The Civilisation of the Renaissance in Italy

1217

Gio. Villani, xi. 2. He had it from the Abbot of Vallombrosa, to whom the hermit had communicated it.

1218

Another view of the Dæmons was given by Gemisthos Pletho, whose great philosophical work οἱ νὁμοι, of which only fragments are now left (ed. Alexander, Paris, 1858), was probably known more fully to the Italians of the fifteenth century, either by means of copies or of tradition, and exercised undoubtedly a great influence on the philosophical, political, and religious culture of the time. According to him the dæmons, who belong to the third order of the gods, are preserved from all error, and are capable of following in the steps of the gods who stand above them; they are spirits who bring to men the good things ‘which come down from Zeus through the other gods in order; they purify and watch over man, they raise and strengthen his heart.’ Comp. Fritz Schultze, Gesch. der Philosophie der Renaissance, Jena, 1874.

1219

Yet but little remained of the wonders attributed to her. For probably the last metamorphosis of a man into an ass, in the eleventh century under Leo IX., see Giul. Malmesbur. ii. 171.

1220

This was probably the case with the possessed woman, who in 1513 at Ferrara and elsewhere was consulted by distinguished Lombards as to future events. Her name was Rodogine. See Rabelais, Pantagruel, iv. 58.

1221

Jovian. Pontan. Antonius.

1222

How widespread the belief in witches then was, is shown by the fact that in 1483 Politian gave a ‘praelectio’ ‘in priora Aristotelis Analytica cui titulus Lamia’ (Italian trans. by Isidore del Lungo, Flor. 1864) Comp. Reumont, Lorenzo, ii. 75-77. Fiesole, according to this, was, in a certain sense, a witches’ nest.

1223

Graziani, Arch. Stor. xvi. i. p. 565, ad a. 1445, speaking of a witch at Nocera, who only offered half the sum, and was accordingly burnt. The law was aimed at such persons as ‘facciono le fature overo venefitie overo encantatione d’ommunde spirite a nuocere,’ l. c. note 1, 2.

1224

Lib. i. ep. 46, Opera, p. 531 sqq. For ‘umbra’ p. 552 read ‘Umbria,’ and for ‘lacum’ read ‘locum.’

1225

He calls him later on: ‘Medicus Ducis Saxoniæ, homo tum dives tum potens.’

1226

In the fourteenth century there existed a kind of hell-gate near Ansedonia in Tuscany. It was a cave, with footprints of men and animals in the sand, which whenever they were effaced, reappeared the next day. Uberti. Il Dittamondo, l. iii. cap. 9.

1227

Pii II. Comment. l. i. p. 10.

1228

Benv. Cellini, l. i. cap. 65.

1229

L’Italia Liberata da’ Goti, canto xiv. It may be questioned whether Trissino himself believed in the possibility of his description, or whether he was not rather romancing. The same doubt is permissible in the case of his probable model, Lucan (book vi.), who represents the Thessalian witch conjuring up a corpse before Sextus Pompejus.

1230

Septimo Decretal, lib. v. tit. xii. It begins: ‘Summis desiderantes affectibus’ &c. I may here remark that a full consideration of the subject has convinced me that there are in this case no grounds for believing in a survival of pagan beliefs. To satisfy ourselves that the imagination of the mendicant friars is solely responsible for this delusion, we have only to study, in the Memoirs of Jacques du Clerc, the so-called trial of the Waldenses of Arras in the year 1459. A century’s prosecutions and persecutions brought the popular imagination into such a state that witchcraft was accepted as a matter of course and reproduced itself naturally.

1231

Of Alexander VI., Leo X., Hadrian VI.

1232

Proverbial as the country of witches, e.g. Orlandino, i. 12.

