The Civilisation of the Renaissance in Italy

CHAPTER VI.

THE FURTHERERS OF HUMANISM

WE have here first to speak of those citizens, mostly Florentines, who made antiquarian interests one of the chief objects of their lives, and who were themselves either distinguished scholars, or else distinguished dilettanti who maintained the scholars. (Comp. pp. 193 sqq.) They were of peculiar significance during the period of transition at the beginning of the fifteenth century, since it was in them that humanism first showed itself practically as an indispensable element in daily life. It was not till after this time that the popes and princes began seriously to occupy themselves with it.

Niccolò Niccoli and Giannozzo Manetti have been already spoken of more than once. Niccoli is described to us by Vespasiano497 as a man who would tolerate nothing around him out of harmony with his own classical spirit. His handsome long-robed figure, his kindly speech, his house adorned with the noblest remains of antiquity, made a singular impression. He was scrupulously cleanly in everything, most of all at table, where ancient vases and crystal goblets stood before him on the whitest linen.498 The way in which he won over a pleasure-loving young Florentine to intellectual interests is too charming not to be here described.499 Piero de’ Pazzi, son of a distinguished merchant, and himself destined to the same calling, fair to behold, and much given to the pleasures of the world, thought about anything rather than literature. One day, as he was passing the Palazzo del Podestà,500 Niccolò called the young man to him, and although they had never before exchanged a word, the youth obeyed the call of one so respected. Niccolò asked him who his father was. He answered, ‘Messer Andrea de’ Pazzi.’ When he was further asked what his pursuit was, Piero replied, as young people are wont to do, ‘I enjoy myself’ (‘attendo a darmi buon tempo’). Niccolò said to him, ‘As son of such a father, and so fair to look upon, it is a shame that thou knowest nothing of the Latin language, which would be so great an ornament to thee. If thou learnest it not, thou wilt be good for nothing, and as soon as the flower of youth is over, wilt be a man of no consequence’ (virtù). When Piero heard this, he straightway perceived that it was true, and said that he would gladly take pains to learn, if only he had a teacher. Whereupon Niccolò answered that he would see to that. And he found him a learned man for Latin and Greek, named Pontano, whom Piero treated as one of his own house, and to whom he paid 100 gold florins a year. Quitting all the pleasures in which he had hitherto lived, he studied day and night, and became a friend of all learned men and a noble-minded statesman. He learned by heart the whole ‘Æneid’ and many speeches of Livy, chiefly on the way between Florence and his country house at Trebbio.501 Antiquity was represented in another and higher sense by Giannozzo Manetti (1393-1459).502 Precocious from his first years, he was hardly more than a child when he had finished his apprenticeship in commerce, and became book-keeper in a bank. But soon the life he led seemed to him empty and perishable, and he began to yearn after science, through which alone man can secure immortality. He then busied himself with books as few laymen had done before him, and became, as has been said (p. 209), one of the most profound scholars of his time. When appointed by the government as its representative magistrate and tax-collector at Pescia and Pistoja, he fulfilled his duties in accordance with the lofty ideal with which his religious feeling and humanistic studies combined to inspire him. He succeeded in collecting the most unpopular taxes which the Florentine state imposed, and declined payment for his services. As provincial governor he refused all presents, abhorred all bribes, checked gambling, kept the country well supplied with corn, required from his subordinates strict obedience and thorough disinterestedness, was indefatigable in settling law-suits amicably, and did wonders in calming inflamed passions by his goodness. The Pistojese loved and reverenced him as a saint, and were never able to discover to which of the two political parties he leaned; when his term of office was over, both sent ambassadors to Florence to beg that it might be prolonged. As if to symbolise the common rights and interests of all, he spent his leisure hours in writing the history of the city, which was preserved, bound in a purple cover, as a sacred relic in the town-hall.503 When he took his leave the city presented him with a banner bearing the municipal arms and a splendid silver helmet. On diplomatic missions to Venice, Rome, and King Alfonso, Manetti represented, as at Pistoja, the interests of his native city, watching vigilantly over its honour, but declining the distinctions which were offered to him, obtained great glory by his speeches and negotiations, and acquired by his prudence and foresight the name of a prophet.

