The Civilisation of the Renaissance in Italy

868

Bandello, parte i. Proemio, and nov. 1 and 2. Another Lombard, the before-mentioned Teofilo Folengo in his Orlandino, treats the whole matter with ridicule.

869

Such a congress appears to have been held at Bologna at the end of 1531 under the presidency of Bembo. See the letter of Claud. Tolomai, in Firenzuola, Opere, vol. ii. append. p. 231 sqq. But this was not so much a matter of purism, but rather the old quarrel between Lombards and Tuscans.

870

Luigi Cornaro complains about 1550 (at the beginning of his Trattato della Vita Sobria) that latterly Spanish ceremonies and compliments, Lutheranism and gluttony had been gaining ground in Italy. With moderation in respect to the entertainment offered to guests, the freedom and ease of social intercourse disappeared.

871

Vasari, xii. p. 9 and 11, Vita di Rustici. For the School for Scandal of needy artists, see xi. 216 sqq., Vita d’Aristotile. Macchiavelli’s Capitoli for a circle of pleasure-seekers (Opere minori, p. 407) are a ludicrous caricature of these social statutes. The well-known description of the evening meeting of artists in Rome in Benvenuto Cellini, i. cap. 30 is incomparable.

872

Which must have been taken about 10 or 11 o’clock. See Bandello, parte ii. nov. 10.

873

Prato, Arch. Stor. iii. p. 309, calls the ladies ‘alquante ministre di Venere.’

874

Biographical information and some of her letters in A. v. Reumont’s Briefe heiliger und gottesfürchtiger Italiener. Freiburg (1877) p. 22 sqq.

875

Important passages: parte i. nov. 1, 3, 21, 30, 44; ii. 10, 34, 55; iii. 17, &c.

876

Comp. Lorenzo Magn. dei Med., Poesie, i. 204 (the Symposium); 291 (the Hawking-Party). Roscoe, Vita di Lorenzo, iii. p. 140, and append. 17 to 19.

877

The title ‘Simposio’ is inaccurate; it should be called, ‘The return from the Vintage.’ Lorenzo, in a parody of Dante’s Hell, gives an amusing account of his meeting in the Via Faenza all his good friends coming back from the country more or less tipsy. There is a most comical picture in the eighth chapter of Piovanno Arlotto, who sets out in search of his lost thirst, armed with dry meat, a herring, a piece of cheese, a sausage, and four sardines, ‘e tutte si cocevan nel sudore.’

878

On Cosimo Ruccellai as centre of this circle at the beginning of the sixteenth century, see Macchiavelli, Arte della Guerra, l. i.

879

Il Cortigiano, l. ii. fol. 53. See above pp. 121, 139.

880

Caelius Calcagninus (Opere, p. 514) describes the education of a young Italian of position about the year 1506, in the funeral speech on Antonio Costabili: first, ‘artes liberales et ingenuae disciplinae; tum adolescentia in iis exercitationibus acta, quæ ad rem militarem corpus et animum praemuniunt. Nunc gymnastae (i.e. the teachers of gymnastics) operam dare, luctari, excurrere, natare, equitare, venari, aucupari, ad palum et apud lanistam ictus inferre aut declinare, caesim punctimve hostem ferire, hastam vibrare, sub armis hyemen juxta et aestatem traducere, lanceis occursare, veri ac communis Martis simulacra imitari.’ Cardanus (De prop. Vita, c. 7) names among his gymnastic exercises the springing on to a wooden horse. Comp. Rabelais, Gargantua, i. 23, 24, for education in general, and 35 for gymnastic art. Even for the philologists, Marsilius Ficinus (Epist. iv. 171 Galeotto) requires gymnastics, and Maffeo Vegio (De Puerorum Educatione, lib. iii. c. 5) for boys.

