CHAPTER VI. THE VANGUARD OF THE RENAISSANCE

[Sidenote: [_ca._ 1250-1400 A.D.]]

We have seen much in recent chapters of the trials and disasters of

Florence. We now have the more agreeable task of recording her triumphs.

The record of petty quarrels and more pretentious warrings, through which

Florence has thus far been called to our attention, might well have

blinded our eyes to the observation of a remarkable culture development

which went on coincidentally with these political jarrings. In point of

fact, there was a most extraordinary intellectual development taking

place in Italy in the later centuries of the so-called dark ages, and the

focus and centre of that development was Florence; in proof of which that

city now gave to the world within a single century a school of writers,

led by Dante, Petrarch, and Boccaccio, who virtually stamped the Italian

language for the first time as a literary medium, and whose works marked

the highest development of Italian creative genius. And contemporaneous

with these writers were the artists Cimabue and Giotto, who gave an

altogether similar impulse to art. All these men were Florentines, and so

greatly did their influence preponderate over that of any other Italians

of the epoch that Symonds[b] is fully justified in saying: “It may be

affirmed without exaggeration that, prior to the close of the fifteenth

century, what we called Italian genius was in truth the genius of

Florence.”

This seemingly sudden efflorescence of genius had its origin, as has

been intimated, in a gradual development, which now for the first time

produced tangible results. If, on the one hand, it may be urged that

these great men were spontaneously creative, it must not be forgotten

that their genius was nurtured in a bed of classicism. Dante and Petrarch

and Boccaccio were all classical scholars, the last named being a student

of Greek as well as of Latin. All of them harked back to the great Roman

writers as their models of style, and founded their culture on a study of

ancient literature. But each of them in turn broke away spontaneously

from these ancient models when he came to his really creative efforts,

and each put forth in the vernacular the works that were destined to

give him perpetuity of fame. In their own day, to be sure, their Latin

works were regarded as having great importance. Boccaccio never dreamed

of placing his Italian writings on a par with his learned treatises

on mythology, geography, and biography; and we are assured that for

two centuries his name was famous all over Europe on account of these

scientific works, while the _Decameron_ was hardly known north of the

Alps. “Petrarch himself,” says Burckhardt,[c] “trusted and hoped that

his Latin writings would bring him fame with his contemporaries and with

posterity, and thought so little of his Italian poems that, as he often

tells us, he would gladly have destroyed them if he could have succeeded

thereby in blotting them out from the memory of man.” Yet these would-be

forgotten poems became a standard of taste for all the world, and have

kept their position in the estimate of critics of each succeeding

generation.

This sudden outburst of creative genius of a high order in Italy, while

the rest of the western world was bound by uncreative traditions,

has been variously explained. Burckhardt finds the explanation in

circumstances that led, in Italy earlier than elsewhere, to the

emancipation of the individual.[a]

In the Middle Ages, he says, both sides of human consciousness--that

which was turned within as that which was turned without--lay dreaming or

half awake beneath a common veil. The veil was woven of faith, illusion,

and childish prepossession, through which the world and history were

seen clad in strange hues. Man was conscious of himself only as member

of a race, people, party, family, or corporation--only through some

general category. In Italy this veil first melted into air; an objective

treatment and consideration of the state and of all the things of this

world became possible. The subjective side at the same time asserted

itself with corresponding emphasis; man became a spiritual individual,

and recognised himself as such. In the same way the Greek had once

distinguished himself from the barbarian, and the Arabian had felt

himself an individual at a time when other Asiatics knew themselves only

as members of a race. It will not be difficult to show that this result

was owing above all to the political circumstances of Italy.

In far earlier times we can here and there detect a development of

free personality which in northern Europe either did not occur at all,

or could not display itself in the same manner. The band of audacious

wrong-doers in the sixteenth century described to us by Liutprand, some

of the contemporaries of Gregory VII, and a few of the opponents of the

first Hohenstaufen show us characters of this kind. But at the close of

the thirteenth century Italy began to swarm with individuality; the charm

laid upon human personality was dissolved; and a thousand figures meet us

each in its own special shape and dress. Dante’s great poem would have

been impossible in any other country of Europe, if only for the reason

that they all still lay under the spell of race. For Italy the august

poet, through the wealth of individuality which he set forth, was the

most national herald of his time. This fact appears in the most decisive

and unmistakable form. The Italians of the fourteenth century knew little

of false modesty or of hypocrisy in any shape; not one of them was afraid

of singularity, of being and seeming unlike his neighbours. 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.

Despotism, as we have already seen, fostered in the highest degree

the individuality not only of the tyrant or condottiere himself, but

also of the men whom he protected or used as his tools--the secretary,

minister, poet, and companion. These people were forced to know all the

inward resources of their own nature, passing or permanent; and their

enjoyment of life was enhanced and concentrated by the desire to obtain

the greatest satisfaction from a possibly very brief period of power and

influence.

But even the subjects whom they ruled over were not free from the same

impulse. Leaving out of account those who wasted their lives in secret

opposition and conspiracies, we speak of the majority who were content

with a strictly private station, like most of the urban population of

the Byzantine Empire and the Mohammedan states. No doubt it was often

hard for the subjects of a Visconti to maintain the dignity of their

persons and families, and multitudes must have lost in moral character

through the servitude they lived under. But this was not the case with

regard to individuality; for political impotence does not hinder the

different tendencies and manifestations of private life from thriving

in the fullest vigour and variety. Wealth and culture, so far as

display and rivalry were not forbidden to them, a municipal freedom

which did not cease to be considerable, and a church which, unlike that

of the Byzantine or of the Mohammedan world, was not identical with

the state--all these conditions undoubtedly favoured the growth of

individual thought, for which the necessary leisure was furnished by the

cessation of party conflicts. The private man, indifferent to politics,

and busied partly with serious pursuits, partly with the interests of a

_dilettante_, seems to have been first fully formed in these despotisms

of the fourteenth century. Documentary evidence cannot, of course, be

required on such a point. The novelists, from whom we might expect

information, describe to us oddities in plenty, but only from one point

of view and in so far as the needs of the story demand. Their scene, too,

lies chiefly in the republican cities.

In the latter, circumstances were also, but in another way, favourable

to the growth of individual character. The more frequently the governing

party was changed, the more the individual was led to make the utmost of

the exercise and enjoyment of power. The statesmen and popular leaders,

especially in Florentine history,[13] acquired so marked a personal

character, that we can scarcely find, even exceptionally, a parallel to

them in contemporary history, hardly even in Jacob van Artevelde.

The members of the defeated parties, on the other hand, often came into

a position like that of the subjects of the despotic states, with the

difference that the freedom or power already enjoyed, and in some cases

the hope of recovering them, gave a higher energy to their individuality.

Among these men of involuntary leisure we find, for instance, an Agnolo

Pandolfini (died 1446), whose work on domestic economy is the first

complete programme of developed private life. His estimate of the duties

of the individual as against the dangers and thanklessness of public life

is in its way a true monument of the age.

[Illustration: DANTE]

Banishment, too, has this effect above all, that it either wears the

exile out or develops whatever is greatest in him. “In all our more

populous cities,” says Giovanni Pontano, “we see a crowd of people

who have left their homes of their own free will; but a man takes

his virtues with him wherever he goes.” And, in fact, they were by no

means only men who had been actually exiled, but thousands left their

native place voluntarily, because they found its political or economical

condition intolerable. The Florentine emigrants at Ferrara and the

Lucchese in Venice formed whole colonies by themselves.

