The Civilisation of the Renaissance in Italy

736

Vasari, viii. 71, in the Commentary to the Vita di Rafaelle.

737

Much of this kind our present taste could dispense with in the Iliad.

738

First edition, 1516.

739

The speeches inserted are themselves narratives.

740

As was the case with Pulci, Morgante, canto xix. str. 20 sqq.

741

The Orlandino, first edition, 1526.

742

Radevicus, De gestis Friderici imp., especially ii. 76. The admirable Vita Henrici IV. contains very little personal description, as is also the case with the Vita Chuonradi imp. by Wipo.

743

The librarian Anastasius (middle of ninth century) is here meant. The whole collection of the lives of the Popes (Liber Pontificalis) was formerly ascribed to him, but erroneously. Comp. Wattenbach, Deutschland’s Geschichtsquellen, i. 223 sqq. 3rd ed.

744

Lived about the same time as Anastasius; author of a history of the bishopric of Ravenna. Wattenbach, l. c. 227.

745

How early Philostratus was used in the same way, I am unable to say. Suetonius was no doubt taken as a model in times still earlier. Besides the life of Charles the Great, written by Eginhard, examples from the twelfth century are offered by William of Malmesbury in his descriptions of William the Conqueror (p. 446 sqq., 452 sqq.), of William II. (pp. 494, 504), and of Henry I. (p. 640).

746

See the admirable criticism in Landau, Boccaccio, 180-182.

747

See above, p. 131. The original (Latin) was first published in 1847 at Florence, by Galletti, with the title, Philippi Villani Liber de civitatis Florentiae famosis civibus; an old Italian translation has been often printed since 1747, last at Trieste, 1858. The first book, which treats of the earliest history of Florence and Rome, has never been printed. The chapter in Villani, De semipoetis, i.e. those who wrote in prose as well as in verse, or those who wrote poems besides following some other profession, is specially interesting.

748

Here we refer the reader to the biography of L. B. Alberti, from which extracts are given above (p. 136), and to the numerous Florentine biographies in Muratori, in the Archivio Storico, and elsewhere. The life of Alberti is probably an autobiography, l. c. note 2.

749

Storia Fiorentina, ed. F. L. Polidori, Florence, 1838.

750

De viris illustribus, in the publications of the Stuttgarter liter. Vereins, No. i. Stuttg. 1839. Comp. C. Voigt, ii. 324. Of the sixty-five biographies, twenty-one are lost.

751

His Diarium Romanum from 1472 to 1484, in Murat. xiii. 81-202.

752

Ugolini Verini poetae Florentini (a contemporary of Lorenzo, a pupil of Landinus, fol. 13, and teacher of Petrus Crinitus, fol. 14), De illustratione urbis Florentinae libri tres, Paris, 1583, deserves mention, esp. lib. 2. Dante, Petrarch, Boccaccio are spoken of and characterised without a word of blame. For several women, see fol. 11.

753

Petri Candidi Decembrii Vita Philippi Mariae Vicecomitis, in Murat. xx. Comp above, p. 38.

754

See above, p. 225.

755

On Comines, see above, p. 96, note 1. While Comines, as is there indicated, partly owes his power of objective criticism to intercourse with Italians, the German humanists and statesmen, notwithstanding the prolonged residence of some of them in Italy, and their diligent and often most successful study of the classical world, acquired little or nothing of the gift of biographical representation or of the analysis of character. The travels, biographies, and historical sketches of the German humanists in the fifteenth, and often in the early part of the sixteenth centuries, are mostly either dry catalogues or empty, rhetorical declamations.

756

See above, p. 96.

757

Here and there we find exceptions. Letters of Hutten, containing autobiographical notices, bits of the chronicle of Barth. Sastrow, and the Sabbata of Joh. Kessler, introduce us to the inward conflicts of the writers, mostly, however, bearing the specifically religious character of the Reformation.

758

Among northern autobiographies we might, perhaps, select for comparison that of Agrippa d’Aubigné (though belonging to a later period) as a living and speaking picture of human individuality.

