury of Fer-
raguto in this scene is one of Boiardo's most brilliant episodes.
3 His epithets are &\waiysfiorito,Jiordicortesia t di franchezza fiore
etc. For the effect of his beauty, see II. xxi. 49, 50. The education oi
GRADATIONS IN CHARACTER-DRAWING. 469
knight in Mantegna's Madonna of the Victory, or like
Giorgione's picture of the fair^haired and mail-clad
donzel, born to conquer by the might of beauty. Agra-
mante, the Eastern Emperor, whose council is composed
of thirty-two crowned heads, enhances by his arrogance
of youth the world-worn prudence of old Charlemagne.
Marfisa, the Amazonian Indian queen, who has the
force of twenty knights, and is as cruel in her courage
as a famished tigress, sets off the gentler prowess of
Brandiamante, Rinaldo's heroic sister. Rodamonte is
the blustering, atheistic, insolent young Ajax, standing
alone against armies, and hurling defiance at heaven
from the midst of a sinking navy. 1 Agricane is dis-
tinguished as the knight who loves fighting for its own
sake, and disdains culture; Sacripante, as the gentle
and fearless suitor of Angelica; Gradasso, as the
hyperbolical champion of the Orient, inflamed with a
romantic desire to gain Durlindana and Baiardo, the
enchanted sword and horse. Gano and Truffaldino,
among these paragons of honor, are notable traitors,
the one brave when he chooses to abandon craft, the
other cowardly. Brunello is the Thersites of the
company, a perfect thief, misshapen, mischievous, con-
summate in his guile. 2 Malagise deals in magic, and
has a swarm of demons at his back for all exigences.
Turpin's chivalry is tempered with a subtle flavor of
Ruggiero by Atalante was probably suggested to Boiardo by the tale of
Cheiron and Achilles. See II. i. 74, 75.
' See II. i. 56, for Rodamonte's first appearance; for his atheism. II.
1U. 22:
Che sol il mio buon brando c 1' armatura
E la mazza, ch' io porto, e "1 destrier mio
E 1' animo, ch' io ho, sono il mio Uio.
II. Hi. 40.
470 RENAISSANCE IN ITALY.
the priest, exposing him to Boiardo's mockery. Of
Oliver and Ogier we hear, accidentally perhaps, but
little. Such are some of Boiardo's personages. Not
a few were given to him by the old romancers; but
these he has new-fashioned to his needs. 1 Others he
has molded from his own imagination with such plastic
force that they fall short in no respect of the time-
honored standard. It is no slight tribute to his crea-
tive power that we recognize a real fraternity between
these puppets of his fancy and the mythic heroes with
whom they are associated. As Boiardo left the actors
in his drama, so Ariosto took them up and with but
slight change treated them in his continuation of the
tale.
Women, with the exception of Marfisa and Bran-
diamante, fare but ill at Boiardo's hands. He seems
to have conceived of female character as a compound
of fickleness, infidelity, malice, falsehood, and light
love. Angelica is little better than a seductive witch,
who dotes on Rinaldo, and yet contrives to make use
of Orlando, luring him to do her purpose by false
promises. 2 Falerina and Dragontina are sorceresses,
apt for all iniquity and guile. Morgana and Alcina
display the capricious loves and inhuman spites of
fairies. Origille is a subtle traitress, beautiful enough
to deceive Orlando, but as poisonous as a serpent
Even the ladies who are intended to be amiable, show
1 In Bello's Mambriano, for instance, we have a very lively picture
ot the amorous and vain Astolfo. Pulci supplies us with even a moie
impressive Orlando than Boiardo's hero, while his Amazonian heroines,
Meridiana and Antea, are at least rough sketches for Marfisa. It was
Boiardo's merit to have grasped these characters and drawn them with
a fullness of minute detail that enhances their vitality.
Her arts and their success are splendidly set forth. I. xxv. xxvi.
FEMALE CHARACTERS. 471
but a low standard of morality. 1 Leodilla, princess of
the Far Isles, glories in adultery, and hates Orlando for
his constancy to Angelica in absence. 2 Fiordelisa is
false in thought to Brandimarte, when she sees Rinaldo
sleeping in the twilight. The picture, however, of the
slumbering warrior and the watchful maiden is so fresh
and true to Boiardo's genius that it deserves quota-
tion 3 :
Upon his steed forthwith hath sprung the knight,
And with the damsel rideth fast away;
Not far they fared, when slowly waned the light,
And forced them to dismount and there to stay.
Rinaldo 'neath a tree slept all the night;
Close at his side the lovely lady lay:
But the strong magic of wise Merlin's well
Had on the baron's temper cast a spell.
He now can sleep anigh that beauteous dame;
Nor of her neighborhood have any care;
Erewhile a sea, a flood, a raging flame
Would not have stayed his quick desire, I swear:
To clasp so fair a creature without shame,
Walls, mountains, he'd have laid in ruins there;
Now side by side they sleep, and naught he recks;
While her, methinks, far other thoughts perplex.
The air, meanwhile, was growing bright around,
Although not yet the sun his face had shown;
Some stars the tranquil brows of heaven still crowned;
The birds upon the trees sang one by one;
Dark night had flown; bright day was not yet found:
Then toward Rinaldo turned the maid alone;
For she with morning light had cast off sleep,
While he upon the grass still slumbered deep.
i In proem to II. xii., Boiardo makes an excuse, imitated by Ariosto
to his lady for this bad treatment of women.
Leodilla's story is found in I. xxi. xxii. xxiv. 14-17, 44.
I. iii. 47-50-
472 RENAISSANCE IN ITALY.
Beauteous he was, and but a stripling then;
Strong-thewed and lithe, and with a lively face;
Broad in the chest, but in the haunches thin;
The lady gazed, smit with his manly grace:
His beard scarce budded upon cheek and chin:
Gazing, she almost fainted in that place,
And took such pleasure in so sweet a sight
That naught she heeds beyond this one delight.
Love, as conceived by Boiardo, though a powerful and
steadfast passion, is not spiritual. The knights love
like centaurs, and fight like bulls for the privilege of
paying suit to their ladies. Rinaldo and Orlando meet
in deadly duel for Angelica; Rodamonte and Ferraguto
dispute Doralice, though the latter does not care for
her, and only asserts his right to dwell in thought upon
her charms. Orlando and Agricane break their court-
eous discourse outside Albracca to fight till one of them
is killed, merely ^because the name of Angelica has inter-
vened. For Boiardo's descriptions of love returned,
and crowned with full fruition, the reader may be re-
ferred to two magnificent passages in the episodes of
Leodilla and Fiordelisa. 1 Poetically noble in spite of
their indelicacy, these pictures of sensuous and natural
enjoyment might be paralleled with the grand frank-
ness of Venetian painting. It is to be regretted for
Boiardo's credit as an artist in expression, that more
rthan a bare reference to them is here impossible.
Boiardo's conception of friendship or fraternity in
arms is finer. The delineation of affection generated
by mutual courtesy under the most trying conditions
of intercourse, which binds together the old rivals
Iroldo and Prasildo, has something in it truly touching. 1
' I. xxii. 24-27; I. xix. 60-65. * ! xv "- 3I M '
LOVE AND COMRADESHIP. 473
The same passion of comradeship finds noble expres-
sion in the stanzas uttered by Orlando, when he rec-
ognizes Rinaldo's shield suspended by Aridano near
Morgana's Lake. 1 It must be remembered that the cous-
ins had recently parted as foes, after a fierce battle for
Angelica before Albracca:
Hearing these dulcet words, the Count began
Little by little of his will to yield;
Backward already he withdrew a span,
When, gazing on the bridge and guarded field,
Force was that he the armor bright should scan
Which erst Rinaldo bore broad sword and shield:
Then weeping, " Who hath done me this despite? "
He cried: " Oh, who hath slain my perfect knight?
" Here wast thou killed by foulest treachery
Of that false robber on this slippery bridge;
For all the .world could not have conquered thee
In fair fight, front to front, and edge to edge:
Cousin, from heaven incline thine ear to me!
Where now thou reignest, list thy lord and liege!
Me who so loved thee, though my brief misprision,
Through too much love, wrought 'twixt our lives division.
"I crave thy pardon: pardon me, I pray,
If e'er I did thee wrong, sweet cousin mine!
I was thine ever, as I am alway,
Though false suspicion, or vain love malign,
And jealous blindness, on an evil day.
Brought me to cross my furious brand with thine:
Yet all the while I loved thee love thee now;
Mine was the fault, and only mine, I vow.
" What traitorous wolf ravening for blood was he
Who thus debarred us twain from kind return
To concord sweet and sweet tranquillity,
Sweet kisses, and sweet tears of souls that yearn ?
This is the anguish keen that conquers me,
That now I may not to thy bosom turn,
And speak, and beg for pardon, ere I part;
This is the grief, the dole that breaks my heart! "
II. vii. 50.
474 RENAISSANCE IN ITALY.
Scarcely less beautiful is the feeling which binds Bra
dimarte to the great Count, the inferior to the superi
hero, making him ready to release his master froi
Manodante's prison at the price of his own liberty,
Boiardo devotes the exordium of the seventh Cantc
of the third Book to a panegyric of chivalrous friend-
ship:
Far more than health, far more than strength Is worth,
Nay more than pleasure, more than honor vain,
Is friendship tried alike in dole and mirth:
For when one love doth join the hearts of twain,
Their woes are halved, their joys give double birth
To joy, by interchange of grief and pain;
And when doubts rise, with free and open heart
Each calls his friend, who gladly bears a part.
What profit is there in much pearls and gold,
Or power, or proud estate, or royal reign?
Lacking a friend, mere wealth is frosty cold:
He who loves not, and is not loved again,
From him true joys their perfect grace withhold:
And this I say, since now across the main
Brave Brandimarte drives his flying ship
To help Orlando, drawn by comradeship.
Next to bravery the poet's favorite virtue is courtesy,
It is enough to mention Orlando's gentle forbearance
with Agricane at Albracca, their evening conversation
in the midst of a bloody duel, and the hero's sorrow
when he has wounded his opponent to the death. 2 Of
the same quality is the courteous behavior of Rinaklo
and Gradasso before a deadly encounter, the aid
afforded to Marfisa by Rinaldo in the midst of their
duel, and the graceful sympathy of Astolfo for Bran-
dimarte, whom he has unhorsed. 3 But the two pas-
t II. xii. 14, et sff. * I. xvi. 36-44; xviii. 39 47; xix. 15, 16.
8 I. v. 7-12; xix. 47; ix. 55-57.
COURAGE AND COURTESY. 475
sages which illustrate Boiardo's ideal of the chivalrous
character, as blent of bravery and courtesy, of intelli-
gence and love, are Orlando's discourse with Agricane
and his speech to Morgana's maiden. In the first of
these the Count and King had fought till nightfall.
Then they agree to sleep together side by side, and to
resume the combat at daybreak. Before they settle for
the night, they talk l :
After the sun below the hills was laid,
And with bright stars the sky began to glow,
Unto the King these words Orlando said:
" What shall we do, now that the day is low? "
Then Agrican made answer, " Make our bed
Together here, amid the herbs that grow;
And then to-morrow with the dawn of light
We can return and recommence the fight."
No sooner said, than straight they were agreed:
Each tied his horse to trees that near them grew;
Then down they lay upon the grassy mead
You might have thought they were old friends and true,
So close and careless couched they in the reed.
Orlando nigh unto the fountain drew,
And Agrican hard by the forest laid
His length beneath a mighty pine-tree's shade.
Herewith the twain began to hold debate
Of fitting things and meet for noble knights.
The Count looked up to heaven and cried, " How great
And fair is yonder frame of glittering lights,
Which God, the mighty monarch, did create;
The silvery moon, and stars that gem our nights,
The light of day, yea, and the lustrous sun,
For us poor men God made them every onel "
But Agrican: " Full well I apprehend
It is your wish toward faith our talk to turn:
Of science less than naught I comprehend;
Nay, when I was a boy, I would not learn,
> I. xviii. 39-47-
476 RENAISSANCE IN ITALY.
But broke my master's head to make amend
For his much prating; no one since did yearn
To teach me book or writing, such the dread
Wherewith I filled them for my hardihead.
" And so I let my boyish days flow by,
In hunting, feats of arms, and horsemanship;
Nor is it meet, meseems, for chivalry
To pore the livelong day on scholarship.
True knights should strive to prove their skill, say I,
And strength of limb in noble fellowship;
Leave priests and teaching men from books to learn.
I know enough, thank God, to serve my turn."
Then spake the Count: "Thus far we both agree;
Arms are the chief prime honor of a knight.
Yet knowledge brings no shame that I can see,
But rather fame, as fields with flowers are bright;
More like an ox, a stock, a stone is he
Who never thinks of God's eternal light;
Nor without learning can we rightly dwell
On his high majesty adorable."
Then Agrican, " Small courtesy it were,
War with advantage so complete to wage!
My nature I have laid before you bare;
I know full well that you are learned and sage;
Therefore to answer you I do not care.
Sleep if you like; in sleep your soul assuage;
Or if you choose with me to hold discourse,
I look for talk of love, and deeds of force.
" Now, I beseech you, answer me the truth
Of what I ask, upon a brave man's faith:
Are you the great Orlando, in good sooth,
Whose name and fame the whole world echoeth?
Whence are you come, and why? And since your youth
Were you by love inthralled? For story saith
That any knight who loves not, though he seem
To sight alive, yet lives but in a dream."
Then spake the Count: " Orlando sure am I
Who both Almonte and his brother slew.
Imperious love hath lost me utterly,
And made me journey to strange lands and DOW;
ITALIAN WEAL OF KNIGHTHOOD. 477
/
And, for I fain would thus in amity
Prolong discourse, therefore I tell you true,
She who now lies within Albracca's wall,
Gallafron's daughter, holds my heart in thrall."
This unlucky mention of Angelica stirs the rage of Agri-
cane, and the two men fight in the moonlight beneath
the forest-trees till the young King is wounded to the
death a splendid subject for some imaginative paint-
er's pencil. We may notice in this dialogue the modi-
fication of chivalry occasioned by Italian respect for
culture. Boiardo exalts the courage of the educated
gentleman above the valor of a man-at-arms. In the
conversation between Orlando and Morgana's maiden
he depicts another aspect of the knightly ideal. The
fairy has made Orlando offer of inestimable treasures,
but he answers that indifference to riches is the sign of
a noble heart 1 :
Orlando smiling heard what she would say,
But scarce allowed her time her speech to end,
Seeing toward riches of the sort the fay
Proffered, his haughty soul he would not bend;
Wherefore he spake: " It irked me not to-day
My very life unto the death to spend;
For only perils and great toils sustain
Honor of chivalry without a stain.
" But for the sake of gold or silver gear,
I would not once have drawn my brand so bright;
For he who holds mere gain of money dear
Hath set himself to labor infinite;
The more he gets the less his gains appear;
Nor can he ever sate his appetite;
They who most have, still care for more to spend,
Wherefore this way of life hath ne'er an end."
Having seen the knights in their more generous
' I. xxv. 13, 14.
478 RENAISSANCE IN ITALY.
moments, we ought to bear in mind that they are ca-
pable of blustering, boasting, and exchanging foul abuse
like humanists. One reference will suffice. Orlando
and Rinaldo quarrel at Albracca and defy each other
to combat. Before fighting they indulge in elaborate
caricatures and vilifications, from which it would
appear, to say the least, that these champions of
Christendom were the subject of much scandalous
gossip. 1
Human nature, unsophisticated and unqualified,
with the crude impulses and the contradictions proper
to an unreflective age, has been studied by Boiardo
for his men and women. His power of expressing
the passions by natural signs might win for him the
title of the Homer of Chivalry. The love lamenta-
tions of Prasildo, the love-languors of Angelica, the
frenzy of Marfisa, the wrath of Ferraguto, the tru-
culency of Rodamonte, the impish craft of Brunello,
Origille's cunning, Brandimarte's fervor, Ruggiero's
impatience to try his strength in the tournament, and
his sudden ecstasy of love for Brandiamante these
and a hundred other instances of vigorous dramatic
presentation could be mentioned. In his pictures of
scenery and descriptions Boiardo follows nature no less
faithfully and this, be it remembered, in an age which
refined on nature and admitted into art only certain
chosen phases of her loveliness. Of affectation and
elaboration he has none. The freshness of authentic
vision gives peculiar vividness to the storm that over-
takes Rodamonte in mid-channel; to the garden of
Falerina, where Orlando stuffs his cask with roses in
1 I. xxvii. 15-22: xxviii. 4-11.
FRESHNESS OF BOIARDO'S ART. 479
i
order to stop his ears against a Siren's song; to the
picture of Morgana combing Ziliante's hair in the
midst of her enchanted meadows, and to the scene in
which Angelica greets Orlando with a perfumed bath
after the battle. l The charm of Boiardo's poetry con-
sists in its firm grasp on truth and nature, the spon-
taneity and immediateness of its painting. He has
none of Poliziano's richness, no Virgilian dignity or
sweetness, no smooth and sparkling fluency like that
of Ariosto. But all that he writes has in it the per-
fume of the soil, the freedom of the open air; the
spirits of the woods and sea and stars are in it Of
his style the most striking merit is rapidity. Almost
always unpolished, sometimes even coarse, but invari-
ably spirited and masculine, his verse leaps onward
like a grayhound in its swiftness. Story succeeds
story with extraordinary speed; and whether of love
or arms, they are equally well told. The pathetic
novel of Tisbina, Rinaldo's wondrous combat with the
griffins and the giants, the lion-hunt at Biserta, the
mustering of Agramante's lieges, and the flux and re-
flux of battle before Montalbano tax the vivid and
elastic vigor of Boiardo in five distinct species of
rapid narration ; and in all of them he proves himself
more than adequate to the strain. For ornaments he
cared but little, nor did he wait to elaborate similes.
