Chapter 94

rhetorical embellishment. Comp. Reumont, i. 487, and the passage there quoted.

[207] If Comines on this and many other occasions observes and judges as objectively as any Italian, his intercourse with Italians, particularly with Angelo Catto, must be taken into account.

[208] Comp. e.g. Malipiero, pp. 216, 221, 236, 237, 468, &c., and above pp. 88, note 2, and 93, note 1. Comp. Egnatius, fol. 321 _a_. The Pope curses an ambassador; a Venetian envoy insults the Pope; another, to win over his hearers, tells a fable.

[209] In Villari, _Storia di Savonarola_, vol. ii. p. xliii. of the ‘Documenti,’ among which are to be found other important political letters. Other documents, particularly of the end of the fifteenth century in Baluzius, _Miscellanea_, ed. Mansi, vol. i. See especially the collected despatches of Florentine and Venetian ambassadors at the end of the fifteenth and beginning of sixteenth centuries in Desjardins, _Négotiations diplomatiques de la France avec la Toscane_. vols. i. ii. Paris. 1859, 1861.

[210] The subject has been lately treated more fully by Max Jähns, _Die Kriegskunst als Kunst_, Leipzig, 1874.

[211] _Pii II. Comment._ iv. p. 190, ad. a. 1459.

[212] The Cremonese prided themselves on their skill in this department. See _Cronaca di Cremona_ in the _Bibliotheca Historica Italica_, vol. i. Milan, 1876, p. 214, and note. The Venetians did the same, Egnatius, fol. 300 sqq.

[213] To this effect Paul Jovius (_Elogia_, p. 184) who adds: ‘Nondum enim invecto externarum gentium cruento more, Italia milites sanguinarii et multæ cædis avidi esse didicerant.’ We are reminded of Frederick of Urbino, who would have been ‘ashamed’ to tolerate a printed book in his library. See _Vespas. Fiorent._

[214] _Porcellii Commentaria Jac. Picinini_, in Murat. xx. A continuation for the war of 1453, _ibid._ xxv. Paul Cortesius (_De Hominibus Doctis_, p. 33, Florence, 1734) criticises the book severely on account of the wretched hexameters.

[215] Porcello calls Scipio Æmilianus by mistake, meaning Africanus Major.

[216] Simonetta, _Hist. Fr. Sfortiæ_, in Murat. xxi. col. 630.

[217] So he was considered. Comp. Bandello, parte i. nov. 40.

[218] Comp. e.g. _De Obsidione Tiphernatium_, in vol. 2, of the _Rer. Italic. Scriptores excodd. Florent._ col. 690. The duel of Marshal Boucicault with Galeazzo Gonzaga (1406) in Cagnola, _Arch. Stor._ iii. p. 25. Infessura tells us of the honour paid by Sixtus IV. to the duellists among his guards. His successors issued bulls against duelling.

[219] We may here notice parenthetically (see Jähns, pp. 26, sqq.) the less favourable side of the tactics of the Condottieri. The combat was often a mere sham-fight, in which the enemy was forced to withdraw by harmless manœuvres. The object of the combatants was to avoid bloodshed, at the worst to make prisoners with a view to the ransom. According to Macchiavelli, the Florentines lost in a great battle in the year 1440 one man only.

[220] For details, see _Arch. Stor._ Append. tom. v.

[221] Here once for all we refer our readers to Ranke’s _Popes_, vol. i., and to Sugenheim, _Geschichte der Entstehung und Ausbildung des Kirchenstaates_. The still later works of Gregorovius and Reumont have also been made use of, and when they offer new facts or views, are quoted. See also _Geschichte der römischen Papstthums_, W. Wattenbach, Berlin, 1876.

[222] For the impression made by the blessing of Eugenius IV. in Florence, see _Vespasiano Fiorent_, p. 18. See also the passage quoted in Reumont, _Lorenzo_, i. 171. For the impressive offices of Nicholas V., see Infessura (Eccard, ii. col. 1883 sqq.) and J. Manetti, _Vita Nicolai V._ (Murat. iii. ii. col. 923). For the homage given to Pius II., see _Diario Ferrarese_ (Murat. xxiv. col. 205), and _Pii II. Commentarii_, _passim_, esp. iv. 201, 204, and xi. 562. For Florence, see _Delizie degli Eruditi_, xx. 368. Even professional murderers respect the person of the Pope.

The great offices in church were treated as matters of much importance by the pomp-loving Paul II. (Platina, l. c. 321) and by Sixtus IV., who, in spite of the gout, conducted mass at Easter in a sitting posture. (_Jac. Volaterran. Diarium_, Murat. xxiii. col. 131.) It is curious to notice how the people distinguished between the magical efficacy of the blessing and the unworthiness of the man who gave it; when he was unable to give the benediction on Ascension Day, 1481, the populace murmured and cursed him. (_Ibid._ col. 133.)

[223] Macchiavelli, _Scritti Minori_, p. 142, in the well-known essay on the catastrophe of Sinigaglia. It is true that the French and Spanish soldiers were still more zealous than the Italians. Comp. in Paul. Jov. _Vita Leonis X._ (l. ii.) the scene before the battle of Ravenna, in which the Legate, weeping for joy, was surrounded by the Spanish troops, and besought for absolution. See further (_ibid._) the statements respecting the French in Milan.

[224] In the case of the heretics of Poli, in the Campagna, who held the doctrine that a genuine Pope must show the poverty of Christ as the mark of his calling, we have simply a kind of Waldensian doctrine. Their imprisonment under Paul II. is related by Infessura (Eccard, ii. col. 1893), Platina, p. 317, &c.

[225] As an illustration of this feeling see the poem addressed to the Pope, quoted in Gregorovius, vii. 136.

[226] _Dialogus de Conjuratione Stephani de Porcariis_, by his contemporary Petrus Godes de Vicenza, quoted and used by Gregorovius, viii. 130. L. B. Alberti, _De Porcaria Conjuratione_, in Murat. xxv. col. 309. Porcari was desirous ‘omnem pontificiam turbam funditus exstinguere.’ The author concludes: ‘Video sane, quo stent loco res Italiæ; intelligo qui sint, quibus hic perturbata esse omnia conducat....’ He names them ‘Extrinsecus impulsores,’ and is of opinion that Porcari will find successors in his misdeeds. The dreams of Porcari certainly bore some resemblance to those of Cola Rienzi. He also referred to himself the poem ‘Spirto Gentil,’ addressed by Petrarch to Rienzi.

[227] ‘Ut Papa tantum vicarius Christi sit et non etiam Cæsaris.... Tunc Papa et dicetur et erit pater sanctus, pater omnium, pater ecclesiæ,’ &c. Valla’s work was written rather earlier, and was aimed at Eugenius IV. See Vahlen, _Lor. Valla_ (Berlin, 1870), pp. 25 sqq., esp. 32. Nicholas V., on the other hand, is praised by Valla, Gregorovius, vii. 136.

[228] _Pii II. Comment._ iv. pp. 208 sqq. Voigt, _Enea Silvio_, iii. pp. 151 sqq.

[229] Platina, _Vita Pauli II._

[230] Battista Mantovano, _De Calamitatibus Temporum_, l. iii. The Arabian sells incense, the Tyrian purple, the Indian ivory: ‘Venalia nobis templa, sacerdotes, altaria sacra, coronæ, ignes, thura, preces, cælum est venale Deusque.’ _Opera_, ed. Paris, 1507, fol. 302 _b_. Then follows an exhortation to Pope Sixtus, whose previous efforts are praised, to put an end to these evils.

[231] See e.g. the _Annales Placentini_, in Murat. xx. col. 943.

[232] Corio, _Storia di Milano_, fol. 416-420. Pietro had already helped at the election of Sixtus. See Infessura, in Eccard, _Scriptores_, ii. col. 1895. It is curious that in 1469 it had been prophesied that deliverance would come from Savona (home of Sixtus, elected in 1471) within three years. See the letter and date in Baluz. _Miscell._ iii. p. 181. According to Macchiavelli, _Storie Fiorent._ l. vii. the Venetians poisoned the cardinal. Certainly they were not without motives to do so.

[233] Honorius II. wished, after the death of William I. (1127), to annex Apulia, as a feof reverted to St. Peter.

[234] Fabroni, _Laurentius Mag._ Adnot. 130. An informer, Vespucci, sends word of both, ‘Hanno in ogni elezione a mettere a sacco questa corte, e sono i maggior ribaldi del mondo.’

[235] Corio, fol. 450. Details, partly from unpublished documents, of these acts of bribery in Gregorovius, vii. 310 sqq.

[236] A most characteristic letter of exhortation by Lorenzo in Fabroni, _Laurentius Magn._ Adnot. 217, and extracts in Ranke, _Popes_, i. p. 45, and in Reumont, _Lorenzo_, ii. pp. 482 sqq.

[237] And perhaps of certain Neapolitan feofs, for the sake of which Innocent called in the Angevins afresh against the immovable Ferrante. The conduct of the Pope in this affair and his participation in the second conspiracy of the barons, were equally foolish and dishonest. For his method of treating with foreign powers, see above p. 127, note 2.

[238] Comp. in particular Infessura, in Eccard. _Scriptores_, ii. _passim_.

[239] According to the _Dispacci di Antonio Giustiniani_, i. p. 60, and iii. p. 309, Seb. Pinzon was a native of Cremona.

[240] Recently by Gregorovius, _Lucrezia Borgia_, 2 Bände 3 Aufl., Stuttgart, 1875.

[241] Except the Bentivoglio at Bologna, and the House of Este at Ferrara. The latter was compelled to form a family relationship, Lucrezia marrying Prince Alfonso.

[242] According to Corio (fol. 479) Charles had thoughts of a Council, of deposing the Pope, and even of carrying him away to France, this upon his return from Naples. According to Benedictus, _Carolus VIII._ (in Eccard, _Scriptores_, ii. col. 1584), Charles, while in Naples, when Pope and cardinals refused to recognise his new crown, had certainly entertained the thought ‘de Italiæ imperio deque pontificis statu mutando,’ but soon after made up his mind to be satisfied with the personal humiliation of Alexander. The Pope, nevertheless, escaped him. Particulars in Pilorgerie, _Campagne et Bulletins de la Grande Armée d’Italie_, 1494, 1495 (Paris, 1866, 8vo.), where the degree of Alexander’s danger at different moments is discussed (pp. 111, 117, &c.). In a letter, there printed, of the Archbishop of St. Malo to Queen Anne, it is expressly stated: ‘Si nostre roy eust voulu obtemperer à la plupart des Messeigneurs les Cardinaulx, ilz eussent fait ung autre pappe en intention de refformer l’église ainsi qu’ilz disaient. Le roy désire bien la reformacion, mais il ne veult point entreprandre de sa depposicion.’

[243] Corio, fol. 450. Malipiero, _Ann. Veneti, Arch. Stor._ vii. i. p. 318. The rapacity of the whole family can be seen in Malipiero, among other authorities, l. c. p. 565. A ‘nipote’ was splendidly entertained in Venice as papal legate, and made an enormous sum of money by selling dispensations; his servants, when they went away, stole whatever they could lay their hands on, including a piece of embroidered cloth from the high altar of a church at Murano.

[244] This in Panvinio alone among contemporary historians (Contin. Platinæ, p. 339), ‘insidiis Cæsaris fratris interfectus ... connivente ... ad scelus patre,’ and to the same effect Jovius, _Elog. Vir. Ill._ p. 302. The profound emotion of Alexander looks like a sign of complicity. After the corpse was drawn out of the Tiber, Sannazaro wrote (_Opera Omnia Latine Scripta_ 1535, fol. 41 _a_):

‘Piscatorem hominum ne te non, Sixte, putemus Piscaris natum retibus, ecce, tuum.’

Besides the epigram quoted there are others (fol. 36 _b_, 42 _b_, 47 _b_, 51 _a_, _b_--in the last passage 5) in Sannazaro on, i.e. against, Alexander. Among them is a famous one, referred to in Gregorovius i. 314, on Lucrezia Borgia:

Ergo te semper cupiet Lucretia Sextus? O fatum diri nominis: hic pater est?

Others execrate his cruelty and celebrate his death as the beginning of an era of peace. On the Jubilee (see below, p. 108, note 1), there is another epigram, fol. 43 _b_. There are others no less severe (fol. 34 _b_, 35 _a_, _b_, 42 _b_, 43 _a_) against Cæsar Borgia, among which we find in one of the strongest:

Aut nihil aut Cæsar vult dici Borgia; quidni? Cum simul et Cæsar possit, et esse nihil.