759

Written in his old age, about 1576. On Cardano as an investigator and discoverer, see Libri, Hist. des Sciences Mathém. iii. p. 167 sqq.

760

E.g. the execution of his eldest son, who had taken vengeance for his wife’s infidelity by poisoning her (cap. 27, 50).

761

Discorsi della Vita Sobria, consisting of the ‘trattato,’ of a ‘compendio,’ of an ‘esortazione,’ and of a ‘lettera’ to Daniel Barbaro. The book has been often reprinted.

762

Was this the villa of Codevico mentioned above, p. 321?

763

In some cases very early; in the Lombard cities as early as the twelfth century. Comp. Landulfus senior, Ricobaldus, and (in Murat. x.) the remarkable anonymous work, De laudibus Papiae, of the fourteenth century. Also (in Murat. i.) Liber de Situ urbis Mediol. Some notices on Italian local history in O. Lorenzo, Deutschland’s Geschichtsquellen im Mittelalter seit dem 13ten Jahr. Berlin, 1877; but the author expressly refrains from an original treatment of the subject.

764

Li Tresors, ed. Chabaille, Paris, 1863, pp. 179-180. Comp. ibid. p. 577 (lib. iii. p. ii. c. 1).

765

On Paris, which was a much more important place to the mediæval Italian than to his successor a hundred years later, see Dittamondo, iv. cap. 18. The contrast between France and Italy is accentuated by Petrarch in his Invectivae contra Gallum.

766

Savonarola, in Murat. xxiv. col. 1186 (above, p. 145). On Venice, see above, p. 62 sqq. The oldest description of Rome, by Signorili (MS.), was written in the pontificate of Martin V. (1417); see Gregorovius, vii. 569; the oldest by a German is that of H. Muffel (middle of fifteenth century), ed. by Voigt, Tübingen, 1876.

767

The character of the restless and energetic Bergamasque, full of curiosity and suspicion, is charmingly described in Bandello, parte i. nov. 34.

768

E.g. Varchi, in the ninth book of the Storie Fiorentine (vol. iii. p. 56 sqq.).

769

Vasari, xii. p. 158. V. di Michelangelo, at the beginning. At other times mother nature is praised loudly enough, as in the sonnet of Alfons de’ Pazzi to the non-Tuscan Annibal Caro (in Trucchi, l. c. iii. p. 187):

‘Misero il Varchi! e più infelici noi,Se a vostri virtudi accidentaliAggiunto fosse ‘l natural, ch’è in noi!’

770

Forcianae Quaestiones, in quibus varia Italorum ingenia explicantur multaque alia scitu non indigna. Autore Philalette Polytopiensi cive. Among them, Mauritii Scaevae Carmen.

‘Quos hominum mores varios quas denique mentesDiverso profert Itala terra solo,Quisve vinis animus, mulierum et strenua virtusPulchre hoc exili codice lector habes.’