The cosmopolitanism which grew up in the most gifted circles is in

itself a high stage of individualism. Dante, as we have already said,

finds a new home in the language and culture of Italy, but goes beyond

even this in the words, “My country is the whole world.” And when his

recall to Florence was offered him on unworthy conditions, he wrote

back: “Can I not everywhere behold the light of the sun and the stars,

everywhere meditate on the noblest truths, without appearing ingloriously

and shamefully before the city and the people? Even my bread will not

fail me.” The artists exult no less defiantly in their freedom from the

constraints of fixed residence. “Only he who has learned everything,”

says Ghiberti, “is nowhere a stranger; robbed of his fortune and without

friends, he is yet the citizen of every country, and can fearlessly

despise the changes of fortune.” In the same strain an exiled humanist

writes: “Wherever a learned man fixes his seat, there is home.”[c]

EUROPEAN CULTURE IN GENERAL

The oppression which weighed upon the rest of Europe contributed to the

maintenance of barbarism, less by rendering difficult and sometimes

dangerous the acquisition of knowledge, than by taking away all

attraction from the exercise of the mind. Thought was a pain to those

capable of judging the state of the human species; of studying the past,

of comparing it with the present; and of thus foreseeing the future.

Danger and suffering appeared on all sides. The men who, in France,

Germany, England, and Spain, felt themselves endued with the power of

generalising their ideas, either smothered them, not to aggravate the

pain of thought, or directed them solely to speculations the farthest

from real life--towards that scholastic philosophy which so vigorously

exercised the understanding, without bringing it to any conclusion.

In Italy, on the contrary, liberty secured the full enjoyment of

intellectual existence. Everyone endeavoured to develop the powers which

he felt within him, because each was conscious that the more his mind

opened the greater was his enjoyment; everyone directed his powers to a

useful and practical purpose, because each felt himself placed in a state

of society in which he might attain some influence, either for his own

benefit or that of his fellow creatures. The first want which towns had

experienced was that of their defence. Accordingly, military architecture

had taken precedence in the arts. From its exercise the transition was

easy to that of religious architecture, at a time when religion was

indispensable to every heart--to civil architecture, then encouraged by

a government in which everything was for all. The study and pursuit of

the beautiful in this first of the fine arts had paved the way to all

the others. From the pleasures of the imagination through the eye, men

ascended to those derived from the soul; and hence the birth of poetry.[d]

The language of Provence had attained its highest degree of cultivation;

Spain and Portugal had already produced more than one poet; and the

_langue d’Oil_, in the north of France, was receiving considerable

attention, while the Italian was not yet enumerated amongst the languages

of Europe, and the richness and harmony of its idiom, gradually and

obscurely formed amongst the populace, were not as yet appreciated.

But in the thirteenth century Dante arose to immortalise this hitherto

neglected tongue, and, aided by his single genius, it soon advanced with

a rapidity which left all competition at a distance.

The Lombardian duchy of Benevento, comprising the greater part of the

modern kingdom of Naples, had preserved, under independent princes, and

surrounded by the Greeks and the Saracens, a degree of civilisation

which, in the earlier part of the Middle Ages, was unexampled throughout

the rest of Italy. Many of the fine arts, and some branches of science,

were cultivated there with success. The schools of Salerno communicated

to the West the medical skill of the Arabs, and the commerce of Amalfi

introduced into those fertile provinces not only wealth but knowledge.

From the eighth to the tenth century, various historical works, written,

it is true, in Latin, but distinguished for their fidelity, their spirit,

and their fire, proceeded from the pen of several men of talent, natives

of that district, some of whom clothed their compositions in hexameter

verses, which, compared with others of the same period, display superior

facility and fancy.

The influx of foreigners consequent upon the invasion of the Norman

adventurers, who founded a sovereignty in Apulia, was not sufficiently

great to effect a change in the language; and, under their government,

the Italian or Sicilian tongue first assumed a settled form. The court

of Palermo, early in the twelfth century, abounded in riches, and

consequently indulged in luxurious habits; and there the first accents of

the Sicilian muse were heard. There, too, at the same period, the Arabs

acquired a degree of influence and credit which they have never possessed

in any other Christian court. The palace of William I, like those of the

monarchs of the East, was guarded by Mohammedan eunuchs. From them he

selected his favourites, his friends, and sometimes even his ministers.

To attach themselves to the arts and to the various avocations which

contribute to the pleasures of life, was the peculiar province of the

Saracens, by whom half of the island is still occupied. When Frederick

II, at the end of the twelfth century, succeeded to the throne of the

Norman monarchs, he transported numerous colonies of Saracens into

Apulia and the principality, but he did not banish them from either his

service or his court. Of them his army was composed; and the governors

of his provinces, whom he denominated justiciaries, were chosen almost

exclusively from their number. Thus was it the destiny of the Arabians,

in the east as well as in the west of Europe, to communicate to the Latin

nations their arts, their science, and their poetry.

From the history of Sicily, we may deduce the effects produced by

Arabian influence on the Italian, or as it was then considered, the

Sicilian poetry, with no less certainty than that with which we trace its

connection, in the county of Barcelona and in the kingdom of Castile,

with the first efforts of the Provençal and Spanish poets. William I,

an effeminate and voluptuous prince, forgot, in his palace of Palermo,

amidst his Moorish eunuchs, in the song and the feast, those commotions

which agitated his realms. The regency of the kingdom devolved, at his

decease, upon his widow, who entrusted the government to Gayto Petro,

the chief of the eunuchs, connected with the Saracens of Africa. All

the commerce of Palermo was monopolised by the infidels. They were the

professors of every art, and the inventors of every variety of luxury.

The nation accommodated itself to their customs; and in their public

festivals it was usual for Christian and Moorish women to sing in concert

to the music of their slaves. We may safely conclude that on these

occasions each party adopted their mother-tongue; and that the Italian

females who, in the words of Hugo Falcandus,[m] responded, in melancholy

cadence to the tambours of their Moorish attendants, would, in all

probability, adapt Sicilian words to African airs and measures.

THE UNIVERSITIES AND NASCENT SCHOLARSHIP

The universities and schools which were already founded obtained more

fame and became more active. The clash of arms, which had not prevented

their flourishing, did not prevent new ones being formed. That same

spirit of rivalry which armed one against the other, princes and nations,

led them to vie one with the other in seeking, by every means, greater

renown and greater glory for their little states. At one time professors

were seen quietly continuing their lectures while fighting was going

on under the walls of the town, or even in the streets and squares; at

another time, the rostrum was overthrown, the professors were driven

away, the scholars put to flight; but they soon returned, either under

the same government or under the new one which had taken its place, and

studies continued their course.

The University of Bologna suffered continual vicissitudes. At one

time excommunicated by Clement V, the greater number of the scholars

passed to the University of Padua, Bologna’s rival; at another time, in

consequence of quarrels which broke out between the professors and the

magistrates, or between the scholars and the citizens, whole classes

deserted and settled in the neighbouring towns. But all these wrongs

were righted. John XXII withdrew Clement’s interdict, and confirmed and

increased the privileges of the university; the magistrates and citizens

granted the amends demanded by professors and pupils; and this school,

which was already famous, became more brilliant and more famous. A

short time later, Milan, Pisa, Pavia, Piacenza, Siena, but especially

Florence, rivalled with Padua, Bologna, and the University of Naples

founded by Frederick II, which had so vastly increased under Robert of

Naples. Boniface VIII had founded the University of Rome, his successors

confirmed and even extended its privileges; but their bulls could not

repair the harm done to the new university by their absence; it could

not do aught but decline so long as their residence at Avignon left the

unfortunate town of Rome almost deserted, and, as a climax, always a prey

to sedition and torn by internal factions.

