The Civilisation of the Renaissance in Italy

661

See below, part vi. chapter 2.

662

See the exaggerated complaints of Libri, op. cit. ii. p. 258 sqq. Regrettable as it may be that a people so highly gifted did not devote more of its strength to the natural sciences, we nevertheless believe that it pursued, and in part attained, still more important ends.

663

On the studies of the latter in Italy, comp. the thorough investigation by C. Malagola in his work on Codro Urceo (Bologna, 1878, cap. vii. 360-366).

664

Italians also laid out botanical gardens in foreign countries, e.g. Angelo, of Florence, a contemporary of Petrarch, in Prag. Friedjung: Carl IV. p. 311, note 4.

665

Alexandri Braccii descriptio horti Laurentii Med., printed as Appendix No. 58 to Roscoe’s Life of Lorenzo. Also to be found in the Appendices to Fabroni’s Laurentius.

666

Mondanarii Villa, printed in the Poemata aliquot insignia illustr. poetar. recent.

667

On the zoological garden at Palermo under Henry VI., see Otto de S. Blasio ad a. 1194. That of Henry I. of England in the park of Woodstock (Guliel. Malmes. p. 638) contained lions, leopards, camels, and a porcupine, all gifts of foreign princes.

668

As such he was called, whether painted or carved in stone, ‘Marzocco.’ At Pisa eagles were kept. See the commentators on Dante, Inf. xxxiii. 22. The falcon in Boccaccio, Decam. v. 9. See for the whole subject: Due trattati del governo e delle infermità degli uccelli, testi di lingua inediti. Rome, 1864. They are works of the fourteenth century, possibly translated from the Persian.

669

See the extract from Ægid. Viterb. in Papencordt, Gesch. der Stadt Rom im Mittelalter, p. 367, note, with an incident of the year 1328. Combats of wild animals among themselves and with dogs served to amuse the people on great occasions. At the reception of Pius II. and of Galeazzo Maria Sforza at Florence, in 1459, in an enclosed space on the Piazza della Signoria, bulls, horses, boars, dogs, lions, and a giraffe were turned out together, but the lions lay down and refused to attack the other animals. Comp. Ricordi di Firenze, Rer. Ital. script. ex Florent. codd. tom. ii. col. 741. A different account in Vita Pii II. Murat. iii. ii. col. 976. A second giraffe was presented to Lorenzo the Magnificent by the Mameluke Sultan Kaytbey. Comp. Paul. Jov. Vita Leonis X. l. i. In Lorenzo’s menagerie one magnificent lion was especially famous, and his destruction by the other lions was reckoned a presage of the death of his owner.

670

Gio. Villani, x. 185, xi. 66. Matteo Villani, iii. 90, v. 68. It was a bad omen if the lions fought, and worse still if they killed one another. Com. Varchi, Stor. fiorent. iii. p. 143. Matt. V. devotes the first of the two chapters quoted to prove (1) that lions were born in Italy, and (2) that they came into the world alive.

671

Cron. di Perugia, Arch. Stor. xvi. ii. p. 77, year 1497. A pair of lions once escaped from Perugia; ibid. xvi. i. p. 382, year 1434. Florence, for example, sent to King Wladislaw of Poland (May, 1406), a pair of lions ut utriusque sexus animalia ad procreandos catulos haberetis. The accompanying statement is amusing in a diplomatic document: ‘Sunt equidem hi leones Florentini, et satis quantum natura promittere potuit mansueti, depositâ feritate, quam insitam habent, hique in Gætulorum regionibus nascuntur et Indorum, in quibus multitudo dictorum animalium evalescit, sicuti prohibent naturales. Et cum leonum complexio sit frigoribus inimica, quod natura sagax ostendit, natura in regionibus aestu ferventibus generantur, necessarium est, quod vostra serenitas, si dictorum animalium vitam et sobolis propagationem, ut remur, desiderat, faciat provideri, quod in locis calidis educentur et maneant. Conveniunt nempe cum regia majestate leones quoniam leo græce latine rex dicitur. Sicut enim rex dignitate potentia, magnanimitate ceteros homines antecellit, sic leonis generositas et vigor imperterritus animalia cuncta praesit. Et sicut rex, sic leo adversus imbecilles et timidos clementissimum se ostendit, et adversus inquietos et tumidos terribilem se offert animadversione justissima.’ (Cod. epistolaris sæculi. Mon. med. ævi hist. res gestas Poloniæ illustr. Krakau, 1876, p. 25.)