Neapoli excudebat Martinus de Ragusia, Anno MDXXXVI. This little work, made use of by Ranke, Päpste, i. 385, passes as being from the hand of Ortensio Landi (comp. Tiraboschi, vii. 800 to 812), although in the work itself no hint is given of the author. The title is explained by the circumstance that conversations are reported which were held at Forcium, a bath near Lucca, by a large company of men and women, on the question whence it comes that there are such great differences among mankind. The question receives no answer, but many of the differences among the Italians of that day are noticed—in studies, trade, warlike skill (the point quoted by Ranke), the manufacture of warlike implements, modes of life, distinctions in costume, in language, in intellect, in loving and hating, in the way of winning affection, in the manner of receiving guests, and in eating. At the close, come some reflections on the differences among philosophical systems. A large part of the work is devoted to women—their differences in general, the power of their beauty, and especially the question whether women are equal or inferior to men. The work has been made use of in various passages below. The following extract may serve as an example (fol. 7 b sqq.):—‘Aperiam nunc quæ sint in consilio aut dando aut accipiendo dissimilitudo. Præstant consilio Mediolanenses, sed aliorum gratia potius quam sua. Sunt nullo consilio Genuenses. Rumor est Venetos abundare. Sunt perutili consilio Lucenses, idque aperte indicarunt, cum in tanto totius Italiæ ardore, tot hostibus circumsepti suam libertatem, ad quam nati videntur semper tutati sint, nulla, quidem, aut capitis aut fortunarum ratione habita. Quis porro non vehementer admiretur? Quis callida consilia non stupeat? Equidem quotiescunque cogito, quanta prudentia ingruentes procellas evitarint, quanta solertia impendentia pericula effugerint, adducor in stuporem. Lucanis vero summum est studium, eos deludere qui consilii captandi gratia adeunt, ipsi vero omnia inconsulte ac temere faciunt. Brutii optimo sunt consilio, sed ut incommodent, aut perniciem afferant, in rebus quæ magnæ deliberationis dictu mirum quam stupidi sint, eisdem plane dotibus instructi sunt Volsci quod ad cædes et furta paulo propensiores sint. Pisani bono quidem sunt consilio, sed parum constanti, si quis diversum ab eis senserit, mox acquiescunt, rursus si aliter suadeas, mutabunt consilium, illud in caussa fuit quod tam duram ac diutinam obsidionem ad extremum usque non pertulerint. Placentini utrisque abundant consiliis, scilicet salutaribus ac pernitiosis, non facile tamen ab iis impetres pestilens consilium, apud Regienses neque consilii copiam invenies. Si sequare Mutinensium consilia, raro cedet infeliciter, sunt enim peracutissimo consilio, et voluntate plane bona. Providi sunt Florentini (si unumquemque seorsum accipias) si vero simul conjuncti sint, non admodum mihi consilia eorum probabuntur; feliciter cedunt Senensium consilia, subita sunt Perusinorum; salutaria Ferrariensium, fideli sunt consilio Veronenses, semper ambigui sunt in consiliis aut dandis aut accipiendis Patavini. Sunt pertinaces in eo quod cœperint consilio Bergomates, respuunt omnium consilia Neapolitani, sunt consultissimi Bononienses.’

771

Commentario delle più notabili e mostruose cose d’Italia et altri luoghi, di Lingua Aramea in Italiana tradotta. Con un breve Catalogo degli inventori delle cose che si mangiano et beveno, novamente ritrovato. In Venetia 1553 (first printed 1548, based on a journey taken by Ortensio Landi through Italy in 1543 and 1544). That Landi was really the author of this Commentario is clear from the concluding remarks of Nicolo Morra (fol. 46 a): ‘Il presente commentario nato del constantissimo cervello di M. O. L.;’ and from the signature of the whole (fol. 70 a): SVISNETROH SVDNAL, ROTUA TSE, ‘Hortensius Landus autor est.’ After a declaration as to Italy from the mouth of a mysterious grey-haired sage, a journey is described from Sicily through Italy to the East. All the cities of Italy are more or less fully discussed: that Lucca should receive special praise is intelligible from the writer’s way of thinking. Venice, where he claims to have been much with Pietro Aretino (p. 166), and Milan are described in detail, and in connexion with the latter the maddest stories are told (fol. 25 sqq.). There is no want of such elsewhere—of roses which flower all the year round, stars which shine at midday, birds which are changed into men, and men with bulls’ heads on their shoulders, mermen, and men who spit fire from their mouths. Among all these there are often authentic bits of information, some of which will be used in the proper place; short mention is made of the Lutherans (fol. 32 a, 38 a), and frequent complaints are heard of the wretched times and unhappy state of Italy. We there read (fol. 22 a): ‘Son questi quelli Italiani li quali in un fatto d’armi uccisero ducento mila Francesi? sono finalmente quelli che di tutto il mondo s’impadronirono? Hai quanto (per quel che io vego) degenerati sono. Hai quanto dissimili mi paiono dalli antichi padri loro, liquali et singolar virtu di cuore e disciplina militare ugualmente monstrarno havere.’ On the catalogue of eatables which is added, see below.