It must be remembered that in these universities and schools nothing was

taught except, as in the preceding century, what were commonly called

the seven arts. Literature, properly so called, was almost entirely

ignored. The ancient authors, who, later on, formed the base of literary

study, were scarcely beginning to be discovered. Libraries of schools

and monasteries, even those which several princes had worked to form,

mostly contained some of the works of the fathers, books on theology,

law, medicine, astrology, and scholastic philosophy; and even these were

few in number. It was in the course of the century then beginning that a

praiseworthy eagerness for the discovery of ancient manuscripts arose in

Italy, and, following Italy’s example, spread throughout Europe. The most

deserted and dusty corners of private houses and convents were searched

for the works of these authors, of whom till then nothing remained but

the name, and of those who had left many works of which only the smallest

part was known. This revolution was principally due to Petrarch, and it

is one of his strongest claims to glory.

One single example will prove the vastness of his work and how little

advanced even the learned of that time were. A professor of the

University of Bologna, writing to him on the subject of ancient authors,

especially of poets, and wishing to include among the latter Plato[14]

and Cicero, was ignorant of the name of Nævius, and even Plautius, and

thought that Ennius and Statius were contemporaries. The ignorance of the

copyists must be added to the imperfection of knowledge and the scarcity

of books. In transcribing the best books they frequently disfigured them

in such a manner that their authors themselves would have had trouble to

recognise them. All this must be remembered to tone down the accounts

found in histories of literature of the fine libraries given to certain

universities, or founded in certain towns, formed by a certain prince and

thrown open by his orders to the learned and to the public. When compared

with our large libraries, they are insignificant book-cupboards--an

absolute famine compared with appalling superabundance.

The science which obtained most assistance from them, and which was the

most abundantly provided with books, was scholastic theology; it was

therefore pursued more eagerly than ever. It was no longer the century

of men like Thomas Aquinas and Bonaventura; but their example was

quite recent, and their admirers and disciples entertained the hope of

equalling them and even surpassing them in glory. Hence among theologians

arose that eagerness, that general fervour to interpret the same books

that their predecessors had interpreted, to explain the explanations

themselves, to commentate the commentaries; to deepen the shadows while

attempting to cast light upon them, and to obscure by explanation what

was at first clear. These are not only the ideas, but the very words

of the wise Tiraboschi; he added the very natural wish that none would

disturb the repose of these indefatigable commentators in the profound

oblivion and dust of the libraries where they lie buried. However, he

does not include among them about a dozen doctors, whose fame it appears

was very great in that century. We will only mention one of them--an

Augustine monk named Denis, a native of St. Sépulcre--because he was

the friend and spiritual adviser of Petrarch; this much may be said of

him, all the rest may be relegated to the same place of refuge whose

inviolability Tiraboschi reclaims for the mob of theologians of the

century. There should be no rank in dust and oblivion. All authors of

books which are unreadable or which teach nothing should sleep there

alike.

LATIN AND THE VERNACULAR

A complete separation had now taken place between the ordinary language

of the country and the Latin tongue. Of the latter, the women were

ignorant. The general adoption of the language to which their delicacy

gave new graces, and in which alone they were accessible to the gallantry

of their admirers, was a necessary result. It was now submitted to rules,

and enlivened by that sensibility of expression, of which a dead and

pedantic language ceases to be susceptible. For a century and a half,

in fact, it would seem that the Sicilians confined themselves to the

composition of love-songs alone. These primitive specimens of Italian

poetry have been studiously preserved, and they have been analysed by

M. Ginguené, with equal talent and learning. To his work, such of our

readers as may wish to obtain a more particular knowledge of these relics

will have satisfaction in referring; nor can they apply to a better

source of information for more complete and profound details on the

subject of Italian poetry than can possibly find a place in a condensed

history of the general literature of the south.

[Illustration: PORTION OF BRONZE ARCHITRAVE OF SOUTH DOOR, BAPTISTERY,

FLORENCE]

The merit of amatory poetry consists, almost entirely, in its expression.

Its warmth and tenderness of sentiment is injured by any exertion of mere

ingenuity and fancy, in the pursuit of which the poet, or the lover,

seems to lose sight of his proper object. Little more is required from

him than to represent with sensibility and with truth the feelings which

are common to all who love. The harmony of language is the best means of

expressing that of the heart. But this principle seems almost entirely

to have escaped the notice of the first Sicilian and Italian writers.

The example of the Arabs and of the Provençals induced them to prefer

ostentation to simplicity, and to exercise a false and affected taste

in the choice of their poetical ornaments. In the best specimens of

this school, we should find little to reward the labour of translating

them; and we feel less inclined to draw the inferior pieces from their

deserved obscurity. It is, therefore, principally with a view to the

history of the language, and of the versification, that we turn over the

pages of Ciullo d’Alcamo the Sicilian, those of Frederick II, and of

his chancellor, Pietro delle Vigne, of Oddo delle Colonne, of Mazzeo di

Ricco, and of other poets of the same class.

The language employed by the Sicilians in their poetical attempts was

not the popular dialect, as it then existed among the natives of the

island and as we still find it preserved in some Sicilian songs, scarcely

intelligible to the Italians themselves. From the imperial court and that

of the kings of Sicily, it had already received a more elegant form; and

those laws of grammar which were originally founded upon custom had now

obtained the ascendency over it, and prescribed their own rules. The

_lingua cortigiana_, the language of the court, was already distinguished

as the purest of the Italian dialects. In Tuscany it came into general

use; and previous to the end of the thirteenth century it received

great stability from several writers of that country, in verse as well

as in prose, who carried it very nearly to that degree of perfection

which it has ever since maintained. For elegance and purity of style,

Ricordano Malaspina, who wrote the _History of Florence_ in 1280, may be

pronounced, at the present day, to be in no degree inferior to the best

writers now extant.

THE MASTER POET, AND HIS THEME

No poet, however, had yet arisen, gifted with absolute power over the

empire of the soul; no philosopher had yet pierced into the depths of

feeling and of thought, when Dante, the greatest name of Italy, and the

father of her poetry, appeared, and demonstrated the mightiness of his

genius by availing himself of the rude and imperfect materials within his

reach, to construct an edifice resembling, in magnificence, that universe

whose image it reflects. Instead of amatory effusions addressed to an

imaginary beauty, instead of madrigals full of sprightly insipidity,

sonnets laboured into harmony, and strained or discordant allegories, the

only models, in any modern language, which presented themselves to the

notice of Dante, that great genius conceived, in his vast imagination,

the mysteries of the invisible creation, and unveiled them to the eyes of

the astonished world.

In the century immediately preceding, the energy of some bold and

enthusiastic minds had been directed to religious objects. A new

spiritual force, surpassing in activity and fanaticism all monastic

institutions before established, was organised by St. Francis and St.