(made use of by Bandello, iv. nov. 11). On the murder of the Duke of Gandia, see especially the admirable collection of the most original sources of evidence in Gregorovius, vii. 399-407, according to which Cæsar’s guilt is clear, but it seems very doubtful whether Alexander knew, or approved, of the intended assassination.

[245] Macchiavelli, _Opere_, ed. Milan, vol. v. pp. 387, 393, 395, in the _Legazione al Duca Valentino_.

[246] Tommaso Gar, _Relazioni della Corte di Roma_, i. p. 12, in the _Rel. of P. Capello_. Literally: ‘The Pope has more respect for Venice than for any other power in the world.’ ‘E però desidera, che ella (Signoria di Venezia) protegga il figliuolo, e dice voler fare tale ordine, che il papato o sia suo, ovvero della signoria nostra.’ The word ‘suo’ can only refer to Cæsar. An instance of the uncertainty caused by this usage is found in the still lively controversy respecting the words used by Vasari in the _Vita di Raffaello_: ‘A Bindo Altoviti fece il ritratto suo, &c.’

[247] _Strozzii Poetae_, p. 19, in the ‘Venatio’ of Ercole Strozza: ’ ... cui triplicem fata invidere coronam.’ And in the Elegy on Cæsar’s death, p. 31 sqq.: ‘Speraretque olim solii decora alta paterni.’

[248] _Ibid._ Jupiter had once promised

‘Affore Alexandri sobolem, quæ poneret olim Italiæ leges, atque aurea sæcla referret,’ etc.

[249] _Ibid._

‘Sacrumque decus majora parantem deposuisse.’

[250] He was married, as is well known, to a French princess of the family of Albret, and had a daughter by her; in some way or other he would have attempted to found a dynasty. It is not known that he took steps to regain the cardinal’s hat, although (acc. to Macchiavelli, l. c. p. 285) he must have counted on the speedy death of his father.

[251] Macchiavelli, l. c. p. 334. Designs on Siena and eventually on all Tuscany certainly existed, but were not yet ripe; the consent of France was indispensable.

[252] Macchiavelli, l. c. pp. 326, 351, 414; Matarazzo, _Cronaca di Perugia, Arch. Stor._ xvi. ii. pp. 157 and 221. He wished his soldiers to quarter themselves where they pleased, so that they gained more in time of peace than of war. Petrus Alcyonius, _De Exilio_ (1522), ed. Mencken, p. 19, says of the style of conducting war: ‘Ea scelera et flagitia a nostris militibus patrata sunt quæ ne Scythæ quidem aut Turcæ, aut Pœni in Italia commisissent.’ The same writer (p. 65) blames Alexander as a Spaniard: ‘Hispani generis hominem, cujus proprium est, rationibus et commodis Hispanorum consultum velle, non Italorum.’ See above, p. 109.

[253] To this effect Pierio Valeriano, _De Infelicitate Literat._ ed. Mencken, p. 282, in speaking of Giovanni Regio: ‘In arcano proscriptorum albo positus.’

[254] Tommaso Gar, l. c. p. 11. From May 22, 1502, onwards the _Despatches of Giustiniani_, 3 vols. Florence, 1876, edited by Pasquale Villari, offer valuable information.

[255] Paulus Jovius, _Elogia_, Cæsar Borgia. In the _Commentarii Urbani_ of Ralph. Volaterianus, lib. xxii. there is a description of Alexander VI., composed under Julius II., and still written very guardedly. We here read: ‘Roma ... nobilis jam carneficina facta erat.’

[256] _Diario Ferrarese_, in Muratori, xxiv. col. 362.

[257] Paul. Jovius, _Histor._ ii. fol. 47.

[258] See the passages in Ranke, _Röm. Päpste_; Sämmtl. Werke, Bd. xxxvii. 35, and xxxix. Anh. Abschn. 1, Nro. 4, and Gregorovius, vii. 497, sqq. Giustiniani does not believe in the Pope’s being poisoned. See his _Dispacci_, vol. ii. pp. 107 sqq.; Villari’s Note, pp. 120 sqq., and App. pp. 458 sqq.

[259] Panvinius, _Epitome Pontificum_, p. 359. For the attempt to poison Alexander’s successor, Julius II., see p. 363. According to Sismondi, xiii. p. 246, it was in this way that Lopez, Cardinal of Capua, for years the partner of all the Pope’s secrets, came by his end; according to Sanuto (in Ranke, _Popes_, i. p. 52, note), the Cardinal of Verona also. When Cardinal Orsini died, the Pope obtained a certificate of natural death from a college of physicians.

[260] Prato, _Arch. Stor._ iii. p. 254; comp. Attilio Alessio, in Baluz. _Miscell._, iv. p. 518 sqq.

[261] And turned to the most profitable account by the Pope. Comp. _Chron. Venetum_, in Murat. xxiv. col. 133, given only as a report: ‘E si giudiceva, che il Pontefice dovesse cavare assai danari di questo Giubileo, che gli tornerà molto a proposito.

[262] Anshelm, _Berner Chronik_, iii. pp. 146-156. Trithem. _Annales Hirsaug._ tom. ii. pp. 579, 584, 586.

[263] Panvin. _Contin. Platinae_, p. 341.

[264] Hence the splendour of the tombs of the prelates erected during their lifetime. A part of the plunder was in this way saved from the hands of the Popes.

[265] Whether Julius really hoped that Ferdinand the Catholic would be induced to restore to the throne of Naples the expelled Aragonese dynasty, remains, in spite of Giovio’s declaration (_Vita Alfonsi Ducis_), very doubtful.

[266] Both poems in Roscoe, _Leone X._ ed. Bossi, iv. 257 and 297. Of his death the _Cronaca di Cremona_ says: ‘quale fu grande danno per la Italia, perchè era homo che non voleva tramontani in Italia, ed haveva cazato Francesi, e l’animo era de cazar le altri.’ _Bibl. Hist. Ital._ (1876) i. 217. It is true that when Julius, in August, 1511, lay one day for hours in a fainting fit, and was thought to be dead, the more restless members of the noblest families--Pompeo Colonna and Antimo Savelli--ventured to call ‘the people’ to the Capitol, and to urge them to throw off the Papal yoke--‘a vendicarsi in libertà ... a publica ribellione,’ as Guicciardini tells us in his tenth book. See, too, Paul. Jov. in the _Vita Pompeji Columnae_, and Gregorovius, viii. 71-75.

[267] _Septimo decretal._ l. i. tit. 3, cap. 1-3.

[268] Franc. Vettori, in the _Arch. Stor._ vi. 297.

[269] Besides which it is said (Paul. Lang. _Chronicon Cilicense_) to have produced not less than 500,000 gold florins; the order of the Franciscans alone, whose general was made a cardinal, paid 30,000. For a notice of the various sums paid, see Sanuto, xxiv. fol. 227; for the whole subject see Gregorovius, viii. 214 sqq.

[270] Franc. Vettori, l.c. p. 301. _Arch. Stor._ Append. i. p. 293 sqq. Roscoe, _Leone X._ ed. Bossi, vi. p. 232 sqq. Tommaso Gar, l. c. p. 42.

[271] Ariosto, Sat. vi. v. 106. ‘Tutti morrete, ed è fatal che muoja Leone appresso.’ Sat. 3 and 7 ridicule the hangers on at Leo’s Court.

[272] One of several instances of such combinations is given in the _Lettere dei Principi_, i. 65, in a despatch of the Cardinal Bibbiena from Paris of the year 1518.

[273] Franc. Vettori, l.c. p. 333.

[274] At the time of the Lateran Council, in 1512, Pico wrote an address: _J. E. P. Oratio ad Leonem X. et Concilium Lateranense de Reformandis Ecclesiæ Moribus_ (ed. Hagenau, 1512, frequently printed in editions of his works). The address was dedicated to Pirckheimer and was again sent to him in 1517. Comp. _Vir. Doct. Epist. ad Pirck._, ed. Freytag, Leipz. 1838, p. 8. Pico fears that under Leo evil may definitely triumph over good, ‘et in te bellum a nostræ religionis hostibus ante audias geri quam pariri.’

[275] _Lettere dei Principi_, i. (Rome. 17th March, 1523): ‘This city stands on a needle’s point, and God grant that we are not soon driven to Avignon or to the end of the Ocean. I foresee the early fall of this spiritual monarchy.... Unless God helps us we are lost.’ Whether Adrian were really poisoned or not, cannot be gathered with certainty from Blas Ortiz, _Itinerar. Hadriani_ (Baluz. _Miscell._ ed. Mansi, i. p. 386 sqq.); the worst of it was that everybody believed it.

[276] Negro, l.c. on Oct. 24 (should be Sept.) and Nov. 9, 1526, April 11, 1527. It is true that he found admirers and flatterers. The dialogue of Petrus Alcyonus ‘De Exilio’ was written in his praise, shortly before he became Pope.

[277] Varchi, _Stor. Fiorent._ i. 43, 46 sqq.

[278] Paul. Jov., _Vita Pomp. Columnae_.

[279] Ranke, _Deutsche Geschichte_ (4 Aufl.) ii. 262 sqq.

[280] Varchi, _Stor. Fiorent._ ii. 43 sqq.

[281] _Ibid._ and Ranke, _Deutsche Gesch._ ii. 278, note, and iii. 6 sqq. It was thought that Charles would transfer his seat of government to Rome.

[282] See his letter to the Pope, dated Carpentras, Sept. 1, 1527, in the _Anecdota litt._ iv. p. 335.

[283] _Lettere dei Principi_, i. 72. Castiglione to the Pope, Burgos, Dec. 10, 1527.

[284] Tommaso Gar, _Relaz. della Corte di Roma_, i. 299.

[285] The Farnese succeeded in something of the kind, the Caraffa were ruined.

[286] Petrarca, _Epist. Fam._ i. 3. p. 574, when he thanks God that he was born an Italian. And again in the _Apologia contra cujusdam anonymi Galli Calumnias_ of the year 1367 (_Opp._ ed. Bas. 1581) p. 1068 sqq. See L. Geiger, _Petrarca_, 129-145.

[287] Particularly those in vol. i. of Schardius, _Scriptores rerum Germanicarum_, Basel, 1574. For an earlier period, Felix Faber, _Historia Suevorum_, libri duo (in Goldast, _Script. rer. Suev._ 1605); for a later, Irenicus, _Exegesis Germaniæ_, Hagenau, 1518. On the latter work and the patriotic histories of that time, see various studies of A. Horawitz, _Hist. Zeitschrift_, bd. xxxiii. 118, anm. 1.

[288] One instance out of many: _The Answers of the Doge of Venice to a Florentine Agent respecting Pisa_, 1496, in Malipiero, _Ann. Veneti. Arch. Stor._ vii. i. p. 427.

[289] Observe the expressions ‘uomo singolare’ and ‘uomo unico’ for the higher and highest stages of individual development.

[290] By the year 1390 there was no longer any prevailing fashion of dress for men at Florence, each preferring to clothe himself in his own way. See the _Canzone_ of Franco Sacchetti: ‘Contro alle nuove foggie’ in the _Rime_, publ. dal Poggiali, p. 52.

[291] At the close of the sixteenth century Montaigne draws the following parallel (_Essais_, l. iii. chap. 5, vol. iii. p. 367 of the Paris ed. 1816): ‘Ils (les Italiens) ont plus communement des belles femmes et moins de laides que nous; mais des rares et excellentes beautés j’estime que nous allons à pair. Et j’en juge autant des esprits; de ceux de la commune façon, ils en ont beaucoup plus et evidemment; la brutalité y est sans comparaison plus rare; d’ames singulières et du plus hault estage, nous ne leur en debvons rien.’

[292] And also of their wives, as is seen in the family of Sforza and among other North Italian rulers. Comp. in the work of Jacobus Phil. Bergomensis, _De Plurimis Claris Selectisque Mulieribus_, Ferrara, 1497, the lives of Battista Malatesta, Paola Gonzaga, Bona Lombarda, Riccarda of Este, and the chief women of the House of Sforza, Beatrice and others. Among them are more than one genuine virago, and in several cases natural gifts are supplemented by great humanistic culture. (See below, chap. 3 and part v.)

[293] Franco Sacchetti, in his ‘Capitolo’ (_Rime_, publ. dal Poggiali, p. 56), enumerates about 1390 the names of over a hundred distinguished people in the ruling parties who had died within his memory. However many mediocrities there may have been among them, the list is still remarkable as evidence of the awakening of individuality. On the ‘Vite’ of Filippo Villani, see below.