672

Gage, Carteggio, i. p. 422, year 1291. The Visconti used trained leopards for hunting hares, which were started by little dogs. See v. Kobel, Wildanger, p. 247, where later instances of hunting with leopards are mentioned.

673

Strozzii poetae, p. 146: De leone Borsii Ducis. The lion spares the hare and the small dog, imitating (so says the poet) his master. Comp. the words fol. 188, ‘et inclusis condita septa feris,’ and fol. 193, an epigram of fourteen lines, ‘in leporarii ingressu quam maximi;’ see ibid. for the hunting-park.

674

Cron. di Perugia, l. c. xvi. ii. p. 199. Something of the same kind is to be found in Petrarch, De remed. utriusque fortunae, but less clearly expressed. Here Gaudium, in the conversation with Ratio, boasts of owning monkeys and ‘ludicra animalia.’

675

Jovian. Pontan. De magnificentia. In the zoological garden of the Cardinal of Aquileja, at Albano, there were, in 1463, peacocks and Indian fowls and Syrian goats with long ears. Pii II. Comment. l. xi. p. 562 sqq.

676

Decembrio, ap. Muratori, xx. col. 1012.

677

Brunetti Latini, Tesor. (ed. Chabaille, Paris, 1863), lib. i. In Petrarch’s time there were no elephants in Italy. ‘Itaque et in Italia avorum memoria unum Frederico Romanorum principi fuisse et nunc Egyptio tyranno nonnisi unicum esse fama est.’ De rem. utr. fort. i. 60.

678

The details which are most amusing, in Paul. Jov. Elogia, on Tristanus Acunius. On the porcupines and ostriches in the Pal. Strozzi, see Rabelais, Pantagruel, iv. chap. 11. Lorenzo the Magnificent received a giraffe from Egypt through some merchants, Baluz. Miscell. iv. 416. The elephant sent to Leo was greatly bewailed by the people when it died, its portrait was painted, and verses on it were written by the younger Beroaldus.

679

Comp. Paul. Jov. Elogia, p. 234, speaking of Francesco Gonzaga. For the luxury at Milan in this respect, see Bandello, Parte II. Nov. 3 and 8. In the narrative poems we also sometimes hear the opinion of a judge of horses. Comp. Pulci, Morgante, xv. 105 sqq.

680

Paul. Jov. Elogia, speaking of Hipp. Medices.