881

Sansovino, Venezia, fol. 172 sqq. They are said to have arisen through the rowing out to the Lido, where the practice with the crossbow took place. The great regatta on the feast of St. Paul was prescribed by law from 1315 onwards. In early times there was much riding in Venice, before the streets were paved and the level wooden bridges turned into arched stone ones. Petrarch (Epist. Seniles, iv. 4) describes a brilliant tournament held in 1364 on the square of St. Mark, and the Doge Steno, about the year 1400, had as fine a stable as any prince in Italy. But riding in the neighbourhood of the square was prohibited as a rule after the year 1291. At a later time the Venetians naturally had the name of bad riders. See Ariosto, Sat. v. 208.

882

See on this subject: Ueber den Einfluss der Renaissance auf die Entwickelung der Musik, by Bernhard Loos, Basel, 1875, which, however, hardly offers for this period more than is given here. On Dante’s position with regard to music, and on the music to Petrarch’s and Boccaccio’s poems, see Trucchi, Poesie Ital. inedite, ii. p. 139. See also Poesie Musicali dei Secoli XIV., XV. e XVI. tratte da vari codici per cura di Antonio Cappelli, Bologna, 1868. For the theorists of the fourteenth century, Filippo Villani, Vite, p. 46, and Scardeonius, De urb. Pativ. antiq. in Graev. Thesaur, vi. iii. col. 297. A full account of the music at the court of Frederick of Urbino, is to be found in Vespes. Fior. p. 122. For the children’s chapel (ten children 6 to 8 years old whom F. had educated in his house, and who were taught singing), at the court of Hercules I., see Diario Ferrarese, in Murat. xxiv. col. 359. Out of Italy it was still hardly allowable for persons of consequence to be musicians; at the Flemish court of the young Charles V. a serious dispute took place on the subject. See Hubert. Leod. De Vita Frid. II. Palat. l. iii. Henry VIII. of England is an exception, and also the German Emperor Maximilian, who favoured music as well as all other arts. Joh. Cuspinian, in his life of the Emperor, calls him ‘Musices singularis amator’ and adds, ‘Quod vel hinc maxime patet, quod nostra aetate musicorum principes omnes, in omni genere musices omnibusque instrumentis in ejus curia, veluti in fertilissimo agro succreverant. Scriberem catalogum musicorum quos novi, nisi magnitudinem operis vererer.’ In consequence of this, music was much cultivated at the University of Vienna. The presence of the musical young Duke Francesco Sforza of Milan contributed to this result. See Aschbach, Gesch. der Wiener Universität (1877), vol. ii. 79 sqq.

A remarkable and comprehensive passage on music is to be found, where we should not expect it, in the Maccaroneide, Phant. xx. It is a comic description of a quartette, from which we see that Spanish and French songs were often sung, that music already had its enemies (1520), and that the chapel of Leo X. and the still earlier composer, Josquin des Près, whose principal works are mentioned, were the chief subjects of enthusiasm in the musical world of that time. The same writer (Folengo) displays in his Orlandino (iii. 23 &c.), published under the name Limerno Pitocco, a musical fanaticism of a thoroughly modern sort.

Barth. Facius, De Vir. Ill. p. 12, praises Leonardus Justinianus as a composer, who produced love-songs in his youth, and religious pieces in his old age. J. A. Campanus (Epist. i. 4, ed. Mencken) extols the musician Zacarus at Teramo and says of him, ‘Inventa pro oraculis habentur.’ Thomas of Forli ‘musicien du pape’ in Burchardi Diarium, ed. Leibnitz, pp. 62 sqq.

883

Leonis Vita anonyma, in Roscoe, ed. Bossi, xii. p. 171. May he not be the violinist in the Palazzo Sciarra? A certain Giovan Maria da Corneto is praised in the Orlandino (Milan, 1584, iii. 27).