[294] _Trattato del Governo della Famiglia_ forms a part of the work: _La Cura della Famiglia_ (_Opere Volg. di Leon Batt. Alberti_, publ. da Anicio Bonucci, Flor. 1844, vol. ii.). See there vol. i. pp. xxx.-xl., vol. ii. pp. xxxv. sqq. and vol. v. pp. 1-127. Formerly the work was generally, as in the text, attributed to Agnolo Pandolfini (d. 1446; see on him _Vesp. Fiorent._, pp. 291 and 379); the recent investigations of Fr. Palermo (Florence 1871), have shown Alberti to be the author. The work is quoted from the ed. Torino, Pomba, 1828.

[295] Trattato, p. 65 sqq.

[296] Jov. Pontanus, _De Fortitudine_, l. ii. cap. 4, ‘De tolerando Exilio,’ Seventy years later, Cardanus (_De Vitâ Propriâ_, cap. 32) could ask bitterly: ‘Quid est patria nisi consensus tyrannorum minutorum ad opprimendos imbelles timidos et qui plerumque sunt innoxii?’

[297] _De Vulgari Eloquio_, lib. i. cap. 6. On the ideal Italian language, cap. 17. The spiritual unity of cultivated men, cap. 18. On home-sickness, comp. the famous passages, _Purg._ viii. 1 sqq., and _Parad._ xxv. 1 sqq.

[298] _Dantis Alligherii Epistolae_, ed. Carolus Witte, p. 65.

[299] Ghiberti, _Secondo Commentario_, cap. xv. (Vasari ed Lemonnier, i. p. xxix.).

[300] _Codri Urcei Vita_, at the end of his works, first pub. Bologna 1502. This certainly comes near the old saying: ‘ubi bene, ibi patria.’ C. U. was not called after the place of his birth, but after Forli, where he lived long; see Malagola, _Codro Urceo_, Bologna, 1877, cap. v. and app. xi. The abundance of neutral intellectual pleasure, which is independent of local circumstances, and of which the educated Italians became more and more capable, rendered exile more tolerable to them. Cosmopolitanism is further a sign of an epoch in which new worlds are discovered, and men feel no longer at home in the old. We see it among the Greeks after the Peloponnesian war; Plato, as Niebuhr says, was not a good citizen, and Xenophon was a bad one; Diogenes went so far as to proclaim homelessness a pleasure, and calls himself, Laertius tells us, ἁπολις. Here another remarkable work may be mentioned. Petrus Alcyonius in his book: _Medices Legatus de Exilio lib. duo_, Ven. 1522 (printed in Mencken, _Analecta de Calam. Literatorum_, Leipzig, 1707, pp. 1-250) devotes to the subject of exile a long and prolix discussion. He tries logically and historically to refute the three reasons for which banishment is held to be an evil, viz. 1. Because the exile must live away from his fatherland. 2. Because he loses the honours given him at home. 3. Because he must do without his friends and relatives; and comes finally to the conclusion that banishment is not an evil. His dissertation culminates in the words, ‘Sapientissimus quisque omnem orbem terrarum unam urbem esse ducit. Atque etiam illam veram sibi esse patriam arbitratur quæ se perigrinantem exciperit, quæ pudorem, probitatem, virtutem colit, quæ optima studia, liberales disciplinas amplectitur, quæ etiam facit ut peregrini omnes honesto otio teneant statum et famam dignitatis suæ.’

[301] This awakening of personality is also shown in the great stress laid on the independent growth of character, in the claim to shape the spiritual life for oneself, apart from parents and ancestors. Boccaccio (_De Cas. Vir. Ill._ Paris, s. a. fol. xxix. _b_) points out that Socrates came of uneducated, Euripides and Demosthenes of unknown, parents, and exclaims: ‘Quasi animos a gignentibus habeamus!’

[302] Boccaccio, _Vita di Dante_, p. 16.

[303] The angels which he drew on tablets at the anniversary of the death of Beatrice (_Vita Nuova_, p. 61) may have been more than the work of a dilettante. Lion. Aretino says he drew ‘egregiamente,’ and was a great lover of music.

[304] For this and what follows, see esp. _Vespasiano Fiorentino_, an authority of the first order for Florentine culture in the fifteenth century Comp. pp. 359, 379, 401, etc. See, also, the charming and instructive _Vita Jannoctii Manetti_ (b. 1396), by Naldus Naldius, in Murat. xx. pp. 529-608.

[305] What follows is taken, e.g., from Perticari’s account of Pandolfo Collenuccio, in Roscoe, _Leone X._ ed. Bossi iii. pp. 197 sqq., and from the _Opere del Conte Perticari_, Mil. 1823, vol. ii.

[306] For what follows compare Burckhardt, _Geschichte der Renaissance in Italien_, Stuttg. 1868, esp. p. 41 sqq., and A. Springer, _Abhandlungen zur neueren Kunstgeschichte_, Bonn, 1867, pp. 69-102. A new biography of Alberti is in course of preparation by Hub. Janitschek.

[307] In Murat. xxv. col. 295 sqq., with the Italian translation in the _Opere Volgari di L. B. Alberti_, vol. i. pp. lxxxix-cix, where the conjecture is made and shown to be probable that this ‘Vita’ is by Alberti himself. See, further, Vasari, iv. 52 sqq. Mariano Socini, if we can believe what we read of him in Æn. Sylvius (_Opera_, p. 622, _Epist._ 112) was a universal dilettante, and at the same time a master in several subjects.

[308] Similar attempts, especially an attempt at a flying-machine, had been made about 880 by the Andalusian Abul Abbas Kasim ibn Firnas. Comp. Gyangos, _The History of the Muhammedan Dynasties in Spain_ (London, 1840), i. 148 sqq. and 425-7; extracts in Hammer, _Literaturgesch. der Araber_, i. Introd. p. li.

[309] Quidquid ingenio esset hominum cum quadam effectum elegantia, id prope divinum ducebat.

[310] This is the book (comp. p. 185, note 2) of which one part, often printed alone, long passed for a work of Pandolfini.

[311] In his work, _De Re Ædificatoria_, l. viii. cap. i., there is a definition of a beautiful road: ‘Si modo mare, modo montes, modo lacum fluentem fontesve, modo aridam rupem aut planitiem, modo nemus vallemque exhibebit.’

[312] One writer among many: Blondus, _Roma Triumphans_, l. v. pp. 117 sqq., where the definitions of glory are collected from the ancients, and the desire of it is expressly allowed to the Christian. Cicero’s work, _De Gloria_, which Petrarch claimed to own, was stolen from him by his teacher Convenevole, and has never since been seen. Alberti, in a youthful composition when he was only twenty years of age, praises the desire of fame. _Opere_, vol. i. pp. cxxvii-clxvi.

[313] _Paradiso_, xxv. at the beginning: ‘Se mai continga,’ &c. See above, p. 133, note 2. Comp. Boccaccio, _Vita di Dante_, p. 49. ‘Vaghissimo fu e d’onore e di pompa, e per avventura più che alla sua inclita virtù non si sarebbe richiesto.’

[314] _De Vulgari Eloquio_, l. i. cap. i. and esp. _De Monarchia_, l. i. cap. i., where he wishes to set forth the idea of monarchy not only in order to be useful to the world but also ‘ut palmam tanti bravii primus in meam gloriam adipiscar.’

[315] _Convito_, ed. Venezia, 1529, fol. 5 and 6.

[316] _Paradiso_, vi. 112 sqq.

[317] E.g. _Inferno_, vi. 89; xiii. 53; xvi. 85; xxxi. 127.

[318] _Purgatorio_, v. 70, 87, 133; vi. 26; viii. 71; xi. 31; xiii. 147.

[319] _Purgatorio_, xi. 85-117. Besides ‘gloria’ we here find close together ‘grido, fama, rumore, nominanza, onore’ all different names for the same thing. Boccaccio wrote, as he admits in his letter to Joh. Pizinga (_Op. Volg._ xvi. 30 sqq.) ‘perpetuandi nominis desiderio’.

[320] Scardeonius, _De Urb. Patav. Antiqu._ (Græv. _Thesaur._ vi. iii. col. 260). Whether ‘cereis’ or ‘certis muneribus’ should be the reading, cannot be said. The somewhat solemn nature of Mussatus can be recognised in the tone of his history of Henry VII.

[321] Franc. Petrarca, _Posteritati_, or _Ad Posteros_, at the beginning of the editions of his works, or the only letter of Book xviii. of the _Epp. Seniles_; also in Fracassetti, _Petr. Epistolæ Familiares_, 1859, i. 1-11. Some modern critics of Petrarch’s vanity would hardly have shown as much kindness and frankness had they been in his place.

[322] _Opera_, ed. 1581, p. 177: ‘De celebritate nominis importuna.’ Fame among the mass of people was specially offensive to him. _Epp. Fam._ i. 337, 340. In Petrarch, as in many humanists of the older generation, we can observe the conflict between the desire for glory and the claims of Christian humility.

[323] ‘De Remediis Utriusque Fortunæ’ in the editions of the works. Often printed separately, e.g. Bern, 1600. Compare Petrarch’s famous dialogue, ‘De Contemptu Mundi’ or ‘De Conflictu Curarum Suarum,’ in which the interlocutor Augustinus blames the love of fame as a damnable fault.

[324] _Epp. Fam._ lib. xviii. (ed. Fracassetti) 2. A measure of Petrarch’s fame is given a hundred years later by the assertion of Blondus (_Italia Illustrata_, p. 416) that hardly even a learned man would know anything of Robert the Good if Petrarch had not spoken of him so often and so kindly.

[325] It is to be noted that even Charles IV., perhaps influenced by Petrarch, speaks in a letter to the historian Marignola of fame as the object of every striving man. H. Friedjung, _Kaiser Karl IV. und sein Antheil am geistigen Leben seiner Zeit_, Vienna, 1876, p. 221.

[326] _Epist. Seniles_, xiii. 3, to Giovanni Aretino, Sept. 9, 1370.

[327] Filippo Villani, _Vite_, p. 19

[328] Both together in the epitaph on Boccaccio: ‘Nacqui in Firenze al Pozzo Toscanelli; Di fuor sepolto a Certaldo giaccio,’ &c. Comp. _Op. Volg. di Boccaccio_, xvi. 44.

[329] Mich. Savonarola, _De Laudibus Patavii_, in Murat. xxiv. col. 1157. Arquà remained from thenceforth the object of special veneration (comp. Ettore Conte Macola, _I Codici di Arquà_, Padua, 1874), and was the scene of great solemnities at the fifth centenary of Petrarch’s death. His dwelling is said to have been lately given to the city of Padua by the last owner, Cardinal Silvestri.

[330] The decree of 1396 and its grounds in Gaye, _Carteggio_, i. 123.

[331] Reumont, _Lorenzo de’ Medici_, ii. 180.

[332] Boccaccio, _Vita di Dante_, p. 39.

[333] Franco Sacchetti, nov. 121.

[334] The former in the well-known sarcophagus near San Lorenzo, the latter over a door in the Palazzo della Ragione. For details as to their discovery in 1413, see Misson, _Voyage en Italie_, vol. i., and Michele Savonarola, col. 1157.

[335] _Vita di Dante_, l. c. How came the body of Cassius from Philippi back to Parma?

[336] ‘Nobilitatis fastu’ and ‘sub obtentu religionis,’ says Pius II. (_Comment._ x. p. 473). The new sort of fame must have been inconvenient to those who were accustomed to the old.