681

At this point a few notices on slavery in Italy at the time of the Renaissance will not be out of place. A short, but important, passage in Jovian. Pontan. De obedientia, l. iii. cap. i.: ‘An homo, cum liber natura sit, domino parere debeat?’ In North Italy there were no slaves. Elsewhere, even Christians, as well as Circassians and Bulgarians, were bought from the Turks, and made to serve till they had earned their ransom. The negroes, on the contrary, remained slaves; but it was not permitted, at least in the kingdom of Naples, to emasculate them. The word ‘moro’ signifies any dark-skinned man; the negro was called ‘moro nero.’—Fabroni, Cosmos, Adn. 110: Document on the sale of a female Circassian slave (1427); Adn. 141: List of the female slaves of Cosimo.—Nantiporto, Murat. iii. ii. col. 1106: Innocent VIII. received 100 Moors as a present from Ferdinand the Catholic, and gave them to cardinals and other great men (1488).—Marsuccio, Novelle, 14: sale of slaves; do. 24 and 25: negro slaves who also (for the benefit of their owner?) work as ‘facchini,’ and gain the love of the women; do. 48 Moors from Tunis caught by Catalans and sold at Pisa.—Gaye, Carteggio, i. 360: manumission and reward of a negro slave in a Florentine will (1490).—Paul. Jov. Elogia, sub Franc. Sfortia; Porzio, Congiura, iii. 195; and Comines, Charles VIII. chap. 18: negroes as gaolers and executioners of the House of Aragon in Naples.—Paul. Jov. Elogia, sub Galeatio: negroes as followers of the prince on his excursions.—Æneæ Sylvii, Opera, p. 456: a negro slave as a musician.—Paul. Jov. De piscibus, cap 3: a (free?) negro as diver and swimming-master at Genoa.—Alex. Benedictus, De Carolo VIII. in Eccard, Scriptores, ii. col. 1608: a negro (Æthiops) as superior officer at Venice, according to which we are justified in thinking of Othello as a negro.—Bandello, Parte III. Nov. 21: when a slave at Genoa deserved punishment he was sold away to Iviza, one of the Balearic isles, to carry salt.

The foregoing remarks, although they make no claim to completeness, may be allowed to stand as they are in the new edition, on account of the excellent selection of instances they contain, and because they have not met with sufficient notice in the works upon the subject. Latterly a good deal has been written on the slave-trade in Italy. The very curious book of Filippo Zamboni: Gli Ezzelini, Dante e gli Schiavi, ossia Roma e la Schiavitù personale domestica. Con documenti inediti. Seconda edizione aumentata (Vienna, 1870), does not contain what the title promises, but gives, p. 241 sqq., valuable information on the slave-trade; p. 270, a remarkable document on the buying and selling of a female slave; p. 282, a list of various slaves (with the place were they were bought and sold, their home, age, and price) in the thirteenth and three following centuries. A treatise by Wattenbach: Sklavenhandel im Mittelalter (Anzeiger für Kunde der deutschen Vorzeit, 1874, pp. 37-40) refers only in part to Italy: Clement V. decides in 1309 that the Venetian prisoners should be made slaves of; in 1501, after the capture of Capua, many Capuan women were sold at Rome for a low price. In the Monum. historica Slavorum meridionalium, ed. Vinc. Macusceo, tom. i. Warsaw, 1874, we read at p. 199 a decision (Ancona, 1458) that the ‘Greci, Turci, Tartari, Sarraceni, Bossinenses, Burgari vel Albanenses,’ should be and always remain slaves, unless their masters freed them by a legal document. Egnatius, Exempl. ill. vir. Ven. fol. 246 a, praises Venice on the ground that ‘servorum Venetis ipsis nullum unquam usum extitisse;’ but, on the other hand, comp. Zamboni, p. 223, and especially Vincenzo Lazari: ‘Del traffico e delle condizioni degli schiavi, in Venezia nel tempo di mezzo,’ in Miscellanea di Stor. Ital. Torino, 1862, vol. i. 463-501.

682

It is hardly necessary to refer the reader to the famous chapters on this subject in Humboldt’s Kosmos.

683

See on this subject the observations of Wilhelm Grimm, quoted by Humboldt in the work referred to.

684

Carmina Burana, p. 162, De Phyllide et Flora, str. 66.

685

It would be hard to say what else he had to do at the top of the Bismantova in the province of Reggio, Purgat. iv. 26. The precision with which he brings before us all the parts of his supernatural world shows a remarkable sense of form and space. That there was a belief in the existence of hidden treasures on the tops of mountains, and that such spots were regarded with superstitious terror, may be clearly inferred from the Chron. Novaliciense, ii. 5, in Pertz, Script. vii., and Monum. hist. patriae, Script. iii.