A lion at bay, a furious bull, a river foaming to the
sea, a swollen torrent, two battling winds, a storm of
hail, the clash of thunderclouds, an earthquake, are
the figures he is apt to use. The descriptions of
Rinaldo, Marfisa and Orlando, may be cited as favor-
1 1L vi. 7-15, 28-^42; II. iv. 24-39; H- x i- 20-23; L KKV- 38*
480 RENAISSANCE IN ITALY.
able specimens of his illustrative metaphors. 1 Short
phrases like a guisa di leone, a guisa di colomba, a
guisa di serpente* a guisa d'uno drago, a guisa di
castello, indicate in outline images that aid the poet's
thought. But nothing like the polish or minuteness
of Ariosto's highly-wrought comparisons can be found
in the Innamorato. Boiardo's study of the classics
had not roused him to the emulation of their decora-
tive beauties. Nor, again, did he attend to cadence in
his versification. He would have wondered at the
lima labor of the poets who came after him. His
own stanzas are forcible, swift, fiery, never pompous
or voluptuous, liquid or sonorous. The changes
wrought by Poliziano in the structure of ottava rima,
his majesty and "linked sweetness long drawn out,"
were unknown to Boiardo. Yet those rugged octaves,
in spite of their halting pauses at the end of the fifth
line, in spite of their frequent repetitions and inequali-
ties of volume, are better adapted to the spirit of his
medieval subject-matter than the sumptuous splendor
of more polished versifiers. His diction, in like man-
ner, judged by the standard of the cinque cento, is far
from choice loaded with Lombardisms, gaining energy
and vividness at the expense of refinement and precision.
Thus style and spirit alike removed him from the
sympathies of the correct and classic age that fol-
lowed.
For the student of the earlier Renaissance Boiardo's
art has one commanding point of interest. In the
romantic treatment of antique motives he is unique.
It was the aim of Italian poets after Boccaccio to effect
i I. xxiii. 38, 47; xxvi. 28.
TREATMENT OF THE ANTIQUE. 481
a fusion between the classical and modern styles, and
to ingraft the beauties of antique literature upon their
own language. Boiardo, far more a child of nature than
either Boccaccio or Poliziano, with deeper sympathy
for feudal traditions and chivalrous modes of feeling,
attacked this problem from a point of view directly
opposite to theirs. His comprehensive study of Greek
and Roman authors had stored his mind with legends
which gave an impulse to the freedom of his own
imagination. He did not imitate the ancients; but
used the myths with so much novelty and delicate
perception of their charm, that beneath his touch
they assumed a fresh and fascinating quality. There
is nothing grotesque in his presentation of Hellenic
fancy, nothing corresponding to tfre medieval trans-
formation of deities into devils; and yet his spirit
is not classical. His Sphinx, his Cyclops, and his
Circe- Dragontina, his Medusa, his Pegasus, his Cen-
taur, his Atalanta, his Satyr, are living creatures of
romantic wonderland, with just enough of classic
gracefulness to remove them from the murky atmo-
sphere of medieval superstition into the serene ether of
a neo-pagan mythology. Nothing can be more dis-
similar from Ovid, more unlike the forms of Graeco-
Roman sculpture. With his firm grasp upon reality,
Boiardo succeeded in naturalizing these classic fancies.
They are not copied, but drawn from the life of the
poet's imagination. A good instance of this creative
faculty is the description of the Faun, who haunts the
woodland in the shade of leaves, and lives on fruits
and drinks the stream, and weeps when the sky is fair,
because he then fears bad weather, but laughs when it
482 RENAISSANCE IN ITALY.
rains, because he knows the sun will shine again. 1 It
is not easy to find an exact analogue in the sister arts
to this poetry, though some points in the work of
Botticelli and Piero di Cosimo, some early engravings
by Robeta and the Master of the Caduceus, some bass-
reliefs of Amadeo or incrustations on the chapel-walls
of S. Francesco at Rimini, a Circe by Dosso Dossi in
the Borghese palace at Rome, an etching of Mantegna
here or there, might be quoted in illustration of its
spirit. 2 Better justice can be done to Boiardo's
achievement by citation than by critical description.
The following stanzas are a picture of Love attended
by the Graces, punishing Rinaldo for his rudeness near
the Font of Merlin 3 :
When to the leafy wood his feet were brought,
Towards Merlin's Font at once he took his way;
Unto the font that changes amorous thought
Journeyed the Paladin without delay;
But a new sight, the which he had not sought,
Caused him upon the path his feet to stay.
Within the wood there is a little close
Full of pink flowers, and white, and various:
And in the midst thereof a naked boy,
Singing, took solace with surpassing cheer;
Three ladies round him, as around their joy,
Danced naked in the light so soft and clear.
No sword, no shield, hath been his wonted toy;
Brown are his eyes; yellow his curls appear;
His downy beard hath scarce begun to grow:
One saith 'tis there, and one might answer, No!
With violets, roses, flowers of every dye,
Baskets they filled and eke their beauteous hands:
Then as they dance in joy and amity,
The Lord of Montalbano near them stands:
I. xxiii. 6.
* Burnc Jones, in his Pan and Syrinx, offers a parallel.
IL xv. 43 tt stq.
RINALDO AT MERLIN'S FONT. 483
Whereat, " Behold the traitor! " loud they cry,
Soon as they mark the foe within their bands;
" Behold the thief, the scorner of delight,
Caught in the trap at last in sorry plight!"
Then with their baskets all with one consent
Upon Rinaldo like a tempest bore:
One flings red roses, one with violets blent
Showers lilies, hyacinths, fast as she can pour:
Each flower in falling with strange pain hath rent
His heart and pricked his marrow to the core,
Lighting a flame in ever)' smitten part,
As though the flowers concealed a fiery dart.
The boy who, naked, coursed along the sod,
Emptied his basket first, and then began,
Wielding a long-grown leafy lily rod,
To scourge the helmet of the tortured man:
No aid Rinaldo found against the god,
But fell to earth as helpless children can;
The youth who saw him fallen, by the feet
Seized him, and dragged him through the meadow sweet.
And those three dames had each a garland rare
Of roses; one was red and one was white:
These from their snowy brows and foreheads fair
They tore in haste, to beat the writhing knight:
In vain he cried and raised his hands in prayer;
For still they struck till they were tired quite:
And round about him on the sward they went,
Nor ceased from striking till the morn was spent
Nor massy cuirass, nor stout plate of steel,
Could yield defense against those bitter blows:
His flesh was swollen with many a livid weal
Beneath his mail, and with such fiery woes
Inflamed as spirits damned in hell may feel;
Yet theirs, upon my troth, are fainter throes:
Wherefore that Baron, sore, and scant of breath,
For pain and fear was well-nigh brought to death.
Nor whether they were gods or men he knew;
Nor prayer, nor courage, nor defense availed,
Till suddenly upon their shoulders grew
And budded wings with gleaming gold engrailed,
484 RENAISSANCE IN ITALY.
Radiant with crimson, white, and azure blue;
And with a living eye each plume was tailed,
Not like a peacock's or a bird's, but bright
And tender as a girl's with love's delight.
Then after small delay their flight they took,
And one by one soared upward to the sky,
Leaving Rinaldo sole beside the brook.
Full bitterly that Baron 'gan to cry,
For grief and dole so great his bosom shook
That still it seemed that he must surely die;
And in the end so fiercely raged his pain
That like a corpse he fell along the plain.
This is a fine painting in the style I have attempted to
characterize the imagery of the Greek mythology
taking a new and natural form of fanciful romance. It
is alien to anything in antique poetry or sculpture.
Yet the poet's imagination had been touched to finest
issues by the spirit of the Greeks before he wrote it.'
Incapable of transplanting the flowers of antiquity
like delicate exotics into the conservatory of studied
art, he acclimatized them to the air of thought and
feeling in which his own romantic spirit breathed.
This distinguishes him from Poliziano, whose stately
poem, like the palm-house in Kew Gardens, contains
specimens of all the fairest species gathered from the
art of Greece and Rome. Even more exquisitely
instinct with the first April freshness of Renaissance
feeling is another episode, where Boiardo presents the
old tale of Narcissus under a wholly new and original
aspect. By what strange freak of fancy has he con-
verted Echo into an Empress of the East and added
the pathos of the fairy Silvanella, whose petulance amid
her hopeless love throws magic on the well ! We arr
far away indeed from the Pompeian frescoes here 1 -
1 II. xvii. 49 et seq.
NARCISSUS. 48*5
Beyond the bridge there was a little close
All round the marble of that fountain fair;
And in the midst a sepulcher arose,
Not made by mortal art, however rare:
Above in golden letters ran the gloss,
Which said, " That soul is vain beyond compare
That falls a-doting on his own sweet eyes.
Here in the tomb the boy Narcissus lies."
Erewhile Narcissus was a damozel
So graceful, and of beauty so complete,
That no fair painted form adorable
Might with his perfect loveliness compete;
Yet not less fair than proud, as poets tell.
Seeing that arrogance and beauty meet
Most times, and thus full well with mickle woe
The laity of love is taught to know.
So that the Empress of the Orient
Doting upon Narcissus beyond measure,
And finding him on love so little bent,
So cruel and so careless of all pleasure,
Poor wretch, her dolorous days in weeping spent,
Craving from morn till eve of love the treasure,
Praying vain prayers of power from Heaven to turn
The very sun, and make him cease to burn.
Yet all these words she cast upon the wind;
For he, heart-hardened, would not hear her moan,
More than the asp, both deaf to charms and blind.
Wherefore by slow degrees more feeble grown,
Toward death she daily dwindling sank and pined;
But ere she died, to Love she cried alone,
Pouring sad sighs forth with her latest breath,
-For vengeance for her undeserved death.
And this Love granted: for beside the stream
Of which I spoke, Narcissus happed to stray
While hunting, and perceived its silvery gleam;
Then having chased the deer a weary way,
He leaned to drink, and saw as though in dream,
His face, ne'er seen by him until that day;
And as he gazed, such madness round him floated.
That with fond love on his fair self he doted.
RENAISSANCE IN ITALY.
Whoever heard so strange a story told ?
Justice of Love! how true, how strong it Is!
Now he stands sighing by the fountain cold
For what he hath, yet never can be his!
He that was erst so hard as stone of old,
Whom ladies like a god on bended knees
Devoutly wooed, imploring him for grace,
Now dies of vain desire for his own face.
Poring upon his perfect countenance,
Which on this earth hath ne'er a paragon,
He pined in deep desire's extravagance,
Little by little, like a lily blown,
Or like a cropped rose; till, poor boy, the glance,
Of his black eyes, his cheek's vermilion,
His snowy whiteness, and his gleeful mirth
Death froze who freezes all things upon earth.
Then by sad misadventure through the glade
The fairy Silvanella took her way;
And on the spot where now this tomb is made,
Mid flowers the dead youth very beauteous lay:
She, marveling at his fair face, wept and stayed
In sore discomfiture and cold dismay;
Nor could she quit the place, but slowly came
To pine and waste for him with amorous flame.
Yea, though the boy was dead, for him she burned:
Pity and grief her gentle soul o'erspread:
Beside him on the grass she lay and mourned,
Kissing his clay-cold lips and mouth and head.
But at the last her madness she discerned,
To love a corpse wherefrom the soul had fled:
Yet knows she not, poor wretch, her doom to shun;
She fain would love not, yet she must love on.
When all the night and all the following day
Were wasted in the torrent of her woes,
A comely tomb of marble fair the Fay
Built by enchantment in the flowery close;
Nor ever from that station would she stray,
But wept and mourned; till worn by weary throes,
Beside the font within a little space
Like snow before the sun she pined apace.
ROMANTIC AND HELLENIC FANCY, 487
Yet for relief, or that she might not rue
Alone the luckless doom which made her die,
E'en mid the pangs of love such charms she threw
Upon the font in her malignity,
That all who passing toward the water drew
And gazed thereon, perchance with listless eye,
Must in the depth see maiden faces fair,
Graceful and soul-inthralling mirrored there.
They in their brows have beauty so entire
That he who gazes cannot turn to fly,
But in the end must fade of mere desire,
And in that field lay himself down to die.
Now it so chanced that by misfortune dire
A king, wise, gentle, ardent, passed thereby,
Together with his true and loving dame;
Larbin and Calidora, such their name.
In these stanzas the old vain passion of Narcissus
for his own beauty lives again a new life of romantic
poetry. That the enchantment of the boy's fascination,
prolonged through Silvanella's mourning for his death,
should linger for ever after in the font that was his
tomb, is a peculiarly modern touch of mysterious fancy.
This part of the romance has little in common with
the classic tale of Salmacis; it is far more fragile
and refined. The Greeks did not carry their human
sympathy with nature, deep and loyal as indeed it was,
so far into the border-land of sensual and spiritual
things. Haunted hills, like the Venusberg of Tann-
hauser's legend; haunted waters, like Morgana's lake
in Boiardo's poem; the charmed rivers and fountains
of naiads, where knights lose their memory and are in-
closed in crystal prison-caves; these are essentially
modern, the final flower and blossom of the medieval
fancy, unfolding stores of old mythology and half- for
j88 RENAISSANCE IN ITALY.
gotten emblems to the light of day in art. 1 For their
perfection it was needful that the gods of Hellas
should have died, and that the phantoms of old-world
divinities should linger in dreams and reveries about
the shores of young romance.
Boiardo's treatment of magic is complementary to
his use of classical mythology. He does not employ
this important element of medieval art in its sim-
plicity, but adapts it to the nature of his own imagina-
tion, adding, as it were, a new quality by the process
of assimilation. Some of his machinery belongs, in-
deed, to the poems of his predecessors, or is framed in
harmony with their spirit. The enchantment of Dur-
lindana and Baiardo; the invulnerability of Orlando,
Ferraguto, and other heroes; the wizardry of Mala-
gise, Mambrino's helmet, Morgana's stag, the horse
Rabicano, Argalia's lance, Angelica's ring, and the
countless dragons and giants which Boiardo creates
at pleasure, may be mentioned in this category. But
it is otherwise with the gardens of Falerina and
Dragontina, the sublacustrine domain of Fata Mor-
gana, and the caverns of the Naiades. These, how-
ever much they may have once belonged to medieval
tradition, have been alchemized by the imagination of
the poet of the Renaissance. They are glimpses into
ideal fairyland, which Ariosto and Tasso could but
refine upon and vary in their famous gardens of Alcina
and Armida. Boiardo's use of the old tradition of
Merlin's fountain, and the other well of Cupid feigned
by him beside it, might again be chosen to illustrate
his free poetic treatment of magical motives. When
| See II. xxxi. xlv.j IIL L IL
MAGIC, ALLEGORY, RELIGION. 489
he trespasses on these enchanted regions, then and
then only does he approach allegory. The quest of
the tree guarded by Medusa in Tisbina's story; the
achievement by Orlando of Morgana's garden, where
Penitence and Fortune play their parts; and Rinaldo's
encounter with Cupid in the forest of Ardennes, have
obviously allegorical elements. Yet the hidden mean-
ing is in each case less important than the adventure;
and the same may be said about the highly tragic
symbolism of the monster in the Rocca Crudele. 1 Boi-
ardo had too vivid a sympathy with nature and hu- )
manity to appreciate the mysteries which allured the
Northern poets of Parzival, the Sangraal, and the faery
Queen. When he lapses into allegory, it is with him
a sign of weakness. Akin, perhaps, to this disregard
for parable is the freedom of his spirit from all super-
stition. The religion of his knights is bluff, simple,
and sincere, in no sense savoring of the cloister and
the cowl. A high sense of truth and personal honor,
indifference to life for life's sake, profound humility in
danger, charity impelling men of power to succor the
oppressed and feeble, are the fruits of their piety. But
of penance for sins of the flesh, of ceremonial obser-
vances, of visions and fasts, of ascetic discipline and
wonder - working images, of all the ecclesiastical
trumpery with which the pseudo-Turpin is filled, and
which contaminates even the Mort d' Arthur of our
heroic Mallory, we read nothing.
In taking up the thread of Boiardo's narrative,
Ariosto made use of all his predecessor had invented,
See I. viiS. 56 et seq. The whole tale of Grifone and Marchino In
that Canto is horrible.
490 RENAISSANCE IN ITALY.
He adopted the machinery of the two fountains, the
lance of Argalia, Angelica's ring, Rabicane, and the
magic arts of Atalante. The characters of the Innam-
orato reappear with slight but subtle changes and with
somewhat softened names in the Furioso. 1 Ariosto,
again, followed Boiardo closely in his peculiar method
of interweaving novelle with the main narrative; of
suspending one story to resume another at a critical
moment; of prefacing his cantos with reflections, and
of concluding them with a courteous license. 2 Lastly,
Ariosto is at great pains, while connecting his poem
with the Innamorato, to make it intelligible by giving
short abstracts at intervals of the previous action.