Dominic, whose furious harangues and bloody persecutions revived that

zeal which, for several centuries past, had appeared to slumber. In

the cells of the monks, nevertheless, the first symptoms of reviving

literature were seen. Their studies had now assumed a scholastic

character. To the imagination of the zealot, the different conditions

of a future state were continually present; and the spiritual objects

which he saw with the eyes of faith were invested with all the reality of

material forms, by the force with which they were presented to his view

in detailed descriptions and in dissertations displaying a scientific

acquaintance with the exact limit of every torment, and the graduated

rewards of glorification.

A very singular instance of the manner in which these ideas were

impressed upon the people is afforded by the native city of Dante, in

which the celebration of a festival was graced by a public representation

of the infernal tortures; and it is not unlikely that the first

circulation of the work of that poet gave occasion to this frightful

exhibition. The bed of the Arno was converted into the gulf of perdition,

where all the horrors coined by the prolific fancy of the monks were

concentrated. Nothing was wanting to make the illusion complete; and

the spectators shuddered at the shrieks and groans of real persons,

apparently exposed to the alternate extremes of fire and frost, to waves

of boiling pitch, and to serpents. This scene occurred at Florence on the

1st of May, 1304.

It appears, then, that when Dante adopted, as the subject of his immortal

poem, the secrets of the invisible world, and the three kingdoms of the

dead, he could not possibly have selected a more popular theme. It had

the advantage of combining the most profound feelings of religion with

those vivid recollections of patriotic glory and party contentions which

were necessarily suggested by the reappearance of the illustrious dead on

this novel theatre.

At the close of the century, in the year 1300, and in the week of Easter,

Dante supposes himself to be wandering in the deserts near Jerusalem, and

to be favoured with the means of access to the realm of shadows. He is

there met by Virgil, the object of his incessant study and admiration,

who takes upon himself the office of guide, and who, by his own admirable

description of the heathen hell, seems to have acquired a kind of right

to reveal the mysteries of these forbidden regions. The two bards arrive

at a gate, on which are inscribed these terrific words:[e]

“Through me you pass into the city of woe:

Through me you pass into eternal pain:

Through me, among the people lost for aye.

Justice the founder of my fabric mov’d:

To rear me was the task of power divine,

Supremest wisdom, and primeval love.

Before me things create were none, save things

Eternal, and eternal I endure.

All hope abandon, ye who enter here.”[o]

The theme of the poem is too familiar to need further exposition here.

It may be interesting to note, however, that the sequence of regions

through which the poet journeys in witnessing the rewards of paradise is

suggested by the ideas of cosmology that were prevalent in Dante’s time.

The poem thus has interest from a scientific as well as from an artistic

standpoint--an interest that is enhanced by the reflection that the time

was almost at hand when a new system of cosmology would supplant the

Ptolemaic one here suggested, and in so doing usher in a new scientific

era, somewhat as the poem itself ushered in a new era of literature.[a]

The power of the human mind was never more forcibly demonstrated, in

its most exquisite masterpieces, than in the poem of Dante. Without a

prototype in any existing language, equally novel in its various parts

and in the combination of the whole, it stands alone as the first

monument of modern genius, the first great work which appeared in the

reviving literature of Europe. In its composition, it is strictly

conformable to the essential and invariable principles of the poetical

art. It possesses unity of design and of execution; and bears the visible

impress of a mighty genius, capable of embracing, at once, the parts and

the whole of its scheme; of employing, with facility, the most stupendous

materials, and of observing all the required niceties of proportion,

without experiencing any difficulty from the constraint. In all other

respects, the poem of Dante is not within the jurisdiction of established

rules. It cannot with propriety be referred to any particular class of

composition, and its author is only to be judged by those laws which he

thought fit to impose upon himself. His modesty induced him to give his

work the title of a comedy, in order to place it in a rank inferior to

the epic, to which he conceived that Virgil had exclusive claims. Dante

had not the slightest acquaintance with the dramatic art, of which he

had, in all probability, never met with a single specimen; and from this

ignorance proceeded that use of the word which now appears to us to be

so extraordinary. In his native country, the title which he gave to his

work was always preserved, and it is still known as _The Divine Comedy_.

A name so totally different from every other seems to be happily bestowed

upon a production which stands without a rival.

_Dante the Man_

The glory which Dante acquired, which commenced during his lifetime, and

which raised him, in a little time, above the greatest names of Italy,

contributed but little to his happiness. He was born in Florence in

1265, of the noble and distinguished family of the Alighieri, which was

attached, in politics, to the party of the Guelfs.

Whilst yet very young, he formed a strong attachment to Beatrice, the

daughter of Folco de’ Portinari, whom he lost at the age of twenty-five

years. Throughout his future life, he preserved a faithful recollection

of the passion which, during fifteen years, had essentially contributed

to the happy development of his feelings, and which was thus associated

with all his noblest sentiments and his most elevated thoughts. It was

probably about ten years after the death of Beatrice when Dante commenced

his great work, which occupied him during the remainder of his life, and

in which he assigned the most conspicuous station to the woman he had

so tenderly loved. In this object of his adoration, he found a common

point of union for images both human and divine; and the Beatrice of his

paradise appears to us sometimes in the character of the most beloved

of her sex, and sometimes as an abstract emblem of celestial wisdom.

Far from considering the passion of love in the same light as the

ancients, the father of modern poetry recognises it as a pure, elevated,

and sacred sentiment, calculated to ennoble and to sanctify the soul;

and he has never been surpassed, by any who have succeeded him, in his

entire and affecting devotion to the object of his attachment. Dante

was, however, induced by considerations of family convenience to enter

into a new engagement. In 1291, a year after the death of Beatrice,

he married Gemma de’ Donati, whose obstinate and violent disposition

embittered his domestic life. It is remarkable that, in the whole course

of his work, into which he introduces the whole universe, he makes no

personal allusion to his wife; and he was actuated, no doubt, by motives

of delicacy towards her and her family, when he passed over, in similar

silence, Corso Donati, the leader of the faction of his enemies, and his

own most formidable adversary.

[Illustration: TORCH HOLDER, PALAZZO STROZZI, FLORENCE]

In the battle of Campaldino, in 1289, Dante bore arms for his country

against the Aretini, and also against the Pisans in the campaign of

1290--the year subsequent to that in which the catastrophe of Count

Ugolino occurred. He subsequently assumed the magisterial functions, at

the period so fatal to the happiness of his country, when the civil wars

between the Bianchi and the Neri broke out. He was accused of a criminal

partiality to the interest of the former faction, during the time when

he was a member of the supreme council; and when Charles de Valois, the

father of Philip VI, proceeded to Florence, to appease the dissensions of

the two parties, Dante was sentenced, in the year 1302, to the payment

of an oppressive fine and to exile. By the subsequent sentence of a

revolutionary tribunal, he was condemned, during his absence, to be

burned alive, with all his partisans.

From that period, Dante was compelled to seek an asylum at such of the

Italian courts as were attached to the Ghibelline interest, and were not

unwilling to extend their protection to their ancient enemies. To that

party, which he had opposed in the outset of his career, his perpetual

exile and his misfortune compelled him, ultimately, to become a convert.

