The Civilisation of the Renaissance in Italy

For instances in the life of Ludovico Moro, see Senarega, in Murat, xxiv. col. 518, 524. Benedictus, in Eccard, ii. col. 1623. And yet his father, the great Francesco Sforza, had despised astrology, and his grandfather Giacomo had not at any rate followed its warnings. Corio, fol. 321, 413.

1168

For the facts here quoted, see Annal. Foroliviens. in Murat. xxii. col. 233 sqq. (comp. col. 150). Leonbattista Alberti endeavoured to give a spiritual meaning to the ceremony of laying the foundation. Opere Volgari, tom. iv. p. 314 (or De Re Ædific. 1. i.). For Bonatto see Filippo Villani, Vite and Delia Vita e delle Opere di Guido Bonati, Astrologo e Astronomo del Secolo Decimoterzo, raccolte da E. Boncompagni, Rome 1851. B.’s great work, De Astronomia, lib. x. has been often printed.

1169

In the horoscopes of the second foundation of Florence (Giov. Villani, iii. 1. under Charles the Great) and of the first of Venice (see above, p. 62), an old tradition is perhaps mingled with the poetry of the Middle Ages.

1170

For one of these victories, see the remarkable passage quoted from Bonatto in Steinschneider, in the Zeitschr. d. D. Morg. Ges. xxv. p. 416. On B. comp. ibid. xviii. 120 sqq.

1171

Ann. Foroliv. 235-238. Filippo Villani, Vite. Macchiavelli, Stor. Fior. l. i. When constellations which augured victory appeared, Bonatto ascended with his book and astrolabe to the tower of San Mercuriale above the Piazza, and when the right moment came gave the signal for the great bell to be rung. Yet it was admitted that he was often wide of the mark, and foresaw neither his own death nor the fate of Montefeltro. Not far from Cesena he was killed by robbers, on his way back to Forli from Paris and from Italian universities where he had been lecturing. As a weather prophet he was once overmatched and made game of by a countryman.

1172

Matteo Villani, xi. 3; see above, p. 508.

1173

Jovian. Pontan. De Fortitudine, l. i. See p. 511 note 1, for the honourable exception made by the first Sforza.

1174

Paul. Jov. Elog. sub v. Livianus, p. 219.

1175

Who tells it us himself. Benedictus, in Eccard, ii. col. 1617.

1176

In this sense we must understand the words of Jac. Nardi, Vita d’Ant. Giacomini, p. 65. The same pictures were common on clothes and household utensils. At the reception of Lucrezia Borgia in Ferrara, the mule of the Duchess of Urbino wore trappings of black velvet with astrological figures in gold. Arch. Stor. Append. ii. p. 305.

1177

Æn. Sylvius, in the passage quoted above p. 508; comp. Opp. 481.

1178

Azario, in Corio, fol. 258.

1179

Considerations of this kind probably influenced the Turkish astrologers who, after the battle of Nicopolis, advised the Sultan Bajazet I. to consent to the ransom of John of Burgundy, since ‘for his sake much Christian blood would be shed.’ It was not difficult to foresee the further course of the French civil war. Magn. Chron. Belgicum, p. 358. Juvénal des Ursins, ad. a. 1396.

1180

Benedictus, in Eccard, ii. col. 1579. It was said of King Ferrante in 1493 that he would lose his throne ‘sine cruore sed sola fama’—which actually happened.

1181

Comp. Steinschneider, Apokalypsen mit polemischer Tendenz, D. M. G. Z. xxviii. 627 sqq. xxix. 261.

1182

Bapt. Mantuan. De Patientia, l. iii. cap. 12.

1183

Giov. Villani, x. 39, 40. Other reasons also existed, e.g. the jealousy of his colleagues. Bonatto had taught the same, and had explained the miracle of Divine Love in St. Francis as the effect of the planet Mars. Comp. Jo. Picus, Adv. Astrol. ii. 5.