1233

E.g. Bandello, iii. nov. 29, 52. Prato, Arch. Stor. iii. 409. Bursellis, Ann. Bon. in Murat. xxiii. col. 897, mentions the condemnation of a prior in 1468, who kept a ghostly brothel: ‘cives Bononienses coire faciebat cum dæmonibus in specie puellarum.’ He offered sacrifices to the dæmons. See for a parallel case, Procop. Hist. Arcana, c. 12, where a real brothel is frequented by a dæmon, who turns the other visitors out of doors. The Galateo (p. 116) confirms the existence of the belief in witches: ‘volare per longinquas regiones, choreas per paludes dicere et dæmonibus cnogredi, ingredi et egredi per clausa ostia et foramina.’

1234

For the loathsome apparatus of the witches’ kitchens, see Maccaroneide, Phant. xvi. xxi., where the whole procedure is described.

1235

In the Ragionamento del Zoppino. He is of opinion that the courtesans learn their arts from certain Jewish women, who are in possession of ‘malie.’ The following passage is very remarkable. Bembo says in the life of Guidobaldo (Opera, i. 614): ‘Guid. constat sive corporis et naturae vitio, seu quod vulgo creditum est, actibus magicis ab Octaviano patruo propter regni cupiditatem impeditum, quarum omnino ille artium expeditissimus habebatur, nulla cum femina coire unquam in tota vita potuisse, nec unquam fuisse ad rem uxoriam idoneum.’

1236

Varchi, Stor. Fior. ii. p. 153.

1237

Curious information is given by Landi, in the Commentario, fol. 36 a and 37 a, about two magicians, a Sicilian and a Jew; we read of magical mirrors, of a death’s-head speaking, and of birds stopped short in their flight.

1238

Stress is laid on this reservation. Corn. Agrippa, De Occulta Philosophia, cap. 39.

1239

Septimo Decretal, l. c.

1240

Zodiacus Vitae, xv. 363-549, comp. x. 393 sqq.

1241

Ibid. ix. 291 sqq.

1242

Ibid. x. 770 sqq.

1243

The mythical type of the magician among the poets of the time was Malagigi. Speaking of him, Pulci (Morgante, canto xxiv. 106 sqq.) gives his theoretical view of the limits of dæmonic and magic influence. It is hard to say how far he was in earnest. Comp. canto xxi.

1244

Polydorus Virgilius was an Italian by birth, but his work De Prodigiis treats chiefly of superstition in England, where his life was passed. Speaking of the prescience of the dæmons, he makes a curious reference to the sack of Rome in 1527.

1245

Yet murder is hardly ever the end, and never, perhaps, the means. A monster like Gilles de Retz (about 1440) who sacrificed more than 100 children to the dæmons has scarcely a distant counterpart in Italy.

1246

See the treatise of Roth ‘Ueber den Zauberer Virgilius’ in Pfeiffer’s Germania, iv., and Comparetti’s Virgil in the Middle Ages. That Virgil began to take the place of the older Telestæ may be explained partly by the fact that the frequent visits made to his grave even in the time of the Empire struck the popular imagination.

1247

Uberti, Dittamondo, 1. iii. cap. 4.

1248

For what follows, see Gio. Villani, i. 42, 60, ii. 1, iii. v. 38, xi. He himself does not believe such godless superstitions. Comp. Dante, Inferno xiii. 146.

1249

According to a fragment given in Baluz. Miscell ix. 119, the Perugians had a quarrel in ancient times with the Ravennates, ‘et militem marmoreum qui juxta Ravennam se continue volvebat ad solem usurpaverunt et ad eorum civitatem virtuosissime transtulerunt.’

1250

The local belief on the matter is given in Annal. Forolivens. Murat. xxii. col. 207, 238; more fully in Fil. Villani, Vite, p 33.

1251

Platina, Vitae Pontiff. p. 320: ‘Veteres potius hac in re quam Petrum, Anacletum, et Linum imitatus.’

1252

Which it is easy to recognise e.g. in Sugerius, De Consecratione Ecclesiae (Duchesne, Scriptores, iv. 355) and in Chron. Petershusanum, i. 13 and 16.