That Carlo Malatesta caused the statue of Virgil to be pulled down and thrown into the Mincio, and this, as he alleged, from anger at the veneration paid to it by the people of Mantua, is a well-authenticated fact, specially attested by an invective written in 1397 by P. P. Vergerio against C. M., _De dirutâ Statuâ Virgilii P. P. V. eloquentissimi Oratoris Epistola ex Tugurio Blondi sub Apolline_, ed. by Marco Mantova Benavides (publ. certainly before 1560 at Padua). From this work it is clear that till then the statue had not been set up again. Did this happen in consequence of the invective? Bartholomæus Facius (_De Vir. Ill._ p. 9 sqq. in the Life of P. P. V. 1456) says it did, ‘Carolum Malatestam invectus Virgilii statua, quam ille Mantuæ in foro everterat, quoniam gentilis fuerat, ut ibidem restitueretur, effecit;’ but his evidence stands alone. It is true that, so far as we know, there are no contemporary chronicles for the history of Mantua at that period (Platina, _Hist. Mant._ in Murat. xx. contains nothing about the matter), but later historians are agreed that the statue was not restored. See for evidence, Prendilacqua, _Vita di Vitt. da Feltre_, written soon after 1446 (ed. 1871, p. 78), where the destruction but not the restoration of the statue is spoken of, and the work of Ant. Possevini, jun. (_Gonzaga_, Mantua, 1628), where, p. 486, the pulling down of the statue, the murmurings and violent opposition of the people, and the promise given in consequence by the prince that he _would_ restore it, are all mentioned, with the addition: ‘Nec tamen restitutus est Virgilius.’ Further, on March 17, 1499, Jacopo d’Hatry writes to Isabella of Este, that he has spoken with Pontano about a plan of the princess to raise a statue to Virgil at Mantua, and that Pontano cried out with delight that Vergerio, if he were alive, would be even more pleased ‘che non se attristò quando el Conte Carola Malatesta persuase abuttare la statua di Virgilio nel flume.’ The writer then goes on to speak of the manner of setting it up, of the inscription ‘P. Virgilius Mantuanus’ and ‘Isabella Marchionissa Mantuæ restituit,’ and suggests that Andrea Mantegna would be the right man to be charged with the work. Mantegna did in fact make the drawings for it. (The drawing and the letter in question are given in Baschet, _Recherches de documents d’art et d’histoire dans les Archives de Mantoue; documents inédits concernant la personne et les œuvres d’Andrea Mantegna_, in the _Gazette des Beaux-Arts_, xx. (1866) 478-492, esp. 486 sqq.) It is clear from this letter that Carlo Malatesta did not have the statue restored. In Comparetti’s work on Virgil in the Middle Ages, the story is told after Burckhardt, but without authorities. Dr. Geiger, on the authority of Professor Paul of Berlin, distinguishes between C. Cassius Longinus and Cassius Parmensis, the poet, both among the assassins of Cæsar.

[337] Comp. Keyssler’s _Neueste Reisen_, p. 1016.

[338] The elder was notoriously a native of Verona.

[339] This is the tone of the remarkable work, _De Laudibus Papiæ_, in Murat. xx., dating from the fourteenth century--much municipal pride, but no idea of personal fame.

[340] _De Laudibus Patavii_, in Murat. xxiv. col. 1138 sqq. Only three cities, in his opinion--could be compared with Padua--Florence, Venice and Rome.

[341] ‘Nam et veteres nostri tales aut divos aut æternâ memoriâ dignos non immerito prædicabant, quum virtus summa sanctitatis sit consocia et pari ematur pretio.’ What follows is most characteristic: ‘Hos itaque meo facili judicio æternos facio.’

[342] Similar ideas occur in many contemporary writers. Codrus Urceus, _Sermo_ xiii. (_Opp._ 1506, fol. xxxviii. _b_), speaking of Galeazzo Bentivoglio, who was both a scholar and a warrior, ‘Cognoscens artem militarem esse quidem excellentem, sed literas multo certe excellentiores.’

[343] What follows immediately is not, as the editor remarks (Murat. xxiv col. 1059, note), from the pen of Mich. Savonarola.

[344] Petrarch, in the ‘Triumph’ here quoted, only dwells on characters of antiquity, and in his collection, _De Rebus Memorandis_, has little to say of contemporaries. In the _Casus Virorum Illustrium_ of Boccaccio (among the men a number of women, besides Philippa Catinensis treated of at the end, are included, and even the goddess Juno is described), only the close of the eighth book and the last book--the ninth--deal with non-classical times. Boccaccio’s remarkable work, _De Claris Mulieribus_, treats also almost exclusively of antiquity. It begins with Eve, speaks then of ninety-seven women of antiquity, and seven of the Middle ages, beginning with Pope Joan and ending with Queen Johanna of Naples. And so at a much later time in the _Commentarii Urbani_ of Ralph. Volaterranus. In the work _De Claris Mulieribus_ of the Augustinian Jacobus Bergomensis (printed 1497, but probably published earlier) antiquity and legend hold the chief place, but there are still some valuable biographies of Italian women. There are one or two lives of contemporary women by Vespasiano da Bisticci (_Arch. Stor. Ital._ iv. i. pp. 430 sqq.). In Scardeonius (_De Urb. Patav. Antiqu. Græv. Thesaur._ vi. iii. col. 405 sqq.,) only famous Paduan women are mentioned. First comes a legend or tradition from the time of the fall of the empire, then tragical stories of the party struggles of the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries; then notices of several heroic women; then the foundress of nunneries, the political woman, the female doctor, the mother of many and distinguished sons, the learned woman, the peasant girl who dies defending her chastity; then the cultivated beauty of the sixteenth century, on whom everybody writes sonnets; and lastly, the female novelist and poet at Padua. A century later the woman-professor would have been added to these. For the famous woman of the House of Este, see Ariosto, _Orl._ xiii.

[345] Bartolommeo Facio and Paolo Cortese. B. F. _De Viris Illustribus Liber_, was first published by L. Mehus (Florence, 1745). The book was begun by the author (known by other historical works, and resident at the court of Alfonso of Naples) after he had finished the history of that king (1455), and ended, as references to the struggles of Hungary and the writer’s ignorance of the elevation of Æneas Silvius to the cardinalate show, in 1456. (See, nevertheless, Wahlen, _Laurentii Vallæ Opuscula Tria_, Vienna, 1869, p. 67, note 1.) It is never quoted by contemporaries, and seldom by later writers. The author wishes in this book to describe the famous men, ‘ætatis memoriæque nostræ,’ and consequently only mentions such as were born in the last quarter of the fourteenth century, and were still living in, or had died shortly before, the middle of the fifteenth. He chiefly limits himself to Italians, except in the case of artists or princes, among the latter of whom he includes the Emperor Sigismund and Albrecht Achilles of Brandenburg; and in arranging the various biographies he neither follows chronological order nor the distinction which the subject of each attained, but puts them down ‘ut quisque mihi occurrerit,’ intending to treat in a second part of those whom he might have left out in the first. He divides the famous men into nine classes, nearly all of them prefaced by remarks on their distinctive qualities: 1. Poets; 2. Orators; 3. Jurists; 4. Physicians (with a few philosophers and theologians, as an appendix); 5. Painters; 6. Sculptors; 7. Eminent citizens; 8. Generals; 9. Princes and kings. Among the latter he treats with special fulness and care of Pope Nicholas V. and King Alfonso of Naples. In general he gives only short and mostly eulogistic biographies, confined in the case of princes and soldiers to the list of their deeds, and of artists and writers to the enumeration of their works. No attempt is made at a detailed description or criticism of these; only with regard to a few works of art which he had himself seen he writes more fully. Nor is any attempt made at an estimate of individuals; his heroes either receive a few general words of praise, or must be satisfied with the mere mention of their names. Of himself the author says next to nothing. He states only that Guarino was his teacher, that Manetti wrote a book on a subject which he himself had treated, that Bracellius was his countryman, and that the painter Pisano of Verona was known to him (pp. 17, 18, 19, 48; but says nothing in speaking of Laurentius Valla of his own violent quarrels with this scholar. On the other hand, he does not fail to express his piety and his hatred to the Turks (p. 64), to relieve his Italian patriotism by calling the Swiss barbarians (p. 60), and to say of P. P. Vergerius, ‘dignus qui totam in Italia vitam scribens exegisset’ (p. 9).

Of all celebrities he evidently sets most store by the scholars, and among these by the ‘oratores,’ to whom he devotes nearly a third of his book. He nevertheless has great respect for the jurists, and shows a special fondness for the physicians, among whom he well distinguishes the theoretical from the practical, relating the successful diagnoses and operations of the latter. That he treats of theologians and philosophers in connection with the physicians, is as curious as that he should put the painters immediately after the physicians, although, as he says, they are most allied to the poets. In spite of his reverence for learning, which shows itself in the praise given to the princes who patronised it, he is too much of a courtier not to register the tokens of princely favour received by the scholars he speaks of, and to characterise the princes in the introduction to the chapters devoted to them as those who ‘veluti corpus membra, ita omnia genera quæ supra memoravimus, regunt ac tuentur.’

The style of the book is simple and unadorned, and the matter of it full of instruction, notwithstanding its brevity. It is a pity that Facius did not enter more fully into the personal relations and circumstances of the men whom he described, and did not add to the list of their writings some notice of the contents and the value of them.

The work of Paolo Cortese (b. 1645, d. 1510), _De Hominibus Doctis Dialogus_ (first ed. Florence, 1734), is much more limited in its character. This work, written about 1490, since it mentions Antonius Geraldinus as dead, who died in 1488, and was dedicated to Lorenzo de’ Medici, who died in 1492, is distinguished from that of Facius, written a generation earlier, not only by the exclusion of all who are not learned men, but by various inward and outward characteristics. First by the form, which is that of a dialogue between the author and his two companions, Alexander Farnese and Antonius, and by the digressions and unequal treatment of the various characters caused thereby; and secondly by the manner of the treatment itself. While Facius only speaks of the men of his own time, Cortese treats only of the dead, and in part of those long dead, by which he enlarges his circle more than he narrows it by exclusion of the living; while Facius merely chronicles works and deeds, as if they were unknown, Cortese criticises the literary activity of his heroes as if the reader were already familiar with it. This criticism is shaped by the humanistic estimate of eloquence, according to which no man could be considered of importance unless he had achieved something remarkable in eloquence, _i.e._ in the classical, Ciceronian treatment of the Latin language. On this principle Dante and Petrarch are only moderately praised, and are blamed for having diverted so much of their powers from Latin to Italian; Guarino is described as one who had beheld perfect eloquence at least through a cloud; Lionardo Aretino as one who had offered his contemporaries ‘aliquid splendidius;’ and Enea Silvio as he ‘in quo primum apparuit mutati sæculi signum.’ This point of view prevailed over all others; never perhaps was it held so one-sidedly as by Cortese. To get a notion of his way of thinking we have only to hear his remarks on a predecessor, also the compiler of a great biographical collection, Sicco Polentone: ‘Ejus sunt viginti ad filium libri scripti de claris scriptoribus, utiles admodum qui jam fere ab omnibus legi sent desiti. Est enim in judicando parum acer, nec servit aurium voluptati quum tractat res ab aliis ante tractatas; sed hoc ferendum. Illud certe molestum est, dum alienis verbis sententiisque scripta infarcit et explet sua; ex quo nascitur maxime vitiosum scribendi genus, quum modo lenis et candidus, modo durus et asper apparcat, et sic in toto genere tanquam in unum agrum plura inter se inimicissima sparsa semina.’

All are not treated with so much detail; most are disposed of in a few brief sentences; some are merely named without a word being added. Much is nevertheless to be learned from his judgments, though we may not be able always to agree with them. We cannot here discuss him more fully, especially as many of his most characteristic remarks have been already made use of; on the whole, they give us a clear picture of the way in which a later time, outwardly more developed, looked down with critical scorn upon an earlier age, inwardly perhaps richer, but externally less perfect.

Facius, the author of the first-mentioned biographical work, is spoken of, but not his book. Like Facius, Cortese is the humble courtier, looking on Lorenzo de’ Medici as Facius looked on Alfonso of Naples; like him, he is a patriot who only praises foreign excellence unwillingly and because he must; adding the assurance that he does not wish to oppose his own country (p. 48, speaking of Janus Pannonius).

Information as to Cortese has been collected by Bernardus Paperinius, the editor of his work; we may add that his Latin translation of the novel of L. B. Alberti, _Hippolytus and Dejanira_, is printed for the first time in the _Opere di L. B. A._ vol. iii. pp. 439-463.

[346] How great the fame of the humanists was is shown by the fact that impostors attempted to make capital out of the use of their names. There thus appeared at Verona a man strangely clad and using strange gestures, who, when brought before the mayor, recited with great energy passages of Latin verse and prose, taken from the works of Panormita, answered in reply to the questions put to him that he was himself Panormita, and was able to give so many small and commonly unknown details about the life of this scholar, that his statement obtained general credit. He was then treated with great honour by the authorities and the learned men of the city, and played his assumed part successfully for a considerable time, until Guarino and others who knew Panormita personally discovered the fraud. Comp. Rosmini, _Vita di Guarino_, ii. 44 sqq., 171 sqq. Few of the humanists were free from the habit of boasting. Codrus Urceus (_Vita_, at the end of the _Opera_, 1506, fol. lxx.), when asked for his opinion about this or that famous man, used to answer: ‘Sibi scire videntur.’ Barth. Facius, _De Vir. Ill._ p. 31, tells of the jurist Antonius Butriensis: ‘Id unum in eo viro notandum est, quod neminem unquam, adeo excellere homines in eo studio volebat, ut doctoratu dignum in examine comprobavit.’