1184

They were painted by Miretto at the beginning of the fifteenth century. Acc. to Scardeonius they were destined ‘ad indicandum nascentium naturas per gradus et numeros’—a more popular way of teaching than we can now well imagine. It was astrology ‘à la portèe de tout le monde.’

1185

He says (Orationes, fol. 35, ‘In Nuptias’) of astrology: ‘haec efficit ut homines parum a Diis distare videantur’! Another enthusiast of the same time is Jo. Garzonius, De Dignitate Urbis Bononiae, in Murat. xxi. col. 1163.

1186

Petrarca, Epp. Seniles, iii. 1 (p. 765) and elsewhere. The letter in question was written to Boccaccio. On Petrarch’s polemic against the astrologers, see Geiger. Petr. 87-91 and 267, note 11.

1187

Franco Sacchetti (nov. 151) ridicules their claims to wisdom.

1188

Gio. Villani, iii. x. 39. Elsewhere he appears as a devout believer in astrology, x. 120, xii. 40.

1189

In the passage xi. 3.

1190

Gio. Villani, xi. 2, xii. 58.

1191

The author of the Annales Placentini (in Murat. xx. col. 931), the same Alberto di Ripalta mentioned at p. 241, took part in this controversy. The passage is in other respects remarkable, since it contains the popular opinion with regard to the nine known comets, their colour, origin, and significance. Comp. Gio. Villani, xi. 67. He speaks of a comet as the herald of great and generally disastrous events.

1192

Paul. Jov. Vita Leonis xx. l. iii. where it appears that Leo himself was a believer at least in premonitions and the like, see above p. 509.

1193

Jo. Picus Mirand. Adversus Astrologos, libri xii.

1194

Acc. to Paul, Jov. Elog. Lit. sub tit. Jo. Picus, the result he achieved was ‘ut subtilium disciplinarum professores a scribendo deterruisse videatur.’

1195

De Rebus Caelestibus, libri xiv. (Opp. iii. 1963-2591). In the twelfth book, dedicated to Paolo Cortese, he will not admit the latter’s refutation of astrology. Ægidius, Opp. ii. 1455-1514. Pontano had dedicated his little work De Luna (Opp. iii. 2592) to the same hermit Egidio (of Viterbo?)

1196

For the latter passage, see p. 1486. The difference between Pontano and Pico is thus put by Franc. Pudericus, one of the interlocutors in the dialogue (p. 1496): ‘Pontanus non ut Johannes Picus in disciplinam ipsam armis equisque, quod dicitur, irrumpit, cum illam tueatur, ut cognitu maxime dignam ac pene divinam, sed astrologos quosdam, ut parum cautos minimeque prudentes insectetur et rideat.’

1197

In S. Maria del Popolo at Rome. The angels remind us of Dante’s theory at the beginning of the Convito.

1198

This was the case with Antonio Galateo who, in a letter to Ferdinand the Catholic (Mai, Spicileg. Rom. vol. viii. p. 226, ad a. 1510), disclaims astrology with violence, and in another letter to the Count of Potenza (ibid. p. 539) infers from the stars that the Turks would attack Rhodes the same year.

1199

Ricordi, l. c. n. 57.

1200

Many instances of such superstitions in the case of the last Visconti are mentioned by Decembrio (Murat. xx. col. 1016 sqq.). Odaxius says in his speech at the burial of Guidobaldo (Bembi Opera, i. 598 sqq.), that the gods had announced his approaching death by thunderbolts, earthquakes, and other signs and wonders.

1201

Varchi, Stor. Fior. l. iv. (p. 174); prophecies and premonitions were then as rife in Florence as at Jerusalem during the siege. Comp. ibid. iii. 143, 195; iv. 43, 177.

1202

Matarazzo, Archiv. Stor. xvi. ii. p. 208.

1203

Prato, Arch. Stor. iii. 324, for the year 1514.

1204

For the Madonna dell’Arbore in the Cathedral at Milan, and what she did in 1515, see Prato, l. c. p. 327. He also records the discovery of a dead dragon as thick as a horse in the excavations for a mortuary chapel near S. Nazaro. The head was taken to the Palace of the Triulzi for whom the chapel was built.