686

Besides the description of Baiæ in the Fiammetta, of the grove in the Ameto, etc., a passage in the De genealogia deorum, xiv. 11, is of importance, where he enumerates a number of rural beauties—trees, meadows, brooks, flocks and herds, cottages, etc.—and adds that these things ‘animum mulcent;’ their effect is ‘mentem in se colligere.’

687

Flavio Biondo, Italia Illustrata (ed. Basil), p. 352 sqq. Comp. Epist. Var. ed. Fracass. (lat.) iii. 476. On Petrarch’s plan of writing a great geographical work, see the proofs given by Attilio Hortis, Accenni alle Scienze Naturali nelle Opere di G. Boccacci, Trieste, 1877, p. 45 sqq.

688

Although he is fond of referring to them: e.g. De vita solitaria (Opera, ed. Basil, 1581), esp. p. 241, where he quotes the description of a vine-arbour from St. Augustine.

689

Epist. famil. vii. 4. ‘Interea utinam scire posses, quanta, cum voluptate solivagus et liber, inter montes et nemora, inter fontes et flumina, inter libros et maximorum hominum ingenia respiro, quamque me in ea, quae ante sunt, cum Apostolo extendens et praeterita oblivisci nitor et praesentia non videre.’ Comp. vi. 3, o. c. 316 sqq. esp. 334 sqq. Comp. L. Geiger: Petrarca, p. 75, note 5, and p. 269.

690

‘Jacuit sine carmine sacro.’ Comp. Itinerar. Syriacum, Opp. p. 558.

691

He distinguishes in the Itinerar. Syr. p. 357, on the Riviera di Levante: ‘colles asperitate gratissima et mira fertilitate conspicuos.’ On the port of Gaeta, see his De remediis utriusque fortunae, i. 54.

692

Letter to Posterity: ‘Subito loco specie percussus.’ Descriptions of great natural events: A Storm at Naples, 1343: Epp. fam. i. 263 sqq.; An Earthquake at Basel, 1355, Epp. seniles, lib. x. 2, and De rem. utr. fort. ii. 91.

693

Epist. fam. ed. Fracassetti, i. 193 sqq.

694

Il Dittamondo, iii. cap. 9.

695

Dittamondo, iii. cap. 21, iv. cap. 4. Papencordt, Gesch. der Stadt Rom, says that the Emperor Charles IV. had a strong taste for beautiful scenery, and quotes on this point Pelzel, Carl IV. p. 456. (The two other passages, which he quotes, do not say the same.) It is possible that the Emperor took this fancy from intercourse with the humanists (see above, pp. 141-2). For the interest taken by Charles in natural science see H. Friedjung, op. cit. p. 224, note 1.

696

We may also compare Platina, Vitae Pontiff. p. 310: ‘Homo fuit (Pius II.) verus, integer, apertus; nil habuit ficti, nil simulati’—an enemy of hypocrisy and superstition, courageous and consistent. See Voigt, ii. 261 sqq. and iii. 724. He does not, however, give an analysis of the character of Pius.

697

The most important passages are the following: Pii II. P. M. Commentarii, l. iv. p. 183; spring in his native country; l. v. p. 251; summer residence at Tivoli; l. vi. p. 306: the meal at the spring of Vicovaro; l. viii. p. 378: the neighbourhood of Viterbo; p. 387: the mountain monastery of St. Martin; p. 388: the Lake of Bolsena; l. ix. p. 396: a splendid description of Monte Amiata; l. x. p. 483: the situation of Monte Oliveto; p. 497: the view from Todi; l. xi. p. 554: Ostia and Porto; p. 562: description of the Alban Hills; l. xii. p. 609: Frascati and Grottaferrata; comp. 568-571.

698

So we must suppose it to have been written, not Sicily.

699

He calls himself, with an allusion to his name: ‘Silvarum amator et varia videndi cupidus.’