772

Descrizione di tutta l’Italia.

773

Satirical lists of cities are frequently met with later, e.g. Macaroneide, Phantas. ii. For France, Rabelais, who knew the Macaroneide, is the chief source of all the jests and malicious allusions of this local sort.

774

It is true that many decaying literatures are full of painfully minute descriptions. See e.g. in Sidonius Apollinaris the descriptions of a Visigoth king (Epist. i. 2), of a personal enemy (Epist. iii. 13), and in his poems the types of the different German tribes.

775

On Filippo Villani, see p. 330.

776

Parnasso teatrale, Lipsia, 1829. Introd. p. vii.

777

The reading is here evidently corrupt. The passage is as follows (Ameto, Venezia, 1856, p. 54): ‘Del mezo de’ quali non camuso naso in linea diretta discende, quanto ad aquilineo non essere dimanda il dovere.’

778

‘Due occhi ladri nel loro movimento.’ The whole work is rich in such descriptions.

779

The charming book of songs by Giusto dei Conti, La bella Mano (best ed. Florence, 1715), does not tell us as many details of this famous hand of his beloved as Boccaccio in a dozen passages of the Ameto of the hands of his nymphs.

780

‘Della bellezza delle donne,’ in the first vol. of the Opere di Firenzuola, Milano, 1802. For his view of bodily beauty as a sign of beauty of soul, comp. vol. ii. pp. 48 to 52, in the ‘ragionamenti’ prefixed to his novels. Among the many who maintain this doctrine, partly in the style of the ancients, we may quote one, Castiglione, Il Cortigiana, l. iv. fol. 176.

781

This was a universal opinion, not only the professional opinion of painters. See below.

782

This may be an opportunity for a word on the eyes of Lucrezia Borgia, taken from the distichs of a Ferrarese court-poet, Ercole Strozza (Strozzii Poetae, fol. 85-88). The power of her glance is described in a manner only explicable in an artistic age, and which would not now be permitted. Sometimes it turns the beholder to fire, sometimes to stone. He who looks long at the sun, becomes blind; he who beheld Medusa, became a stone; but he who looks at the countenance of Lucrezia

‘Fit primo intuitu cæcus et inde lapis.’

Even the marble Cupid sleeping in her halls is said to have been petrified by her gaze:

‘Lumine Borgiado saxificatur Amor.’

Critics may dispute, if they please, whether the so-called Eros of Praxiteles or that of Michelangelo is meant, since she was the possessor of both.

And the same glance appeared to another poet, Marcello Filosseno, only mild and lofty, ‘mansueto e altero’ (Roscoe, Leone X. ed. Bossi, vii. p. 306).

Comparisons with ideal figures of antiquity occur (p. 30). Of a boy ten years old we read in the Orlandino (ii. str. 47), ‘ed ha capo romano.’ Referring to the fact that the appearance of the temples can be altogether changed by the arrangement of the hair, Firenzuola makes a comical attack on the overcrowding of the hair with flowers, which causes the head to ‘look like a pot of pinks or a quarter of goat on the spit.’ He is, as a rule, thoroughly at home in caricature.

783

For the ideal of the ‘Minnesänger,’ see Falke, Die deutsche Trachten- und Modenwelt, i. pp. 85 sqq.

784

On the accuracy of his sense of form, p. 290.

785

Inferno, xxi. 7; Purgat. xiii. 61.

786

We must not take it too seriously, if we read (in Platina, Vitae Pontiff. p. 310) that he kept at his court a sort of buffoon, the Florentine Greco, ‘hominem certe cujusvis mores, naturam, linguam cum maximo omnium qui audiebant risu facile exprimentem.’

787

Pii. II. Comment. viii. p. 391.