Yet throughout this long laborious work of continua-
tion he preserves a studied silence respecting the poet
to whom he owed so much. Was this due to the
desire of burying Boiardo's fame beneath his own ?
Did he so contrive that the contemporary repute of
the Innamorato should serve to float his Furioso and
then be forgotten by posterity? If so, he calculated
> On Ariosto 's treatment of Boiardo's characters there is much ex-
cellent criticism in Pio Rajna's Le Fonti dell' Orlando Furioso (Fi-
renze, Sansoni, 1876), pp. 43-53.
* I do not mean that other poets Pulci and Bello, for example had
not interwoven episodical novelle. The latter's poem of Mambrianc
owes all its interest to the episodes, and many of its introductory re-
flections are fair specimens of the discursive style. But the peculiarity
of Boiardo, as followed by Ariosto, consisted in the art of subordinating
these subsidiary motives to the main design. Neither Pulci nor Bello
showed any true sense of poetical unity. It may here be parenthetically
remarked that Francesco Bello, a native of Ferrara, called II Cieco be-
cause of his blindness, recited his Mambriano at the Mantuan Court of
the Gonzagas. It was not printed till after his death in 1509. This poem
consists of a series of tales, loosely stitched together, each canto con-
taining just enough to stimulate the attention of an idle audience. Rl-
naldo. Astolfo, and Mambriano, king of Bithynia, play prominent parts
in the action.
PATE OF THE INNAMORATO. 491
wisely; for this is what almost immediately happened.
Though the Orlando Innamorato was printed four
times before 1613 once at Venice in 1486, once at
Scandiano in 1496, and again at Venice in i5o6, i5n,
and 1 5 1 3 and though it continued to be reprinted at
Venice through the first half of the sixteenth century,
yet the sudden silence of the press after this period
shows that the Furioso had eclipsed Boiardo's fame. '
Still the integral connection between the two poems
could not be overlooked; and just about the period of
Ariosto's death, Francesco Berni conceived the notion
of rewriting Boiardo's epic with the expressed inten-
tion of correcting its diction and rendering it more
equal in style to the Orlando Furioso. This rifaci-
mento was published in 1641, after his death. The
mysterious circumstances that attended its publication,
and the nature of the changes introduced by Berni
into the substance of Boiardo's poem, will be touched
upon when we arrive at this illustrious writer of bur-
lesque verse. It is enough to mention here that
Berni's version was printed twice between 1641 and
1645, and that then, like the original, it fell into com-
parative oblivion till the end of the last century.
Meanwhile the second rifacimento by Domenichi ap-
peared in 1 546; and though this new issue was a mere
piece of impudent book-making, it superseded Berni's
masterpiece during the next two hundred years. The
critics of the last century rediscovered Berni's rifaci-
mento, and began to quote Boiardo's poem under his
name, treating the real author as an ignorant and un-
couth writer of a barbarous dialect. Thus one of the
most original poets of the fifteenth century, to whom
492 RENAISSANCE IN ITALY.
Italy owes the form and substance of the Furioso, has
been thrust aside and covered with contempt, by a
curious irony of fortune, owing to the very qualities
that ought to have insured his immortality. Used
by Ariosto as the ladder for ascending to Parnassus;
by Berni as an exercising ground for the display of
style; by Domenichi as the means of getting his name
widely known, the Orlando Innamorato served any
purposes but that of its great author's fame. Panizzi,
by reprinting the original poem along with the Orlando
Furioso, restored Boiardo at length to his right place
in Italian literature. From that time forward it has
been impossible to overlook his merits or to under-
estimate Ariosto's obligations to so gifted and original
a master.
CHAPTER VIII.
ARlUbTO.
Ancestry and Birth of Ariosto His Education His Father's Death
Life at Reggio Enters Ippolito d' Este's Service Character of the
Cardinal Court Life Composition and Publication of the Furioso
Quiet Life at Ferrara Comedies Governorship of Garfagnana
His Son Virginio Last Eight Years Death Character and Habits
The Satires Latin Elegies and Lyrics Analysis of the Satires
Ippolito's Service Choice of a Wife Life at Court and Place-hunt-
ing Miseries at Garfagnana Virginio's Education Autobiograph-
ical and Satirical Elements Ariosto's Philosophy of Life Minor
Poems Alessandra Benucci Ovidian Elegies Madrigals and Son-
nets Ariosto's Conception of Love.
ARIOSTO'S family was ancient and of honorable station
in the Duchy of Ferrara. His father, Nicol6, held
offices of trust under Ercole I., and in the year 1472
was made Governor of Reggio, where he acquired
property and married. His wife, Daria Maleguzzi,
gave birth at Reggio in 1474 to their first-born, Lodo-
vico, the poet. At Reggio the boy spent seven years
of childhood, removing with his father in 1481 to
Rovigo. His education appears to have been carried
on at Ferrara, where he learned Latin but no Greek.
This ignorance of Greek literature placed him, like
Machiavelli, somewhat at a disadvantage among men
of culture in an age that set great store upon the
knowledge of both ancient languages. He was des-
tined for a legal career; but, like Petrarch and Boc-
caccio, after spending some useless years in unconge-
494 RENAISSANCE IN ITALY.
nial studies, Ariosto prevailed upon his father to
allow him to follow his strong bent for literature. In
1 5oo Nicolo Ariosto died, leaving a family of five sons
and five daughters, with property sufficient for the
honor of his house but scarcely adequate to the needs
of his numerous children. Lodovico was the eldest.
He therefore found himself at the age of twenty-six
in the position of father to nine brothers and sisters,
for whose education, start in life, and suitable settle-
ment, he was called on to arrange. The administra-
tion of his father's estate, and the cares thus early
thrust upon him, made the poet an exact man of
business, and brought him acquainted with real life
under its most serious aspects. He discharged his
duties with prudence and fidelity; managing by econ-
omy to provide portions for his sisters and honor-
able maintenance for his brothers out of their joint
patrimony.
The first three years after his father's death were
spent by Ariosto in the neighborhood of Reggio, and
to this period of his life we may perhaps refer some of
the love-affairs celebrated in his Latin poems. He held
the Captaincy of Canossa, a small sinecure involving no
important duties, since the Castle of Canossa was even
in those days a ruin. In 1603 he entered the service
of Cardinal Ippolito d' Este, with whom he remained
until 1617. He was placed upon the list of the Car-
dinal's extraordinary servants, to be employed in
matters of confidence and delicacy, involving frequent
journeys to all parts of Italy and ceremonial embassies.
His pay seems to have been fixed at 240 lire marche
sane, corresponding to about 1 200 francs, charged upon
YOUTH AND COURT SERVICE. 495
the Archiepiscopal Chancery of Milan. 1 This salary,
had it been regularly paid, would have suffered to
maintain the poet in decent comfort; but he had con-
siderable difficulty from time to time in realizing the
sums due to him. Ippolito urged him to take orders,
no doubt with a view of securing better emoluments
from benefices that could only be conferred upon a
member of the priesthood. But Ariosto refused to
enter a state of life for which he felt no vocation. 3
The Cardinal Deacon of S. Lucia in Silice was one of
those secular princes of the Church, addicted to worldly
pleasures, profuse in personal expenditure, with more
inclination for the camp and the hunting-field than for
the duties of his station, who since the days of Sixtus
IV. had played a prominent part in the society of
the Italian Courts. He was of distinguished beauty;
and his military courage, like that of the Cardinal
Ippolito de' Medici, was displayed in the Hungarian
campaign against the Turks. With regard to his char-
acter and temper, it may suffice to remind the reader
how, in a fit of jealous passion, he hired assassins to
put out his natural brother Giulio's eyes. That Ippolito
d' Este did not share the prevailing enthusiasm of his
age for literary culture, seems pretty clear; and he failed
to discern the unique genius of the man whom he had
chosen for his confidential agent. Ariosto complains
that he was turned into a common courier and forced
to spend his days and nights upon the road by the
master upon whom, at the expense of truth and reason,
1 See Satire, i. 100-102; ii. 109-111.
* See Satire, i. 113-123, for his reasons. He seems chiefly to have
dreaded the loss of personal liberty, if he took orders.
496 RENAISSANCE IN ITALY.
he conferred an immortality of fame in his great poem.
Yet it would not be fair to echo the commonplace
invectives against the Cardinal for illiberality and
ingratitude. Ariosto knew the nature of his patron
when he entered his service, and Ippolito did not hire
a student but an active man of business for his work.
It was an arrangement of convenience on both sides, to
which the poet would never have stooped had his private
means sufficed, or had the conditions of Italian society
offered any decent career for a gentleman outside the
circle of the Court. Moreover, it was not until after
their final rupture, caused by Ariosto's refusal to un-
dertake the Hungarian expedition in his master's train,
that the true greatness of the author of the Furioso was
revealed. How should a dissolute and ill-conditioned
Cardinal have discerned that a dreamy poem in MS.
on the madness of Orlando would live as long as the
sEneid, or that the flattering lies invented by his
courier would in after ages turn the fierce glare of
criticism and celebrity upon the darkest corners of his
own history ? The old legend about his brutal recep-
tion of the Orlando Furioso has been now in part
disproved. 1 We know that he defrayed the expenses
of its publication, and secured the right and profits of
its sale to Ariosto. 2 There is even an entry in his
memoranda of expenditure proving that he bought a
copy for the sum of one lira marchesana? While de-
ploring the waste of Ariosto's time and strength in the
1 Ippolito is said to have asked the poet: " Dove avete trovato, mes-
ser Lodovico, tante corbellerie ? " That he did in effect say something
of the kind is proved by Satire, ii. 94-99.
* Campori, Notizie per la Vita, di L. Ariosto (Modena, Vincenzi,
1871), pp. 55-58.
Ibid. p. 58.
ARIOSTO AND IPPOLITO D> ESTR. 497
uncongenial service of this patron, we must acknowl-
edge that his choice of Ippolito was a mistake for
which he alone was responsible, and that the pane-
gyrics showered on such a man are wholly inexcusable. 1
When all the circumstances of their connection are
taken into account, there is nothing but the extreme
irritation caused by incompatibility of temper, and
divergence of aims and interests, to condone the
poet's private censure of the master whom publicly he
loaded with praises. 2 The whole unhappy story illus-
trates the real conditions of that Court -life, so glow-
ingly described by Castiglione, which proved the ruin
of Tasso and the disgrace of Guarini. Could any-
thing justify the brigandlike brutalities of Pietro
Aretino, il flagello de Principi, we might base his
apology upon the dreary histories of these Italian
poets, soured, impoverished, and broken because they
had been forced to put their trust in princes. When
there lay no choice between levying blackmail by
menaces and coaxing crumbs by flatteries, it accorded
better with the Italian ideal virtu to fatten upon the
former kind of infamy than to starve upon the
latter.
The Orlando Furioso was conceived and begun in
the year i5o5. It was sent to press in i5i5. Gio-
vanni Mazzocchi del Bondeno published it in April,
1 He penned the following couplet in 1503, when it is to be hoped
he had yet not learned to know his master's real qualities:
Quis patre invicto gerit Hercule fortius arma,
Mystica quis casto castius Hippolyto ?
In another epigram, written on the death of the Cardinal, he pretends
that Ippolito, hearing of Alfonso's illness, vowed his own life for his
brother's and was accepted. See Opere Minori, i. 349.
See Satires ii. viL; Capita li i. ii.
498 RENAISSANCE IN ITALY.
1 5 1 6. A large portion of the poet's life was subse-
quently spent in correcting and improving it. In
i5i8, having freed himself from Ippolito's bondage,
Ariosto entered the service of Duke Alfonso I. He was
termed cameriere or famigliare, and his stipend was
fixed at eighty-four golden crowns per annum, with
maintenance for three servants and two horses, paid in
kind. 1 He occupied his own house in Ferrara ; and
the Duke, who recognized his great literary qualities
and appreciated the new luster conferred upon his
family by the publication of the Furioso, left him in the
undisturbed possession of his leisure. 2 The next four
years were probably the happiest of Ariosto's life;
for he had now at last secured independence and had
entered upon the enjoyment of his fame. The Medici
of Florence and Rome, and the ducal families of Urbino
and Mantua, were pleased to number him among their
intimate friends, and he received flattering acknowl-
edgments of his poem from the most illustrious men
of Italy. The few journeys he made at the request of
Alfonso carried him to Florence, the head-quarters of
literary and artistic activity. At home the time he
spared from the revision of the Furioso, was partly
'devoted to the love-affairs he carried on with jealous
secrecy, and partly to the superintendence of the ducal
theater. The criticism of Ariosto's comedies must be
reserved for another chapter. It is enough to remark
here that their composition amused him from his boy-
hood to his latest years. So early as 1493 he had
accompanied Ercole I. to Pavia in order to play before
Lodovico Sforza, and in the same year he witnessed
> Campori, op. cit. p. 59. 2 See Satire iv. 67-72.
DUCAL SERVICE AND THE STAGE. 499
the famous representation of the Mentzchmi at Ferrara.
Some of his earliest essays in literature were transla-
tions of Latin comedies, now unfortunately lost. They
were intended for representation ; and, as exercises in
the playwright's art, they strongly influenced his style.
His own Cassaria appeared for the first time at Ferrara
in i5o8; the Suppositi followed in i5o9, and was
reproduced at the Vatican in 1619. It took Leo's
fancy so much that he besought the author for another
comedy. Ariosto, in compliance with this request,
completed the Negromante, which he had already had
in hand during the previous ten years. The Lena was
first represented at Ferrara in i528, and the Scokistica
was left unfinished at the poet's death. What part
Ariosto took in the presentation of his comedies, is
uncertain ; but it is probable that he helped in their
performance, besides directing the stage and reciting
the prologue. He thus acquired a practical acquaintance
with theatrical management, and it was by his advice,
and on plans furnished by him, that Alfonso built
the first permanent stage at Ferrara in 1532. On the
last day of that year, not long after its erection, the
theater was burned down. These dates are important ;
since they prove that Ariosto's connection with the
stage, as actor, playwright, and manager, was con-
tinuous throughout his lifetime.
Ariosto's peaceful occupations at Ferrara were inter-
rupted early in 1622 by what must be reckoned the
strangest episode of his career. On February 7 in
that year, he was nominated Ducal Commissary for the
government of Garfagnana, a wild upland district
stretching under Monte Pellegrino almost across the
500 RENAISSANCE IN ITALY.
Apennines from the Lucchese to the Modenese frontiers
We find that the salary allowed him by Alfonso had
never been very regularly paid, and that in 1621 the
Duke, straitened in means by his warfare with the
Papacy, was compelled to suspend it altogether. 1 Al
the same period the Communes forming what is known
as Garfagnana (who had placed themselves beneath
the Marquises of Ferrara in the first half of the fifteenth
century, but had lately suffered from Florentine and
Papal incursions) besought Alfonso to assert his suzer-
ainty of their district and to take measures for securing
ts internal quiet. The emoluments of the Commissary
amounted to about 930 lire marchesane, estimated at
something like 2,300 francs of present value; and it
was undoubtedly the pecuniary profits of the office
which induced the Duke to offer it, and the poet to
accept it.
We may think it strange that so acute a judge of
men as Alfonso should have selected the author ol
the Furioso, a confirmed student, almost a recluse in
his habits, and already broken in health, for the gover-
norship of a district half-ruined by foreign raids and
domestic feuds, which had become the haunt of
brigands and the asylum of bandits from surrounding
provinces. Yet we must remember that Ariosto had
already given ample proof of his good sense and
business-like qualities, not only in the administration
of his own affairs, but in numerous embassies under-
taken for the Cardinal and Duke, his masters. At
that epoch of Italian history the name and fame of an
illustrious writer were themselves a power in politics :
1 See Satire v. 172-201.
GOVERNORSHIP OF GARFAGNANA. 501
and it is said that during Ariosto's first journey into
Garfagnana, he owed his liberation from the hands of
brigands to the celebrity of the Orlando Furioso.
Alfonso knew, moreover, that the poet was well
qualified for negotiating with princes; and what was
of grave practical importance, he stood in excellent
personal relations to the Medici, from whom as the
rulers of Florence the Garfagnana was menaced with
invasion. These considerations are sufficient to ex-
plain Alfonso's choice. Nothing but necessity would
probably have induced Ariosto to quit Ferrara for the
intolerable seclusion of those barbarous mountains ;
where it was his duty to issue edicts against brigands,
to hunt outlaws, to punish murderers and robbers, to
exact fines for rape and infamous offenses, to see
that the hangman did his duty, and to sit in judg-
ment daily upon suits that proved the savage im-
morality of the entire population. The hopelessness of
the task might have been enough to break a sterner
heart than Ariosto's, and his loathing of his life at ;
Castelnovo found vent in the most powerful of his
satires. He managed to endure this uncongenial
existence for three years, from February 20, 1622, till
June, 1 525, sustaining his spirits with correspondence
and composition, and varying the monotony of his life
by visits to Ferrara. It was during his Garfagnana
residence in all probability that he composed the
Cinque Canti. The society of his dearly-loved son,
Virginio whose education he superintended and for
This is one of the pretty stories on which some doubt has lately
been cast. See Campori, pp. 105-1 10, for a full discussion of its proba-
ble truth.