For further information as to the learned citizens of Florence at this period the reader must all the more be referred to Vespasiano, who knew them all personally, because the tone and atmosphere in which he writes, and the terms and conditions on which he mixed in their society, are of even more importance than the facts which he records. Even in a translation, and still more in the brief indications to which we are here compelled to limit ourselves, this chief merit of his book is lost. Without being a great writer, he was thoroughly familiar with the subject he wrote on, and had a deep sense of its intellectual significance.

If we seek to analyse the charm which the Medici of the fifteenth century, especially Cosimo the Elder (d. 1464) and Lorenzo the Magnificent (d. 1492) exercised over Florence and over all their contemporaries, we shall find that it lay less in their political capacity than in their leadership in the culture of the age. A man in Cosimo’s position—a great merchant and party leader, who also had on his side all the thinkers, writers, and investigators, a man who was the first of the Florentines by birth and the first of the Italians by culture—such a man was to all intents and purposes already a prince. To Cosimo belongs the special glory of recognising in the Platonic philosophy the fairest flower of the ancient world of thought,504 of inspiring his friends with the same belief, and thus of fostering within humanistic circles themselves another and a higher resuscitation of antiquity. The story is known to us minutely.505 It all hangs on the calling of the learned Johannes Argyropulos, and on the personal enthusiasm of Cosimo himself in his last years, which was such, that the great Marsilio Ficino could style himself, as far as Platonism was concerned, the spiritual son of Cosimo. Under Pietro Medici, Ficino was already at the head of a school; to him Pietro’s son and Cosimo’s grandson, the illustrious Lorenzo, came over from the Peripatetics. Among his most distinguished fellow-scholars were Bartolommeo Valori, Donato Acciajuoli, and Pierfilippo Pandolfini. The enthusiastic teacher declares in several passages of his writings that Lorenzo had sounded all the depths of the Platonic philosophy, and had uttered his conviction that without Plato it would be hard to be a good Christian or a good citizen. The famous band of scholars which surrounded Lorenzo was united together, and distinguished from all other circles of the kind, by this passion for a higher and idealistic philosophy. Only in such a world could a man like Pico della Mirandola feel happy. But perhaps the best thing of all that can be said about it is, that, with all this worship of antiquity, Italian poetry found here a sacred refuge, and that of all the rays of light which streamed from the circle of which Lorenzo was the centre, none was more powerful than this. As a statesman, let each man judge him as he pleases; a foreigner will hesitate to pronounce what was due to human guilt and what to circumstances in the fate of Florence, but no more unjust charge was ever made than that in the field of culture Lorenzo was the protector of Mediocrity, that through his fault Lionardo da Vinci and the mathematician Fra Luca Pacciolo lived abroad, and that Toscanella, Vespucci, and others at least remained unsupported. He was not, indeed, a man of universal mind; but of all the great men who have striven to favour and promote spiritual interests, few certainly have been so many-sided, and in none probably was the inward need to do so equally deep.

The age in which we live is loud enough in proclaiming the worth of culture, and especially of the culture of antiquity. But the enthusiastic devotion to it, the recognition that the need of it is the first and greatest of all needs, is nowhere to be found but among the Florentines of the fifteenth and the early part of the sixteenth centuries. On this point we have indirect proof which precludes all doubt. It would not have been so common to give the daughters of the house a share in the same studies, had they not been held to be the noblest of earthly pursuits; exile would not have been turned into a happy retreat, as was done by Palla Strozzi; nor would men who indulged in every conceivable excess have retained the strength and the spirit to write critical treatises on the ‘Natural History’ of Pliny like Filippo Strozzi.506 Our business here is not to deal out either praise or blame, but to understand the spirit of the age in all its vigorous individuality.

Besides Florence, there were many cities of Italy where individuals and social circles devoted all their energies to the support of humanism and the protection of the scholars who lived among them. The correspondence of that period is full of references to personal relations of this kind.507 The feeling of the instructed classes set strongly and almost exclusively in this direction.