1253

Comp. the Calandra of Bibiena.

1254

Bandello, iii. nov. 52. Fr. Filelfo (Epist. Venet. lib. 34, fol. 240 sqq.) attacks nercromancy fiercely. He is tolerably free from superstition (Sat. iv. 4) but believes in the ‘mali effectus,’ of a comet (Epist. fol. 246 b).

1255

Bandello, iii. 29. The magician exacts a promise of secrecy strengthened by solemn oaths, in this case by an oath at the high altar of S. Petronio at Bologna, at a time when no one else was in the church. There is a good deal of magic in the Maccaroneide, Phant. xviii.

1256

Benv. Cellini, i. cap. 64.

1257

Vasari, viii. 143, Vita di Andrea da Fiesole. It was Silvio Cosini, who also ‘went after magical formulæ and other follies.’

1258

Uberti, Dittamondo, iii. cap. 1. In the March of Ancona he visits Scariotto, the supposed birthplace of Judas, and observes: ‘I must not here pass over Mount Pilatus, with its lake, where throughout the summer the guards are changed regularly. For he who understands magic comes up hither to have his books consecrated, whereupon, as the people of the place say, a great storm arises.’ (The consecration of books, as has been remarked, p. 527, is a special ceremony, distinct from the rest.) In the sixteenth century the ascent of Pilatus near Luzern was forbidden ‘by lib und guot,’ as Diebold Schilling records. It was believed that a ghost lay in the lake on the mountain, which was the spirit of Pilate. When people ascended the mountain or threw anything into the lake, fearful storms sprang up.

1259

De Obsedione Tiphernatium, 1474 (Rer. Ital. Scrippt. ex Florent. codicibus, tom. ii.).

1260

This superstition, which was widely spread among the soldiery (about 1520), is ridiculed by Limerno Pitocco, in the Orlandino, v. 60.

1261

Paul. Jov. Elog. Lit. p. 106, sub voce ‘Cocles.’

1262

It is the enthusiastic collector of portraits who is here speaking.

1263

From the stars, since Gauricus did not know physiognomy. For his own fate he had to refer to the prophecies of Cocle, since his father had omitted to draw his horoscope.

1264

Paul. Jov. l. c. p. 100 sqq. s. v. Tibertus.

1265

The most essential facts as to these side-branches of divination, are given by Corn. Agrippa, De Occulta Philosophia, cap. 57.

1266

Libri, Hist. des Sciences Mathém. ii. 122.

1267

‘Novi nihil narro, mos est publicus’ (Remed. Utr. Fort. p. 93), one of the lively passages of this book, written ‘ab irato.’

1268

Chief passage in Trithem. Ann. Hirsaug. ii. 286 sqq.

1269

‘Neque enim desunt,’ Paul. Jov. Elog. Lit. p. 150, s. v. ‘Pomp, Gauricus;’ comp. ibid. p. 130, s. v. Aurel. Augurellus, Maccaroneide. Phant. xii.

1270

In writing a history of Italian unbelief it would be necessary to refer to the so-called Averrhoism, which was prevalent in Italy and especially in Venice, about the middle of the fourteenth century. It was opposed by Boccaccio and Petrarch in various letters, and by the latter in his work: De Sui Ipsius et Aliorum Ignorantia. Although Petrarch’s opposition may have been increased by misunderstanding and exaggeration, he was nevertheless fully convinced that the Averrhoists ridiculed and rejected the Christian religion.

1271

Ariosto, Sonetto, 34: ‘Non credere sopra il tetto.’ The poet uses the words of an official who had decided against him in a matter of property.

1272

We may here again refer to Gemisthos Plethon, whose disregard of Christianity had an important influence on the Italians, and particularly on the Florentines of that period.

1273

Narrazione del Caso del Boscoli, Arch. Stor. i. 273 sqq. The standing phrase was ‘non aver fede;’ comp. Vasari, vii. 122, Vita di Piero di Cosimo.