50 RENAISSANCE IN ITALY.
whom he wrote the charming seventh Satire to Pietro
Bembo also served to diminish the dreariness of his
exile from love, leisure, and the society of friends.
Virginio was Ariosto's natural son by a woman of
Reggio. He collected the Latin poems after his
father's death, and prepared the Cinque Canh for
Manuzio's press in i545. He also helped his uncle
Gabriele to finish La Scolastica, and wrote a few brief
recollections of his father. Ariosto had a second
illegitimate son, named Giovanni Battista, who dis-
tinguished himself in a military career.
The last eight years of Ariosto's life were spent in
great tranquillity at Ferrara. Soon after his reiturn
from Garfagnana he built his house in the Contrada
Mirasol, and placed upon it the following characteristic
inscription J :
Parva sed apta mihi sed null! obnoxia sed non
Sordida parta meo sed tamen aere domus.
About this time, too, he married the lady to whom for
many years he had been tenderly attached. 2 She was
the Florentine Alessandra Benucci, widow of Tito
Strozzi, whom he first saw at Florence in the year
1 5 1 3. The marriage was kept strictly secret, probably
because the poet did not choose to relinquish the
income he derived from certain minor benefices. Nor
did it prove fruitful of offspring, for Ariosto left u<
legitimate heirs. His life of tranquil study was varied
1 " Small, but suited to my needs, freehold, not mean, the fruit of my
own earnings." His son Virginio substituted another inscription which
may still be seen upon the little house-front: Sic domus hac Areostea
propitios habeat deos olim ut Pindarica " May this house of Ariosto
have gods propitious as of old the house of Pindar."
* The date is uncertain. It was not before 1522, perhaps even so
late as 1527.
MARRIAGE AND THE FURIOSO. 503
only by short journeys to Venice, Abano, and Mantua.
In 1631 he was sent to negotiate certain matters for
his master in the camp of the Marquis del Vasto at
Correggio. On this occasion he received from Alfonso
Davalos a pension of one hundred golden ducats, by a
deed which sets forth in its preamble the duty of
princes to recompense poets who immortalize the acts
of heroes. This is the only instance of reward be-
stowed on Ariosto for his purely literary merits. The
poet repaid his benefactor by magnificent eulogies
inserted in the last edition of the Furioso. 1 Between
the year i525, when he left Garfagnana, and 1632,
when his poem issued from the press, he devoted him-
self with unceasing labor to its revision and improve-
ment. The edition of i5i6 consisted of forty cantos.
That of 1532 contained forty-six, and the whole text
had been subjected in the interval to minute altera-
tions. 2 Not long after the publication of the revised
edition Ariosto's health gave way. His constitution
had never been robust, for he suffered habitually from
a catarrh of the lungs which made his old life as
Ippolito d' Este's courier not only distasteful but
dangerous. 3 Toward the close of 1632 this complaint
took the form of a consumption, which ended his days
on the sixth of June, 1533. Great pains have been
bestowed by his biographers on proving that he
died a good Catholic; nor is there any reason to
suppose that he neglected the consolations of the
Church in his last hours. He was by no means a man
> xv. 28; xxxiii. 24.
* See Panizzi, op. cit. vol. vi. p. cxix. for a description of these ver-
bal changes.
* See especially Satire ii. 28-51, and Capitolo L
504 RENAISSANCE IN ITALY.
to break abruptly with tradition or to make an in-
decorous display of doubts that may have haunted
him. Yet the best Latin verses he ever penned were
a half-humorous copy of hendecasyllables for his own
epitaph, which seem to prove that he applied Mon-
taigne's peut-ttre even to the grave. 1
Of Ariosto's personal habits and opinions we know
unfortunately but little, beyond what may be gathered
from the incomparably transparent self-revelation of his
satires. His son, Virginio, who might have amply
satisfied our curiosity, confined himself to the fewest
and briefest details in the notes transcribed and pub-
lished by Barotti. Some of these, however, are so
characteristic that it may not be inopportune to trans-
late them. With regard to his method of composition,
Virginio writes: " He was never satisfied with his
verses, but altered them again and again, so that he
could not keep his lines in his memory, and conse-
quently lost many of his compositions. ... In horticul-
ture he followed the same system as in composition,
for he would not leave anything he planted for more
than three months in one place; and if he sowed
peaches or any kind of seed, he went so often to see
if they were sprouting, that at last he broke the shoots
He had but small knowledge of herbs, and used to
think that whatever grew near the things he had sown,
were the plants themselves, and watched them dili-
gently till his mistake was proved beyond all doubt.
I remember once, when he had planted capers, he went
every day to see them and was greatly delighted at
their luxuriance. At last he discerned that they were
" Ludovici Areosti humamur ossa," etc., Op. Mia. L 365.
PERSONAL HABITS. 505
but elders, and that the capers had not come up at
all. . . . He was not much given to study, and cared
to see but few books. Virgil gave him pleasure, and
Tibullus for his diction; but he greatly commended
Horace and Catullus, Propertius not much. . . . He
ate fast and much, and made no distinction of food.
So soon as he came home, if he found the bread seO
out, he would eat one piece walking, while the meats
were being brought to table. When he saw them
spread, he had water poured upon his hands and then
began to eat whatever was nearest to him. . . . He
was fond of turnips."
From the bare details of Ariosto's biography it is
satisfactory to turn to the living picture of the man
himself revealed in his Satires. These compositions
rank next to the Orlando Furioso in the literary canon
of his works, and have the highest value for the light
they cast upon his temperament and mode of feeling.
Though they are commonly called Satires, they rather \
deserve the name of Epistles; for while a satiric ele-y
ment gives distinct flavor to each of the seven poems,
this is subordinated to personal and familiar topics of
correspondence. We learn from them what the great
artist of the golden age thought and felt about the
times in which he lived; what moved his indignation or
aroused his sympathy; how he strove to meet the
troubles of his checkered life; and where, amid the
carnival of that mad century, he laid his finger upon
hidden social maladies. Reading them, we come to
know the man himself, and are better able to under-
stand how, while Italy was distracted with wars and
trampled on by foreign armies, he could withdraw him-
506 RENAISSANCE IN ITALY.
self from the tumult, and spend his years in polishing
the stanzas of Orlando. The Satires do not reveal a
hero or a sage, a poet passionate like Dante with the
sense of wrong, or like Petrarch aspiring after an
impossible ideal. It is rather the type of Boccaccio's
character, refined and purged of sensuality, with deli-
cate touches of irony and a more fastidious taste, that
meets us in this portrait of Ariosto painted by himself.
His mental vision is more lucid, his judgment more
acute, his philosophy less indulgent, and his ideal of art
more exacting; yet he, too, might be nicknamed
Lodovico della Tranquillith. With his head in Phili-
roe's lap beside a limpid rivulet, he basks away
the summer hours, and cares not whether French or
German get the upper hand in Italy. 1 Does it greatly
signify, he asks Ercole Strozzi in one of his Latin
poems, whether we serve a French or an Italian tyrant?
Servitude is the same, if the despot be a barbarian only
in manners, like our princelings, or in name too, like
these foreigners. 2
Left alone to study and to polish verses, Ariosto
1 See the Opere Minori, vol. i. p. 336. Also Carducci's eloquent de-
fense of these Horatian verses in his essay, Delle Poesie Latine di L.
Ariosto (Bologna, Zanichelli, 1876), p. 82. The latter treatise is a learned
criticism of Ariosto 's Latin poetry from a point of view somewhat too
indulgent to Ariosto as a poet and a man. Carducci, for example, calls
the four Alcaic stanzas in question " una cosellina quasi perfetta," though
they contain three third lines like these:
Furore militis tremendo
Jacentem aquae ad murmur cadentis
Mecumque cespite hoc recumbens.
Ariosto was but second-rate among the Latin versifiers of his century. If
must, however, be added that his Latin poems were written in early man-
hood and only published after his death by Giambattista Pigna, in 1553
* Op. Min. vol. i. p. 333:
LATIN POEMS AND THE SATIRES. 507
is content. He is content to flatter and confer im-
mortality on the master he despises. He is content
to rest in one place, turning his maps over when he
fain would take a journey into foreign lands. Only
let him be, and give him enough to live upon, and he
will trouble no man, dispute no pretender's claims,
raise no inconvenient questions of right and wrong,
inflame the world with no far-reaching thoughts, but
gild the refined gold of his purest phrases and paint
the lilies of his loveliest thoughts in placid ease. Italy
has grown old, and Ariosto is the genius of a tired,
world-weary, disillusioned age. What is there worth
a struggle ? At the same time he preserves his inde-
pendence as a private gentleman. He passes free
judgment upon society ; and the patron he has praised
officially in his epic, receives hard justice in his
Satires. He is frank and honest, free from hypocrisy
and guile, genial and loyal toward his friends, upright
in his dealings and manly in his instincts. We re-
spect his candor, his contempt for worldly honors,
and his love of liberty. We admire his intellectual
sagacity, his deep and wise philosophy of life, the
knowledge of the world so easily communicated, the
irony so pungent yet so free from bitterness, which
gives piquancy to these familiar discourses. Still
both respect and admiration are tempered with some
Quid nostra an Gallo regi an servire Latino,
Si sit idem hinc atque hinc non leve servrtium?
Barbaricone esse est pejus sub nomine, quam sub
Moribus ? ' At ducibus, Dii, date digna mails.
What Ariosto thought about the Italian despots finds full expression In
the Cinque Canti, ii. 5, 6, where he protests that Caligula, Nero. Phala-
ris, Dionysius and Creon were surpassed by them in cruelty and crime
508 RENAISSANCE IN ITALY.
regret that the greatest poet of the sixteenth century
should have been so easy-going. Such is the Ariosto
revealed to us by the Satires not a noble or sublime
being: by no means the man to save the State if
safety had been possible. Throughout the tragedy of
Italy's last years of freedom he moves, an essentially
comic character, only redeemed by genius and by
Weltweisheit from the ridicule attaching to a man
whose aims are commonplace, and whose complaints
against the world are petty. He is not servile enough
to accept the humiliations of a courtier's lot without
a murmur. He is not proud enough to break his
chains and live in haughty isolation. Hence in these
incomparable records of his private opinion, we find
him at one moment painting the discomforts of his
position with a naivete that provokes our laughter, at
another analyzing the vices of society with luminous
acumen, then shrugging his shoulders and summoning
philosophy to his aid with a final cry of Pazienza!
The motive of the first Epistle is a proposed journey
to Rome. 1 The second enumerates the reasons why
the poet will not accompany Ippolito d' Este to Hun-
' I have followed the order of Lemonnier's edition, vol. i. of Open
Afinori, Florence, 1857. But the dates of composition are uncertain,
and it may be doubted whether Ariosto's own autograph can be taken
as the basis of a chronological arrangement. Much obscurity rests upon
these poems. We do not know, for instance, whether they were sent to
the friends addressed in them by name, or whether the author intended
them for publication. The student may profitably consult upon these
points the lithographed facsimile of the autograph, published at Bologna
by Zanichelli in 1875. Meanwhile it is enough to mention that the first
epistle was addressed to Messer Galasso Ariosto, the poet's brother, the
second to Messer Alessandro Ariosto and Messer Lodovico da Bagno,
the third and fourth to Messer Annibale Maleguccio, the fifth to Mes-
ser Sismondo Maleguccio, the sixth to Messer Buonaventura Pistofilo,
and the seventh to Monsignore Pietro Bembo.
SUBJECTS OF THE SATIR&S. 509
gary. The subject of the third is the choice of a wife.
The fourth discusses the vanity of honors and wealth
in comparison with a contented mind. The fifth
describes the poet's isolation in the Garfagnana, and
contains a confession of his love. In the sixth he
explains why he does not wish to go to Rome and
seek advancement from Clement VII. The seventh
is devoted to the education of youth in the humani-
ties, and contains a retrospect of his own early life.
The satire of the first is directed against the ambition
and avarice of priests, the pride of Roman prelates,
and the nepotism of the Popes. The passage de-
scribing an ecclesiastic's levee is justly famous for its
humor; and the diatribe on Papal vices for its force.
The second shows how the dependents upon princes
are forced to flatter, and how they exchange their
freedom for the empty honor of sitting near great
men at table. Ariosto takes occasion to describe the
character of Ippolito d' Este, who cared for his hawks
and hounds more than for the Muses, and who paid
his body-servants better than the poet of Orlando. 1
44 1 owe you nothing, Phcebus, nor you, holy college
of the Muses! From you I never got enough to
buy myself a cloak. 4 Indeed ? your lord has given
you. . . . ' More than the price of several cloaks,
I grant. But not for your sake, Muses, I am certain.
He has told me, and I do not mind repeating it, that
my verses are just worth the price of their waste
paper. He will not give a penny for my praises,
but pays me for courier's service. His followers in
510 RENAISSANCE IN ITALY.
the barge or villa, his valet- de-chambre and butler, his
lackeys who outwatch the night, get paid. But when
I set his name v/ith honor in my verse, he tells me I
have whiled my time away in ease and pleasure I had
pleased him better by attendance on his person. If
you remind me that I owe to him a third of the
Chancery dues at Milan, I answer that he gave me
this because I ply both spur and whip, change beasts
and guides, and hurry over hills and precipices, risking
my life upon his business."
The third Epistle is a masterpiece of sound counsel
and ripe knowledge of the world. Better rules could
not be given about the precautions to be taken in
selecting a wife, the qualities a man should seek in her,
and the conduct he should use toward her after mar-
riage. The satire consists in that poor opinion of
female honesty which the author of the Funoso had con-
ceived, not without much experience of women, and after
mature reflection upon social institutions. It is not
envenomed like the invectives of the Corbaccio, or
exaggerated like the abuse in Alberti's dialogues.
Leaning back in his arm-chair with an amused and quiet
smile, the indulgent satirist enunciates truths that are
biting only because they condense the wisdom of an
observant lifetime. He never ceases to be kindly;
and we feel, while listening to him, that his epigrams
are double-edged. The poet who has learned thus
much of women, gives the measure of his limited ca-
pacity for noble feeling; for while he paints them as
he finds them, he leaves an impression of his own
emotional banality. After making due allowance for
this defect in Ariosto's point of view, we may
WOMEN AND COURT-LIFE. 511
rank the third Epistle among the ripest products of his
intellect. The fourth resumes the theme of Court-life
and place-hunting. "You ask me, friend Annibale,
how I fare with Duke Alfonso, and whether I find his
service lighter than the Cardinal's. To tell the truth,
I do not like one burden better than the other; and
were I rich enough, I certainly would be no man's
servant. But I was not born an only son, and Mer-
cury was never generous to my race. So I am forced
to live at a patron's charge, and it is better to owe my
maintenance to the Duke than to beg bread from
door to door. I know that most people think it a grand
thing to be a courtier, but I count Court-life as mere
slavery. A nightingale is ill at ease in a cage, and
a swallow dies after a day's imprisonment. If a man
wants to be decorated with the spurs or the red hat,
let him serve kings or popes. For my part, I care
for neither ; a turnip in my own house tastes sweeter
to me than a banquet in a master's. 1 I would rather
stretch my lazy limbs in my armchair than be able
to boast that I had traveled oyer half the globe. I
have seen Tuscany, Lombardy, Romagna, the Apen-
nines and Alps, the Adriatic and the Mediterranean.
That is enough for me. The rest of the world I can
visit at my leisure with Ptolemy for guide. The
Duke's service has this advantage, that it does not in-
terrupt my studies, or take me far from Ferrara, where
my heart is always. I think I hear you laughing at
this point, and saying that neither love of study nor of
country, but a woman ties me to my home. Well:
> See above, p. 505, for Ariosto's liking for turnips. He ate them
with vinegar and wine sauce.
511 RENAISSANCE IN ITALY.
I will confess it frankly. But suppose I had gone to
Rome to fish for benefices, says some one, I should
certainly have netted more than one, especially as I
was Leo's friend before his merits or his luck raised
him to the highest earthly station. I knew him at
Urbino when he cheered his exile with Castiglione
and Bembo; and afterwards when he returned to
Florence, he bade me count upon him like a brother
All this is true; but listen to a fable I will tell you. 1
In time of drought, when there was no water to be had
in all the country, a shepherd found a scanty spring.
He drank of it first, and next his wife, and then his
children, and afterwards his servants and his cattle.
Last of all there came a magpie he had petted in old
days ; but the bird saw that she had no right to drink
of the fountain, for she was neither wife nor child nor
hind, nor could she bring wealth to the household. 2
It is just the same with me. Leo has all the Medici,
and all his friends in exile, who risked their lives and
fortunes for him, and all the priests who made him
pope, to recompense. What is there left for me? It
is true that he has not forgotten me. When I went to
Rome and kissed his foot, he bent down from the holy
seat, and took my hand and saluted me on both cheeks.
Besides, he made me free of half the stamp-dues I was
bound to pay ; and then, breast-full of hope but soaked
with rain and smirched with mud, I went and had my
1 Compare the apologue of the gourd and the pear-tree in the sixth
Satire (55-114). It is to the same effect, but even plainer.
