The Civilisation of the Renaissance in Italy

88

Franc. Vettori, in the Arch. Stor. Append., tom. vi. p. 321. For Federigo, see Vespas. Fiorent. pp. 132 sqq. and Prendilacqua, Vita di Vittorino da Feltre, pp. 48-52. V. endeavoured to calm the ambitious youth Federigo, then his scholar, with the words: ‘Tu quoque Cæsar eris.’ There is much literary information respecting him in, e.g., Favre, Mélanges d’Hist. Lit. i. p. 125, note 1.

89

See below, part iii. chapter 3.

90

Castiglione, Cortigiano, l. i.

91

Petr. Bembus, De Guido Ubaldo Feretrio deque Elizabetha Gonzaga Urbini ducibus, Venetis, 1530. Also in Bembo’s Works, Basel, 1566, i. pp. 529-624. In the form of a dialogue; contains among other things, the letter of Frid. Fregosus and the speech of Odaxius on Guido’s life and death.

92

What follows is chiefly taken from the Annales Estenses, in Murat. xx. and the Diario Ferrarese, Murat. xxiv

93

See Bandello, i. nov. 32.

94

Diario Ferrar. l. c. col. 347.

95

Paul. Jov. Vita Alfonsi ducis, ed. Flor. 1550, also an Italian by Giovanbattista Gelli, Flor. 1553.

96

Paulus Jovius, l. c.

97

The journey of Leo X. when Cardinal, may be also mentioned here. Comp. Paul. Jov. Vita Leonis X. lib. i. His purpose was less serious, and directed rather to amusement and knowledge of the world; but the spirit is wholly modern. No Northerner then travelled with such objects.

98

Diar. Ferr. in Murat. xxiv. col. 232 and 240.

99

Jovian. Pontan. De Liberalitate, cap. 28.

100

Giraldi, Hecatomithi, vi. nov. 1 (ed. 1565, fol. 223 a).

101

Vasari, xii. 166, Vita di Michelangelo.

102

As early as 1446 the members of the House of Gonzaga followed the corpse of Vittorino da Feltre.

103

Capitolo 19, and in the Opere Minore, ed. Lemonnier, vol. i. p. 425, entitled Elegia 17. Doubtless the cause of this death (above, p. 46) was unknown to the young poet, then 19 years old.

104

The novels in the Hecatomithi of Giraldi relating to the House of Este are to be found, with one exception (i. nov. 8), in the 6th book, dedicated to Francesco of Este, Marchese della Massa, at the beginning of the second part of the whole work, which is inscribed to Alfonso II. ‘the fifth Duke of Ferrara.’ The 10th book, too, is specially dedicated to him, but none of the novels refer to him personally, and only one to his predecessor Hercules I.; the rest to Hercules I. ‘the second Duke,’ and Alfonso I. ‘the third Duke of Ferrara.’ But the stories told of these princes are for the most part not love tales. One of them (i. nov. 8) tells of the failure of an attempt made by the King of Naples to induce Hercules of Este to deprive Borso of the government of Ferrara; another (vi. nov. 10) describes Ercole’s high-spirited treatment of conspirators. The two novels that treat of Alfonso I. (vi. nov. 2, 4), in the latter of which he only plays a subordinate part, are also, as the title of the book shows and as the dedication to the above-named Francesco explains more fully, accounts of ‘atti di cortesía’ towards knights and prisoners, but not towards women, and only the two remaining tales are love-stories. They are of such a kind as can be told during the lifetime of the prince; they set forth his nobleness and generosity, his virtue and self-restraint. Only one of them (vi. nov. 1) refers to Hercules I., who was dead long before the novels were compiled, and only one to the Hercules II. then alive (b. 1508, d. 1568) son of Lucrezia Borgia, husband of Renata, of whom the poet says: ‘Il giovane, che non meno ha benigno l’animo, che cortese l’aspetto, come già il vedemmo in Roma, nel tempo, ch’egli, in vece del padre, venne à Papa Hadriano.’ The tale about him is briefly as follows:—Lucilla, the beautiful daughter of a poor but noble widow, loves Nicandro, but cannot marry him, as the lover’s father forbids him to wed a portionless maiden. Hercules, who sees the girl and is captivated by her beauty, finds his way, through the connivance of her mother, into her bedchamber, but is so touched by her beseeching appeal that he respects her innocence, and, giving her a dowry, enables her to marry Nicandro.