But it is now time to speak of humanism at the Italian courts. The natural alliance between the despot and the scholar, each relying solely on his personal talent, has already been touched upon (p. 9); that the latter should avowedly prefer the princely courts to the free cities, was only to be expected from the higher pay which they there received. At a time when the great Alfonso of Aragon seemed likely to become master of all Italy, Æneas Sylvius wrote to another citizen of Siena:508 ‘I had rather that Italy attained peace under his rule than under that of the free cities, for kingly generosity rewards excellence of every kind.509 Too much stress has latterly been laid on the unworthy side of this relation, and the mercenary flattery to which it gave rise, just as formerly the eulogies of the humanists led to a too favourable judgment on their patrons. Taking all things together, it is greatly to the honour of the latter that they felt bound to place themselves at the head of the culture of their age and country, one-sided though this culture was. In some of the popes,510 the fearlessness of the consequences to which the new learning might lead strikes us as something truly, but unconsciously, imposing. Nicholas V. was confident of the future of the Church, since thousands of learned men supported her. Pius II. was far from making such splendid sacrifices for humanism as were made by Nicholas, and the poets who frequented his court were few in number; but he himself was much more the personal head of the republic of letters than his predecessor, and enjoyed his position without the least misgiving. Paul II. was the first to dread and mistrust the culture of his secretaries, and his three successors, Sixtus, Innocent, and Alexander, accepted dedications and allowed themselves to be sung to the hearts’ content of the poets—there even existed a ‘Borgiad,’ probably in hexameters511—but were too busy elsewhere, and too occupied in seeking other foundations for their power, to trouble themselves much about the poet-scholars. Julius II. found poets to eulogise him, because he himself was no mean subject for poetry (p. 117), but he does not seem to have troubled himself much about them. He was followed by Leo X., ‘as Romulus by Numa’—in other words after the warlike turmoil of the first pontificate, a new one was hoped for wholly given to the muses. The enjoyment of elegant Latin prose and melodious verse was part of the programme of Leo’s life, and his patronage certainly had the result that his Latin poets have left us a living picture of that joyous and brilliant spirit of the Leonine days, with which the biography of Jovius is filled, in countless epigrams, elegies, odes, and orations.512 Probably in all European history there is no prince who, in proportion to the few striking events of his life, has received such manifold homage. The poets had access to him chiefly about noon, when the musicians had ceased playing;513 but one of the best among them514 tells us how they also pursued him when he walked in his garden or withdrew to the privacy of his chamber, and if they failed to catch him there, would try to win him with a mendicant ode or elegy, filled, as usual, with the whole population of Olympus.515 For Leo, prodigal of his money, and disliking to be surrounded by any but cheerful faces, displayed a generosity in his gifts which was fabulously exaggerated in the hard times that followed.516 His reorganisation of the Sapienza (p. 212) has been already spoken of. In order not to underrate Leo’s influence on humanism we must guard against being misled by the toy-work that was mixed up with it, and must not allow ourselves to be deceived by the apparent irony with which he himself sometimes treated these matters (p. 157). Our judgment must rather dwell on the countless spiritual possibilities which are included in the word ‘stimulus,’ and which, though they cannot be measured as a whole, can still, on closer study, be actually followed out in particular cases. Whatever influence in Europe the Italian humanists have had since 1520 depends in some way or other on the impulse which was given by Leo. He was the Pope who in granting permission to print the newly found Tacitus,517 could say that the great writers were a rule of life and a consolation in misfortune; that helping learned men and obtaining excellent books had ever been one of his highest aims; and that he now thanked heaven that he could benefit the human race by furthering the publication of this book.

The sack of Rome in the year 1527 scattered the scholars no less than the artists in every direction, and spread the fame of the great departed Mæcenas to the furthest boundaries of Italy.