700

On Leonbattista Alberti’s feeling for landscapes see above, p. 136 sqq. Alberti, a younger contemporary of Æneas Silvius (Trattato del Governo della Famiglia, p. 90; see above, p. 132, note 1), is delighted when in the country with ‘the bushy hills,’ ‘the fair plains and rushing waters.’ Mention may here be made of a little work Ætna, by P. Bembus, first published at Venice, 1495, and often printed since, in which, among much that is rambling and prolix, there are remarkable geographical descriptions and notices of landscapes.

701

A most elaborate picture of this kind in Ariosto; his sixth canto is all foreground.

702

He deals differently with his architectural framework, and in this modern decorative art can learn something from him even now.

703

Lettere Pittoriche, iii. 36, to Titian, May, 1544.

704

Strozzii Poetae, in the Erotica, l. vi. fol. 183; in the poem: ‘Hortatur se ipse, ut ad amicam properet.’

705

Comp. Thausing: Dürer, Leipzig, 1876, p. 166.

706

These striking expressions are taken from the seventh volume of Michelet’s Histoire de France (Introd.).

707

Tomm. Gar, Relaz. della Corte di Roma, i. pp. 278 and 279. In the Rel. of Soriano, year 1533.

708

Prato, Arch. Stor. iii. p. 295 sqq. The word ‘saturnico’ means ‘unhappy’ as well as ‘bringing misfortune.’ For the influence of the planets on human character in general, see Corn. Agrippa, De occulta philosophia, c. 52.

709

See Trucchi, Poesie Italiane inedite, i. p 165 sqq.

710

Blank verse became at a later time the usual form for dramatic compositions. Trissino, in the dedication of his Sofonisba to Leo X., expressed the hope that the Pope would recognise this style for what it was—as better, nobler, and less easy than it looked. Roscoe, Leone X., ed. Bossi, viii. 174.

711

Comp. e.g. the striking forms adopted by Dante, Vita Nuova, ed. Witte, p. 13 sqq., 16 sqq. Each has twenty irregular lines; in the first, one rhyme occurs eight times.

712

Trucchi, op. cit. i. 181 sqq.

713

These were the ‘Canzoni’ and Sonnets which every blacksmith and donkey-driver sang and parodied—which made Dante not a little angry. (Comp. Franco Sachetti, Nov. 114, 115.) So quickly did these poems find their way among the people.

714

Vita Nuova, ed. Witte, pp. 81, 82 sqq. ‘Deh peregrini,’ ibid. 116.

715

For Dante’s psychology, the beginning of Purg. iv. is one of the most important passages. See also the parts of the Convito bearing on the subject.

716

The portraits of the school of Van Eyck would prove the contrary for the North. They remained for a long period far in advance of all descriptions in words.

717

Printed in the sixteenth volume of his Opere Volgari. See M. Landau, Giov. Boccaccio (Stuttg. 1877), pp. 36-40; he lays special stress on B.’s dependence on Dante and Petrarch.

718

In the song of the shepherd Teogape, after the feast of Venus, Opp. ed. Montier, vol. xv. 2. p. 67 sqq. Comp. Landau, 58-64; on the Fiammetta, see Landau, 96-105.

719

The famous Lionardo Aretino, the leader of the humanists at the beginning of the fifteenth century, admits, ‘Che gli antichi Greci d’umanita e di gentilezza di cuore abbino avanzanto di gran lunga i nostri Italiani;’ but he says it at the beginning of a novel which contains the sentimental story of the invalid Prince Antiochus and his step-mother Stratonice—a document of an ambiguous and half-Asiatic character. (Printed as an Appendix to the Cento Novelle Antiche.)

720

No doubt the court and prince received flattery enough from their occasional poets and dramatists.

721

Comp. the contrary view taken by Gregorovius, Gesch. Roms, vii. 619.

722

Paul. Jovius, Dialog. de viris lit. illustr., in Tiraboschi, tom. vii. iv. Lil. Greg. Gyraldus, De poetis nostri temp.