788

Two tournaments must be distinguished, Lorenzo’s in 1468 and Guiliano’s in 1475 (a third in 1481?). See Reumont, L. M. i. 264 sqq. 361, 267, note 1; ii. 55, 67, and the works there quoted, which settle the old dispute on these points. The first tournament is treated in the poem of Luca Pulci, ed. Ciriffo Calvaneo di Luca Pulci Gentilhuomo Fiorentino, con la Giostra del Magnifico Lorenzo de’ Medici. Florence, 1572, pp. 75, 91; the second in an unfinished poem of Ang. Poliziano, best ed. Carducci, Le Stanze, l’Orfeo e le Rime di M. A. P. Florence, 1863. The description of Politian breaks off at the setting out of Guiliano for the tournament. Pulci gives a detailed account of the combatants and the manner of fighting. The description of Lorenzo is particularly good (p. 82).

789

This so-called ‘Caccia’ is printed in the Commentary to Castiglione’s Eclogue from a Roman MS. Lettere del conte B. Castiglione, ed. Pierantonio Lerassi (Padua, 1771), ii. p. 269.

790

See the Serventese of Giannozzo of Florence, in Trucchi, Poesie italiane inedite, ii. p. 99. The words are many of them quite unintelligible, borrowed really or apparently from the languages of the foreign mercenaries. Macchiavelli’s description of Florence during the plague of 1527 belongs, to certain extent, to this class of works. It is a series of living, speaking pictures of a frightful calamity.

791

According to Boccaccio (Vita di Dante, p. 77), Dante was the author of two eclogues, probably written in Latin. They are addressed to Joh. de Virgiliis. Comp. Fraticelli, Opp. min. di Dante, i. 417. Petrarch’s bucolic poem in P. Carmina minora, ed. Bossetti, i. Comp. L. Geiger, Petr. 120-122 and 270, note 6, especially A. Hortis, Scritti inediti di F. P. Triest, 1874.

792

Boccaccio gives in his Ameto (above, p. 344) a kind of mythical Decameron, and sometimes fails ludicrously to keep up the character. One of his nymphs is a good Catholic, and prelates shoot glances of unholy love at her in Rome. Another marries. In the Ninfale fiesolano the nymph Mensola, who finds herself pregnant, takes counsel of an ‘old and wise nymph.’

793

In general the prosperity of the Italian peasants was greater then than that of the peasantry anywhere else in Europe. Comp. Sacchetti, nov. 88 and 222; L. Pulci in the Beca da Dicamano (Villari, Macchiavelli, i. 198, note 2).

794

‘Nullum est hominum genus aptius urbi,’ says Battista Mantovano (Ecl. viii.) of the inhabitants of the Monte Baldo and the Val. Cassina, who could turn their hands to anything. Some country populations, as is well known, have even now privileges with regard to certain occupations in the great cities.

795

Perhaps one of the strongest passages, Orlandino, cap. v. str. 54-58. The tranquil and unlearned Vesp. Bisticci says (Comm. sulla vita di Giov. Manetti, p. 96): ‘Sono due ispezie di uomini difficili a supportare per la loro ignoranza; l’una sono i servi, la seconda i contadini.’

796

In Lombardy, at the beginning of the sixteenth century, the nobles did not shrink from dancing, wrestling, leaping, and racing with the peasants. Il Cortigiano, l. ii. fol. 54. A. Pandolfini (L. B. Alberti) in the Trattato del governo della famiglia, p. 86, is an instance of a land-owner who consoles himself for the greed and fraud of his peasant tenantry with the reflection that he is thereby taught to bear and deal with his fellow-creatures.

797

Jovian. Pontan. De fortitudine, lib. ii.

798

The famous peasant-woman of the Valtellina—Bona Lombarda, wife of the Condottiere Pietro Brunoro—is known to us from Jacobus Bergomensis and from Porcellius, in Murat. xxv. col. 43.

799

On the condition of the Italian peasantry in general, and especially of the details of that condition in several provinces, we are unable to particularise more fully. The proportions between freehold and leasehold property, and the burdens laid on each in comparison with those borne at the present time, must be gathered from special works which we have not had the opportunity of consulting. In stormy times the country people were apt to have appalling relapses into savagery (Arch. Stor. xvi. i. pp. 451 sqq., ad. a. 1440; Corio, fol. 259; Annales Foroliv. in Murat. xxii. col. 227, though nothing in the shape of a general peasants’ war occurred. The rising near Piacenza in 1462 was of some importance and interest. Comp. Corio, Storia di Milano, fol. 409; Annales Placent. in Murat. xx. col. 907; Sismondi, x. p. 138. See below, part vi. cap. 1.