Among the secular princes of the fifteenth century, none displayed such enthusiasm for antiquity as Alfonso the Great of Aragon, King of Naples (see p. 35). It appears that his zeal was thoroughly unaffected, and that the monuments and writings of the ancient world made upon him, from the time of his arrival in Italy, an impression deep and powerful enough to reshape his life. Possibly he was influenced by the example of his ancestor Robert, Petrarch’s great patron, whom he may have wished to rival or surpass. With strange readiness he surrendered the stubborn Aragon to his brother, and devoted himself wholly to his new possessions. He had in his service,518 either successively or together, George of Trebizond, the younger Chrysoloras, Lorenzo Valla, Bartolommeo Facio and Antonio Panormita, of whom the two latter were his historians; Panormita daily instructed the King and his court in Livy, even during military expeditions. These men cost him yearly 20,000 gold florins. He gave Panormita 1,000 for his work: Facio received for the ‘Historia Alfonsi,’ besides a yearly income of 500 ducats, a present of 1,500 more when it was finished, with the words, ‘It is not given to pay you, for your work would not be paid for if I gave you the fairest of my cities; but in time I hope to satisfy you.’519 When he took Giannozzo Manetti as his secretary on the most brilliant conditions, he said to him, ‘My last crust I will share with you.’ When Giannozzo first came to bring the congratulations of the Florentine government on the marriage of Prince Ferrante, the impression he made was so great, that the King sat motionless on the throne, ‘like a brazen statue, and did not even brush away a fly, which had settled on his nose at the beginning of the oration.’ In restoring the castle, he took Vitruvius as his guide; wherever he went, he had the ancient classics with him; he looked on a day as lost in which he had read nothing; when he was reading, he suffered no disturbance, not even the sound of music; and he despised all contemporary princes who were not either scholars or the patrons of learning. His favourite haunt seems to have been the library of the castle at Naples, which he opened himself if the librarian was absent, and where he would sit at a window overlooking the bay, and listen to learned debates on the Trinity. For he was profoundly religious, and had the Bible, as well as Livy and Seneca, read to him, till after fourteen perusals he knew it almost by heart. He gave to those who wished to be nuns the money for their entrance to the monastery, was a zealous churchgoer, and listened with great attention to the sermon. Who can fully understand the feeling with which he regarded the supposititious remains (p. 143) of Livy at Padua? When, by dint of great entreaties, he obtained an arm-bone of the skeleton from the Venetians, and received it with solemn pomp at Naples, how strangely Christian and pagan sentiment must have been blended in his heart! During a campaign in the Abruzzi, when the distant Sulmona, the birthplace of Ovid, was pointed out to him, he saluted the spot and returned thanks to its tutelary genius. It gladdened him to make good the prophecy of the great poet as to his future fame.520 Once indeed, at his famous entry into the conquered city of Naples (1443), he himself chose to appear before the world in ancient style. Not far from the market a breach forty ells wide was made in the wall, and through this he drove in a gilded chariot like a Roman Triumphator.521 The memory of the scene is preserved by a noble triumphal arch of marble in the Castello Nuovo. His Neapolitan successors (p. 37) inherited as little of this passion for antiquity as of his other good qualities.

Alfonso was far surpassed in learning by Frederick of Urbino522—the great pupil of the great teacher Vittorino da Feltre—who had but few courtiers around him, squandered nothing, and in his appropriation of antiquity, as in all other things, went to work considerately. It was for him and for Nicholas V. that most of the translations from the Greek, and a number of the best commentaries and other such works, were written. He spent much on the scholars whose services he used, but spent it to good purpose. There were no traces of the official poet at Urbino, where the Duke himself was the most learned in the whole court. Classical antiquity, indeed, only formed a part of his culture. An accomplished ruler, captain, and gentleman, he had mastered the greater part of the science of the day, and this with a view to its practical application. As a theologian, he was able to compare Scotus with Aquinas, and was familiar with the writings of the old fathers of the Eastern and Western Churches, the former in Latin translations. In philosophy, he seems to have left Plato altogether to his contemporary Cosimo, but he knew thoroughly not only the ‘Ethics’ and ‘Politics’ of Aristotle but the ‘Physics’ and some other works. The rest of his reading lay chiefly among the ancient historians, all of whom he possessed; these, and not the poets, ‘he was always reading and having read to him.’

The Sforza,523 too, were all of them men of more or less learning and patrons of literature; they have been already referred to in passing (pp. 38 sqq.). Duke Francesco probably looked on humanistic culture as a matter of course in the education of his children, if only for political reasons. It was felt universally to be an advantage if the Prince could mix with the most instructed men of his time on an equal footing. Ludovico Moro, himself an excellent Latin scholar, showed an interest in intellectual matters which extended far beyond classical antiquity (p. 41 sqq.).