1205

‘Et fuit mirabile quod illico pluvia cessavit.’ Diar. Parmense in Murat. xxii. col. 280. The author shares the popular hatred of the usurers. Comp. col. 371.

1206

Conjurationis Pactianae Commentarius, in the appendices to Roscoe’s Lorenzo. Politian was in general an opponent of astrology. The saints were naturally able to cause the rain to cease. Comp. Æneas Sylvius, in his life of Bernadino da Siena (De Vir. Ill. p. 25): ‘jussit in virtute Jesu nubem abire, quo facto solutis absque pluvia nubibus, prior serenitas rediit’.

1207

Poggi Facetiae, fol. 174. Æn. Sylvius (De Europa, c. 53, 54, Opera, pp. 451, 455) mentions prodigies which may have really happened, such as combats between animals and strange appearances in the sky, and mentions them chiefly as curiosities, even when adding the results attributed to them. Similarly Antonio Ferrari (il Galateo), De Situ Iapygiae, p. 121, with the explanation: ‘Et hae, ut puto, species erant earum rerum quæ longe aberant atque ab eo loco in quo species visae sunt minime poterant.’

1208

Poggi Facetiae, fol. 160. Comp. Pausanias, ix. 20.

1209

Varchi, iii 195. Two suspected persons decided on flight in 1529, because they opened the Æneid at book iii. 44. Comp. Rabelais, Pantagruel, iii. 10.

1210

The imaginations of the scholars, such as the ‘splendor’ and the ‘spiritus’ of Cardanus, and the ‘dæmon familiaris’ of his father, may be taken for what they are worth. Comp. Cardanus, De Propria Vita, cap. 4, 38, 47. He was himself an opponent of magic; cap. 39. For the prodigies and ghosts he met with, see cap. 37, 41. For the terror of ghosts felt by the last Visconti, see Decembrio, in Murat. xx. col. 1016.

1211

‘Molte fiate i morti guastano le creature.’ Bandello, ii. nov. 1. We read (Galateo, p. 177) that the ‘animæ’ of wicked men rise from the grave, appear to their friends and acquaintances, ‘animalibus vexi, pueros sugere ac necare, deinde in sepulcra reverti.’

1212

Galateo, l. c. We also read (p. 119) of the ‘Fata Morgana’ and other similar appearances.

1213

Bandello, iii. nov. 20. It is true that the ghost was only a lover wishing to frighten the occupier of the palace, who was also the husband of the beloved lady. The lover and his accomplices dressed themselves up as devils; one of them, who could imitate the cry of different animals, had been sent for from a distance.

1214

Graziani, Arch. Stor. xvi. i. p. 640, ad a. 1467. The guardian died of fright.

1215

Balth. Castilionii Carmina; Prosopopeja Lud. Pici.

1216

Alexandri ab Alexandro, Dierum Genialium, libri vi. (Colon. 1539), is an authority of the first rank for these subjects, the more so as the author, a friend of Pontanus and a member of his academy, asserts that what he records either happened to himself, or was communicated to him by thoroughly trustworthy witnesses. Lib. vi. cap. 19: two evil men and a monk are attacked by devils, whom they recognise by the shape of their feet, and put to flight, partly by force and partly by the sign of the cross. Lib. vi. cap. 21: A servant, cast into prison by a cruel prince on account of a small offence, calls upon the devil, is miraculously brought out of the prison and back again, visits meanwhile the nether world, shows the prince his hand scorched by the flames of Hell, tells him on behalf of a departed spirit certain secrets which had been communicated to the latter, exhorts him to lay aside his cruelty, and dies soon after from the effects of the fright. Lib. ii. c. 19, iii. 15, v. 23: Ghosts of departed friends, of St. Cataldus, and of unknown beings in Rome, Arezzo and Naples. Lib. ii. 22, iii. 8: Appearances of mermen and mermaids at Naples, in Spain, and in the Peloponnesus; in the latter case guaranteed by Theodore Gaza and George of Trebizond.

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.