723

Isabella Gonzaga to her husband, Feb. 3, 1502, Arch. Stor. Append. ii. p. 306 sqq. Comp. Gregorovius, Lucrezia Borgia, i. 256-266, ed. 3. In the French Mystères the actors themselves first marched before the audience in procession, which was called the ‘montre.’

724

Diario Ferrarese, in Murat. xxiv. col. 404. Other passages referring to the stage in that city, cols. 278, 279, 282 to 285, 361, 380, 381, 393, 397, from which it appears that Plautus was the dramatist most popular on these occasions, that the performances sometimes lasted till three o’clock in the morning, and were even given in the open air. The ballets were without any meaning or reference to the persons present and the occasion solemnized. Isabella Gonzaga, who was certainly at the time longing for her husband and child, and was dissatisfied with the union of her brother with Lucrezia, spoke of the ‘coldness and frostiness’ of the marriage and the festivities which attended it.

725

Strozzii Poetæ, fol. 232, in the fourth book of the Æolosticha of Tito Strozza. The lines run:

‘Ecce superveniens rerum argumenta retexitMimus, et ad populum verba diserta refert.Tum similes habitu formaque et voce MenæchmiDulcibus oblectant lumina nostra modis.’

The Menæchmi was also given at Ferrara in 1486, at the cost of more than 1,000 ducats. Murat. xxiv. 278.

726

Franc. Sansovino, Venezia, fol. 169. The passage in the original is as follows: ‘Si sono anco spesso recitate delle tragedie con grandi apparecchi, comporte da poeti antichi o da moderni. Alle quali per la fama degli apparati concorrevano le genti estere e circonvicine per vederle e udirle. Ma hoggi le feste da particolari si fanno fra i parenti et essendosi la città regolata per se medesima da certi anni in quà, si passano i tempi del Carnovale in comedie e in altri più lieti e honorati diletti.’ The passage is not thoroughly clear.

727

This must be the meaning of Sansovino, Venezia, fol. 168, when he complains that the ‘recitanti’ ruined the comedies ‘con invenzioni o personaggi troppo ridicoli.’

728

Sansovino, l. c.

729

Scardeonius, De urb. Patav. antiq., in Graevius, Thes. vi. iii. col. 288 sqq. An important passage for the literature of the dialects generally. One of the passages is as follows: ‘Hinc ad recitandas comœdias socii scenici et gregales et æmuli fuere nobiles juvenes Patavini, Marcus Aurelius Alvarotus quem in comœdiis suis Menatum appellitabat, et Hieronymus Zanetus quem Vezzam, et Castegnola quem Billoram vocitabat, et alii quidam qui sermonem agrestium imitando præ ceteris callebant.’

730

That the latter existed as early as the fifteenth century may be inferred from the Diario Ferrerese, Feb. 2nd, 1501: ‘Il duca Hercole fece una festa di Menechino secondo il suo uso.’ Murat. xxiv. col. 393. There cannot be a confusion with the Menæchmi of Plautus, which is correctly written, l. c. col. 278. See above, p. 318, note 2.

731

Pulci mischievously invents a solemn old-world legend for his story of the giant Margutte (Morgante, canto xix. str. 153 sqq.). The critical introduction of Limerno Pitocco is still droller (Orlandino, cap. i. str. 12-22).

732

The Morgante was written in 1460 and the following years, and first printed at Venice in 1481. Last ed. by P. Sermolli, Florence, 1872. For the tournaments, see part v. chap. i. See, for what follows, Ranke: Zur Geschichte der italienischen Poesie, Berlin, 1837.

733

The Orlando inamorato was first printed in 1496.

734

L’Italia liberata da Goti, Rome, 1547.

735

See above, p. 319, and Landau’s Boccaccio, 64-69. It must, nevertheless, be observed that the work of Boccaccio here mentioned was written before 1344, while that of Petrarch was written after Laura’s death, that is, after 1348.