In Bandello, ii. nov. 8 and 9 refer to Alessandro Medici, 26 to Mary of Aragon, iii. 26, iv. 13 to Galeazzo Sforza, iii. 36, 37 to Henry VIII. of England, ii. 27 to the German Emperor Maximilian. The emperor, ‘whose natural goodness and more than imperial generosity are praised by all writers,’ while chasing a stag is separated from his followers, loses his way, and at last emerging from the wood, enquires the way from a countryman. The latter, busied with lading wood, begs the emperor, whom he does not know, to help him, and receives willing assistance. While still at work, Maximilian is rejoined, and, in spite of his signs to the contrary, respectfully saluted by his followers, and thus recognised by the peasant, who implores forgiveness for the freedom he has unwittingly taken. The emperor raises the kneeling suppliant, gives him presents, appoints him as his attendant, and confers upon him distinguished privileges. The narrator concludes: ‘Dimostrò Cesare nello smontar da cavallo e con allegra ciera aiutar il bisognoso contadino, una indicibile e degna d’ogni lode humanità, e in sollevarlo con danari e privilegii dalla sua faticosa vita, aperse il suo veramente animo Cesareo’ (ii. 415). A story in the Hecatomithi (viii. nov. 5) also treats of Maximilian. It is the same tale which has acquired a world-wide celebrity through Shakespeare’s Measure for Measure (for its diffusion see Kirchhof’s Wendunmuth, ed. Oesterley, bd. v. s. 152 sqq.), and the scene of which is transferred by Giraldi to Innsbruck. Maximilian is the hero, and here too receives the highest eulogies. After being first called ‘Massimiliano il Grande,’ he is designated as one ‘che fu raro esempio di cortesia, di magnanimità, e di singolare giustizia.’

105

In the Deliciæ Poet. Italorum (1608), ii. pp. 455 sqq.: ad Alfonsum ducem Calabriæ. (Yet I do not believe that the above remark fairly applies to this poem, which clearly expresses the joys which Alfonso has with Drusula, and describes the sensations of the happy lover, who in his transports thinks that the gods themselves must envy him.—L.G.).

106

Mentioned as early as 1367, in the Polistore, in Murat. xxiv. col. 848, in reference to Niccolò the Elder, who makes twelve persons knights in honour of the twelve Apostles.

107

Burigozzo, in the Archiv. Stor. iii. p. 432.

108

Discorsi, i. 17, on Milan after the death of Filippo Visconti.

109

De Incert. et Vanitate Scientiar. cap. 55.

110

Prato, Archiv. Stor. iii. p. 241.

111

De Casibus Virorum Illustrium, l. ii. cap. 15.

112

Discorsi, iii. 6; comp. Storie Fiorent. l. viii. The description of conspiracies has been a favourite theme of Italian writers from a very remote period. Luitprand (of Cremona, Mon. Germ., ss. iii. 264-363) gives us a few, which are more circumstantial than those of any other contemporary writer of the tenth century; in the eleventh the deliverance of Messina from the Saracens, accomplished by calling in Norman Roger (Baluz. Miscell. i. p. 184), gives occasion to a characteristic narrative of this kind (1060); we need hardly speak of the dramatic colouring given to the stories of the Sicilian Vespers (1282). The same tendency is well known in the Greek writers.

113

Corio, fol. 333. For what follows, ibid. fol. 305, 422 sqq. 440.

114

So in the quotations from Gallus, in Sismondi, xi. 93. For the whole subject see Reumont, Lorenzo dei Medici, pp. 387-97, especially 396.

115

Corio, fol. 422. Allegretto, Diari Sanesi, in Murat. xxiii. col. 777. See above, p. 41.

116

The enthusiasm with which the Florentine Alamanno Rinuccini (b. 1419) speaks in his Ricordi (ed. by G. Aiazzi, Florence, 1840) of murderers and their deeds is very remarkable. For a contemporary, though not Italian, apology for tyrannicide, see Kervyn de Lettenhove, Jean sans Peur et l’Apologie du Tyrannicide, in the Bulletin de l’Académie de Bruxelles, xi. (1861), pp. 558-71. A century later opinion in Italy had changed altogether. See the condemnation of Lampugnani’s deed in Egnatius, De Exemplis Ill. Vir., Ven. fol. 99 b; comp. also 318 b.

Petr. Crinitus, also (De honestâ disciplinâ, Paris, 1510, fol. 134 b), writes a poem De virtute Jo. Andr. Lamponiani tyrannicidæ, in which Lampugnani’s deed is highly praised, and he himself is represented as a worthy companion of Brutus.