[347] A Latin poet of the twelfth century, one of the wandering scholars who barters his song for a coat, uses this as a threat. _Carmina Burana_, p. 76.

[348] Sonnet cli: Lasso ch’i ardo.

[349] Boccaccio, _Opere Volgari_, vol. xvi. in Sonnet 13: Pallido, vinto, etc.

[350] Elsewhere, and in Roscoe, _Leone X._ ed. Bossi, iv. 203.

[351] _Angeli Politiani Epp._ lib. x.

[352] Quatuor navigationes, etc. Deodatum (_St. Dié_), 1507. Comp. O. Peschel, _Geschichte des Zeitalters der Entdeckungen_, 1859, ed. 2, 1876.

[353] Paul. Jov. _De Romanis Piscibus_, Præfatio (1825). The first decade of his histories would soon be published, ‘non sine aliqua spe immortalitatis.’

[354] Comp. _Discorsi_, i. 27. ‘Tristizia’ (crime) can have ‘grandezza’ and be ‘in alcuna parte generosa’; ‘grandezza’ can take away ‘infamia’ from a deed; a man can be ‘onorevolmente tristo’ in contrast to one who is ‘perfettamente buono.’

[355] _Storie Fiorentine_, l. vi.

[356] Paul. Jov. _Elog. Vir. Lit. Ill._ p. 192, speaking of Marius Molsa.

[357] Mere railing is found very early, in Benzo of Alba, in the eleventh century (_Mon. Germ._ ss. xi. 591-681).

[358] The Middle Ages are further rich in so-called satirical poems; but the satire is not individual, but aimed at classes, categories, and whole populations, and easily passes into the didactic tone. The whole spirit of this literature is best represented by _Reineke Fuchs_, in all its forms among the different nations of the West. For this branch of French literature see a new and admirable work by Lenient, _La Satire en France au Moyen-âge_, Paris, 1860, and the equally excellent continuation, _La Satire en France, ou la littérature militante, au XVIe Siècle_, Paris, 1866.

[359] See above, p. 7 note 2. Occasionally we find an insolent joke, nov. 37.

[360] _Inferno_, xxi. xxii. The only possible parallel is with Aristophanes.

[361] A modest beginning _Opera_, p. 421, sqq., in _Rerum Memorandarum Libri IV._ Again, in _Epp. Seniles_, x. 2. Comp. _Epp. Fam._ ed. Fracass. i. 68 sqq., 70, 240, 245. The puns have a flavour of their mediæval home, the monasteries. Petrarch’s invectives ‘contra Gallum,’ ‘contra medicum objurgantem,’ and his work, _De Sui Ipsius et Multorum Ignorantia_; perhaps also his _Epistolæ sine Titulo_,’ may be quoted as early examples of satirical writing.

[362] Nov. 40, 41; Ridolfo da Camerino is the man.

[363] The well-known jest of Brunellesco and the fat wood-carver, Manetto Ammanatini, who is said to have fled into Hungary before the ridicule he encountered, is clever but cruel.

[364] The ‘Araldo’ of the Florentine Signoria. One instance among many, _Commissioni di Rinaldo degli Albizzi_, iii. 651, 669. The fool as necessary to enliven the company after dinner; Alcyonius, _De Exilio_, ed. Mencken, p. 129.

[365] Sacchetti, nov. 48. And yet, according to nov. 67, there was an impression that a Romagnole was superior to the worst Florentine.

[366] L. B. Alberti, _Del Governo della Famiglia, Opere_, ed. Bonucci, v. 171. Comp. above, p. 132, note 1.

[367] Franco Sacchetti, nov. 156; comp. 24 for Dolcibene and the Jews. (For Charles IV. and the fools, _Friedjung_, o.c. p. 109.) The _Facetiæ_ of Poggio resemble Sacchetti’s in substance--practical jokes, impertinences, refined indecency misunderstood by simple folk; the philologist is betrayed by the large number of verbal jokes. On L. A. Alberti, see pp. 136, sqq.

[368] And consequently in those novels of the Italians whose subject is taken from them.

[369] According to Bandello, iv. nov. 2, Gonnella could twist his features into the likeness of other people, and mimic all the dialects of Italy.

[370] Paul. Jov. _Vita Leonis X._

[371] ‘Erat enim Bibiena mirus artifex hominibus ætate vel professione gravibus ad insaniam impellendis.’ We are here reminded of the jests of Christine of Sweden with her philologists. Comp. the remarkable passage of Jovian. Pontanus, _De Sermone_, lib. ii. cap. 9: ‘Ferdinandus Alfonsi filius, Neapolitanorum rex magnus et ipse fuit artifex et vultus componendi et orationes in quem ipse usus vellet. Nam ætatis nostri Pontifices maximi fingendis vultibus ac verbis vel histriones ipsos anteveniunt.

[372] The eye-glass I not only infer from Rafael’s portrait, where it can be explained as a magnifier for looking at the miniatures in the prayer-book, but from a statement of Pellicanus, according to which Leo views an advancing procession of monks through a ‘specillum’ (comp. _Züricher Taschenbuch_ for 1858, p. 177), and from the ‘cristallus concava,’ which, according to Giovio, he used when hunting. (Comp. ‘Leonis X. vita auctore anon, conscripta’ in the Appendix to Roscoe.) In Attilius Alessius (Baluz. _Miscell._ iv. 518) we read, ‘Oculari ex gemina (gemma?) utebatur quam manu gestans, signando aliquid videndum esset, oculis admovebat.’ The shortsightedness in the family of the Medici was hereditary. Lorenzo was shortsighted, and replied to the Sienese Bartolommeo Soccini, who said that the air of Florence was bad for the eyes: ‘E quella di Siena al cervello.’ The bad sight of Leo X. was proverbial. After his election, the Roman wits explained the number MCCCCXL. engraved in the Vatican as follows: ‘Multi cæci Cardinales creaverunt cæcum decimum Leonem.’ Comp. Shepherd-Tonelli, _Vita del Poggio_, ii. 23, sqq., and the passages there quoted.

[373] We find it also in plastic art, e.g., in the famous plate parodying the group of the Laöcoon as three monkeys. But here parody seldom went beyond sketches and the like, though much, it is true, may have been destroyed. Caricature, again, is something different. Lionardo, in the grotesque faces in the Biblioteca Ambrosiana, represents what is hideous when and because it is comical, and exaggerates the ludicrous element at pleasure.

[374] Jovian. Pontan. _De Sermone_, libri v. He attributes a special gift of wit to the Sienese and Peruginese, as well as to the Florentines, adding the Spanish court as a matter of politeness.

[375] _Il Cortigiano_, lib. ii. cap. 4 sqq., ed. Baude di Vesme, Florence, 1854, pp. 124 sqq. For the explanation of wit as the effect of contrast, though not clearly put, see _ibid._ cap. lxxiii. p. 136.

[376] Pontanus, _De Sermone_, lib. iv. cap. 3, also advises people to abstain from using ‘ridicula’ either against the miserable or the strong.

[377] _Galateo del Casa_, ed. Venez. 1789, p. 26 sqq. 48.

[378] _Lettere Pittoriche_, i. p. 71, in a letter of Vinc. Borghini, 1577. Macchiavelli (_Stor. Fior._ vii. cap. 28) says of the young gentlemen in Florence soon after the middle of the fifteenth century: ‘Gli studî loro erano apparire col vestire splendidi, e col parlare sagaci ed astuti, e quello che più destramente mordeva gli altri, era più savio e da più stimato.’

[379] Comp. Fedra Inghirami’s funeral oration on Ludovico Podocataro (d. Aug. 25, 1504) in the _Anecd. Litt._ i. p. 319. The scandal-monger Massaino is mentioned in Paul. Jov. _Dialogues de Viris Litt. Illustr._ (Tiraboschi, tom. vii. parte iv. p. 1631).

[380] This was the plan followed by Leo X., and his calculations were not disappointed. Fearfully as his reputation was mangled after his death by the satirists, they were unable to modify the general estimate formed of him.

[381] This was probably the case with Cardinal Ardicino della Porta, who in 1491 wished to resign his dignity and take refuge in a monastery. See Infessura, in Eccard. ii. col. 2000.

[382] See his funeral oration in the _Anecd. Litt._ iv. p. 315. He assembled an army of peasants in the March of Aneona, which was only hindered from acting by the treason of the Duke of Urbino. For his graceful and hopeless love-poems, see Trucchi, _Poesie Inedite_, iii. 123.

[383] How he used his tongue at the table of Clement VII. is told in Giraldi, _Hecatomithi_, vii. nov. 5.

[384] The charge of taking into consideration the proposal to drown Pasquino (in Paul. Jov. _Vita Hadriani_), is transferred from Sixtus IV. to Hadrian. Comp. _Lettere dei Principi_, i. 114 sqq., letter of Negro, dated April 7, 1523. On St. Mark’s Day Pasquino had a special celebration, which the Pope forbade.

[385] In the passages collected in Gregorovius, viii. 380 note, 381 sqq. 393 sqq.

[386] Comp. Pier. Valer. _De Infel. Lit._ ed. Mencken, p. 178. ‘Pestilentia quæ cum Adriano VI. invecta Romam invasit.’

[387] E.g. Firenzuola, _Opera_ (Milano 1802), vol. i. p. 116, in the _Discorsi degli Animali_.

[388] Comp. the names in Höfler, _Sitzungsberichte der Wiener Academie_ (1876), vol. 82, p. 435.

[389] The words of Pier. Valerian, _De Infel. Lit._ ed. Mencken, p. 382, are most characteristic of the public feeling at Rome: ‘Ecce adest Musarum et eloquentiæ totiusque nitoris hostis acerrimis, qui literatis omnibus inimicitias minitaretur, quoniam, ut ipse dictitabat, Terentiani essent, quos quum odisse atque etiam persequi cœpisset voluntarium alii exilium, alias atque alias alii latebras quærentes tam diu latuere quoad Deo beneficio altero imperii anno decessit, qui si aliquanto diutius vixisset, Gothica illa tempora adversus bonas literas videbatur suscitaturus.’ The general hatred of Adrian was also due partly to the fact that in the great pecuniary difficulties in which he found himself he adopted the expedient of a direct tax. Ranke, _Päpste_, i. 411. It may here be mentioned that there were, nevertheless, poets to be found who praised Adrian. Comp. various passages in the _Coryciana_ (ed. Rome, 1524), esp. J. J. 2_b_ sqq.

[390] To the Duke of Ferrara, January 1, 1536 (_Lettere_, ed. 1539, fol. 39): ‘You will now journey from Rome to Naples,’ ‘ricreando la vista avvilita nel mirar le miserie pontificali con la contemplazione delle eccellenze imperiali.’

[391] The fear which he caused to men of mark, especially artists, by these means, cannot be here described. The publicistic weapon of the German Reformation was chiefly the pamphlet dealing with events as they occurred; Aretino is a journalist in the sense that he has within himself a perpetual occasion for writing.

[392] E.g. in the _Capitolo_ on Albicante, a bad poet; unfortunately the passages are unfit for quotation.

[393] _Lettere_, ed. Venez. 1539, fol. 12, dated May 31, 1527.

[394] In the first _Capitolo_ to Cosimo.

[395] Gaye, _Carteggio_, ii. 332.

[396] See the insolent letter of 1536 in the _Lettere Pittor._ i. Append. 34. See above, p. 142, for the house where Petrarch was born in Arezzo.

[397]

L’Aretin, per Deo grazia, è vivo e sano, Ma’l mostaccio ha fregiato nobilmente, E più colpi ha, che dita in una mano.’ (Mauro, ‘_Capitolo in lode delle bugie._’)

[398] See e.g. the letter to the Cardinal of Lorraine, _Lettere_, ed. Venez. fol. 29, dated Nov. 21, 1534, and the letters to Charles V., in which he says that no man stands nearer to God than Charles.

[399] For what follows, see Gaye, _Carteggio_, ii. 336, 337, 345.

[400] _Lettere_, ed. Venez. 1539, fol. 15, dated June 16, 1529. Comp. another remarkable letter to M. A., dated April 15, 1528, fol. 212.

[401] He may have done so either in the hope of obtaining the red hat or from fear of the new activity of the Inquisition, which he had ventured to attack bitterly in 1535 (l. c. fol. 37), but which, after the reorganisation of the institution in 1542, suddenly took a fresh start, and soon silenced every opposing voice.