He resided, for a considerable time, with the marquis Malaspina, in the

Lunigiana, with the count Busone da Gubbio, and with the two brothers

Della Scala, lords of Verona. But, in every quarter, the haughty

obstinacy of his character, which became more inflexible in proportion

to the difficulties with which he was surrounded, and the bitterness

of his wit, which frequently broke out in caustic sarcasms, raised up

against him new enemies. His attempts to re-enter Florence with his

party, by force of arms, were successively foiled; his petitions to

the people were rejected; and his last hope, in the emperor Henry VII,

vanished on the death of that monarch. His decease took place at Ravenna,

on the 14th of September, 1321, whilst he was enjoying the hospitable

protection of Guido Novello da Polenta, the lord of that city, who had

always treated him rather as a friend than as a dependant, and who,

a short time before, had bestowed upon him an honourable mark of his

confidence by charging him with an embassy to the republic of Venice.

On the death of her great poet, all Italy appeared to go into mourning.

On every side copies of his work were multiplied, and enriched with

numerous commentaries. In the year 1350, Giovanni Visconti, archbishop

and prince of Milan, engaged a number of learned men in the laborious

task of illustrating and explaining the obscure passages of the _Divina

Commedia_. Six distinguished scholars, two theologians, two men of

science, and two Florentine antiquaries united their talents in this

undertaking. Two professorships were instituted for the purpose of

expounding the works of Dante. One of these, founded at Florence, in the

year 1373, was filled by the celebrated Boccaccio. The duties of the

other, at Bologna, were no less worthily discharged by Benvenuto d’Imola,

a scholar of eminence. It is questionable whether any other man ever

exercised so undisputed an authority and so direct an influence over the

age immediately succeeding his own.

An additional proof of the superiority of this great genius may be drawn

from the commentaries upon his works. We are there surprised to see his

most enthusiastic admirers incapable of appreciating his real grandeur.

Dante himself, in his Latin treatise entitled _De Vulgari Eloquentia_,

appears to be quite unconscious of the extent of his services to the

literature of his country. Like his commentators, he principally values

himself upon the purity and correctness of his style. Yet he is neither

pure nor correct; but, what is far superior to either, he had the powers

of creative invention. For the sake of the rhyme, we find him employing a

great number of barbarous words, which do not occur a second time in his

verses. But, when he is himself affected, and wishes to communicate his

emotions, the Italian language of the thirteenth century, in his powerful

hands, displays a richness of expression, a purity, and an elegance

which he was the first to elicit, and by which it has ever since been

distinguished. The personages whom he introduces are moving and breathing

beings; his pictures are nature itself; his language speaks at once to

the imagination and to the judgment; and it would be difficult to point

out a passage in his poem which would not form a subject for the pencil.

The admiration of his commentators has also been abundantly bestowed

upon the profound learning of Dante, who, it must be allowed, appears to

have been master of all the knowledge and accomplishments of the age in

which he lived. Of these various attainments, his poem is the faithful

depository, from which we may infer, with great precision, the progress

which science had at that time made, and the advances which were yet

necessary to afford full satisfaction to the mind.[e]

The importance ascribed by Dante’s contemporaries to his writings other

than the famous poem is well illustrated in the comment of the historian

Giovanni Villani who, commenting on the death and burial of Dante, says:

“This was a great and learned person in almost every science, although

a layman; he was a consummate poet and philosopher and rhetorician; as

perfect in prose and verse as he was in public speaking a most noble

orator; in rhyming excellent, with the most polished and beautiful style

that ever appeared in our language up to his time or since. He wrote

in his youth the book of _The Early Life of Love_, and afterwards when

in exile made twenty moral and amorous canzonets very excellent, and

amongst other things three noble epistles; one he sent to the Florentine

government complaining of his undeserved exile; another to the emperor

Henry when he was at the siege of Brescia, reprehending him for his

delay and almost prophesying; the third to the Italian cardinals during

the vacancy after the death of Pope Clement, urging them to agree in

electing an Italian pope--all in Latin, with noble precepts and excellent

sentences and authorities, which were much commended by the wise and

learned. And he wrote the _Commedia_ where, in polished verse and with

great and subtile arguments, moral, natural, astrological, philosophical,

and theological, with new and beautiful figures, similes, and poetical

graces, he composed and treated in a hundred chapters, or cantos, of the

existence of hell, purgatory, and paradise, so loftily as may be said of

it that whoever is of subtile intellect may by his said treatise perceive

and understand. He was well pleased in this poem to blame and cry out

in the manner of poets, in some places perhaps more than he ought to

have done; but it may be that his exile made him do so. He also wrote

the _Monarchia_, where he treats of the office of popes and emperors.

And he began a comment on fourteen of the above-named moral canzonets in

the vulgar tongue, which in consequence of his death is found imperfect

except on three, which to judge from what is seen would have proved a

lofty, beautiful, subtile, and most important work, because it is equally

ornamented with noble opinions and fine philosophical and astrological

reasoning. Besides these he composed a little book which he entitled _De

Vulgari Eloquentia_, of which he promised to make four books (but only

two are to be found, perhaps in consequence of his early death), where in

powerful and elegant Latin and good reasoning he rejects all the vulgar

tongues of Italy.

“This Dante,” continues Villani, “from his knowledge, was somewhat

presumptuous, harsh, and disdainful, like an ungracious philosopher; he

scarcely deigned to converse with laymen; but for his other virtues,

science, and worth as a citizen, it seems but reasonable to give him

perpetual remembrance in this our chronicle; nevertheless his noble works

left to us in writing bear true testimony of him and honourable fame to

our city.”[f]

LESSER CONTEMPORARIES OF DANTE

To the same period with Dante belongs Francesco Barberini, the disciple,

like Dante, of Brunetto Latini, and author of a treatise in verse on

moral philosophy, which, in conformity with the affected spirit of the

times, he entitled _I Documenti d’Amore_. Cecco d’Ascoli was also the

contemporary of Dante, and his personal enemy. His poem in five books,

called _L’Acerba_, or rather, according to M. Ginguené, _L’Acerva_,

“the heap,” is a collection of all the sciences of his age, including

astronomy, philosophy, and religion. It is much less remarkable for

its intrinsic merit than for the lamentable catastrophe of its author,

who was burned alive in Florence as a sorcerer, in 1327, at the age of

seventy years, after having long held the professorship of judicial

astrology in the University of Bologna.

Cino da Pistoia, of the house of the Sinibaldi, was the friend of Dante,

and was equally distinguished by the brilliancy of his talents in two

different departments: as a lawyer, by his commentary on the first

nine books of the code, and, as a poet, by his verses addressed to the

beautiful Selvaggia de’ Vergiolesi, of whom he was deprived by death,

about the year 1307. As a lawyer, he was the preceptor of the celebrated

Bartolo, who, if he has surpassed his master, yet owed much to his

lessons. As a poet, he was the model which Petrarch loved to imitate;

and, in this view, he perhaps did his imitator as much injury by his

refinement and affectation as he benefited him by the example of his pure

and harmonious style. Fazio de’ Uberti, grandson of the great Farinata,

who, in consequence of the hatred which the Florentines entertained for

his ancestor, lived and died in exile, raised himself to equal celebrity

at this period by his sonnets and other verses. At a much later time of

life, he composed a poem of the descriptive kind, entitled _Dettamondo_,

in which he proposed to imitate Dante, and to display the real world, as

that poet had portrayed the world of spirits. But it need hardly be said

that the distance between the original and the imitation is great indeed.