Comp. also the Latin poem: Bonini Mombritii poetæ Mediol. trenodiæ in funere illustrissimi D. Gal. Marie Sfor (2 Books—Milan, 1504), edited by Ascalon Vallis (sic), who in his dedication to the jurist Jac. Balsamus praises the poet and names other poems equally worthy to be printed. In this work, in which Megæra and Mars, Calliope and the poet, appear as interlocutors, the assassin—not Lampugnano, but a man from a humble family of artisans—is severely blamed, and he with his fellow conspirators are treated as ordinary criminals; they are charged with high treason on account of a projected alliance with Charles of Burgundy. No less than ten prognostics of the death of Duke Galeazzo are enumerated. The murder of the Prince, and the punishment of the assassin are vividly described; the close consists of pious consolations addressed to the widowed Princess, and of religious meditations.

117

‘Con studiare el Catalinario,’ says Allegretto. Comp. (in Corio) a sentence like the following in the desposition of Olgiati: ‘Quisque nostrum magis socios potissime et infinitos alios sollicitare, infestare, alter alteri benevolos se facere cœpit. Aliquid aliquibus parum donare: simul magis noctu edere, bibere, vigilare, nostra omnia bona polliceri,’ etc.

118

Vasari, iii. 251, note to V. di Donatello.

119

It now has been removed to a newly constructed building.

120

Inferno, xxxiv. 64.

121

Related by a hearer, Luca della Robbia, Archiv. Stor. i. 273. Comp. Paul. Jovius, Vita Leonis X. iii. in the Viri Illustres.

122

First printed in 1723, as appendix to Varchi’s History, then in Roscoe, Vita di Lorenzo de’ Medici, vol. iv. app. 12, and often besides. Comp. Reumont, Gesch. Toscana’s seit dem Ende des Florent. Freistaates, Gotha, 1876, i. p. 67, note. See also the report in the Lettere de’ Principi (ed. Venez. 1577), iii. fol. 162 sqq.

123

On the latter point see Jac. Nardi, Vita di Ant. Giacomini, Lucca (1818), p. 18.

124

‘Genethliacum Venetæ urbis,’ in the Carmina of Ant. Sabellicus. The 25th of March was chosen ‘essendo il cielo in singolar disposizione, si come da gli astronomi è stato calcolato più volte.’ Comp. Sansovino, Venezia città nobilissima e singolare, descritta in 14 libri, Venezia, 1581, fol. 203. For the whole chapter see Johannis Baptistæ Egnatii viri doctissimi de exemplis Illustrium Virorum Venetæ civitatis atque aliarum gentium, Paris, 1554. The eldest Venetian chronicler, Joh. Diaconi, Chron. Venetum in Pertz, Monum. S.S. vii. pp. 5, 6, places the occupation of the islands in the time of the Lombards and the foundation of the Rialto later.

125

‘De Venetæ urbis apparatu panagiricum carmen quod oraculum inscribitur.’

126

The whole quarter was altered in the reconstructions of the sixteenth century.

127

Benedictus Carol. VIII. in Eccard, Scriptores, ii. col. 1597, 1601, 1621. In the Chron. Venetum, Murat. xxiv. col. 26, the political virtues of the Venetians are enumerated: ‘bontà, innocenza, zelo di carità, pietà, misericordia.’

128

Many of the nobles cropped their hair. See Erasmi Colloquia, ed. Tiguri, a. 1553: miles et carthusianus.

129

Epistolæ, lib. v. fol. 28.

130

Malipiero, Ann. Veneti, Archiv. Stor. vii. i. pp. 377, 431, 481, 493, 530; ii. pp. 661, 668, 679. Chron. Venetum, in Muratori, xxiv. col. 57. Diario Ferrarese, ib. col. 240. See also Dispacci di Antonio Giustiniani (Flor. 1876), i. p. 392.

131

Malipiero, in the Archiv. Stor. vii. ii. p. 691. Comp. 694, 713, and i. 535.

132

Marin Sanudo, Vite dei Duchi, Murat. xxii. col. 1194.

133

Chron. Venetum, Murat. xxiv. col. 105.

134

Chron. Venetum, Murat. xxiv. col. 123 sqq. and Malipiero, l. c. vii. i. pp. 175, 187 sqq. relate the significant fall of the Admiral Antonio Grimani, who, when accused on account of his refusal to surrender the command in chief to another, himself put irons on his feet before his arrival at Venice, and presented himself in this condition to the Senate. For him and his future lot, see Egnatius, fol. 183 a sqq., 198 b sqq.

135

Chron. Ven. l. c. col. 166.

136

Malipiero, l. c. vii. i. 349. For other lists of the same kind see Marin Sanudo, Vite dei Duchi, Murat. xxii. col. 990 (year 1426), col. 1088 (year 1440), in Corio, fol. 435-438 (1483), in Guazzo Historie, fol. 151 sqq.