[402] [Carmina Burana, in the _Bibliothek des literarischen Vereins in Stuttgart_, vol. xvi. (Stuttg. 1847). The stay in Pavia (p. 68 _bis_), the Italian local references in general, the scene with the ‘pastorella’ under the olive-tree (p. 146), the mention of the ‘pinus’ as a shady field tree (p. 156), the frequent use of the word ‘bravium’ (pp. 137, 144), and particularly the form Madii for Maji (p. 141), all speak in favour of our assumption.]

The conjecture of Dr. Burckhardt that the best pieces of the _Carmina Burana_ were written by an Italian, is not tenable. The grounds brought forward in its support have little weight (e.g. the mention of Pavia: ‘Quis Paviæ demorans castus habeatur?’ which can be explained as a proverbial expression, or referred to a short stay of the writer at Pavia), cannot, further, hold their own against the reasons on the other side, and finally lose all their force in view of the probable identification of the author. The arguments of O. Hubatsch _Die lateinischen Vagantenlieder des Mittelalters_, Görlitz, 1870, p. 87) against the Italian origin of these poems are, among others, the attacks on the Italian and praise of the German clergy, the rebukes of the southerners as a ‘gens proterva,’ and the reference to the poet as ‘transmontanus.’ Who he actually was, however, is not clearly made out. That he bore the name of Walther throws no light upon his origin. He was formerly identified with Gualterus de Mapes, a canon of Salisbury and chaplain to the English kings at the end of the twelfth century; since, by Giesebrecht (_Die Vaganten oder Goliarden und ihre Lieder, Allgemeine Monatschrift_, 1855), with Walther of Lille or Chatillon, who passed from France into England and Germany, and thence possibly with the Archbishop Reinhold of Köln (1164 and 75) to Italy (Pavia, &c.). If this hypothesis, against which Hubatsch (l. c.) has brought forward certain objections, must be abandoned, it remains beyond a doubt that the origin of nearly all these songs is to be looked for in France, from whence they were diffused through the regular school which here existed for them over Germany, and there expanded and mixed with German phrases; while Italy, as Giesebrecht has shown, remained almost unaffected by this class of poetry. The Italian translator of Dr. Burckhardt’s work, Prof. D. Valbusa, in a note to this passage (i. 235), also contests the Italian origin of the poem. [L. G.]

[403] _Carm. Bur._ p. 155, only a fragment: the whole in Wright, _Walter Mapes_ (1841), p. 258. Comp. Hubatsch, p. 27 sqq., who points to the fact that a story often treated of in France is at the foundation. Æst. Inter. _Carm. Bur._ p. 67; Dum Dianæ, _Carm. Bur._ p. 124. Additional instances: ‘Cor patet Jovi;’ classical names for the loved one; once, when he calls her Blanciflor, he adds, as if to make up for it, the name of Helena.

[404] In what way antiquity could serve as guide and teacher in all the higher regions of life, is briefly sketched by Æneas Sylvius (_Opera_, p. 603, in the _Epist._ 105, to the Archduke Sigismund).

[405] For particulars we must refer the reader to Roscoe, _Lorenzo Mag._ and _Leo X._, as well as to Voigt, _Enea Silvio_ (Berlin, 1856-63); to the works of Reumont and to Gregorovius, _Geschichte der Stadt Rom im Mittelalter_.

To form a conception of the extent which studies at the beginning of the sixteenth century had reached, we cannot do better than turn to the _Commentarii Urbani_ of Raphael Volatterranus (ed. Basil, 1544, fol. 16, &c.). Here we see how antiquity formed the introduction and the chief matter of study in every branch of knowledge, from geography and local history, the lives of great and famous men, popular philosophy, morals and the special sciences, down to the analysis of the whole of Aristotle with which the work closes. To understand its significance as an authority for the history of culture, we must compare it with all the earlier encyclopædias. A complete and circumstantial account of the matter is given in Voigt’s admirable work, _Die Wiederbelebung des classischen Alterthums_ oder _Das erste Jahrhundert der Humanismus_, Berlin, 1859.

[406] In William of Malmesbury, _Gesta Regum Anglor_. l. ii. § 169, 170, 205, 206 (ed. Lond. 1840, vol. i. p. 277 sqq. and p. 354 sqq.), we meet with the dreams of treasure-hunters, Venus as ghostly love, and the discovery of the gigantic body of Pallas, son of Evander, about the middle of the eleventh century. Comp. Jac. ab Aquis _Imago Mundi_ (_Hist. Patr. Monum. Script._ t. iii. col. 1603), on the origin of the House of Colonna, with reference to the discovery of hidden treasure. Besides the tales of the treasure-seekers, William of Malmesbury mentions the elegy of Hildebert of Mans, Bishop of Tours, one of the most singular examples of humanistic enthusiasm in the first half of the twelfth century.

[407] Dante, _Convito_, tratt. iv. cap. v.

[408] _Epp. Familiares_, vi. 2; references to Rome before he had seen it, and expressions of his longing for the city, _Epp. Fam._ ed. Fracass. vol. i. pp. 125, 213; vol. ii. pp. 336 sqq. See also the collected references in L. Geiger, _Petrarca_, p. 272, note 3. In Petrarch we already find complaints of the many ruined and neglected buildings, which he enumerates one by one (_De Rem. Utriusque Fort._ lib. i. dial. 118), adding the remark that many statues were left from antiquity, but no paintings (l. c. 41).

[409] _Dittamondo_, ii. cap. 3. The procession reminds one at times of the three kings and their suite in the old pictures. The description of the city (ii. cap. 31) is not without archæological value (Gregorovius, vi. 697, note 1). According to Polistoro (Murat. xxiv. col. 845), Niccolò and Ugo of Este journeyed in 1366 to Rome, ‘per vedere quelle magnificenze antiche, che al presente sipossono vedere in Roma.’

[410] Gregorovius, v. 316 sqq. Parenthetically we may quote foreign evidence that Rome in the Middle Ages was looked upon as a quarry. The famous Abbot Sugerius, who about 1140 was in search of lofty pillars for the rebuilding of St. Denis, thought at first of nothing less then getting hold of the granite monoliths of the Baths of Diocletian, but afterwards changed his mind. See ‘Sugerii Libellus Alter,’ in Duchesne, _Hist. Franc. Scriptores_, iv. p. 352.

[411] _Poggii Opera_, fol. 50 sqq. ‘Ruinarum Urbis Romæ Descriptio,’ written about 1430, shortly before the death of Martin V. The Baths of Caracalla and Diocletian had then their pillars and coating of marble. See Gregorovius, vi. 700-705.

[412] Poggio appears as one of the earliest collectors of inscriptions, in his letter in the _Vita Poggii_, Muratori, xx. col. 177, and as collector of busts, (col. 183, and letter in Shepherd-Tonelli, i. 258). See also _Ambros. Traversarii Epistolæ_, xxv. 42. A little book which Poggio wrote on inscriptions seems to have been lost. Shepherd, _Life of Poggio_, trad. Tonelli, i. 154 sqq.

[413] Fabroni, _Cosmus_, Adnot. 86. From a letter of Alberto degli Alberti to Giovanni Medici. See also Gregorovius, vii. 557. For the condition of Rome under Martin V., see Platina, p. 227; and during the absence of Eugenius IV., see Vespasiano Fiorent., p. 21.

[414] _Roma Instaurata_, written in 1447, and dedicated to the Pope; first printed, Rome, 1474.

[415] See, nevertheless, his distichs in Voigt, _Wiederbelebung des Alterthums_, p. 275, note 2. He was the first Pope who published a Bull for the protection of old monuments (4 Kal. Maj. 1462), with penalties in case of disobedience. But these measures were ineffective. Comp. Gregorovius, vii. pp. 558 sqq.

[416] What follows is from Jo. Ant. Campanus, _Vita Pii II._, in Muratori, iii. ii. col. 980 sqq. _Pii II. Commentarii_, pp. 48, 72 sqq., 206, 248 sqq., 501, and elsewhere.

[417] First dated edition, Brixen, 1482.

[418] Boccaccio, _Fiammetta_, cap. 5. _Opere_, ed. Montier, vi. 91.

[419] His work, _Cyriaci Anconitani Itinerarium_, ed. Mehus, Florence, 1742. Comp. Leandro Alberti, _Descriz. di tutta l’Italia_, fol. 285.

[420] Two instances out of many: the fabulous origin of Milan in Manipulus (Murat. xl. col. 552), and that of Florence in Gio. Villani (who here, as elsewhere, enlarges on the forged chronicle of Ricardo Malespini), according to which Florence, being loyally Roman in its sentiments, is always in the right against the anti-Roman rebellious Fiesole (i. 9, 38, 41; ii. 2). Dante, _Inf._ xv. 76.

[421] _Commentarii_, p. 206, in the fourth book.

[421A] Mich. Cannesius, _Vita Pauli II._, in Murat. iii. ii. col. 993. Towards even Nero, son of Domitius Ahenobarbus, the author will not be impolite, on account of his connection with the Pope. He only says of him, ‘De quo verum Scriptores multa ac diversa commemorant.’ The family of Plato in Milan went still farther, and nattered itself on its descent from the great Athenian. Filelfo in a wedding speech, and in an encomium on the jurist Teodoro Plato, ventured to make this assertion; and a Giovanantonio Plato put the inscription on a portrait in relief carved by him in 1478 (in the court of the Pal. Magenta at Milan): ‘Platonem suum, a quo originem et ingenium refert.’

[422] See on this point, Nangiporto, in Murat. iii. ii. col. 1094; Infessura, in Eccard, _Scriptores_, ii. col. 1951; Matarazzo, in the _Arch. Stor._ xvi. ii. p. 180. Nangiporto, however, admits that it was no longer possible to decide whether the corpse was male or female.

[423] As early as Julius II. excavations were made in the hope of finding statues. Vasari, xi. p. 302, _V. di Gio. da Udine_. Comp. Gregorovius, viii. 186.

[424] The letter was first attributed to Castiglione, _Lettere di Negozi del Conte Bald. Castiglione_, Padua, 1736 and 1769, but proved to be from the hand of Raphael by Daniele Francesconi in 1799. It is printed from a Munich MS. in Passavant, _Leben Raphael’s_, iii. p. 44. Comp. Gruyer _Raphael et l’Antiquité_, 1864, i. 435-457.

[425] _Lettere Pittoriche_, ii. 1, Tolomei to Landi, 14 Nov., 1542.

[426] He tried ‘curis animique doloribus quacunque ratione aditum intercludere;’ music and lively conversation charmed him, and he hoped by their means to live longer. _Leonis X. Vita Anonyma_, in Roscoe, ed. Bossi, xii. p. 169.

[427] This point is referred to in the _Satires_ of Ariosto. See the first (‘Perc’ ho molto,’ &c.), and the fourth ‘Poiche, Annibale’).

[428] Ranke, _Päpste_, i. 408 sqq. ‘_Lettere dei Principi_, p. 107. Letter of Negri, September 1, 1522 ... ‘tutti questi cortigiani esausti da Papa Leone e falliti.’ They avenged themselves after the death of Leo by satirical verses and inscriptions.

[429] _Pii II. Commentarii_, p. 251 in the 5th book. Comp. Sannazaro’s elegy, ‘Ad Ruinas Cumarum urbis vetustissimæ’ (_Opera_, fol. 236 sqq.).

[430] Polifilo (i.e. Franciscus Columna) ‘Hypnerotomachia, ubi humana omnia non nisi somnum esse docet atque obiter plurima scita sane quam digna commemorat,’ Venice, Aldus Manutius, 1499. Comp. on this remarkable book and others, A. Didot, _Alde Manuce_, Paris, 1875, pp. 132-142; and Gruyer, _Raphael et l’Antiquité_, i. pp. 191 sqq.; J. Burckhardt, _Geschichte der Renaissance in Italien_, pp. 43 sqq., and the work of A. Ilg, Vienna, 1872.

[431] While all the Fathers of the Church and all the pilgrims speak only of a cave. The poets, too, do without the palace. Comp. Sannazaro, _De Partu Virginis_, l. ii.

[432] Chiefly from Vespasiano Fiorentine, in the first vol. of the _Spicileg. Romanum_, by Mai, from which edition the quotations in this book are made. New edition by Bartoli, Florence, 1859. The author was a Florentine bookseller and copying agent, about and after the middle of the fifteenth century.