In some respects all these poets, and many others whose names are yet

more obscure, have common points of resemblance. We find, in all, the

same subtlety of idea, the same incoherent images, and the same perplexed

sentiments. The spirit of the times was perverted by an affected

refinement; and it is a subject of just surprise that, in the very outset

of a nation, simplicity and natural feeling should have been superseded

by conceit and bombast. It is, however, to be considered that this nation

did not form her own taste, but adopted that of a foreign country,

before she was qualified, by her own improved knowledge, to make a

proper choice. The verses of the troubadours of Provence were circulated

from one end of Italy to the other. They were diligently perused and

committed to memory by every poet who aspired to public notice, some

of whom exercised themselves in compositions in the same language; and

although the Italians, if we except the Sicilians, had never any direct

intercourse with the Arabians, yet they derived much information from

them by this circuitous route. The almost unintelligible subtleties with

which they treated of love passed for refinement of sentiment; while the

perpetual rivalry which was maintained between the heart and the head,

between reason and passion, was looked upon as an ingenious application

of philosophy to a literary subject. The causeless griefs, the languors,

the dying complaints of a lover became a constituent portion of the

consecrated language in which he addressed his mistress, and from which

he could not without impropriety depart. Conventional feelings in poetry

thus usurped the place of those native and simple sentiments which are

the offspring of the heart.

PETRARCH

But, instead of dwelling upon these defects in the less celebrated

poets, we shall attempt to exhibit the general spirit of the fourteenth

century, as displayed in the works of the greatest man whom Italy, in

that age, produced, whose reputation has been most widely spread, and

whose influence has been most extensively felt, not only in Italy but in

France, in Spain, and in Portugal. The reader will easily imagine that it

is Petrarch, the lover of Laura, to whom we here allude.

Petrarch was the son of a Florentine, who, like Dante, had been exiled

from his native city. He was born at Arezzo, on the night of the 19th of

July, 1304, and he died at Arqua, near Padua, on the 18th of July, 1374.

During the century of which his life occupied the greater portion, he was

the centre of Italian literature. Passionately attached to letters, and

more especially to history and to poetry, and an enthusiastic admirer

of antiquity, he imparted to his contemporaries by his discourses, his

writings, and his example that taste for the recovery and study of Latin

manuscripts which so eminently distinguished the fourteenth century;

which preserved the masterpieces of the classical authors, at the very

moment when they were about to be lost forever; and gave a new impulse,

by the imitation of those admirable models, to the progress of the human

intellect.

[Illustration: PETRARCH]

Petrarch, tortured by the passion which has contributed so greatly to

his celebrity, endeavoured, by travelling during a considerable portion

of his life, to escape from himself and to change the current of his

thoughts. He traversed France, Germany, and every part of Italy; he

visited Spain; and, with incessant activity, directed his attention to

the examination of the remains of antiquity. He became intimate with

all the scholars, poets, and philosophers from one end of Europe to

the other, whom he inspired with his own spirit. While he imparted to

them the object of his own labours, he directed their studies; and his

correspondence became a sort of magical bond, which, for the first time,

united the whole literary republic of Europe. At the age in which he

lived, that continent was divided into petty states, and sovereigns had

not yet attempted to establish any of those colossal empires, so dreaded

by other nations. On the contrary, each country was divided into smaller

sovereignties. The authority of many a prince did not extend above thirty

leagues from the little town over which he ruled; while at the distance

of a hundred, his name was unknown. In proportion, however, as political

importance was confined, literary glory was extended; and Petrarch,

the friend of Azzo di Correggio, prince of Parma, of Lucchino and of

Galeazzo Visconti, princes of Milan, and of Francesco di Carrara, prince

of Padua, was better known and more respected, throughout Europe, than

any of those petty sovereigns. This universal reputation, to which his

high acquirements entitled him, and of which he frequently made use in

forwarding the interests of literature, he occasionally turned to account

for political purposes. No man of letters, no poet was doubtless ever

charged with so many embassies to great potentates--to the emperor, the

pope, the king of France, the senate of Venice, and all the princes of

Italy. It is very remarkable that Petrarch did not fulfil these duties

merely as a subject of the state which had committed its interests

to his hands, but that he acted for the benefit of all Europe. He was

intrusted with such missions on account of his reputation; and when he

treated with the different princes, it was, as it were, in the character

of an arbitrator, whose suffrage everyone was eager to obtain, that he

might stand high in the opinion of posterity.

The prodigious labours of Petrarch to promote the study of ancient

literature are, after all, his noblest title to glory. Such was the view

in which they were regarded by the age in which he lived, and such also

was his own opinion. His celebrity, notwithstanding, at the present day

depends much more on his Italian lyrical poems than on his voluminous

Latin compositions. These lyrical pieces, which were imitated from the

Provençals, from Cino da Pistoia, and from the other poets who flourished

at the commencement of that century, have served, in their turn, as

models to all the distinguished poets of the south.

The Latin compositions upon which Petrarch rested his fame, and which

are twelve or fifteen times as voluminous as his Italian writings, are

now only read by the learned. The long poem entitled _Africa_, which he

composed on the victories of the elder Scipio, and which was considered,

in his own age, as a masterpiece worthy of rivalling the _Æneid_, is

very fatiguing to the ear. The style is inflated, and the subject so

devoid of interest and so exceedingly dull as absolutely to prevent the

perusal of the work. His numerous epistles in verse, instead of giving

interest to the historical events to which they allude, acquire it from

that circumstance. The imitation of the ancients, and the fidelity of the

copy, which in Petrarch’s eyes constituted their chief merit, deprive

these productions of every appearance of truth. The invectives against

the barbarians who had subjugated Italy are so cold, so bombastic, and so

utterly destitute of all colouring suited to the time and place, that we

might believe them to have been written by some rhetorician who had never

seen Italy; and we might confound them with those which a poetic fury

dictated to Petrarch himself, against the Gauls who besieged the capital.

His philosophical works, amongst which may be mentioned a treatise on

_Solitary Life_, and another on _Good and Bad Fortune_, are scarcely

less bombastic. The sentiments display neither truth nor depth of

thought. They are merely a show of words on some given subject. The

author pre-determines his view of the question, and never examines the

arguments for the purpose of discovering the truth, but of vanquishing

the difficulties which oppose him, and of making everything agree with

his own system. His letters, of which a voluminous collection has been

published--which is, however, far from being complete--are perhaps more

read than any other of his works, as they throw much light upon a period

which is well worthy of being known. We do not, however, discover in them

either the familiarity of intimate friendship or the complete openness of

an amiable character. They display great caution and studied propriety,

with an attention to effect which is not always successful. An Italian

would never have written Latin letters to his friends, if he had wished

only to unfold the secrets of his heart; but the letters of Cicero were

in Latin, and with them Petrarch wished to have his own compared. He was,

evidently, always thinking more of the public than of his correspondent;

and in fact the public were often in possession of the letter before

his friend. The bearer of an elegantly written epistle well knew that

he should flatter the vanity of the writer by communicating it; and he

therefore often openly read it, and even gave copies of it, before it

reached its destination.

It is difficult to say whether the extended reputation which Petrarch

enjoyed, during the course of a long life, is more glorious to himself

or to his age. We have elsewhere mentioned the faults of this celebrated

man--that subtlety of intellect which frequently led him to neglect

true feeling, and to abandon himself to a false taste; and that vanity

which too often induced him to call himself the friend of cruel and

contemptible princes, because they flattered him. But, before we part

with him, let us once more take a view of those great qualities which

rendered him the first man of his age--that ardent love for science to

which he consecrated his life, his powers, and his faculties; and that

glorious enthusiasm for all that is high and noble in the poetry, the

eloquence, the laws, and the manners of antiquity. This enthusiasm is

the mark of a superior mind. To such a mind, the hero becomes greater

by being contemplated; while a narrow and sterile intellect reduces the

greatest men to its own level, and measures them by its own standard.