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

Even the most insignificant despots of Romagna found it hard to do without one or two men of letters about them. The tutor and secretary were often one and the same person, who sometimes, indeed, acted as a kind of court factotum.525 We are apt to treat the small scale of these courts as a reason for dismissing them with a too ready contempt, forgetting that the highest spiritual things are not precisely matters of measurement.

Life and manners at the court of Rimini must have been a singular spectacle under the bold pagan Condottiere Sigismondo Malatesta. He had a number of scholars around him, some of whom he provided for liberally, even giving them landed estates, while others earned at least a livelihood as officers in his army.526 In his citadel—‘arx Sismundea’—they used to hold discussions, often of a very venomous kind, in the presence of the ‘rex,’ as they termed him. In their Latin poems they sing his praises and celebrate his amour with the fair Isotta, in whose honour and as whose monument the famous rebuilding of San Francesco at Rimini took place—‘Divæ Isottæ Sacrum.’ When the humanists themselves came to die, they were laid in or under the sarcophagi with which the niches of the outside walls of the church were adorned, with an inscription testifying that they were laid here at the time when Sigismundus, the son of Pandulfus, ruled.527 It is hard for us nowadays to believe that a monster like this prince felt learning and the friendship of cultivated people to be a necessity of life; and yet the man who excommunicated him, made war upon him, and burnt him in effigy, Pope Pius II., says: ‘Sigismund knew history and had a great store of philosophy; he seemed born to all that he undertook.528

CHAPTER VII.

THE REPRODUCTION OF ANTIQUITY: LATIN CORRESPONDENCE AND ORATIONS

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

Not only was the secretary required to be a competent Latinist, but conversely, only a humanist was credited with the knowledge and ability necessary for the post of secretary. And thus the greatest men in the sphere of science during the fifteenth century mostly devoted a considerable part of their lives to serve the state in this capacity. No importance was attached to a man’s home or origin. Of the four great Florentine secretaries who filled the office between 1427 and 1465,529 three belonged to the subject city of Arezzo, namely, Lionardo (Bruni), Carlo (Marsuppini), and Benedetto Accolti; Poggio was from Terra Nuova, also in Florentine territory. For a long period, indeed, many of the highest officers of state were on principle given to foreigners. Lionardo, Poggio, and Giannozzo Manetti were at one time or another private secretaries to the popes, and Carlo Aretino was to have been so. Blondus of Forli, and, in spite of everything, at last even Lorenzo Valla, filled the same office. From the time of Nicholas V. and Pius II. onwards,530 the Papal chancery continued more and more to attract the ablest men, and this was still the case even under the last popes of the fifteenth century, little as they cared for letters. In Platina’s ‘History of the Popes,’ the life of Paul II. is a charming piece of vengeance taken by a humanist on the one Pope who did not know how to behave to his chancery—to that circle ‘of poets and orators who bestowed on the Papal court as much glory as they received from it.’ It is delightful to see the indignation of these haughty and wealthy gentlemen, who knew as well as the Pope himself how to use their position to plunder foreigners,531 when some squabble about precedence happened, when, for instance, the ‘Advocati consistoriales’ claimed equal or superior rank to theirs.532 The Apostle John, to whom the ‘Secreta cœlestia’ were revealed; the secretary of Porsenna, whom Mucius Scævola mistook for the king; Mæcenas, who was private secretary to Augustus; the archbishops, who in Germany were called chancellors, are all appealed to in turn.533 ‘The apostolic secretaries have the most weighty business of the world in their hands. For who but they decide on matters of the Catholic faith, who else combat heresy, re-establish peace, and mediate between great monarchs? who but they write the statistical accounts of Christendom? It is they who astonish kings, princes, and nations by what comes forth from the Pope. They write commands and instructions for the legates, and receive their orders only from the Pope, on whom they wait day and night.’ But the highest summit of glory was only attained by the two famous secretaries and stylists of Leo X.: Pietro Bembo and Jacopo Sadoleto.534