* The word I have translated "magpie" is gaza in the autograph.
This has been interpreted as a slip of the pen for ganza; but it may be a
Lombardism for gaxxa. In the latter case we should translate it mag-
pie," .n the former "sweetheart." 1 prefer to read gaxsa, as the ironi-
cal analogy between a magpie and a poet is characteristic of Ariosto
PLACE-HUNTING. 513
supper at the Ram! 1 But supposing the Pope kept
all his promises and put as many miters on my head
as Michelangelo's Jonah sees beneath him in the
Sistine Chapel, what would this profit me? No
amount of wealth can satisfy desire. Honors and
riches do not bring tranquillity of mind. True honor
is, to be esteemed an honest man, and to be this
in good earnest; for if you are not really one, you
will be detected. What is the advantage of wearing
fine clothes and being bowed to in the market-place,
if people point you out behind your back as thief and
traitor ? There are dignities which are notorious dis- ,
graces ; and the richer and greater a man is who has
gained his rank dishonorably, the more he calls atten-
tion to his shame."
Quante collane, quante cappe nove
Per dignitk si comprano, che sono
Pubblici vituperi in Roma e altrove!
In the sixth Epistle written in the Garfagnana,
Ariosto still further develops the same theme. His
friend, Pistofilo, had advised him to go to Rome and
seek preferment from Clement VII. " What would
be the use ? " he argues. " I have as much of worldly
honor as I care for; and if Leo did not find it in
liis power to help me, I cannot expect anything from
the other Medici. Nay, my friend, bait your hook
with more enticing dainties : remind me of Bembo,
Sadoleto, Giovio, Vida, Molza, Tibaldeo; in whose
1 The irony of this passage is justly celebrated. After all his hopes
and all the pontiff's promises, the poet gets a kiss, a trifling favor, and
has to trudge down from the Vatican to his inn. The me**a bolla is
supposed to refer to the fine for entrance on the little benefice of Sant
Agata, half of which Leo remitted.
514 RENAJSSAXCh IN ITALY.
company I might wander over the seven hills : or
speak to me about the libraries of Rome. Not even
these allurements would move me; for if I had to
live away from Ferrara, I should not be happy in
the lap of Jove. Existence is only made endurable
by occasional visits to the town I love ; and if the
Duke wishes to fulfill my desires, he must recall me
to himself and make me stationary at Ferrara. Why
do I cling so to that place, you ask me ? I would
as lief tell you as confess my worst crimes to a friar.
I am forty-nine years of age, and too old to be the
slave of love." The conclusion of the sixth Epistle
makes it clear that his residence at Castelnovo was
irksome to the poet because it forced him to be absent
from the woman he loved. But the fifth is even
more explicit. " This day completes the first year of
my exile among these barbarous mountains, dead to
the Muses, divided by snows, fells, forests, rivers,
from the mistress of my soul! 1 I am nearly fifty,
and yet love rules me like a beardless boy. Well:
this weakness is at least pardonable. I do not com
mit murder; I do not smite or stab, or vex my neigh-
bors. I am not consumed with avarice, ambition,
prodigality, or monstrous lust. But in this doleful
place my heart fails me. I cannot write poetry as
I used to do at Reggio when life was young. Im-
prisoned between the naked heights of Pania and
Pellegrino's precipices, the wild steeps of these woody
Apennines inclose me in a living grave. Here in the
castle, or out there in the open air, my ears are deaf-
1 The third elegy is a. beautiful lamentation over his separation from
his mistress. Written to ease his heart in solitude, it is more impas-
sioned and less guarded than the epistle.
THE FIF7W SATIRE. 515
ened with continual law -suits, accusations, brawls.
Theft, murder, hatred, vengeance, anger, furnish me
with occupation day and night. My time is spent in
threatening, punishing, persuading, or acquitting. I
write dispatches daily to the Duke for counsel or for
aid against the bandits that encompass me. The
whole province is disorganized with brigandage, and
its eighty-three villages are in a state of chronic dis-
cord. Is it likely then that Phoebus, when I call him,
will quit Delphi for this den ? You ask me why I
left my mistress and my studies for so dolorous a cave
of care. I was never greedy of money, and my sti-
pend at Ferrara satisfied me, until the war stopped it
altogether, as well as my profits from the Chancery at
Milan. When I asked the Duke for help, it so hap-
pened that the Garfagnana wanted a Governor, and he
sent me here with more regard for my necessities than
for the needs of the people under my care. I am
grateful to him for his good will; but though his gift
is costly, it is not to my mind. So I am like the cock
who found a jewel on his dungheap, or like the Vene-
tian who had a fine horse given him and could not
ride it."
The satirical passages in this Epistle can be sepa
rated from its autobiography, and furnish striking
specimens of Ariosto's style. In order to show how
ill the world judges of the faults and follies of great
men, he draws a series of portraits with a few but tell-
ing touches. Though furnished with fictitious names,
they suit the persons of the time to a nicety. This,
for example, is Francesco Guicciardini, as Pitti repre-
sented him:
516 RENAISSANCE IN ITALY.
Ermilian si del denajo ardente
Come di Alessio il Gianfa, e che lo brama
Ogn' ora, in ogni loco, da ogni gente,
N6 amico ne fratel ne se stesso ama;
Uomo d' industria, uomo di grande ingegno,
Di gran goverao e gran valor si chiama.
And here, without doubt, is the elder Lorenzo de
Medici l :
Laurin si fa della sua patria capo,
Ed in privato il pubblico converte;
Tre ne confina, a sei ne taglia il capo;
Comincia volpe, indi con forze aperte
Esce Icon, poi c' ha '1 popol sedutto
Con licenze, con doni e con offerte.
Gl' iniqui alzando, e deprimendo in lutto
Gli buoni, acquista titolo di saggio,
Di furti, stupri e d* omicidi brutto. '
Autobiography and satire are mingled in the same
unequal proportions in the seventh Epistle, which is
perhaps the most interesting poem of the series.
" Bembo," so begins the letter, " I want my son Vir-
ginio to be well taught in the arts that elevate a man.
You possess them all: I therefore ask you to recom-
mend me a good Greek tutor at Venice or Padua, in
whose house the youth may live and study. The
Greek must be learned, but also of sound principles,
for erudition without morality is worse than worthless.
Unhappily, in these days it is difficult to find a teacher
of this sort. Few humanists are free from the most
infamous of vices, and intellectual vanity makes most
of them skeptics also. Why is it that learning and
infidelity go hand in hand? Why do our scholars
1 It may be interesting to compare this scarcely disguised satire with
the official flatteries of Canzone ii. and Elegies i., xiv., where Ariostc
praises the Medici, and especially Lorenzo, as the saviours of Florence,
the honor of Italy.
CHOICE OF A TUTOR. 517
Latinize their names of baptism, changing Peter into
Pierius, and John into Janus, or Jovianus? Plato was
right when he expelled such poets from his State
Little have they in common with Phoebus and Am-
phion who taught civil life to barbarous races. For
myself, it stings me to the quick when men of my own
profession are proved thus vain and vicious. Find,
then, an honest tutor to instruct Virginio in Greek.
I have already taught him Latin; but the difficulties
of my early manhood deprived me of Greek learning.
My father drove me at the spear's point into legal
studies. I wasted five years in that trifling, and it
was not till I was twenty that I found a teacher in
Gregorio da Spoleto. He began by grounding me in
Latin ; but before we had advanced to Greek, the good
man was summoned to Milan. His pupil, Francesco
Sforza, went with II Moro, a prisoner, into France.
Gregorio followed him, and died there. Then my
father died and left me the charge of my younger
brothers and sisters. I had to neglect study and be-
come a strict economist. Next my dear relative Pan-
dolfo Ariosto, the best and ablest of our house, died ;
and, as if these losses were not enough, I found my-
self beneath the yoke of Ippolito d' Este. All through
the reign of Julius II. and for seven years of Leo's
pontificate he kept me on the move from place to
place, and made me courier instead of poet Small
chance had I of learning Greek or Hebrew on those
mountain roads."
These abstracts of Ariosto's so-called Satires will
not be reckoned superfluous when we consider the
clear light they cast upon his personal character and
5l8 RENAISSANCE IN ITALY.
philosophy. The note of sincerity throughout is un-
mistakable. No one can read the pure and simple
language of the poet without feeling that his mind was
as transparent as his style, his character as ingenuous
as his diction was perspicuous. When he tells us, for
example, that he does not care for honors, that he
prefers his study to the halls of princes, and that a
turnip in his own house tastes better than the pheasants
of a ducal table, we believe him. His confession of un-
seasonable love, and his acknowledgment that he has
none of the qualities of judge or ruler, are a security
for equal frankness when he professes himself free
from avarice and the common vices of his age. His
satire upon women, his picture of the Roman prelates,
his portraits of great men, and his condemnation of
the humanists are convincing by their very modera-
tion. Like Horace, he plays about the heart instead
of wielding the whip of Lucilius. This parsimony of
expression adds weight to his censure, and renders
these epistles more decisive than the invectives in
which contemporary authors indulged. We doubt the
calumnies of Poggio and Filelfo until we read the
well-considered passage of the seventh Epistle, which
includes them all. 1 In like manner the last lines of
the fourth Epistle confirm the Diaries of Burchard and
Infessura, while the first contains an epitome of all
that could be said of Alexander's nepotism. These
familiar poems have, therefore, a singular value for the
illustration of the Italian Renaissance in general no
less than for that of Ariosto's own life. Furthermore,
they are unique in the annals of Italian literature.
22-69.
AR10ST&S SINCERITY. 519
The terza rima of Dante's vision has here become a
vehicle for poetry separated by the narrowest interval
from prose. It no longer lends itself to parody, as in
the Beoni of Lorenzo de' Medici. It is not contami-
nated by the foul frivolities of the Bernesque Capitoli.
It takes with accuracy the impress of the writer's
common thought and feeling. The meter designed to
express a sublime belief, adapts itself to the discursive
utterance of a man of sense and culture in a disillu-
sioned age; and thus we might use the varying for-
tunes of terza rima to symbolize the passage from the
trecento to the cinque cento, from Dante to Ariosto,
from faith and inspiration to art and reflection.
Ariosto's minor poems, with but one or two excep-
tions, have direct reference to the circumstances of his
life. They consist of Elegies, Capitoli, and an Eclogue
composed in terza rima, with Canzoni, Sonnets, and
Madrigals of the type made obligatory by Petrarch.
The poet of the Orlando was not great in lyric verse.
These lesser compositions show his mastery of simple
and perspicuous style; but the specific qualities of his
best work, its color and imagery and pointed humor,
are absent. The language is sometimes pedestrian
in directness, sometimes encumbered with conceits
that anticipate the taste of the seventeenth century. 1
Where it is plainest, we lack the seasoning of epigram
and illustration which enlivens the Satires; and
though the sincere feeling a/id Ovidian fluency of the
more ambitious lyrics render them delightful reading,
As when, for instance, he calls the sun in the first Canton*, " 1
omicida lucido d' Achille." Several of the sonnets are artificial In their
tropes.
530 RENAISSANCE IN ITALY.
we acknowledge that a wider channel of description or
narrative or reflection was needed for the full tide
of the poet's eloquence. The purely subjective style
was hardly suited to his genius.
Only three Canzoni are admitted into the canon of
Ariosto's works. The first relates the origin of his
love for Alessandra Benucci, wife of Tito Strozzi,
whom he admired as wife and married as widow. It
was on S. John's Day in the year 1613 that he saw
her at Florence among the gay crowd of the mid-
summer festival. She was dressed in black silk em-
broidered with two vines, her golden hair twisted into
heavy braids, and her forehead overshadowed with a
jeweled laurel-wreath. The brightness of the scene
was blotted out for the poet, and swallowed in the
intense luster of her beauty:
D* altro ch' io vidi, tenni
Poco ricordo, e poco me ne cale:
Sol mi restb immortale
Memoria, ch' io non vidi in tutta quella
Bella citta, di voi cosa piQ bella.
How much he admired Florence, he tells us in the
fourteenth elegy, where this famous compliment
occurs:
Se dentro un mur, sotto un medesmo nome
Fosser raccolti i tuoi palazzi sparsi,
Non ti sarian da pareggiar due Rome.
The second Canzone is supposed to be spoken by
the soul of Giuliano de' Medici, Duke of Nemours,
to his widow, Filiberta of Savoy. Elevation of concep-
tion raises the language of this poem to occasional sub-
limity, as in the passage where he speaks of immor-
tality:
CANZONI AND ELEGIES. $21
Di me t' incresca, ma non altrtmente
Che, s' io vivessi ancor, t* incresceria
D* una partita mia
Che tu avessi a seguir fra pochi giorni:
E se qualche e qualch" anno anco soggiorni
Col tuo mortale a patir caldo e verno,
Lo de"i stimar per un momento breve,
Verso quel altro, che mai non riceve
Ne termine ne fin, viver eterno.
1'he undulation of rhythm obeying the thought renders
these lines in a high sense musical.
Some of the Elegies have been already used in
illustration of other poems. There remain a group
apart, which seem to have been directly modeled
upon Ovid. Of these the sixth, describing a night of
love, and the seventh, when the lover dares not enter
his lady's door in moonlight lest he should be seen, are
among the finest. The ninth, upon fidelity in love,
contains these noble lines :
La fede mai non debbe esser corrotta,
O data a un sol o data ancor a cento,
Data in palese o data in una grotta.
Per la vil plebe e fatto il giuramento;
Ma tra gli spirti piu elevati sono
Le semplici promesse un sagramento.
The second is written on the famous black pen fringed
with gold, which Ariosto adopted for his device and
wore embroidered on his clothes. He declines to
explain the meaning of this bearing ; but it is commonly
believed to have referred in some way to his love for
Alessandra Strozzi. Barufifaldi conjectures that her
black dress and golden hair suggested the two colors
But since this elegy threatens curious inquirers with
Actaeon's fate, we may leave his device to the obscurity
522 RENAISSANCE IN ITALY.
he sought. Secrecy in respect to the great passion oi
his life was jealously maintained by Ariosto. His ink-
stand at Ferrara still bears a Cupid with one finger on
his lip, as though to bid posterity observe the reticence
adopted by the poet in his lifetime.
The Madrigals and Sonnets do not add much to our
conception of Ariosto's genius. It has been well
remarked that while his Latin love-poems echo the
style of Horace, these are imitations of Petrarch's
manner. 1 In the former he celebrates the facile
attractions of Lydia and Megilla, or confesses that he
is inconstant in every thing except in always varying
his loves. 2 In the latter he professes to admire a
beautiful soul and eloquent lips more than physical
charms, praises the spiritual excellences of his mis-
tress, and writes complimentary sonnets on her golden
hair. 3 In neither case is there any insincerity. Ariosto
never pretended to be a platonic lover, nor did he
credit women with great nobility of nature. Yet on
the other hand it is certain that he was no less tenderly
than passionately attached to Alessandra; and this
serious love, of which the Sonnets are perhaps the
record, triumphed over the volatility of his earlier
affections.
It is enough in this chapter to have dealt with
Ariosto's life and minor writings. The Orlando Furioso
considered both as the masterpiece of his genius and
also as the representative poem of the Italian Renais-
sance, must form the subject of a separate study.
' De Sanctis, ii.
* See especially the lines entitled De su& ipsius mobilltatc*
8 See Sonnets xii. xi. xxvi. xxiii.
APPENDICES.
APPENDIX I.
Note on Italian Heroic Verse.
(See above, p. 24.)
THE Italian hendecasyllable is an accentual iambic line of
five feet with one unaccented syllable over and included
in the rhyme. Thus the first line of the Inferno may be
divided:
Nel mezjzo del | cammin | di nosjtra vita.
When the verse is so constructed, it is said to \>z piano, the
rhyme being what in English we call double. When the
rhyme is single, the verse is franco, and the rhythm corre-
sponds to that of our heroic, as in the following instance
(Par. xxv. IO2):
II ver|no avreb|be un me|se d* un | sol dL
When the rhyme is treble, the verse is sdrucciolo, of which
form this is a specimen (Par. xxvi. 78):
Che ri|fulge|va piti | di miljle milia.
It is clear that the quality of the verse is not affected by the
number of syllables in the rhyme; and the line is called
hendecasyllabic because versi piani are immeasurably more
frequent and more agreeable to the ear than either verst
tronchi or sdruccioli.
If we inquire into the origin of the meter, the first remark
we have to make is that lines of similar construction were
used by poets of Provence. Dante, for example, quotes
(De Vulg. Eloq. ii. 2) from Bertram:
NOD puesc roudar q* un chantar non espaija.
5*4 APPENDIX I.
This fact will seem to many minds conclusive on the point
in question. But, following the investigations of recent
scholars, we find this form of verse pretty generally referred
to the watch-song of the Modenese soldiers. Thus Professor
Adolfo Bartoli, after quoting two lines of that song,
O tu qui servas armis ista moenia,
Noli dormire, moneo, sed vigila,
adds: " qul apparisce per la prima volta il nostro verso endeca-
sillabo, regolarmente accentato." If this, which is the view
accepted by Italian critics, be right, he ought to have added
that each line of the Modenese watch song is a sdrucciolo
verse. Otherwise, the rhythm bears the appearance of a six-
foot accentual iambic, an appearance which is confirmed by
the recurrence of a single rhyme or assonance in a through-
out the poem. Still the strong accent on the antepenulti-
mate syllable of every verse is sufficient to justify us in
regarding the meter as endecasillabo sdrucciolo.