137

Guicciardini (Ricordi, n. 150) is one of the first to remark that the passion for vengeance can drown the clearest voice of self-interest.

138

Malipiero, l. c. vii. i., p. 328.

139

The statistical view of Milan, in the ‘Manipulus Florum’ (in Murat. xi. 711 sqq.) for the year 1288, is important, though not extensive. It includes house-doors, population, men of military age, ‘loggie’ of the nobles, wells, bakeries, wine-shops, butchers’-shops, fishmongers, the consumption of corn, dogs, birds of chase, the price of salt, wood, hay, and wines; also the judges, notaries, doctors, schoolmasters, copying clerks, armourers, smiths, hospitals, monasteries, endowments, and religious corporations. A list perhaps still older is found in the ‘Liber de magnalibus Mediolani,’ in Heinr. de Hervordia, ed. Potthast, p. 165. See also the statistical account of Asti about the year 1250 in Ogerius Alpherius (Alfieri), De Gestis Astensium, Histor. patr. Monumenta, Scriptorum, tom. iii. col. 684. sqq.

140

Especially Marin Sanudo, in the Vite dei Duchi di Venezia, Murat. xxii. passim.

141

See for the marked difference between Venice and Florence, an important pamphlet addressed 1472 to Lorenzo de’ Medici by certain Venetians, and the answer to it by Benedetto Dei, in Paganini, Della Decima, Florence, 1763, iii. pp. 135 sqq.

142

In Sanudo, l. c. col. 958. What relates to trade is extracted in Scherer, Allgem. Gesch. des Welthandels, i. 326, note.

143

Here all the houses, not merely those owned by the state, are meant. The latter, however, sometimes yielded enormous rents. See Vasari, xiii. 83. V. d. Jac. Sansovino.

144

See Sanudo, col. 963. In the same place a list of the incomes of the other Italian and European powers is given. An estimate for 1490 is to be found, col. 1245 sqq.

145

This dislike seems to have amounted to positive hatred in Paul II. who called the humanists one and all heretics. Platina, Vita Pauli, ii. p. 323. See also for the subject in general, Voigt, Wiederbelebung des classischen Alterthums, Berlin, 1859, pp. 207-213. The neglect of the sciences is given as a reason for the flourishing condition of Venice by Lil. Greg. Giraldus, Opera, ii. p. 439.

146

Sanudo, l. c. col. 1167.

147

Sansovina, Venezia, lib. xiii. It contains the biographies of the Doges in chronological order, and, following these lives one by one (regularly from the year 1312, under the heading Scrittori Veneti), short notices of contemporary writers.

148

Venice was then one of the chief seats of the Petrarchists. See G. Crespan, Del Petrarchismo, in Petrarca e Venezia, 1874, pp. 187-253.

149

See Heinric. de Hervordia ad a. 1293, p. 213, ed. Potthast, who says: ‘The Venetians wished to obtain the body of Jacob of Forli from the inhabitants of that place, as many miracles were wrought by it. They promised many things in return, among others to bear all the expense of canonising the defunct, but without obtaining their request.’

150

Sanudo, l. c. col. 1158, 1171, 1177. When the body of St. Luke was brought from Bosnia, a dispute arose with the Benedictines of S. Giustina at Padua, who claimed to possess it already, and the Pope had to decide between the two parties. Comp. Guicciardini, Ricordi, n. 401.

151

Sansovino, Venezia, lib. xii. ‘dell’andate publiche del principe.’ Egnatius, fol. 50a. For the dread felt at the papal interdict see Egnatius, fol. 12 a sqq.

152

G. Villani, viii. 36. The year 1300 is also a fixed date in the Divine Comedy.

153

Stated about 1470 in Vespas. Fiorent. p. 554.