[433] Comp. Petr. _Epist. Fam._ ed. Fracass. l. xviii. 2, xxiv. 12, var. 25, with the notes of Fracassetti in the Italian translation, vol. iv. 92-101, v. 196 sqq., where the fragment of a translation of Homer before the time of Pilato is also given.

[434] Forgeries, by which the passion for antiquity was turned to the profit or amusement of rogues, are well known to have been not uncommon. See the articles in the literary histories on Annius of Viterbo.

[435] Vespas. Fiorent. p. 31. ‘Tommaso da Serezana usava dire, che dua cosa farebbe, se egli potesse mai spendere, ch’era in libri e murare. E l’una e l’altra fece nel suo pontificato.’ With respect to his translation, see Æen. Sylvius, _De Europa_, cap. 58, p. 459, and Papencordt, _Ges. der Stadt Rom._ p. 502. See esp. Voigt, op. cit. book v.

[436] Vespas. Fior. pp. 48 and 658, 665. Comp. J. Manetti, _Vita Nicolai V._, in Murat. iii. ii. col. 925 sqq. On the question whether and how Calixtus III. partly dispersed the library again, see Vespas. Fiorent. p. 284, with Mai’s note.

[437] Vespas. Fior. pp. 617 sqq.

[438] Vespas. Fior. pp. 457 sqq.

[439] Vespas. Fiorent, p. 193. Comp. Marin Sanudo, in Murat. xxii. col. 1185 sqq.

[440] How the matter was provisionally treated is related in Malipiero, _Ann. Veneti, Arch. Stor._ vii. ii. pp. 653, 655.

[441] Vespas. Fior. pp. 124 sqq., and ‘Inventario della Libreria Urbinata compilata nel Secolo XV. da Federigo Veterano, bibliotecario di Federigo I. da Montefeltro Duca d’Urbino,’ given by C. Guasti in tbe _Giornale Storico degli Archivi Toscani_, vi. (1862), 127-147 and vii. (1863) 46-55, 130-154. For contemporary opinions on the library, see Favre, _Mélanges d’Hist. Lit._ i. 127, note 6. The following is the substance of Dr. Geiger’s remarks on the subject of the old authors:--

For the Medicean Library comp. _Delle condicioni e delle vicende della libreria medicea privata dal 1494 al 1508 ricerche di Enea Piccolomini_, Arch. stor. ital., 265 sqq., 3 serie, vol. xix. pp. 101-129,254-281, xx. 51-94, xxi. 102-112, 282-296. Dr. Geiger does not undertake an estimate of the relative values of the various rare and almost unknown works contained in the library, nor is he able to state where they are now to be found. He remarks that information as to Greece is much fuller than as to Italy, which is a characteristic mark of the time. The catalogue contains editions of the Bible, of single books of it, with text and annotations, also Greek and Roman works in their then most complete forms, together with some Hebrew books--_tractatus quidam rabbinorum hebr._--with much modern work, chiefly in Latin, and with not a little in Italian.

Dr. Geiger doubts the absolute accuracy of Vespasiano Fiorentino’s catalogue of the library at Urbino. See the German edition, i. 313, 314. [S.G.C.M.]

[442] Perhaps at the capture of Urbino by the troops of Cæsar Borgia. The existence of the manuscript has been doubted; but I cannot believe that Vespasiano would have spoken of the gnomic extracts from Menander, which do not amount to more than a couple of hundred verses, as ‘tutte le opere,’ nor have mentioned them in the list of comprehensive manuscripts, even though he had before him only our present Pindar and Sophocles. It is not inconceivable that this Menander may some day come to light.

[The catalogue of the library at Urbino (see foregoing note), which dates back to the fifteenth century, is not perfectly in accordance with Vespasiano’s report, and with the remarks of Dr. Burckhardt upon it. As an official document, it deserves greater credit than Vespasiano’s description, which, like most of his descriptions, cannot be acquitted of a certain inaccuracy in detail and tendency to over-colouring. In this catalogue no mention is made of the manuscript of Menander. Mai’s doubt as to its existence is therefore justified. Instead of ‘all the works of Pindar,’ we here find: ‘Pindaris Olimpia et Pithia.’ The catalogue makes no distinction between ancient and modern books, contains the works of Dante (among others, _Comœdiæ Thusco Carmine_), and Boccaccio, in a very imperfect form; those of Petrarch, however, in all completeness. It may be added that this catalogue mentions many humanistic writings which have hitherto remained unknown and unprinted, that it contains collections of the privileges of the princes of Montefeltro, and carefully enumerates the dedications offered by translators or original writers to Federigo of Urbino.--L. G.]

[443] For what follows and in part for what has gone before, see W. Wattenbach, _Das Schriftwesen im Mittelalter_, 2nd. ed. Leipzig, 1875, pp. 392 sqq., 405 sqq., 505. Comp. also the poem, _De Officio Scribæ_, of Phil. Beroaldus, who, however, is rather speaking of the public scrivener.]

[444] When Piero de’ Medici, at the death of Matthias Corvinus, the book-loving King of Hungary, declared that the ‘scrittori’ must now lower their charges, since they would otherwise find no further employment (Scil. except in Italy), he can only have meant the Greek copyists, as the caligraphists, to whom one might be tempted to refer his words, continued to be numerous throughout all Italy. Fabroni, _Laurent. Magn._ Adnot. 156 Comp. Adnot. 154.]

[445] Gaye, _Carteggio_, i. p. 164. A letter of the year 1455 under Calixtus III. The famous miniature Bible of Urbino is written by a Frenchman, a workman of Vespasiano’s. See D’Agincourt, _La Peinture_, tab. 78. On German copyists in Italy, see further G. Campori, _Artisti Italiani e Stranieri negli Stati Estensi_, Modena, 1855, p. 277, and _Giornale di Erudizione Artistica_, vol. ii. pp. 360 sqq. Wattenbach, _Schriftwesen_, 411, note 5. For German printers, see below.]

[446] Vespas. Fior. p. 335.]

[447] Ambr. Trav. _Epist._ i. p. 63. The Pope was equally serviceable to the libraries of Urbino and Pesaro (that of Aless. Sforza, p. 38). Comp. Arch. Stor. ital. xxi. 103-106. The Bible and Commentaries on it; the Fathers of the Church; Aristotle, with his commentators, including Averroes and Avicenna; Moses Maimonides; Latin translations of Greek philosophers; the Latin prose writers; of the poets only Virgil, Statius, Ovid, and Lucan are mentioned.]

[448] Vespas. Fior. p. 129.]

[449] ‘Artes--Quis Labor est fessis demptus ab Articulis’ in a poem by Robertus Ursus about 1470, _Rerum Ital. Script, ex Codd. Fiorent._ tom, ii. col. 693. He rejoices rather too hastily over the rapid spread of classical literature which was hoped for. Comp. Libri, _Hist. des Sciences Mathématiques_, ii. 278 sqq. (See also the eulogy of Lor. Valla, _Hist. Zeitschr._ xxxii. 62.) For the printers at Rome (the first were Germans: Hahn, Pannartz, Schweinheim), see Gaspar. Veron. _Vita Pauli II._ in Murat. iii. ii. col. 1046; and Laire, _Spec. Hist. Typographiæ Romanae, xv. sec._ Romæ, 1778; Gregorovius, vii. 525-33. For the first Privilegium in Venice, see Marin Sanudo, in Muratori, xxii. col. 1189.]

[450] Something of the sort had already existed in the age of manuscripts. See Vespas. Fior. p. 656, on the _Cronaco del Mondo_ of Zembino of Pistoia.]

[451] Fabroni, _Laurent. Magn._ Adnot. 212. It happened in the case of the libel. _De Exilio_.]

[452] Even in Petrarch the consciousness of this superiority of Italians over Greeks is often to be noticed: _Epp. Fam._ lib. i. ep. 3; _Epp. Sen._ lib. xii. ep. 2; he praises the Greeks reluctantly: _Carmina_, lib. iii. 30 (ed. Rossetti, vol. ii. p. 342). A century later, Æneas Sylvius writes (Comm. to Panormita, ‘De Dictis et Factis Alfonsi,’ Append.): ‘Alfonsus tanto est Socrate major quanto gravior Romanus homo quam Græcus putatur.’ In accordance with this feeling the study of Greek was thought little of. From a document made use of below, written about 1460, it appears that Porcellio and Tomaso Seneca tried to resist the rising influence of Greek. Similarly, Paolo Cortese (1490) was averse to Greek, lest the hitherto exclusive authority of Latin should be impaired, _De Hominibus Doctis_, p. 20. For Greek studies in Italy, see esp. the learned work of Favre, _Mélanges d’Hist. Liter._ i. _passim_.]

[453] See above p. 187, and comp. C. Voigt, _Wiederbelebung_, 323 sqq.]

[454] The dying out of these Greeks is mentioned by Pierius Valerian, _De Infelicitate Literat._ in speaking of Lascaris. And Paulus Jovius, at the end of his _Elogia Literaria_, says of the Germans, ‘Quum literæ non latinæ modo cum pudore nostro, sed græcæ et hebraicæ in eorum terras fatali commigratione transierint’ (about 1450). Similarly, sixty years before (1482), Joh. Argyropulos had exclaimed, when he heard young Reuchlin translate Thucydides in his lecture-room at Rome, ‘Græcia nostra exilio transvolavit Alpes.’ Geiger, _Reuchlin_ (Lpzg. 1871), pp. 26 sqq. Burchhardt, 273. A remarkable passage is to be found in Jov. Pontanus, _Antonius_, opp. iv. p. 203: ‘In Græcia magis nunc Turcaicum discas quam Græcum. Quicquid enim doctorum habent Græcæ disciplinæ, in Italia nobiscum victitat.]

[455] Ranke, _Päpste_, i. 486 sqq. Comp. the end of this part of our work.]

[456] Tommaso Gar, _Relazioni della Corte di Roma_, i. pp. 338, 379.]

[457] George of Trebizond, teacher of rhetoric at Venice, with a salary of 150 ducats a year (see Malipiero, _Arch. Stor._ vii. ii. p. 653). For the Greek chair at Perugia, see _Arch. Stor._ xvi. ii. p. 19 of the Introduction. In the case of Rimini, there is some doubt whether Greek was taught or not. Comp. _Anecd. Litt._ ii. p. 300. At Bologna, the centre of juristic studies, Aurispa had but little success. Details on the subject in Malagola.]

[458] Exhaustive information on the subject in the admirable work of A. F. Didot, _Alde Manuce et l’Héllenisme à Venise_, Paris, 1875.]

[459] For what follows see A. de Gubernatis, _Matériaux pour servir à l’Histoire des Études Orientales en Italie_, Paris, Florence, &c., 1876. Additions by Soave in the _Bolletino Italiano degli Studi Orientali_, i. 178 sqq. More precise details below.]

[460] See below.]

[461] See _Commentario della Vita di Messer Gianozzo Manetti, scritto da Vespasiano Bisticci_, Torino, 1862, esp. pp. 11, 44, 91 sqq.]

[462] Vesp. Fior. p. 320. A. Trav. _Epist._ lib. xi. 16.]

[463] Platina, _Vita Sixti IV._ p. 332.]

[464] Benedictus Faleus, _De Origine Hebraicarum Græcarum Latinarumque Literarum_, Naples, 1520.]