Going further back than the Modenese watch-song (date
about 924), the next question is whether any of the classic
meters supplied its precedent. By reading either Horatian
Sapphics or Catullian hendecasyllables without attention
to quantity, we may succeed in marking the beat of the
endecasillabo piano? Thus:
Cui dojno lep|idum | novum | libellum ?
and:
Serus | in cce|lum redjeas, | diuque
Laetus | interjsis po|pulo | Quirini.
When these lines are translated into literal Italian, the
metamorphosis is complete. Thus:
Cui donjo il lepjido | nuovo | libretto ?
and:
Tardo in ] ciel ried'i e di|utur|no serba
Fausto il 1 tuo aspet|to al popjol di 1 Quirlno.
Even Alcaics, unceremoniously handled by a shifting of the
accent, which is violent disregard of quantity, yield like results.
Thus:
Atqui | scie | bat qua: [ sibi [ barbarus.
APPENDIX 1. 535
Or in Italian:
Eppur | conob|be db | ch* II manjigoldo.
The accentual Sapphics of the middle ages throw some
curious light upon these transmutations of meter. In a
lament for Aquileia (tenth century) we find these lines:
Bella sublimis inclyta divitiis,
Olim fuisti celsa aedificiis.
Here, instead of the Latin Sapphic, we get a loose sdrucciok
rhythm. The meter of the Serventese seems built upon this
medieval Sapphic model. Here is an example l :
O Jeso Cristo, padre onipotente,
Aprestame lo core con la mente
Che rasonare possa certamente
Un servientese.
When the humanistic Italians tried to write Italian Sap-
phics, they produced a meter not very dissimilar. Thus in
the Certamen Coronarium*:
Eccomi, i' son qui Dea degli amid,
Quella qual tutti li omini solete
Mordere, e falso fuggitiva dirli
Or la voletc.
What seems tolerably certain is that the modern Italian
hendecasyllable was suggested by one of the Latin eleven-
syllabled meters, but that, in the decay of quantitative
prosody, an iambic rhythm asserted itself. It has no exact
correspondence in any classic meter; but it was early devel-
oped out of the accentual Latin measures which replaced
quantitative meter in the middle ages. Signer Rubieri
points out that there may be traces of it in the verses of
Etruscan inscriptions.* Nor is it impossible that the rhythm
was indigenous, persisting through a long period of Graeco-
Roman culture, to reappear when the rustic language threw
out a modern idiom.
' Carducci, Intorno ad Alcune Rime, p. 107.
* Opere Volgari di L. B. Alberti, vol. i. p. cootv.
See passage referred to above, p. 5x4, note.
APPENDIX II.
Ten Sonnets translated from Folgore da San Gemignano.
(See Chapter I. p. 55.)
ON THE ARMING OF A KNIGHT.
This morn a young squire shall be made a knight;
Whereof he fain would be right worthy found,
And therefore pledgeth lands and castles round
To furnish all that fits a man of might
Meat, bread and wine he gives to many a wight;
Capons and pheasants on his board abound,
Where serving men and pages march around;
Choice chambers, torches, and wax-candle light
Barbed steeds, a multitude, are in his thought,
Mailed men at arms and noble company,
Spears, pennants, housing-cloths, bells richly wrought
Musicians following with great barony
And jesters through the land his state have brought,
With dames and damsels whereso rideth he
IL
Lo Prowess, who despoileth him straightway,
And saith: "Friend, now beseems it thee to strip;
For I will see men naked, thigh and hip,
And thou my will must know and eke obey;
And leave what was thy wont until this day,
And for new toil, new sweat, thy strength equip;
This do, and thou shall join my fellowship,
If of fair deeds thou tire not nor cry nay."
APPENDIX II. 5*7
And when she sees his comely body bare,
Forthwith within her arms she him doth take,
And saith: "These limbs thou yieldest to my prayer:
I do accept thee, and this gift thee make,
So that thy deeds may shine for ever fair,
My lips shall never more thy praise forsake. "
m.
Humility to him doth gently go,
And saith: "I would in no wise weary thee;
Yet must I cleanse and wash thee thoroughly,
And I will make thee whiter than the snow.
Hear what I tell thee in few words, for so
Fain am I of thy heart to hold the key;
Now must thou sail henceforward after me;
And I will guide thee as myself do go.
But one thing would I have thee straightway leave:
Well knowest thou mine enemy is pride;
Let her no more unto thy spirit cleave:
So leal a friend with thee will I abide
That favor from all folk thou shalt receive;
This grace hath he who keepeth on my side."
rv.
Then did Discretion to the squire draw near,
And drieth him with a fair cloth and clean,
And straightway putteth him the sheets between,
Silk, linen, counterpane, and minevere.
Think now of this I Until the day was clear,
With songs and music and delight the queen,
And with new knights, fair fellows well-beseen,
To make him perfect, gave him goodly cheer.
Then saith she: "Rise forthwith, for now 'tis due,
Thou shouldst be born into the world again;
Keep well the order thou dost take in view."
Unfathomable thoughts with him remain
Of that great bond he may no more eschew;
Nor can he say, "I'll hide me from this chain,"
5 28 APPENDIX II.
V.
Comes Blithesomeness with mirth and merriment,
All decked in flowers she seemeth a rose-tree;
Of linen, silk, cloth, fur, now beareth she
To the new knight a rich habiliment;
Head-gear and cap and garland flower-besprent,
So brave they were, Maybloom he seemed to be;
With such a rout, so many and such glee,
That the floor shook. Then to her work she went,
And stood him on his feet in hose and shoon;
And purse and gilded girdle neath the fur
That drapes his goodly limbs, she buckles on;
Then bids the singers and sweet music stir,
And showeth him to ladies for a boon
And all who in that following went with her.
THE CRY FOR COURTESY.
Courtesy! Courtesy! Courtesy! I call:
But from no quarter comes there a reply.
They who should show her, hide her; wherefore I
And whoso needs her, ill must us befall.
Greed with his hook hath ta'en men one and all,
And murdered every grace that dumb doth lie:
Whence, if I grieve, I know the reason why;
From you, great men, to God I make my call:
For you my mother Courtesy have cast
So low beneath your feet she there must bleed;
Your gold remains, but you're not made to last
Of Eve and Adam we are all the seed:
Able to give and spend, you hold wealth fast:
111 is the nature that rears such a breed !
APPENDIX 1L 529
ON THE GHIBELLINE VICTORIES.
I praise thee not, O God, nor give thee glory,
Nor yield thee any thanks, nor bow the knee,
Nor pay thee service; for this irketh me
More than the souls to stand in purgatory;
Since thou hast made us Guelphs a jest and story
Unto the Ghibellines for all to see:
And if Uguccion claimed tax of thee,
Thou'dst pay it without interrogatory.
Ah, well I wot they know thee ! and have stolen
St Martin from thee, Altopascio,
St Michael, and the treasure thou hast lost;
And thou that rotten rabble so hast swollen
That pride now counts for tribute; even so
Thou'st made their heart stone-hard to thine own cost
TO THE PISANS.
Ye are more silky-sleek than ermines are,
Ye Pisan counts, knights, damozels, and squires,
Who think by combing out your hair like wires
To drive the men of Florence from their car.
Ye make the Ghibellines free near and for,
Here, there, in cities, castles, buts, and byres,
Seeing how gallant in your brave attires,
How bold you look, true paladins of war.
Stout-hearted are ye as a hare in chase,
To meet the sails of Genoa on the sea;
And men of Lucca never saw your face
Dogs with a bone for courtesy are ye:
Could Folgore but gain a special grace,
He'd have you banded 'gainst all men that be.
530 APPENDIX II.
ON DISCRETION.
Dear friend, not every herb puts forth a flower;
Nor every flower that blossoms, fruit doth bear;
Nor hath each spoken word a virtue rare;
Nor every stone in earth its healing power:
This thing is good when mellow, that when sour;
One seems to grieve, within doth rest from care;
Not every torch is brave that flaunts in air;
There is what dead doth seem, yet flame doth shower.
Wherefore it ill behooveth a wise man
His truss of every grass that grows to bind,
Or pile his back with every stone he can,
Or counsel from each word to seek to find,
Or take his walks abroad with Dick and Dan:
Not without cause I'm moved to speak my mind.
ON DISORDERED WILL.
What time desire hath o'er the soul such sway
That reason finds nor place nor puissance here,
Men oft do laugh at what should claim a tear,
And over grievous dole are seeming gay.
He sure would travel far from sense astray
Who should take frigid ice for fire; and near
Unto this plight are those who make glad cheer
For what should rather cause their soul dismay.
But more at heart might he feel heavy pain
Who made his reason subject to mere will,
And followed wandering impulse without rein;
Seeing no lordship is so rich as still
One's upright self unswerving to sustain,
To follow worth, to flee things vain and ill.
APPENDIX III.
Translations from A If s so Donati.
(See Chapter III. p. 157.)
THE NUN.
The knotted cord, dark veil and tunic gray,
I'll fling aside, and eke this scapulary,
Which keeps me here a nun immured alway:
And then with thee, dressed like a gallant gay,
With girded loins and limber gait and free,
I'll roam the world, where chance us twain may carry.
I am content slave, scullion-wench to be;
That will not irk me as this irketh me !
THE LOVERS.
Nay, get thee gone now, but so quietly,
By God, so gently go, my love,
That yon damned villain may hear naught thereof !
He's quick of hearing : if he hears but me
Turn myself round in bed,
He clasps me tight for fear I may be sped.
God curse whoever joined me to this hind,
Or hopes in churls good merchandise to find )
THE GIRL.
In dole I dree the days all lonely here,
A young girl by her mother shut from life,
Who guardeth me with jealousy and strife:
But by the cross of God I swear to her,
If still she keeps me pent up thus to pine,
I'll say: "Aroint thee, thou fell hag malign I"
And fling yon wheel and distaff to the wall,
And fly to thee, my love, who art mine all 1
APPENDIX IV.
Presepio, Corrotto, and Cantico del? Amore
Supcrardente, Translated into English Verse.
(See Chapter V. pp. 291 et sey.)
THREE POEMS ATTRIBUTED TO JACOPONE DA TODI.
THOUGH judging it impossible to preserve the least part of
Jacopone's charm in a translation, I have made versions of
the Christmas Carol, the Passion Poem, and the Hymn of
Divine Love, alluded to in chapter v., pp. 291-298. The
metrical structure of the first is confused in the original; but
1 have adopted a stanza which follows the scheme pretty
closely, and reproduces the exact number of the lines. In
the second I have forced myself to repeat the same rhyme at
the close of each of the thirty-four strophes, which in the
Italian has a very fine effect the sound being ato. No
English equivalent can do it justice. The third poem I ad-
mit to be really untranslatable. The recurrences of strong
voweled endings in ore, are, ezza, ate cannot be imitated.
THE PRESEPIO.
By thy great and glorious merit,
Mary, Mother, Maid !
In thy firstling, new-born child
All our life is laid.
That sweet smiling infant child,
Born for us, I wis;
That majestic baby mild,
Yield him to our kiss !
APPENDIX IV. 533
Clasping and embracing him,
We shall drink of bliss.
Who could crave a deeper joy ?
Purer none was made.
For thy beauteous baby boy
We a-hungered burn;
Yea, with heart and soul of grace
Long for him and yearn.
Grant us then this prayer; his tec
Toward our bosom turn:
Let him keep us in his care,
On his bosom stayed I
Mary, in the manger where
Thou hast strewn his nest,
With thy darling baby we
Fain would dwell at rest
Those who cannot take him, see,
Place him on their breast !
Who shall be so rude and wild
As to spurn thee, Maid?
Come and look upon her child
Nestling in the hay I
See his fair arms opened wide,
On her lap to play I
And she tucks him by her side,
Cloaks him as she may;
Gives her paps unto his mouth,
Where his lips are laid.
For the little babe had drouth,
Sucked the breast she gave;
All he sought was that sweet breast,
Broth he did not crave;
With his tiny mouth he pressed,
Tiny mouth that clave:
Ah, the tiny baby thing,
Mouth to bosom laid !
534
APPENDIX IV.
She with left hand cradling
Rocked and hushed her boy,
And with holy lullabies
Quieted her toy.
Who so churlish but would rise
To behold heaven's joy
Sleeping? In what darkness drowned.
Dead and renegade ?
Little angels all around
Danced, and carols flung;
Making verselets sweet and true,
Still of love they sung;
Calling saints and sinners too
With love's tender tongue;
Now that heaven's high glory is
On this earth displayed.
Choose we gentle courtesies,
Churlish ways forswear;
Let us one and all behold
Jesus sleeping there.
Earth, air, heaven he will unfold,
Flowering, laughing fair;
Such a sweetness, such a grace
From his eyes hath rayed.
O poor humble human race,
How uplift art thou 1
With the divine dignity
Re-united now !
Even the Virgin Mary, she
All amazed doth bow;
And to us who sin inherit,
Seems as though she prayed.
By thy great and glorious merit,
Mary, Mother, Maid !
In thy firstling, new-born child
All our life is laid.
APPENDIX IV. 53 q
CORROTTO.
Messenger. Lady of Paradise, woe's me,
Thy son is taken, even he,
Christ Jesus, that saint blessed 1
Run, Lady, look amain
How the folk him constrain:
Methinks they him have slain,
Sore scourged, with rods oppress
Mary. Nay, how could this thing be?
To folly ne'er turned he,
Jesus, the hope of me:
How did they him arrest?
Messenger. Lady, he was betrayed;
Judas sold him, and bade
Those thirty crowns be paid
Poor gain, where bad is best.
Mary. Ho, succor ! Magdalen !
The storm is on me: men
My own son, Christ, have ta'en !
This news hath pierced my breast.
Messenger. Aid, Lady I Up and run 1
They spit upon thy son,
And hale him through the town;
To Pilate they him wrest
Mary. O Pilate, do not let
My son to pain be set I
That he is guiltless, yet
With proofs I can protest
The Jews. Crucify ! Crucify I
Who would be King, must die.
He spurns the Senate by
Our laws, as these attest
We'll see if, stanch of state,
He can abide this fate;
Die shall he at the gate,
And Barab he redressed.
536 APPENDIX IV.
Mary, I pray thee, hear my prayer i
Think on my pain and care I
Perchance thou then wilt bear
New thoughts and change thy quest.
The Jews. Bring forth the thieves, for they
Shall walk with him this day:
Crown him with thorns, and say
He was made king in jest.
Mary. O Son, Son, Son, dear Son I
O Son, my lovely Son 1
Son, who shall shed upon
My anguished bosom rest?
O jocund eyes, sweet Son I
Why art Thou silent ? Son I
Son, wherefore dost Thou shun.
This thy own mother's breast?
Messenger. Lady, behold the tree !
The people bring it, see,
Where the true Light must be
Lift up at man's behest 1
Mary. O cross, what wilt thou do ?
Wilt thou my Son undo ?
Him will they fix on you,
Him who hath ne'er transgressed ?
Messenger. Up, full of grief and bale 1
They strip thy son, and rail;
The folk are fain to nail
Him on yon cross they've dressed.
Mary. If ye his raiment strip,
I'll see him, breast and hip !
Lo, how the cruel whip
Hath bloodied back and chest !
Messenger. Lady, his hand outspread
Unto the cross is laid:
Tis pierced; the huge nail's head
Down to the wood they've pressed
They seize his other hand,
And on the tree expand:
His pangs are doubled and
Too keen to be expressed 1
APPENDIX IV. 537
Lady, his feet they take,
And pin them to the stake,
Rack every joint, and make
Each sinew manifest!
Mary. I now the dirge commence.
Son, my life's sole defense I
Son, who hath torn thee hence ?
Sweet Son, my Son caressed 1
Far better done had they
My heart to pluck away,
Than by thy cross to lay
Of thee thus dispossessed I
Christ, Mother, why weep'st thou so ?
Thou dealest me death's blow.
To watch thy tears, thy woe
Unstinted, tears my breast
Mary. Son, who hath twinned us two?
Son, father, husband true 1
Son, who thy body slew ?
Son, who hath thee suppressed i*
Christ. Mother, why wail and chide ?
I will thou shouldst abide,
And serve those comrades tried
I saved amid the rest
Mary. Son, say not this to me 1
Fain would I hang with thee
Pierced on the cross, and be
By thy side dying blessed I
One grave should hold us twain,
Son of thy mother's pain 1
Mother and Son remain
By one same doom oppressed 1
Christ. Mother, heart-full of woe,
I bid thee rise and go
To John, my chosen 1 GO
Is he thy son confessed.
John, this my mother see:
Take her in charity:
Cherish her piteously:
The sword hath pierced her breast
538 APPENDIX IV.
Mary. Son I Ah, thy soul hath flown !
Son of the woman lone 1
Son of the overthrown 1
Son, poisoned by sin's pest!
Son of white ruddy cheer 1
Son without mate or peer !