800

F. Bapt. Mantuani Bucolica seu Adolescentia in decem Eclogas divisa; often printed, e.g. Strasburg, 1504. The date of composition is indicated by the preface, written in 1498, from which it also appears that the ninth and tenth eclogues were added later. In the heading to the tenth are the words, ‘post religionis ingressum;’ in that of the seventh, ‘cum jam autor ad religionem aspiraret.’ The eclogues by no means deal exclusively with peasant life; in fact, only two of them do so—the sixth, ‘disceptatione rusticorum et civium,’ in which the writer sides with the rustics; and the eighth, ‘de rusticorum religione.’ The others speak of love, of the relations between poets and wealthy men, of conversion to religion, and of the manners of the Roman court.

801

Poesie di Lorenzo Magnifico, i. p. 37 sqq. The remarkable poems belonging to the period of the German ‘Minnesänger,’ which bear the name of Neithard von Reuenthal, only depict peasant life in so far as the knight chooses to mix with it for his amusement. The peasants reply to the ridicule of Reuenthal in songs of their own. Comp. Karl Schroder, Die höfische Dorfpoesie des deutschen Mittelalters in Rich. Gosche, Jahrb. für Literaturgesch. 1 vol. Berlin, 1875, pp. 45-98, esp. 75 sqq.

802

Poesie di Lor. Magn. ii. 149.

803

In the Deliciae poetar. ital., and in the works of Politian. First separate ed. Florence, 1493. The didactic poem of Rucellai, Le Api, first printed 1519, and La coltivazione, Paris, 1546, contain something of the same kind.

804

Poesie di Lor. Magnifico, ii. 75.

805

The imitation of different dialects and of the manners of different districts spring from the same tendency. Comp. p. 155.

806

Jo. Pici oratio de hominis dignitate. The passage is as follows: ‘Statuit tandem optimus opifex ut cui dari nihil proprium poterat commune esset quidquid privatum singulis fuerat. Igitur hominem accepit indiscretae opus imaginis atque in mundi posito meditullio sic est allocutus; Nec certam sedem, nec propriam faciem, nec munus ullum peculiare tibi dedimus, O Adam, ut quam sedem, quam faciem, quae munera tute optaveris, ea pro voto pro tua sententia habeas et possideas. Definita caeteris natura inter praescriptas a nobis leges coercetur, tu nullis augustiis coercitus pro tuo arbitrio, in cujus manus te posui, tibi illam praefinies. Medium te mundi posui ut circumspiceres inde commodius quidquid est in mundo. Nec te caelestem neque terrenum, neque mortalem neque immortalem fecimus, ut tui ipsius quasi arbitrarius honorariusque plastes et fictor in quam malueris tute formam effingas. Poteris in inferiora quae sunt bruta degenerare, poteris in superiora quae sunt divina ex tui animi sententia regenerari. O summam dei patris liberalitatem, summam et admirandam hominis felicitatem. Cui datum id habere quod optat, id esse quod velit. Bruta simulatque nascuntur id secum afferunt, ut ait Lucilius, e bulga matris quod possessura sunt; supremi spiritus aut ab initio aut paulo mox id fuerunt quod sunt futuri in perpetuas aeternitates. Nascenti homini omnifaria semina et omnigenae vitæ germina indidit pater; quæ quisque excoluerit illa adolescent et fructus suos ferent in illo. Si vegetalia, planta fiet, si sensualia, obbrutescet, si rationalia, coeleste evadet animal, si intellectualia, angelus erit et dei filius, et si nulla creaturarum sorte contentus in unitatis centrum suae se receperit, unus cum deo spiritus factus in solitaria patris caligine qui est super omnia constitutus omnibus antestabit.’