154

The passage which followed in former editions referring to the Chronicle of Dino Compagni is here omitted, since the genuineness of the Chronicle has been disproved by Paul Scheffer-Boichhorst (Florentiner Studien, Leipzig, 1874, pp. 45-210), and the disproof maintained (Die Chronik des D. C., Leipzig, 1875) against a distinguished authority (C. Hegel, Die Chronik des D. C., Versuch einer Rettung, Leipzig, 1875). Scheffer’s view is generally received in Germany (see W. Bernhardi, Der Stand der Dino-Frage, Hist. Zeitschr. N.F., 1877, bd. i.), and even Hegel assumes that the text as we have it is a later manipulation of an unfinished work of Dino. Even in Italy, though the majority of scholars have wished to ignore this critical onslaught, as they have done other earlier ones of the same kind, some voices have been raised to recognise the spuriousness of the document. (See especially P. Fanfani in his periodical Il Borghini, and in the book Dino Campagni Vendicato, Milano, 1875). On the earliest Florentine histories in general see Hartwig, Forschungen, Marburg, 1876, and C. Hegel in H. von Sybel’s Historischer Zeitschrift, b. xxxv. Since then Isidore del Lungo, who with remarkable decision asserts its genuineness, has completed his great edition of Dino, and furnished it with a detailed introduction: Dino Campagni e la sua cronaca, 2 vols. Firenze, 1879-80. A manuscript of the history, dating back to the beginning of the fifteenth century, and consequently earlier than all the hitherto known references and editions, has been lately found. In consequence of the discovery of this MS. and of the researches undertaken by C. Hegel, and especially of the evidence that the style of the work does not differ from that of the fourteenth century, the prevailing view of the subject is essentially this, that the Chronicle contains an important kernel, which is genuine, which, however, perhaps even in the fourteenth century, was remodelled on the ground-plan of Villani’s Chronicle. Comp. Gaspary, Geschichte der italienischen Literatur. Berlin, 1885, i. pp. 361-9, 531 sqq.

155

Purgatorio, vi. at the end.

156

De Monarchia, i. 1. (New critical edition by Witte, Halle, 1863, 71; German translation by O. Hubatsch, Berlin, 1872).

157

Dantis Alligherii Epistolæ, cum notis C. Witte, Padua, 1827. He wished to keep the Pope as well as the Emperor always in Italy. See his letter, p. 35, during the conclave of Carpentras, 1314. On the first letter see Vitæ Nuova, cap. 31, and Epist. p. 9.

158

Giov. Villani, xi. 20. Comp. Matt. Villani, ix. 93, who says that John XXII. ‘astuto in tutte sue cose e massime in fare il danaio,’ left behind him 18 million florins in cash and 6 millions in jewels.

159

See for this and similar facts Giov. Villani, xi. 87, xii. 54. He lost his own money in the crash and was imprisoned for debt. See also Kervyn de Lettenhove, L’Europe au Siècle de Philippe le Bel, Les Argentiers Florentins in Bulletin de l’Académie de Bruxelles (1861), vol. xii. pp. 123 sqq.

160

Giov. Villani, xi. 92, 93. In Macchiavelli, Stor. Fiorent. lib. ii. cap. 42, we read that 96,000 persons died of the plague in 1348.

161

The priest put aside a black bean for every boy and a white one for every girl. This was the only means of registration.

162

There was already a permanent fire brigade in Florence.

163

Matteo Villani, iii. 106.

164

Matteo Villani, i. 2-7, comp. 58. The best authority for the plague itself is the famous description by Boccaccio at the beginning of the Decameron.

165

Giov. Villani, x. 164.

166

Ex Annalibus Ceretani, in Fabroni, Magni Cormi Vita, Adnot. 34. vol. ii. p. 63.

167

Ricordi of Lorenzo, in Fabroni. Laur. Med. Magnifici Vita, Adnot. 2 and 25. Paul. Jovius, Elogia, pp. 131 sqq. Cosmus.

168

Given by Benedetto Dei, in the passage quoted above (p. 70, note 1). It must be remembered that the account was intended to serve as a warning to assailants. For the whole subject see Reumont, Lor. dei Medici, ii. p. 419. The financial project of a certain Ludovico Ghetti, with important facts, is given in Roscoe, Vita di Lor. Med. ii. Append, i.

169

E. g. in the Arch. Stor. iv.(?) See as a contrast the very simple ledger of Ott. Nuland, 1455-1462 (Stuttg. 1843), and for a rather later period the day-book of Lukas Rem, 1494-1541, ed. by B. Greiff, Augsb., 1861.

170

Libri, Histoire des Sciences Mathématiques, ii. 163 sqq.

171

Varchi, Stor. Fiorent. iii. p. 56 and sqq. up to the end of the 9th book. Some obviously erroneous figures are probably no more than clerical or typographical blunders.

172

In respect of prices and of wealth in Italy, I am only able, in default of further means of investigation, to bring together some scattered facts, which I have picked up here and there. Obvious exaggerations must be put aside. The gold coins which are worth referring to are the ducat, the sequin, the ‘fiorino d’oro,’ and the ‘scudo d’oro.’ The value of all is nearly the same, 11 to 12 francs of our money.

In Venice, for example, the Doge Andrea Vendramin (1476) with 170,000 ducats passed for an exceedingly rich man (Malipiero, l. c. vii. ii. p. 666. The confiscated fortune of Colleoni amounted to 216,000 florins, l. c. p. 244.