Son, who shall help me here,
Son, left by thee, distressed 1
Son, white and fair of face I
Son of pure jocund grace 1
Son, why did this wild place,
This world, Son, thee detest ?
Son, sweet and pleasant Son !
Son of the sorrowing one 1
Son, why hath thee undone
To death this folk unblessed ?
John, my new son, behold
Thy brother he is cold 1
I feel the sword foretold,
Which prophecies attest
Lo, Son and mother slain !
Dour death hath seized the twain:
Mother and Son, they strain
Upon one cross embraced.
Here the miserable translation ends. But I would that I
could summon from the deeps of memory some echo of the
voice I heard at Perugia, one dark Good Friday evenrng,
singing Penitential Psalms. This made me feel of what sort
was the Corrotto, chanted by the confraternities of Umbria.
The psalms were sung on that occasion to a monotonous
rhythm of melodiously simple outline by three solo voices
in turn soprano, tenor, and bass. At the ending of each
psalm a candle before the high-altar was extinguished, until
all light and hope and spiritual life went out for the damned
soul. The soprano, who sustained the part of pathos, had
the fullness of a powerful man's chest and larynx, with the
pitch of a woman's and the timbre of a boy's voice. He
seemed able to do what he chose in prolonging and sustaining
notes, with wonderful effects of crescendo and diminuendo
APPENDIX IV. 539
passing from the wildest and most piercing forte to the ten-
derest pianissimo. He was hidden in the organ-loft; and as
he sang, the organist sustained his cry with long-drawn
shuddering chords and deep groans of the diapason. The
whole church throbbed with the vibrations of the rising, fall-
ing melody; and the emotional thrill was as though Christ's
or Mary's soul were speaking through the darkness to our
hearts. I never elsewhere heard a soprano of this sort sing in
tune so perfect or with so pure an intonation. The dramatic
effect produced by the contrast between this soprano and the
bass and tenor was simple but exceedingly striking. English-
men, familiar with cathedral music, may have derived a some-
what similar impression from the more complex Motett of
Mendelssohn upon Psalm xxii. I think that when the Umbrian
Laud began to be dramatic, the parts in such a hymn as Jaco-
pone's Corrotto must have been distributed after the manner
of these Perugian Good Friday services. Mary's was un-
doubtedly given to the soprano; that of the Jews, possibly,
to the bass; Christ's, and perhaps the messenger's also, to
the tenor. And it is possible that the rhythm was almost
identical with what I heard; for that had every mark of
venerable antiquity and popular sincerity.
I now pass to the Hymn of Divine Love, which Tresatti
entitles Cantico delV Amore Superardente (Book vi. 16). It
consists of three hundred and seventy lines, all of which I
have translated, though I content myself here with some
extracts:
O Love of Charity!
Why didst thou so wound me ?
Why breaks my heart through thec,
My heart which burns with Love ?
It burns and glows and finds no place to stay;
It cannot fly, for it is bound so tight;
It melts like wax before the flame away;
Living, it dies; swoons, faints, dissolves outright;
Prays for the force to fly some little way;
Finds itself in the furnace fiery-white;
Ah me, in this sore plight,
540 APPENDIX nr.
Who, what consumes my breath ?
Ah, thus to live is death 1
So swell the flames of Love.
Or ere I tasted Jesus, I besought
To love him, dreaming pure delights to prove,
And dwell at peace mid sweet things honey-fraught.
Far from all pain on those pure heights above:
Now find I torment other than I sought;
I knew not that my heart would break for love !
There is no image of
The semblance of my plight 1
I die, drowned in delight,
And live heart-lost in Love I
Lost is my heart and all my reason gone,
My will, my liking, and all sentiment;
Beauty is mere vile mud for eyes to shun;
Soft cheer and wealth are naught but detriment;
One tree of love, laden with fruit, but one,
Fixed in my heart, supplies me nourishment:
Hourly therefrom are sent,
With force that never tires
But varies still, desires,
Strength, sense, the gifts of Love.
Let none rebuke me then, none reprehend,
If love so great to madness driveth me !
What heart from love her fortress shall defend ?
So thralled, what heart from love shall hope to flee (
Think, how could any heart not break and rend,
Or bear this furnace-flame's intensity ?
Could I but only be
Blest with some soul that knows,
Pities and feels the woes
Which whelm my heart with Love!
Lo, heaven, lo, earth cries out, cries out for aye,
And all things cry thai I must love even thus !
Each calls: With all thy heart to that Love fly,
Loving, who strove to clasp thee, amorous:
APPENDIX IV. 541
That Love who for thy love did seek and sigh,
To draw thee up to him, He fashioned us I-
Such beauty luminous,
Such goodness, such delight,
Flows from that holy light,
Beams on my soul from Love |
For thee, O Love, I waste, swooning away I
I wander calling loud with thee to be 1
When thou departest, I die day by day;
I groan and weep to have thee close to me:
When thou returnest, my heart swells; I pray
To be transmuted utterly in thee I
Delay not then 1 Ah me I
Love deigns to bring me grace 1
Binds me in his embrace,
Consumes my heart with Love I
Love, Love, thou hast me smitten, wounded sore I
No speech but Love, Love, Love I can I deliver!
Love, I am one with thee, to part no more 1
Love, Love, thee only shall I clasp for ever 1
Love, Love, strong Love, thou forcest me to soar
Heavenward ! my heart expands; with love I quiver;
For thee I swoon and shiver,
Love, pant with thee to dwell !
Love, if thou lovest me well,
Oh, make me die of Love 1
Love, Love, Love, Jesus, I have scaped the seas !
Love, Love, Love, Jesus, thou has guided me 1
Love, Love, Love, Jesus, give me rest and peace 1
Love, Love, Love, Jesus, I'm inflamed by thee 1
Love, Love, Love, Jesus 1 From wild waves release 1
Make me, Love, dwell for ever clasped with thee?
And be transformed in thee,
In truest charity,
In highest verity,
Of pure transmuted Love I
542 APPENDIX IV.
Love, Love, Love, Love, the world's exclaim and cry I
Love, Love, Love, Love, each thing this cry returns !
Love, Love, Love, Love, thou art so deep, so high:
Whoso clasps thee, for thee more madly yearns 1
Love, Love, thou art a circle like the sky;
Who enters, with thy love for ever bums 1
Web, woof, art thou; he learns,
Who clothes himself with thee,
Such sweetness, suavity,
That still he shouts, Love, Love 1
Love, Love, Love, Love, thou giv'st me such strong pain
Love, Love, Love, Love, how shall I bear this ache?
Love, Love, Love, Love, thou fill'st my heart amain !
Love, Love, Love, Love, I feel my heart must break !
Love, Love, Love, Love, thou dost me so constrain 1
Love, Love, Love, Love, absorb me for Love's sake I
Love-languor, sweet to take I
Love, my Love amorous 1
Love, my delicious !
Swallow my soul in Love I
Love, Love, Love, Love, my heart it is so riven !
Love, Love, Love, Love, what wounds I feel, what bliss !
Love, Love, Love, Love, I'm drawn and rapt to heaven I
Love, Love, I'm ravished by thy beauteousness 1
Love, Love, life's naught, for less than nothing given I
Love, Love, the other life is one with this I
Thy love the soul's life is !
To leave thee were death's anguish 1
Thou mak'st her swoon and languish,
Gasped, overwhelmed in Love 1
Love, Love, Love, Love, O Jesus amorous 1
Love, Love, fain would I die embracing Thee 1
Love, Love, Love, Love, O Jesus my soul's Spouse 1
Love, Love, Love, Love, death I demand of thee I
Love, Love, Love, Love, Jesus, my lover, thus
Resume me, let me be transformed in thee 1
Where am I ? Love ! Ah me 1
Jesus, my hope 1 in thee
Ingulf me, whelm in Love !
APPENDIX V.
Passages translated from the Morgante Maggiore of Pulci.
(See Chapter VII. pp. 444 et seq.) Morgante xviil 115.
Answered Margutte: "Friend, I never boasted:
I don't believe in black more than in blue,
But in fat capons, boiled, or may be roasted;
And I believe sometimes in butter too,
In beer and must, where bobs a pippin toasted;
Sharp liquor more than sweet I reckon true;
But mostly to old wine my faith I pin,
And hold him saved who firmly trusts therein.
"I believe in the tartlet and the tart;
One is the mother, t'other is her son:
The perfect paternoster is a part
Of liver, fried in slips, three, two, or one;
. Which also from the primal liver start:
And since I'm dry, and fain would swill a tun,
If Mahomet forbids the juice of grape,
I reckon him a nightmare, phantom, ape.
"Apollo's naught but a delirious vision,
And Trivigant perchance a midnight specter;
Faith, like the itch, is catching; what revision
This sentence needs, you'll make, nor ask the rector:
To waste no words, you may without misprision
Dub me as rank a heretic as Hector:
I don't disgrace my lineage, nor indeed
Am I the cabbage-ground for any creed.
''Faith's as man gets it, this, that, or another!
See then what sort of creed I'm bound to follow:
For you must know a Greek nun was my mother,
My sire at Brusa, mid the Turks, a mollah;
544 APPENDIX V.
I played the rebeck first, and made a pother
About the Trojan war, flattered Apollo,
Praised up Achilles, Hector, Helen fair,
Not once, but twenty thousand times, I swear.
"Next, growing weary of my light guitar,
I donned a military bow and quiver;
One day within the mosque I went to war,
And shot my grave old daddy through the liver:
Then to my loins I girt this scimitar,
And journeyed forth o'er sea, land, town, and river
Taking for comrades in each holy work
The congregated sins of Greek and Turk.
"That's much the same as all the sins of hell !
I've seventy-seven at least about me, mortal;
Summer and winter in my breast they swell:
Guess now how many venial crowd the portal 1
Twere quite impossible, I know full well,
If the world never ended, to report all
The crimes I've done in this one life alone;
Each item too is catalogued and known.
"I pray you listen for one little minute;
The skein shall be unraveled in a trice:
When I've got cash, I'm gay as any linnet,
Cast with who calls, cut cards, and fling the dice;
All times, all places, or the devil's in it,
Serve me for play; I've spent on this one vice
Fame, fortune staked my coat, my shirt, my breeches;
I hope this specimen will meet your wishes.
"Don't ask what juggler's tricks I teach the boxes 1
Or whether sixes serve me when I call,
Or jumps an ace up I Foxes pair with foxes;
The same pitch tars our fingers, one and all !
Perhaps I don't know how to fleece the doxies?
Perhaps I can't cheat, cozen, swindle, bawl ?
Perhaps I never learned to patter slang ?
I know each trick, each turn, and lead the gang.
APPENDIX V. 545
"Gluttony after gambling's my prime pleasure.
Here it behooves one to be learned and wise,
To gauge the merits and the virtues measure
Of pheasant, partridge, fowl; with practiced eyes
Noting each part of every dish at leisure,
Seeking where tender slice or morsel lies;
And since I've touched upon this point, 111 tell ye
How best to grease your jaws and stuff your belly.
"If I could only show you how I baste,
If you could see me turn the spit and ladle,
You'd swear I had a most consummate taste 1
Of what ingredients are black-puddings made all ?
Not to be burned, and not to run to waste,
Not over-hot nor frozen in the cradle,
Done to a turn, juicy, not bathed in butter,
Smooth, plump and swelling! Don't you hear 'em sputter?
"About fried liver now receive my say:
It wants five pieces count them on your fingers;
It must be round keep this in mind, I pray 1
Fire on this side or that the frying injures I
Be careful not to brush the fat away,
Which keeps the stew soft while it drops and lingers;
You must divide it in two parts, and see
That each part is apportioned equally.
"It should not be too large; but there's a saw
Stint not your bag-pudding of hose and jacket:
Now mark me, for I'm laying down the law
Don't overcook the morsel in the packet;
It ought to melt, midway twixt done and raw,
Like a ripe autumn fig, when you attack it:
Serve it up hissing, and then sound the tabors
With spice and orange peel, to end your labors !
"I've got a hundred hints to give the wary!
But take it on my word, ragouts and pies
Are the true test of science culinary:
A lamprey now you'd scarce believe your eyes
546 APPENDIX r.
To see its stews and salmis, how they vary I
Yet all are known and numbered by the wise.
True gourmandize hath seventy-two divisions,
Besides a few that are my own additions:
"If one be missed, the cooking's spoiled, that's granted:
Not heaven itself can save a ruined platter 1
From now till noon I'd hold your sense enchanted
With secrets of my art, if I dared chatter 1
I kept an inn at Corinth once, and wanted
To argue publicly upon the matter.
But we must leave this point, for 'twill divert you
To hear about another cardinal virtue.
"Only to F these confidences carry;
Just think what 'twill be when we come to R !
I plow (no nonsense) with ass, cassiowary,
Ox, camel any other beast bizarre.
A thousand bonfires, prisons, by Lord Harry,
My tricks have earned, and something uglier far:
Where my head will not pass, I stick my tail in,
And what I like's to hear the good folk railing.
"Take me to balls, to banquets, for an airing;
I'll do my duty there with hands and feet:
I'm rude, importunate, a bore, and daring;
On friends no less than foes I'll take a seat:
To shame I've said farewell, nor am I sparing
Of fawning like a cur when kicks I meet,
But tell my tale and swagger up and down,
And with a thousand fibs each exploit crown.
"No need to ask if I've kept geese at grass,
Purveyed stewed prunes, taught kittens how to play.
Suppose a thousand widow, wife, and lass:
That's just about my figure, I dare say.
When mid the women by mishap I pass,
Six out of every five become my prey;
I make the pretty dears so deuc6d cunning,
They beat nurse, maid, duenna out of running.
APPENDIX V. 547
"Three of my moral qualities are these
Gluttony, dicing, as I said, and drinking:
But, since we'll drain the barrel to the lees,
Hear now the fourth and foremost to my thinking.
No need of hooks or ladders, crows or keys,
I promise, where my hands are 1 Without blinking
I've worn the cross and miter on my forehead
No pope's nor priest's, but something much more horrid 1
"Screws, files and jemmies are my stock in trade,
Springs, picklocks, of more sorts than I could mention;
Rope and wood ladders, levers, slippers made
Of noiseless felt my patented invention
Drowsing all ears, where'er my feet are laid;
I fashioned them to take my mind's intention;
Fire too that by itself no light delivers,
But when I spit on it, springs up and quivers.
"See me but in a church alone and frisky 1
I'm keener on the robbing of an altar
Than gaugers when they scent a keg of whiskey;
Then to the alms-box off I fly, nor falter:
Sacristies are my passion; though 'tis risky,
With cross and sacring cup I never palter,
But pull the crucifixes down and stow 'em
Virgins and saints and effigies, you know 'em 1
"I've swept, may-be, a hen-roost in my day
And if you'd seen me loot a lot of washing,
You'd swear that never maid or housewife gay
Could clear it in a style so smart and dashing 1
If naught, Morgante, 's left but blooming May
To strip, I steal it I can't keep from flashing I
I ne'er drew difference twixt thine and mine:
All things, to start with, were effects divine.
"But ere I learned to thieve thus on the sly,
I ran the highway rig as bold as any;
I would have robbed the biggest saint on higa
If there are saints above us for a penny;
548 APPENDIX P.
But loving peace and fair tranquillity,
I left assassination to the many:
Not that my will was weak I'd rather say,
Because theft mixed with murder does not pay.
"My virtues theological now smile on I
God knows if I can forge or falsify:
I'll turn an H into a Greek Upsilon
You could not write a neater, prettier Y I
I gut the pages of a book, and pile on
New rubrics for new chapters, change the die,
Change title, cover, index, name the poet
Who wrote the verse I counterfeit, won't know it
"False oaths and perjuries come trickling down
Out of my mouth as smooth and sweet as honey,
Ripe figs, or macaroni nicely brown,
Or anything that's natural and funny:
Suppose they brain some guileless count or clown;
All's one; ware heads, I cry, and pouch my money i
I've set on foot full many a strife and wrangle,
And left 'em in inextricable tangle.
"With ready coin I always square a scandal:
Of oaths I've got a perfect stock in trade;
Each saint supplies my speech with some choice handle;
I run them off in rows from A to Z:
In lying no man holds to me a candle;
Truth's always the reverse of what I've said:
I'd like to see more fire than land or water,
In heaven and earth naught but plague, famine, slaughter.
"Don't fancy that in fasting, prayer and prate,
Or charities my spare time I employ !
Not to seem stiff, I beg from gate ta gate,
And always utter something to annoy:
Proud, envious, tiresome and importunate
This character I've cherished from a boy;
For the seven deadly sins and all the other
Vices have brought me up to be their brother 1
APPENDIX V. 549
"So that I'd roam the world, cross ban and border,
Hood-winked, nor ever fear to miss my way;
As sweet and clean as any lump of ordure,
I leave my trail like slugs where'er I stray,
Nor seek to hide that slimy self- recorder:
Creeds, customs, friends I slough from day to day;
Change skin and climate, as it suits me best,
For I was evil even in the nest
"I've left a whole long chapter undiscussed
Of countless peccadilloes in a jumble:
Were I to catalogue each crime and lust,
The medley of my sins might make you grumble:
Twould take from now till June to lay the dust,
If in this mud heap we began to tumble;
One only point I'd have you still perpend
I never in my life betrayed a friend."
MORGANTE XXV. 119.