884

Lomazzo, Trattato dell’Arte della Pittura, &c. p. 347. The text, however, does not bear out the last statement, which perhaps rests on a misunderstanding of the final sentence, ‘Et insieme vi si possono gratiosamente rappresentar convitti et simili abbellimenti, che il pittore leggendo i poeti e gli historici può trovare copiosamente et anco essendo ingenioso et ricco d’invenzione può per se stesso imaginare?’ Speaking of the lyre, he mentions Lionardo da Vinci and Alfonso (Duke?) of Ferrara. The author includes in his work all the celebrities of the age, among them several Jews. The most complete list of the famous musicians of the sixteenth century, divided into an earlier and a later generation, is to be found in Rabelais, in the ‘New Prologue’ to the fourth book. A virtuoso, the blind Francesco of Florence (d. 1390), was crowned at Venice with a wreath of laurel by the King of Cyprus.

885

Sansovino, Venezia, fol. 138. The same people naturally collected books of music. Sansovino’s words are, ‘è vera cosa che la musica ha la sua propria sede in questa città.’

886

The ‘Academia de’ Filarmonici’ at Verona is mentioned by Vasari, xi. 133, in the life of Sanmichele. Lorenzo Magnifico was in 1480 already the centre of a School of Harmony consisting of fifteen members, among them the famous organist and organ-builder Squarcialupi. See Delecluze, Florence et ses Vicissitudes, vol. ii. p. 256, and Reumont, L. d. M. i. 177 sqq., ii. 471-473. Marsilio Ficino took part in these exercises and gives in his letters (Epist. i. 73, iii. 52, v. 15) remarkable rules as to music. Lorenzo seems to have transmitted his passion for music to his son Leo X. His eldest son Pietro was also musical.

887

Il Cortigiano, fol. 56, comp. fol. 41.

888

Quatro viole da arco’—a high and, except in Italy, rare achievement for amateurs.

889

Bandello, parte i. nov. 26. The song of Antonio Bologna in the House of Ippolita Bentivoglio. Comp. iii. 26. In these delicate days, this would be called a profanation of the holiest feelings. (Comp. the last song of Britannicus, Tacit. Annal. xiii. 15.) Recitations accompanied by the lute or ‘viola’ are not easy to distinguish, in the accounts left us, from singing properly so-called.

890

Scardeonius, l. c.

891

For biographies of women, see above, p. 147 and note 1. Comp. the excellent work of Attilio Hortis: Le Donne Famose, descritte da Giovanni Boccacci. Trieste, 1877.

892

E.g. in Castiglione, Il Cortigiano. In the same strain Francesco Barbaro, De Re Uxoria; Poggio, An Seni sit Uxor ducenda, in which much evil is said of women; the ridicule of Codro Urceo, especially his remarkable discourse, An Uxor sit ducenda (Opera, 1506, fol. xviii.-xxi.), and the sarcasms of many of the epigrammatists. Marcellus Palingenius, (vol. i. 304) recommends celibacy in various passages, lib. iv. 275 sqq., v. 466-585; as a means of subduing disobedient wives he recommends to married people,

‘Tu verbera misceTergaque nunc duro resonent pulsata bacillo.’

Italian writers on the woman’s side are Benedetto da Cesena, De Honore Mulierum, Venice, 1500, Dardano, La defesa della Donna, Ven. 1554, Per Donne Romane. ed. Manfredi, Bol. 1575. The defence of, or attack on, women, supported by instances of famous or infamous women down to the time of the writer, was also treated by the Jews, partly in Italian and partly in Hebrew; and in connection with an earlier Jewish literature dating from the thirteenth century, we may mention Abr. Sarteano and Eliah Gennazzano, the latter of whom defended the former against the attacks of Abigdor (for their MS. poems about year 1500, comp. Steinschneider, Hebr. Bibliogr. vi. 48).

893

Addressed to Annibale Maleguccio, sometimes numbered as the 5th or the 6th.

894

When the Hungarian Queen Beatrice, a Neapolitan princess, came to Vienna in 1485, she was addressed in Latin, and ‘arrexit diligentissime aures domina regina saepe, cum placide audierat, subridendo.’ Aschbach, o. c. vol. ii. 10 note.