This enthusiasm was felt by Petrarch, not only for distinguished men, but

for everything that is great in nature, for religion, for philosophy,

for patriotism, and for freedom. He was the friend and patron of the

unfortunate Rienzi, who, in the fourteenth century, awakened for a moment

the ancient spirit and fortunes of Rome. He appreciated the fine arts as

well as poetry, and he contributed to make the Romans acquainted with the

rich monuments of antiquity, as well as with the manuscripts which they

possessed. His passions were tinctured with a sense of religion which

induced him to worship all the glorious works of the Deity, with which

the earth abounds; and he believed that, in the woman he loved, he saw

the messenger of that heaven which thus revealed to him its beauty. He

enabled his contemporaries to estimate the full value of the purity of a

passion so modest and so religious as his own; while to his countrymen

he gave a language worthy of rivalling those of Greece and Rome, with

which, by his means, they had become familiar. Softening and ornamenting

his own language by the adoption of proper rules, he suited it to the

expression of every feeling, and changed, in some degree, its essence.

He inspired his age with that enthusiastic love for the beauty, and that

veneration for the study of antiquity, which gave it a new character,

and which determined that of succeeding times. It was, it may be said,

in the name of grateful Europe that Petrarch, on the 8th of April, 1341,

was crowned by the senator of Rome, in the Capitol; and this triumph, the

most glorious which was ever decreed to man, was not disproportioned to

the authority which this great poet was destined to maintain over future

ages.[e]

EARLY ITALIAN PROSE

Already, for half a century, Italian poetry had been cultivated with

ardour and with success, and in Dante’s time there was scarcely a

well-educated Florentine who could not at need rhyme a sonnet or write a

short song in the vulgar tongue. It was not so easy to write in prose;

for if the poet had a language and rules of style, there had not yet been

a learned time for the prose writer; he had no fixed rules, the form

in short which allows a writer to express his thought in the logical

order necessary to convey all its shades of meaning, to show up its

striking points, artistically to subordinate the less important or purely

expletive parts. The poet, on the contrary, at his first attempt met with

metrical forms, long adopted and practised in Provençal, a parent idiom,

whose rules could, without any difficulty, be applied to Italian. He

found moreover that the Provençal poetry, whose prosody he borrowed, had

taken with slight differences the same subjects which he wished to sing

in Italian; so that he found a poetical storehouse, if the expression

may be allowed, of comparisons, epithets, connecting links, phrases, and

permissible inversions.

It was not so with prose. The Italian language, which could without

difficulty adopt the Provençal metrical system, found no prose developed

which it could take as a model. Latin was the only perfect type which it

could imitate; but the complete absence of any declension, the relatively

limited number of conjunctions, the impossibility of freeing itself

completely from analytical order, which it experienced in common with all

modern languages, did not allow it to be modelled on Cicero, as poetry

was modelled on Bertrand de Born or Sordello. To reach this point of

perfection two or three more centuries were needed, during which deep

thinkers and great artists moulded this refractory material.

It is true that the Latin historians, who were perfectly known, might

have been taken as examples to be copied and even imitated; for these

writers had treated the same kinds of subject which were again about

to be attempted. However, there was one difference: ancient history,

after all, was far distant, and the resemblance between the subjects

was more apparent than real; or at least, if this resemblance really

existed, men were too interested in the events to be able to judge them

and compare them with others as coldly as we are accustomed to do. To

sing the praises of his lady’s eyes, to express sentiments of fidelity

or sadness, to paint chivalrous tournaments, it suffices to have read

or to have listened to the Provençal troubadours, and the same words,

with very few changes, can almost be transported from one language into

the other. Imagine, on the other hand, a poor chronicler of the Middle

Ages imitating Sallust or Titus Livius: could the vernacular furnish

him with a single word to render those of his model--and the prose

writer, accustomed to think in Latin, could he find in Italian a single

expression equivalent to his thought? Whence could he have drawn that

common fund of ideas and formulas which is so necessary to write a real

history, however matter of fact, however little philosophic it might be?

Even in order to relate facts, putting aside all thought of interest, one

must have ideas.

But the difficulty was far greater when abstract subjects were treated.

There is even some confusion in the beautiful prose of Dante’s _Convito_,

and even in the scholastic digressions of _The Divine Comedy_, although

at the beginning of the fourteenth century the Italian language was

already far more developed than one hundred years before; and, to go no

further, some idea of the extreme difficulty of such an enterprise may be

found by calling to mind the obstacles which had to be overcome by the

first French and German philosophers who had the courage and self-denial

to expose in their mother-tongues (which were then nearly formed) ideas

reasoned in Latin; for a certain effort is needed to follow the French

and German writings of Descartes and Wolff, while their Latin works

present no difficulty. Therefore, besides the general and constant causes

for the priority of poetry to prose, there was in Italy a special cause

which contributed to develop poetry first in the vulgar tongue; this

cause was the existence of Provençal poetry, already flourishing and

cultivated.

A fact common alike to the literary history of Italy and to that of

all other nations is that the first attempts in prose were generally

historical writings. In fact, among all primitive people we see that the

first use they made of free speech was to decompose the epic poems,

to give the importance of historical tradition to stories of popular

imagination. Thus we see the Ionian chroniclers, up to Herodotus, add the

history of contemporary events to the deeds of heroes of fable, just as

the first Florentine chroniclers, till Villani, trace back the origin of

their native town and its early history to Roman names whose traditions

were doubtless retained in the popular poems prior to the Provençal

school which reigned in Italy towards the middle of the fourteenth

century, and relate, without metre or rhythm, what the Florentine woman

of the time of Frederick Barbarossa sang, seated at her spindle:

“_Favoleggiava con la sua famiglia_

_De’ Trojani, di Fiesole, e di Roma._”

--DANTE.

However this may be, it was only about this time that the use of the

vernacular spread little by little; that public treaties and commercial

correspondence began to be written in this language, and the public

already preferred to read in the Italian language stories and other works

written originally in Latin or sometimes in Provençal. But these writings

can scarcely be considered literary works; they cannot, therefore, be

taken as the starting-point of a history of Italian prose.

Just as the first Italian poems had been written in Sicilian dialect,

soon replaced by the Tuscan dialect, so the first somewhat important and

truly literary work in Italian prose was written in Sicilian dialect,

while nearly all the prose writers of the following period were Tuscans;

and this fact is sufficiently explained by the general history of Italy

in the thirteenth century.

While Florence and all the centre of the peninsula were in a state of

civil war, or painfully working to attain an independent municipal life,

Naples, the home of the Hohenstaufens and the capital of the kingdom

of the Two Sicilies, was enjoying profound peace, royal luxury, great

freedom of thought, and all the refinements of life, in the midst of

institutions which may be considered perfect for their time. Queen

Constanza had already granted special protection to the Provençal poets,

and her son, Frederick II, only placed above the troubadours of the south

of France the learned philosophers of Baghdad and Cordova, as if the

great man only believed himself understood or appreciated by those whose

glance was not troubled by religious, political, or local passions. The

influence of this brilliant court, which united taste for science with

frivolity, where serious discussions on law and philosophy alternated

with the gay Provençal wisdom, and where displays of chivalry and love

songs diverted the greatest statesmen of the Middle Ages after the

fatigues or annoyances of politics, this preponderant influence made the

Sicilian nation for a time the chief actor in the history of Italy, and

their language the dominant organ of the rising literature; and it is not

surprising that the first great work in Italian prose was written in the

dialect made popular by the beautiful songs of the emperor Frederick II

and his famous chancellor Pietro delle Vigne, King Enzio, and the brave

Manfred, his half-brother.