[465] For Dante, see Wegele, _Dante_, 2nd ed. p. 268, and Lasinio, _Dante e le Lingue semitiche_ in the _Rivista Orientale_ (Flor. 1867-8). On Poggio, _Opera_, p. 297; Lion. Bruni, _Epist._ lib. ix. 12, comp. Gregorovius, vii. 555, and Shepherd-Tonelli, _Vita di Poggio_, i. 65. The letter of Poggio to Niccoli, in which he treats of Hebrew, has been lately published in French and Latin under the title, _Les Bains de Bade par Pogge_, by Antony Méray, Paris, 1876. Poggio desired to know on what principles Jerome translated the Bible, while Bruni maintained that, now that Jerome’s translation was in existence, distrust was shown to it by learning Hebrew. For Manetti as a collector of Hebrew MSS. see Steinschneider, in the work quoted below. In the library at Urbino there were in all sixty-one Hebrew manuscripts. Among them a Bible ‘opus mirabile et integrum, cum glossis mirabiliter scriptus in modo avium, arborum et animalium in maximo volumine, ut vix a tribus hominibus feratur.’ These, as appears from Assemanni’s list, are now mostly in the Vatican. On the first printing in Hebrew, see Steinschneider and Cassel, _Jud. Typographic in Esch. u. Gruber, Realencyclop._ sect. ii. bd. 28, p. 34, and _Catal. Bodl._ by Steinschneider, 1852-60, pp. 2821-2866. It is characteristic that of the two first printers one belonged to Mantua, the other to Reggio in Calabria, so that the printing of Hebrew books began almost contemporaneously at the two extremities of Italy. In Mantua the printer was a Jewish physician, who was helped by his wife. It may be mentioned as a curiosity that in the _Hypnerotomachia_ of Polifilo, written 1467, printed 1499, fol. 68 _a_, there is a short passage in Hebrew; otherwise no Hebrew occurs in the Aldine editions before 1501. The Hebrew scholars in Italy are given by De Gubernatis (p. 80), but authorities are not quoted for them singly. (Marco Lippomanno is omitted; comp. Steinschneider in the book given below.) Paolo de Canale is mentioned as a learned Hebraist by Pier. Valerian. _De Infel. Literat._ ed. Mencken, p. 296; in 1488 Professor in Bologna, _Mag. Vicentius_; comp. _Costituzione, discipline e riforme dell’antico studio Bolognese. Memoria del Prof. Luciano Scarabelli_, Piacenza, 1876; in 1514 Professor in Rome, Agarius Guidacerius, acc. to Gregorovius, viii. 292, and the passages there quoted. On Guid. see Steinschneider, _Bibliogr. Handbuch_, Leipzig, 1859, pp. 56, 157-161.]

[466] The literary activity of the Jews in Italy is too great and of too wide an influence to be passed over altogether in silence. The following paragraphs, which, not to overload the text, I have relegated to the notes, are wholly the substance of communications made me by Dr. M. Steinschneider, of Berlin, to whom I [Dr. Ludwig Geiger] here take the opportunity of expressing my thanks for his constant and friendly help. He has given exhaustive evidence on the subject in his profound and instructive treatise, ‘Letteratura Italiana dei Giudei,’ in the review _Il Buonarotti_, vols. vi. viii. xi. xii.; Rome, 1871-77 (also printed separately); to which, once for all, I refer the reader.

There were many Jews living in Rome at the time of the Second Temple. They had so thoroughly adopted the language and civilisation prevailing in Italy, that even on their tombs they used not Hebrew, but Latin and Greek inscriptions (communicated by Garucci, see Steinschneider, _Hebr. Bibliogr._ vi. p. 102, 1863). In Lower Italy, especially, Greek learning survived during the Middle Ages among the inhabitants generally, and particularly among the Jews, of whom some are said to have taught at the University of Salerno, and to have rivalled the Christians in literary productiveness (comp. Steinschneider, ‘Donnolo,’ in Virchow’s _Archiv_, bd. 39, 40). This supremacy of Greek culture lasted till the Saracens conquered Lower Italy. But before this conquest the Jews of Middle Italy had been striving to equal or surpass their bretheren of the South. Jewish learning centred in Rome, and from there spread, as early as the sixteenth century, to Cordova, Kairowan, and South Germany. By means of these emigrants, Italian Judaism became the teacher of the whole race. Through its works, especially through the work _Aruch_ of Nathan ben Jechiel (1101), a great dictionary to the Talmud, the Midraschim, and the Thargum, ‘which, though not informed by a genuine scientific spirit, offers so rich a store of matter and rests on such early authorities, that its treasures have even now not been wholly exhausted,’ it exercised indirectly a great influence (Abraham Geiger, _Das Judenthum und seine Geschichte_, Breslau, bd. ii. 1865, p. 170; and the same author’s _Nachgelassene Schriften_, bd. ii. Berlin, 1875, pp. 129 and 154). A little later, in the thirteenth century, the Jewish literature in Italy brought Jews and Christians into contact, and received through Frederick II., and still more perhaps through his son Manfred, a kind of official sanction. Of this contact we have evidence in the fact that an Italian, Niccolò di Giovinazzo, studied with a Jew, Moses ben Salomo, the Latin translation of the famous work of Maimonides, _More Nebuchim_; of this sanction, in the fact that the Emperor, who was distinguished for his freethinking as much as for his fondness for Oriental studies, probably was the cause of this Latin translation being made, and summoned the famous Anatoli from Provence into Italy, to translate works of Averroes into Hebrew (comp. Steinschneider, _Hebr. Bibliogr._ xv. 86, and Renan, _L’Averroes et l’Averroisme_, third edition, Paris, 1866, p. 290). These measures prove the acquaintance of early Jews with Latin, which rendered intercourse possible between them and Christians--an intercourse which bore sometimes a friendly and sometimes a polemical character. Still more than Anatoli, Hillel b. Samuel, in the latter half of the thirteenth century, devoted himself to Latin literature; he studied in Spain, returned to Italy, and here made many translations from Latin into Hebrew; among them of writings of Hippocrates in a Latin version. (This was printed 1647 by Gaiotius, and passed for his own.) In this translation he introduced a few Italian words by way of explanation, and thus perhaps, or by his whole literary procedure, laid himself open to the reproach of despising Jewish doctrines.

But the Jews went further than this. At the end of the thirteenth and in the fourteenth centuries, they drew so near to Christian science and to the representatives of the culture of the Renaissance, that one of them, Giuda Romano, in a series of hitherto unprinted writings, laboured zealously at the scholastic philosophy, and in one treatise used Italian words to explain Hebrew expressions. He is one of the first to do so (Steinschneider, _Giuda Romano_, Rome, 1870). Another, Giuda’s cousin Manoello, a friend of Dante, wrote in imitation of him a sort of Divine Comedy in Hebrew, in which he extols Dante, whose death he also bewailed in an Italian sonnet (Abraham Geiger, _Jüd. Zeitsch._ v. 286-331, Breslau, 1867). A third, Mose Riete, born towards the end of the century, wrote works in Italian (a specimen in the Catalogue of Hebrew MSS., Leyden, 1858). In the fifteenth century we can clearly recognise the influence of the Renaissance in Messer Leon, a Jewish writer, who, in his _Rhetoric_, uses Quintilian and Cicero, as well as Jewish authorities. One of the most famous Jewish writers in Italy in the fifteenth century was Eliah del Medigo, a philosopher who taught publicly as a Jew in Padua and Florence, and was once chosen by the Venetian Senate as arbitrator in a philosophical dispute (Abr. Geiger, _Nachgelassene Schriften_, Berlin, 1876, bd. iii. 3). Eliah del Medigo was the teacher of Pico della Mirandola; besides him, Jochanan Alemanno (comp. Steinschneider, _Polem. u. Apolog. Lit._ Lpzg. 1877, anh. 7, § 25). The list of learned Jews in Italy may be closed by Kalonymos ben David and Abraham de Balmes (d. 1523), to whom the greater part of the translations of Averroes from Hebrew into Latin is due, which were still publicly read at Padua in the seventeenth century. To this scholar may be added the Jewish Aldus, Gerson Soncino, who not only made his press the centre of Jewish printing, but, by publishing Greek works, trespassed on the ground of the great Aldus himself (Steinschneider, _Gerson Soncino und Aldus Manutius_, Berlin, 1858).

[467] Pierius Valerian. _De Infelic. Lit._ ed. Mencken, 301, speaking of Mongajo. Gubernatis, p. 184, identifies him with Andrea Alpago, of Bellemo, said to have also studied Arabian literature, and to have travelled in the East. On Arabic studies generally, Gubernatis, pp. 173 sqq. For a translation made 1341 from Arabic into Italian, comp. Narducci, _Intorno ad una tradizione italiana di una composizione astronomica di Alfonso X. rè di Castiglia_, Roma 1865. On Ramusio, see Sansovino, _Venezia_, fol. 250.

[468] Gubernatis, p. 188. The first book contains Christian prayers in Arabic; the first Italian translations of the Koran appeared in 1547. In 1499 we meet with a few not very successful Arabic types in the work of Polifilo, b. 7 _a_. For the beginnings of Egyptian studies, see Gregorovius, viii. p. 304.

[469] Especially in the important letter of the year 1485 to Ermolao Barbaro, in _Ang. Politian. Epistolæ_, l. ix. Comp. Jo. Pici, _Oratio de Hominis Dignitate_. For this discourse, see the end of part iv.; on Pico himself more will be given in part vi. chap. 4.

[470] Their estimate of themselves is indicated by Poggio (_De Avaritia_, fol. 2), according to whom only such persons could say that they had lived (_se vixisse_) who had written learned and eloquent books in Latin or translated Greek into Latin.

[471] Esp. Libri, _Histoires des Sciences Mathém._ ii. 159 sqq., 258 sqq.

[472] _Purgatorio_, xviii. contains striking instances. Mary hastens over the mountains, Cæsar to Spain; Mary is poor and Fabricius disinterested. We may here remark on the chronological introduction of the Sibyls into the profane history of antiquity as attempted by Uberti in his _Dittamondo_ (i. cap. 14, 15), about 1360.

[473] The first German translation of the _Decameron_, by H. Steinhovel, was printed in 1472, and soon became popular. The translations of the whole _Decameron_ were almost everywhere preceded by those of the story of Griselda, written in Latin by Petrarch.

[474] These Latin writings of Boccaccio have been admirably discussed recently by Schück, _Zur Characteristik des ital. Hum. im 14 und 15 Jahrh._ Breslau, 1865; and in an article in Fleckeisen and Masius, _Jahrbücher fur Phil. und Pädag._ bd. xx. (1874).

[475] ‘Poeta,’ even in Dante (_Vita Nuova_, p. 47), means only the writer of Latin verses, while for Italian the expressions ‘Rimatore, Dicitore per rima,’ are used. It is true that the names and ideas became mixed in course of time.

[476] Petrarch, too, at the height of his fame complained in moments of melancholy that his evil star decreed him to pass his last years among scoundrels (_extremi fures_). In the imaginary letter to Livy, _Epp. Fam._ ed. Fracass. lib. xxiv. ep. 8. That Petrarch defended poetry, and how, is well known (comp. Geiger, _Petr._ 113-117). Besides the enemies who beset him in common with Boccaccio, he had to face the doctors (comp. _Invectivæ in Medicum Objurgantem_, lib. i. and ii.).

[477] Boccaccio, in a later letter to Jacobus Pizinga (_Opere Volgari_, vol. xvi.), confines himself more strictly to poetry properly so called. And yet he only recognises as poetry that which treated of antiquity, and ignores the Troubadours.

[478] Petr. _Epp. Senil._ lib. i. ep. 5.

[479] Boccaccio (_Vita di Dante_, p. 50): ‘La quale (laurea) non scienza accresce ma è dell’acquistata certissimo testimonio e ornamento.’

[480] _Paradiso_, xxv. 1 sqq. Boccaccio, _Vita di Dante_, p. 50. ‘Sopra le fonti di San Giovanni si era disporto di coronare.’ Comp. _Paradiso_, i. 25.

[481] See Boccaccio’s letter to him in the _Opere Volgari_, vol. xvi. p. 36: ‘Si præstet Deus, concedente senatu Romuleo.’ ...

[482] Matt. Villani, v. 26. There was a solemn procession on horseback round the city, when the followers of the Emperor, his ‘baroni,’ accompanied the poet. Boccaccio, l. c. Petrarch: _Invectivæ contra Med. Præf._ See also _Epp. Fam. Volgarizzate da Fracassetti_, iii. 128. For the speech of Zanobi at the coronation, Friedjung, l. c. 308 sqq. Fazio degli Uberti was also crowned, but it is not known where or by whom.

[483] Jac. Volaterran. in Murat. xxiii. col. 185.

[484] Vespas. Fiorent. pp. 575, 589. _Vita Jan. Manetti_, in Murat. xx. col. 543. The celebrity of Lionardo Aretino was in his lifetime so great that people came from all parts merely to see him; a Spaniard fell on his knees before him.--Vesp. p. 568. For the monument of Guarino, the magistrate of Ferrara allowed, in 1461, the then considerable sum of 100 ducats. On the coronation of poets in Italy there is a good summary of notices in Favre, _Mélanges d’Hist. Lit._ (1856) i. 65 sqq.

[485] Comp. Libri, _Histoire des Sciences Mathém._ ii. p. 92 sqq. Bologna, as is well known, was older. Pisa flourished in the fourteenth century, fell through the wars with Florence, and was afterwards restored by Lorenzo Magnifico, ‘ad solatium veteris amissæ libertatis,’ as Giovio says, _Vita Leonis X._ l. i. The university of Florence (comp. Gaye, _Carteggio_, i. p. 461 to 560 _passim_; _Matteo Villani_, i. 8;