895

The share taken by women in the plastic arts was insignificant. The learned Isotta Nogarola deserves a word of mention. On her intercourse with Guarino, see Rosmini, ii. 67 sqq.; with Pius II. see Voigt, iii. 515 sqq.

896

It is from this point of view that we must judge of the life of Allessandra de’ Bardi in Vespasiano Fiorentino (Mai, Spicileg. rom. i. p. 593 sqq.) The author, by the way, is a great ‘laudator temporis acti,’ and it must not be forgotten that nearly a hundred years before what he calls the good old time, Boccaccio wrote the Decameron. On the culture and education of the Italian women of that day, comp. the numerous facts quoted in Gregorovius, Lucrezia Borgia. There is a catalogue of the books possessed by Lucrezia in 1502 and 3 (Gregorovius, ed. 3, i. 310, ii. 167), which may be considered characteristic of the Italian women of the period. We there find a Breviary; a little book with the seven psalms and some prayers; a parchment book with gold miniature, called De Coppelle alla Spagnola; the printed letters of Catherine of Siena; the printed epistles and gospels in Italian; a religious book in Spanish; a MS. collection of Spanish odes, with the proverbs of Domenico Lopez; a printed book, called Aquila Volante; the Mirror of Faith printed in Italian; an Italian printed book called The Supplement of Chronicles; a printed Dante, with commentary; an Italian book on philosophy; the legends of the saints in Italian; an old book De Ventura; a Donatus; a Life of Christ in Spanish; a MS. Petrarch, on duodecimo parchment. A second catalogue of the year 1516 contains no secular books whatever.

897

Ant. Galateo, Epist. 3, to the young Bona Sforza, the future wife of Sigismund of Poland: ‘Incipe aliquid de viro sapere, quoniam ad imperandum viris nata es.... Ita fac, ut sapientibus viris placeas, ut te prudentes et graves viri admirentur, et vulgi et muliercularum studia et judicia despicias,’ &c. A remarkable letter in other respects also (Mai. Spicileg. Rom. viii. p. 532).

898

She is so called in the Chron. Venetum, in Muratori, xxiv. col. 121 sqq. (in the account of her heroic defence, ibid. col. 121 she is called a virago). Comp. Infessura in Eccard, Scriptt. ii. col. 1981, and Arch. Stor. append. ii. p. 250, and Gregorovius, vii. 437 note 1.

899

Contemporary historians speak of her more than womanly intellect and eloquence. Comp. Ranke’s Filippo Strozzi, in Historisch-biographische Studien, p. 371 note 2.

900

And rightly so, sometimes. How ladies should behave while such tales are telling, we learn from Cortigiano, l. iii. fol. 107. That the ladies who were present at his dialogues must have known how to conduct themselves in case of need, is shown by the strong passage, l. ii. fol. 100. What is said of the ‘Donna di Palazzo’—the counterpart of the Cortigiano—that she should neither avoid frivolous company nor use unbecoming language, is not decisive, since she was far more the servant of the princess than the Cortigiano of the prince. See Bandello, i. nov. 44. Bianca d’Este tells the terrible love-story of her ancestor, Niccolò of Ferrara, and Parisina. The tales put into the mouths of the women in the Decameron may also serve as instances of this indelicacy. For Bandello, see above, p. 145; and Landau, Beitr. z. Gesch. der Ital. Nov. Vienna, 1875, p. 102. note 32.

901

Sansovino, Venezia, fol. 152 sqq. How highly the travelled Italians valued the freer intercourse with girls in England and the Netherlands is shown by Bandello, ii. nov. 44, and iv. nov. 27. For the Venetian women and the Italian women generally, see the work of Yriarte, pp. 50 sqq.