1274

Jovian. Pontan. Charon, Opp. ii. 1128-1195.

1275

Faustini Terdocei Triumphus Stultitiae, l. ii.

1276

E.g. Borbone Morosini about 1460; comp. Sansovino, Venezia l. xiii. p. 243. He wrote ‘de immortalite animæ ad mentem Aristotelis.’ Pomponius Lætus, as a means of effecting his release from prison, pointed to the fact that he had written an epistle on the immortality of the soul. See the remarkable defence in Gregorovius, vii. 580 sqq. See on the other hand Pulci’s ridicule of this belief in a sonnet, quoted by Galeotti, Arch. Stor. Ital. n. s. ix. 49 sqq.

1277

Vespas. Fiorent. p. 260.

1278

Orationes Philelphi, fol. 8.

1279

Septimo Decretal. lib. v. tit. iii. cap. 8.

1280

Ariosto, Orlando, vii. 61. Ridiculed in Orlandino, iv. 67, 68. Cariteo, a member of the Neapolitan Academy of Pontanus, uses the idea of the pre-existence of the soul in order to glorify the House of Aragon. Roscoe, Leone X. ed. Bossi, ii. 288.

1281

Orelli, ad Cic. De Republ. l. vi. Comp. Lucan, Pharsalia, at the beginning.

1282

Petrarca, Epp. Fam. iv. 3, iv. 6.

1283

Fil. Villani, Vite, p. 15. This remarkable passage is as follows: ‘Che agli uomini fortissimi poichè hanno vinto le mostruose fatiche della terra, debitamente sieno date le stelle.’

1284

Inferno, iv. 24 sqq. Comp. Purgatorio, vii. 28, xxii. 100.

1285

This pagan heaven is referred to in the epitaph on the artist Niccolò dell’Arca:

‘Nunc te Praxiteles, Phidias, Polycletus adoraMiranturque tuas, o Nicolae, manus.’In Bursellis, Ann. Bonon. Murat. xxiii. col. 912.

1286

In his late work Actius.

1287

Cardanus, De Propria Vita, cap. 13: ‘Non pœnitere ullius rei quam voluntarie effecerim, etiam quæ male cessisset;’ else I should be of all men the most miserable.

1288

Discorsi, ii. cap. 2.

1289

Del Governo della Famiglia, p. 114.

1290

Comp. the short ode of M. Antonio Flaminio in the Coryciana (see p. 269):

Dii quibus tam Corycius venustaSigna, tam dives posuit sacellum,Ulla si vestros animos piorumGratia tangit,Vos jocos risusque senis facetiSospites servate diu; senectamVos date et semper viridem et FalernoUsque madentem.At simul longo satiatus ævoLiquerit terras, dapibus DeorumLætus intersit, potiore mutansNectare Bacchum.

1291

Firenzuola, Opere, iv. p. 147 sqq.

1292

Nic. Valori, Vita di Lorenzo, passim. For the advice to his son Cardinal Giovanni, see Fabroni, Laurentius, adnot. 178, and the appendices to Roscoe’s Leo X.

1293

Jo. Pici Vita, auct. Jo. Franc. Pico. For his ‘Deprecatio ad Deum,’ see Deliciae Poetarum Italorum.

1294

Orazione, Roscoe, Leone X. ed. Bossi viii. 120 (Magno Dio per la cui costante legge); hymn (oda il sacro inno tutta la natura) in Fabroni,’ Laur. adnot. 9; L’Altercazione, in the Poesie di Lor. Magn. i. 265. The other poems here named are quoted in the same collection.

1295

If Pulci in his Morgante is anywhere in earnest with religion, he is so in canto xvi. str. 6. This deistic utterance of the fair pagan Antea is perhaps the plainest expression of the mode of thought prevalent in Lorenzo’s circle, to which tone the words of the dæmon Astarotte (quoted above p. 494) form in a certain sense the complement.