There is a spirit, Astarotte height,
Wise, terrible, and fierce exceedingly;
In Hell's dark caves profound he hides from sight:
No goblin, but a fiend far blacker he.
Malagigi summoned him one deep midnight,
And cried: "How feres Rinaldo, tell to me I
Then will I say what more I'd have thee work;
But look not on me with face so mirk I
"If thou wilt do this bidding, I declare
I'll never call nor conjure thee by force,
But burn upon my death yon book, I swear,
Which can alone compel thee in due course:
So shalt thou live thenceforward free as air."
Thereat the fiend swaggered, and had recourse
To threatening wiles, and would not yield an inch,
If haply he could make the master flinch.
But when he saw Malagigi's blood was stirred,
In act to flash the ring of his dread art,
And hurl him to some tomb by book and word,
He threw his cards UD with a sudden start.
550 APPENDIX V.
And cried: "Of your will yet I've nothing heard."
Then Malagigi answered: "In what part
Are Ricciardetto and Rinaldo now?
Tell all the truth, or you'll repent, I vow t *
MORGANTE XXV. 135.
Said Astarotte: "This point remains obscure,
Unless I thought the whole night through thereon;
Nor would my best of judgments be secure;
The paths of heaven for us are all undone,
Our sight of things to be is no more sure
Than that of sages gazing on the sun;
For neither man nor beast would 'scape from Hell,
Had not our wings been shortened when we fell.
"Of the Old Testament I've much to teach,
And of what happened in the days gone by;
But all things do not come within our reach:
One only Power there is, who sees on high,
As in a glass before him, all and each,
Past, present, and remote futurity:
He who made all that is, alone knows all,
Nor doth the Son well know what shall befall.
"Therefore I could not without thought intense
Tell thee the destined fate of Charlemain:
Know that the air around us now is dense
With spirits; in their hands I see them strain
Astrolabe, almanac, and tablet, whence
To read yon signs in heaven of strife and bane
The blood and treason, overthrow and war,
Menaced by Mars in Scorpio angular.
"And for thy better understanding, he
Is joined with Saturn in the ascendant, so
Charged with all-powerful malignity
That e'en the wars of Turnus had less woe.
Slaughters of many peoples we shall see,
With dire disasters in confusion flow,
And change of states and mighty realms; for 1
Know that these signs were never wont to lie.
APPENDIX V. 55 j
"I know not whether thou hast fixed thy thought
Upon those comets which appeared of late,
Veru and Dominus and Ascon, brought
Treasons and wars and strife to indicate,
With deaths of princes and great nobles fraught?
These, too, ne'er falsified the word of fate.
So that it seems from what I learn and see,
That what I say, and worse, is like to be.
"What Gano with Marsilio planned before,
I know not, since I did not think thereon:
But he's the same, methinks, he was of yore;
Wherefore this needs no divination:
A seat is waiting for him at hell's core;
And if his life's book I correctly con,
That evil soul will very shortly go
To weep his sins in everlasting woe. "
Then spake Malagigi: "Something thou hast said
Which holds my sense and reason still in doubt,
That some things even from the Son are hid;
This thy dark saying I can fathom not"
Then Astarotte: "Thou, it seems, hast read
But ill thy Bible, or its words forgot;
For when the Son was asked of that great day,
Only the Father knows, He then did say.
" Mark my words, Malagigi 1 Thou shall hear,
Now if thou wilt, the fiend's theology:
Then to thy churchmen go, and make it clear.
You say: Three Persons in one entity,
One substance; and to this we, too, adhere:
One flawless, pure, unmixed activity:
Wherefore it follows from what went before,
That this alone is what you all adore.
"One mover, whence all movement is impelled:
One order, whence all order hath its rise;
One cause, whereby all causes are compelled;
One power, whence flow all powers and energies;
552
APPENDIX V.
One fire, wherein all radiances are held;
One principle, which every truth implies;
One knowledge, whence all wisdom hath been given;
One Good, which made all good in earth and heaven.
"This is that Father and that ancient King,
Who hath made all things and can all things know,
But cannot change His own wise ordering,
Else heaven and earth to ruin both would go.
Having lost His friendship, I no more may wing
My flight unto the mirror, where our woe
Perchance e'en now is clearly shown to view;
Albeit futurity I never knew.
/}
"If Lucifer had known the doom to be,
He had not brought those fruits of rashness forth;
Nor had he ruined for eternity,
Seeking his princely station in the North;
But being impotent all things to see,
He and we all were damned 'neath heaven and earth;
And since he was the first to sin, he first
Fell to Giudecca, and still fares the worst
"Nor had we vainly tempted all the blest,
Who now sit crowned with stars in Paradise,
If, as I said, a veil by God's behest
Had not been drawn before our mental eyes;
Nor would that Saint, of Saints the first and best
Been tempted, as your Gospel testifies,
And borne by Satan to the pinnacle
Where at the last he saw His miracle.
, ^
"And forasmuch as He makes nothing ill, >-
And all hath circumscribed by fixed decrees,
And what He made is present with Him still,
Being established on just premises,
Know that this Lord repents not of His will;
Nay, if one saith that change hath been, he sees
Falsehood for truth, in sense and judgment blind
For what is now, was in the primal mind. "
APPENDIX F. 553
"Tell me," then answered Malagigi, "more, ^
Since thou'rt an angel sage and rational 1
If that first Mover, whom we all adore,
Within His secret soul foreknew your fell,
If time and hour were both foreseen before,
His sentence must be found tyrannical,
Lacking both justice and true charity;
Since, while creating, and while damning, He
"Foreknew you to be frail and formed in sin;
Nathless you call Him just and piteous,
Nor was there room, you say, pardon to win:
This makes our God the partisan of those
Angels who stayed the gates of heaven within,
Who knew the true from false, discerning thus
Which side would prosper, which would lose the day,
Nor went, like you, with Lucifer astray."
Astarotte, like the devil, raged with pain;
Then cried: "That just Sabaoth loved no more
Michael than Lucifer; nor made he Cain
More apt than Abel to shed brother's gore:
If one than Nimrod was more proud and vain,
If the other, all unlike to Gabriel, swore
He'd not repent nor bellow psalms to heaven,
It was free-will condemned both unforgiven,
"That was the single cause that damned us all:
His clemency, moreover, gave full time,
Wherein 'twas granted us to shun the fall,
And by repentance to compound our crime;
But now we've fallen from grace beyond recall:
Just was our sentence from that Judge sublime;
His foresight shortened not our day of grace,
For timely penitence aye finds a place.
*x
"Just is the Father, Son, and just the Word!
His justice with great mercy was combined:
Through pride no more than thanklessness we erred;
That was our sin malignant and unkind-
554 APPENDIX V.
Nor hath remorse our stubborn purpose stirred,
Seeing that evil nourished in the mind
And will of those who knew the good, and were
Untcmpted, never yet was changed to fair.
"Adam knew not the nature of his sin;
Therefore his primal error was forgiven,
Because the tempter took him in a gin:
Only his disobedience angered heaven;
Therefore, though cast from Eden, he might win
Grace, when repentance from his heart had driven
The wicked will, with peace to end his strife,
And mercy also in eternal life.
"But the angelic nature, once debased,
Can never more to purity return:
It sinned with science and corrupted taste:
Whence in despair incurable we burn.
Now, if that wise one answered not, nor raised
His voice, when Pilate asked of him to learn
What was the truth, the truth was at his side;
This ignorance was therefore justified.
"Pilate was lost> because in doing well
He persevered not when he washed his hand;
And Judas, too, beyond redemption fell,
Because, though penitent at last, he banned
Hope, without which no soul escapes from hell:
His doom no Origen shall countermand,
Nor who to Judas give what's meant for Judah
In diebus Hits salvabiiur Juda.
"Thus there is one first Power in heaven who knew
All things, by whom all things were also made:
Making and damning us, He still was true;
On Truth and Justice all His work is laid:
Future and past are present to his view;
For it must follow, as I elsewhere said,
That the whole world before His face should lie,
From whom proceeds force, virtue, energy.
APPENDIX V. 555
" But now that thou hast bound me to relate,
My master thou, the cause of our mischance,
Thou fain would'st hear why He who rules o'er fate,
And of our fall foresaw each circumstance,
Labored in vain, and made us reprobate?
Sealed is that rubric, closed from every glance,
Reserved for Him, the Lord victorious:
I know not, I can only answer thus 1
"Nor speak I this to put thy mind to proof;
But forasmuch as I discern that men
Weave on this warp of doubts a misty woof,
Seeking to learn; albeit they cannot ken
Whence flows the Nile the Danube's not enough I
Assure thy soul, nor ask the how and when,
That heaven's high Master, as the Psalmist taught,
Is just and true in all that he hath wrought
"The things whereof I speak are known not by
Poet or prophet, moralist or sage:
Yet mortal men in their presumption try
To rank the hierarchies, stage over stage I
A chieftain among Seraphim was I;
Yet knew not what in many a learned page
Denys and Gregory wrote 1 Full surely they
Who paint heaven after earth will go astray I
"But above all things see thou art not led
By elves and wandering sprites, a tricksy kind,
Who never speak one word of truth, but shed
Doubt and suspicion on the hearer's mind;
Their aim is injury toward fools ill-sped:
And, mark this well, they ne'er have been confined
To glass or water, but reside in air,
Playing their pranks here, there, and everywhere.
"From ear to ear they pass, and 'tis their vaunt
Ever to make things seem that are not so:
For one delights in horseplay, jeer and jaunt;
One deals in science; one pretends to show
556 APPENDIX V.
Where treasures iurk in some forgotten haunt:
Others, more grave, futurity foreknow:
But now I ve given thee hints enough, to tell
That courtesy can even be found in Hell 1 "
MORGANTE XXV. 282.
And when Rinaldo had learned all his need,
"Astarotte," he cried, "thou art a perfect friend,
And I am bound to thee henceforth indeed !
This I say truly: if God's will should bend,
If grace divine should e'er so much concede
As to reverse heaven's ordinance, amend
Its statutes, sentences, or high decrees,
I will remember these thy services.
"More at the present time I cannot give:
The soul returns to Him from whom it flew:
The rest of us, thou knowest, will not live 1
love supreme, rare courtesy and new."
1 have no doubt that all my friends believe
This verse belongs to Petrarch; yet 'tis true
Rinaldo spoke it very long ago:
But who robs not, is called a rogue, you know.
Said Astarotte: "Thanks for your good will 1
Yet shall those keys be lost for us for ever:
High treason was our crime, measureless ill.
Thrice happy Christians 1 One small tear can sever
Your bonds ! One sigh, sent from the contrite will:
Lord, to Thee only did I sin ! But never
Shall we find grace: we sinned once; now we lie
Sentenced to hell for all eternity.
"If after, say, some thousand million ages
We might have hope yet once to see again
The least spark of that Love, this pang that rages
Here at the core, could scarce be reckoned pain 1
But wherefore annotate such dreary pages?
To wish for what can never be, is vain.
Therefore I mean with your kind approbation
To change the subject of our conversation."
APPENDIX V. 557
MORGANTE XXV. 73.
What God ordains is no chance miracle.
Next prodigies and signs in heaven were seen;
For the sun suddenly turned ghastly pale,
And clouds with rain o'erladen flew between,
Muttering low prelude to their thunder-knell,
As when Jove shakes the world with awful spleen:
Next wind and fury, hail and tempest, hiss
O'er earth and skies Good God, what doom is this?
Then while they cowered together dumb with dread,
Lightning flashed forth and hurtled at their side,
Which struck a laurel's leaf-embowered head,
And burned it; cleft unto the earth, it died.
O Phoebus ! yon fair curls of gold outspread !
How could'st thou bear to see thy love, thy pride,
Thus thunder-smitten ? Hath thy sacred bay
Lost her inviolable rights to-day ?
Marsilio cries: "Mahoundl What can it mean 1
What doleful mystery lies hid beneath ?
O Bianciardino, to our State, I ween,
This omen brings some threat of change or death 1 "
But, while he spoke, an earthquake shook the scene,
Nay, shook both hemispheres with blustering breath:
Falseron's face changed hue, grew cold and hot,
And even Bianciardino liked it not
Yet none for very fear dared move a limb,
The while above their heads a sudden flush
Spread like live fire, that made the daylight dim;
And from the font they saw the water gush
In gouts and crimson eddies from the brim;
And what it sprinkled, with a livid flush
Burned: yea, the grass flared up on every side;
For the well boiled, a fierce and sanguine tide.
Above the fountain rose a locust-tree,
The tree where Judas hanged himself 'tis said;
This turned the heart of Gano sick to see,
For now it ran with ruddy sweat and bled,
558 APPENDIX V.
Then dried both trunk and branches suddenly,
Moulting its scattered leaves by hundreds dead;
And on his pate a bean came tumbling down,
Which made the hairs all bristle on his crown.
The beasts who roamed at will within the park,
Set up a dismal howl and wail of woe;
Then turned and rushed amuck with yelp and bark,
Butting their horns and charging to and fro:
Marsilio and his comrades in the dark
Watched all dismayed to see how things would go;
And none knew well what he should say or do,
So dreadful was heaven's wrath upon the crew.
MORGANTE XXV. 115.
I had it in my mind once to curtail
This story, knowing not how I should bring
Rinaldo all that way to Roncesvale,
Until an angel straight from heaven did wing,
And showed me Arnald to recruit my tale:
He cries, "Hold, Louis! Wherefore cease to sing ?
Perchance Rinaldo will turn up in time I "
So, just as he narrates, I'll trim my rhyme.
I must ride straight as any arrow flies,
Nor mix a fib with all the truths I say;
This is no story to be stuffed with lies 1
If I diverge a hand's breadth from the way,
One croaks, one scolds, while everybody cries,
"Ware madman 1 " when he sees me trip or stray.
I've made my mind up to a hermit's life,
So irksome are the crowd and all their strife.
Erewhile my Academe and my Gymnasia
Were in the solitary woods I love,
Whence I can see at will Afric or Asia;
There nymphs with baskets tripping through the grove,
Shower jonquils at my feet or colocasia:
Far from the town's vexations there I'd rove,
Haunting no more your Areopagi,
Where folk delight in calumny and lie.
APPENDIX V. 559
MORGANTE XXVII. 6.
Then answered Baldwin: "If my sire in sooth
Hath brought us here by treason, as you say,
Should I survive this battle, by God's truth,
With this good sword I will my father slay 1
But, Roland, I'm no traitor I forsooth,
Who followed thee with love as clear as day 1
How could'st thou fling worse insult on thy friend?
Then with fierce force the mantle he did rend,
And cried: "I will return into the fight,
Since thou hast branded me with treason, thou !
I am no traitor I May God give me might,
As living thou shalt see me ne'er from now I "
Straight toward the Paynim battle spurs the knight,
Still shouting, "Thou hast done me wrong, I vow!"
Roland repents him of the words he spake,
When the youth, mad with passion, from him brake.
MORGANTE XXVIII. 138.
I ask not for that wreath of bay or laurel
Which on Greek brows or Roman proudly shone:
With this plain quill and style I do not quarrel,
Nor have I sought to sing of Helicon:
My Pegasus is but a rustic sorrel;
Untutored mid the graves I still pipe on:
Leave me to chat with Corydon and Thyrsis;
I'm no good shepherd, and can't mend my verses.
Indeed I'm not a rash intrusive claimant,
Like the mad piper of those ancient days,
From whom Apollo stripped his living raiment,
Nor quite the Satyr that my face bewrays.
A nobler bard shall rise and win the payment
Fame showers on loftier style and worthier lays:
While I mid beech-woods and plain herdsmen dwell,
Who love the rural muse of Pulci well
560 APPENDIX V.
Ill tempt the waters in my little wherry,
Seeking safe shallows where a skiff may swim :
My only care is how to make men merry
With these thick-crowding thoughts that take my whim:
Tis right that all things in this world should vary;
Various are wits and faces, stout and slim,
One dotes on white, while one dubs black sublime,
And subjects vary both in prose and rhyme.
APPENDIX VI.
Translations of Elegiac Verses by Girolanio Beni^tieni and
Michelangelo Buonarroti.
(See page 321).
The heavenly sound is hushed, from earth is riven
The harmony of that delighted lyre,
Which leaves the world in grief, to gladden heaven.
Yea, even as our sobs from earth aspire,
Mourning his loss, so ring the jocund skies
With those new songs, and dance the angelic choir.
Ah happy he, who from this vale of sighs,
Poisonous and dark, heavenward hath flown, and lost
Only the vesture, frail and weak, that dies 1
Freed from the world, freed from the tempest-tossed
Warfare of sin, his splendor now doth gaze
Full on the face of God through endless days.
Thou 'it dead of dying, and art made divine;
Nor need'st thou fear to change or life or will;
Wherefore my soul well-nigh doth envy thine.
Fortune and time across thy threshold still
Shall dare not pass, the which mid us below
Bring doubtful joyance blent with certain ilL
Clouds are there none to dim for thee heaven's glow;
The measured hours compel not thee at all;
Chance or necessity thou canst not know.
Thy splendor wanes not when our night doth fall.
Nor waxes with day's light however clear,
Nor when our suns the season's warmth recall
END OF THE FIRST PART.
Si-Jo. .
r
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