902

Paul. Jov. De Rom. Piscibus, cap. 5; Bandello, parte iii. nov. 42. Aretino, in the Ragionamento del Zoppino, p. 327, says of a courtesan: ‘She knows by heart all Petrarch and Boccaccio, and many beautiful verses of Virgil, Horace, Ovid, and a thousand other authors.’

903

Bandello, ii. 51, iv. 16.

904

Bandello, iv. 8.

905

For a characteristic instance of this, see Giraldi, Hecatomithi, vi nov. 7.

906

Infessura, in Eccard, Scriptores, ii. col. 1997. The public women only, not the kept women, are meant. The number, compared with the population of Rome, is certainly enormous, perhaps owing to some clerical error. According to Giraldi, vi. 7, Venice was exceptionally rich ‘di quella sorte di donne che cortigiane son dette;’ see also the epigram of Pasquinus (Gregor. viii. 279, note 2); but Rome did not stand behind Venice (Giraldi, Introduz. nov. 2). Comp. the notice of the ‘meretrices’ in Rome (1480) who met in a church and were robbed of their jewels and ornaments, Murat. xxii. 342 sqq., and the account in Burchardi, Diarium, ed. Leibnitz, pp. 75-77, &c. Landi (Commentario, fol. 76) mentions Rome, Naples, and Venice as the chief seats of the ‘cortigiane;’ ibid. 286, the fame of the women of Chiavenna is to be understood ironically. The Quaestiones Forcianae, fol. 9, of the same author give most interesting information on love and love’s delights, and the style and position of women in the different cities of Italy. On the other hand, Egnatius (De Exemp. III. Vir. Ven. fol. 212 b sqq.) praises the chastity of the Venetian women, and says that the prostitutes come every year from Germany. Corn. Agr. de van. Scientiae, cap. 63 (Opp. ed. Lugd. ii. 158) says: ‘Vidi ego nuper atque legi sub titulo “Cortosanæ” Italica lingua editum et Venetiis typis excusum de arte meretricia dialogum, utriusque Veneris omnium flagitiosissimum et dignissimum, qui ipse cum autore suo ardeat.’ Ambr. Traversari (Epist. viii. 2 sqq.) calls the beloved of Niccolò Niccoli ‘foemina fidelissima.’ In the Lettere dei Principi, i. 108 (report of Negro, Sept. 1, 1522) the ‘donne Greche’ are described as ‘fonte di ogni cortesia et amorevolezza.’ A great authority, esp. for Siena, is the Hermaphroditus of Panormitanus. The enumeration of the ‘lenae lupaeque’ in Florence (ii. 37) is hardly fictitious; the line there occurs:

‘Annaque Theutonico tibi si dabit obvia cantu.’

907

Were these wandering knights really married?

908

Trattato del Governo della Famiglia. See above, p. 132, note 1. Pandolfini died in 1446, L. B. Alberti, by whom the work was really written, in 1472.

909

A thorough history of ‘flogging’ among the Germanic and Latin races treated with some psychological power, would be worth volumes of dispatches and negotiations. (A modest beginning has been made by Lichtenberg, Vermischte Schriften, v. 276-283.) When, and through what influence, did flogging become a daily practice in the German household? Not till after Walther sang: ‘Nieman kan mit gerten kindes zuht beherten.’

In Italy beating ceased early; Maffeo Vegio (d. 1458) recommends (De Educ. Liber. lib. i. c. 19) moderation in flogging, but adds: ‘Caedendos magis esse filios quam pestilentissmis blanditiis laetandos.’ At a later time a child of seven was no longer beaten. The little Roland (Orlandino, cap. vii. str. 42) lays down the principle:

‘Sol gli asini si ponno bastonare,Se una tal bestia fussi, patirei.’

The German humanists of the Renaissance, like Rudolf Agricola and Erasmus, speak decisively against flogging, which the elder schoolmasters regarded as an indispensable means of education. In the biographies of the Fahrenden Schüler at the close of the fifteenth century (Platter’s Lebensbeschriebung, ed. Fechter, Basel, 1840; Butzbach’s Wanderbuch, ed. Becher, Regensburg, 1869) there are gross examples of the corporal punishment of the time.

910

But the taste was not universal. J. A. Campanus (Epist. iv. 4) writes vigorously against country life. He admits: ‘Ego si rusticus natus non essem, facile tangerer voluptate;’ but since he was born a peasant, ‘quod tibi deliciae, mihi satietas est.’

911

Giovanni Villani, xi. 93, our principal authority for the building of villas before the middle of the fourteenth century. The villas were more beautiful than the town houses, and great exertions were made by the Florentines to have them so, ‘onde erano tenuti matti.’

912

Trattato del Governo della Famiglia (Torino, 1829), pp. 84, 88.

913

See above, part iv. chap. 2. Petrarch was called ‘Silvanus,’ on the ground of his dislike of the town and love of the country. Epp. Fam. ed. Fracass. ii. 87 sqq. Guarino’s description of a villa to Gianbattista Candrata, in Rosmini, ii. 13 sqq., 157 sqq. Poggio, in a letter to Facius (De Vir. Ill. p. 106): ‘Sum enim deditior senectutis gratia rei rusticæ quam antea.’ See also Poggio, Opp. (1513), p 112 sqq.; and Shepherd-Tonelli, i. 255 and 261. Similarly Maffeo Vegio (De Lib. Educ. vi. 4), and B. Platina at the beginning of his dialogue, ‘De Vera Nobilitate.’ Politian’s descriptions of the country-houses of the Medici in Reumont, Lorenzo, ii. 73, 87. For the Farnesina, see Gregorovius, viii. 114.

914

Comp. J. Burckhardt, Geschichte der Renaissance in Italien (Stuttg. 1868), pp. 320-332.

915

Compare pp. 47 sqq., where the magnificence of the festivals is shown to have been a hindrance to the higher development of the drama.

916

In comparison with the cities of the North.

917

The procession at the feast of Corpus Christi was not established at Venice until 1407; Cecchetti, Venezia e la Corte di Roma, i. 108.

918

The festivities which took place when Visconti was made Duke of Milan, 1395 (Corio, fol. 274), had, with all their splendour, something of mediæval coarseness about them, and the dramatic element was wholly wanting. Notice, too, the relative insignificance of the processions in Pavia during the fourteenth century (Anonymus de Laudibus Papiae, in Murat. xi. col. 34 sqq.).

919

Gio. Villani, viii. 70.

920

See e.g. Infessura, in Eccard, Scrippt. ii. col. 1896; Corio, fols. 417, 421.

921

The dialogue in the Mysteries was chiefly in octaves, the monologue in ‘terzine.’ For the Mysteries, see J. L. Klein, Geschichte der Ital. Dramas, i. 153 sqq.

922

We have no need to refer to the realism of the schoolmen for proof of this. About the year 970 Bishop Wibold of Cambray recommended to his clergy, instead of dice, a sort of spiritual bézique, with fifty-six abstract names represented by as many combinations of cards. ‘Gesta Episcopori Cameracens.’ in Mon. Germ. SS. vii. p. 433.

923

E.g. when he found pictures on metaphors. At the gate of Purgatory the central broken step signifies contrition of heart (Purg. ix. 97), though the slab through being broken loses its value as a step. And again (Purg. xviii. 94), the idle in this world have to show their penitence by running in the other, though running could be a symbol of flight.

924

Inferno, ix. 61; Purgat. viii. 19.

925

Poesie Satiriche, ed. Milan, p. 70 sqq. Dating from the end of the fourteenth century.

926

The latter e.g. in the Venatio of the Cardinal Adriano da Corneto (Strasburg, 1512; often printed). Ascanio Sforza is there supposed to find consolation for the fall of his house in the pleasures of the chase. See above, p. 261.