Matteo Spinelli, the contemporary of these poets of noble birth, has

left a chronicle under the very characteristic title “journal,” which

enables us to judge at once what Italian prose was at that period. If we

quote this work of Spinelli’s first, it is not because we are unaware

of the numerous and often vague attempts which preceded him; but all

previous writings may be considered as uncertain groping. The language

of these works is not even completely Italian yet, and the true modern

idiom has been considered to rise in all its individuality in the poems

of Ciullo d’Alcamo and in the _Journals_ of Spinelli. Moreover, the work

of the Sicilian chronicler (although, as its name seems to indicate,

it was a diary scarcely intended for publication) offers by its very

extent more ample matter for literary and philological study than certain

inscriptions, deeds, laws, decrees, and other documents of similar nature.

[Illustration: SAN MARTINO, NAPLES]

We do not mean to say that the _Journals_ have nothing Latin about

them, or that they are written in pure Italian or Sicilian. Latin

words, even phrases, which recall the customs of a dead language, are

frequently found in the midst of a speech in all other respects purely

Italian; but these souvenirs are always isolated, and do not alter the

general character of the tongue, which is essentially Sicilian. But what

distinguishes the style of this delightful teller of stories is not

only the sweetness characteristic of the dialect he employed, but also

a certain carelessness, a certain freedom in the construction of his

sentences. In the first prose writer of a language one certainly does

not expect Ciceronian periods; it appears perfectly natural that all his

sentences should be co-ordinate, instead of being subordinate to one

another, and that he should simply join his propositions by copulative

conjunctions, instead of arranging them in incidental phrases; but with

Spinelli, we simply find conversational language, and nothing more; that

is to say, his style is wanting in clearness. He writes as he would have

spoken to an attentive audience, with all the assistance to be derived

from gesture, intonation, and expressive glance. This conversational

style, applied to written works of great length, is often unintelligible

unless interpreted by a clever reader, who recites it as an actor recites

his rôle in a comedy. In the end it becomes wearisome by the very fact

that the necessary explanation, which recitation would give, is wanting.

But, on the other hand, there is an animation which the finest art could

not produce--each word, each expression creates a picture. One might be

listening to a loquacious barber, on the lookout for the gossip of the

day, serving up hot the talk of the town.

This is Spinelli’s specialty; he must not be looked on as a historian,

not even a political chronicler, but as a teller of stories, often

amusing, nearly always animated. The events of contemporary history are

only mentioned incidentally in the midst of town and country gossip.

But apart from the style and light shade of irony which form one of the

charms of Boccaccio, Spinelli’s stories are not less wanting in interest

than the stories of the _Decameron_. This is the great merit of the

_Journals_; their historic value is almost worthless, and, on account

of serious errors (chiefly those of chronology), they become dangerous

guides for the reader who takes them seriously and refers to them for

information on the period and country in which Spinelli lived. There is

a great difference to be seen when one passes from this expansive and

unpretentious gossip to professional men of letters, to the somewhat

pedantic orators of Florence, from the neglected Sicilian dialect to the

already majestic and developed language of Tuscany.

The study of rhetoric was first cultivated in Florence, and we see, by

Dante’s education, the importance attached to this branch of knowledge.

However, the earliest rhetoricians, such as Buoncompagni and Guidotto of

Bologna, seldom employed the vernacular. The honour of fixing, so to say,

the Tuscan dialect, of raising the Italian patois to the rank which Latin

had occupied exclusively till then, belongs to Brunetto Latini, of whom

Villani tells us that he was “the first to polish the Florentines,” and

to whom Dante, his pupil, raised a monument more durable than any other

claim to immortality which the poor orator possessed: “You taught me

how man can make himself immortal, and it is right that while I live my

tongue should declare the gratitude which I feel.”[g]

BOCCACCIO

But these after all are only tentative efforts. The first writer to

make use of the new vehicle as a medium for really artistic prose

of a creative type was a Florentine of a slightly later epoch, the

contemporary of Petrarch, Giovanni Boccaccio, the famous author of the

_Decameron_. Boccaccio was born at Paris, in 1313, and was the natural

son of a merchant of Florence, himself born at Certaldo, a castle in the

Val d’Elsa, in the Florentine territory. His father had intended him for

a commercial life, but before devoting him to it, indulged him with a

literary education. From his earliest years, Boccaccio evinced a decided

predilection for letters. He wrote verses, and manifested an extreme

aversion to trade. He revolted equally at the prospect of a commercial

life, and the study of the canon law, which his father was desirous of

his undertaking. To oblige his father, however, he made several journeys

of business; but he brought back with him, instead of a love for his

employment, a more extended information, and an increased passion for

study.

He at length obtained permission to devote himself wholly to literature,

and fixed on Naples as his place of residence, where letters then

flourished under the powerful protection of Robert, the reigning monarch.

He was quickly initiated in all the sciences at that time taught. He

acquired also the rudiments of the Greek tongue, which, though then

spoken in Calabria, was an abstruse study with the early scholars. In

1341, he assisted at the celebrated examination of Petrarch, which

preceded his coronation at Rome; and, from that time, a friendship arose

between him and the poet, which terminated only with their lives. At this

period, Boccaccio, distinguished no less for the elegance of his person

than for the brilliancy of his wit, and devoted to pleasure, formed an

attachment to a natural daughter of King Robert, named Maria, who for

several years had been the wife of a Neapolitan gentleman. This lady

he has celebrated in his writings, under the name of Fiammetta. In the

attachment of Boccaccio, we must not look for that purity or delicacy

which distinguished Petrarch in his love for Laura. This princess had

been brought up in the most corrupt court of Italy; she herself partook

of its spirit, and it is to her depraved taste that the exceptionable

parts of the _Decameron_, a work undertaken by Boccaccio in compliance

with her request, and for her amusement, are to be attributed. On his

side, Boccaccio probably loved her as much from vanity as from real

passion; for, although distinguished for her beauty, her grace, and her

wit, as much as for her rank, she does not seem to have exercised any

extraordinary influence on his life; and neither the conduct nor the

writings of Boccaccio afford evidence of a sincere or profound attachment.

[Illustration: BOCCACCIO]

Boccaccio quitted Naples in 1342, to return to Florence. He came back

again in 1344, and returned for the last time in 1350. From that year,

he fixed himself in his native country, where his reputation had already

assigned him a distinguished rank. His life was thenceforth occupied by

his public employments in several embassies; by the duties which his

increasing friendship to Petrarch imposed on him; and by the constant and

indefatigable labours to which he devoted himself for the advancement

of letters, the discovery of ancient manuscripts, the elucidation of

subjects of antiquity, the introduction of the Greek language into

Italy, and the composition of his numerous works. After taking the

ecclesiastical habit, in 1361, he died at Certaldo, in the mansion of his

ancestors, on the 21st of December, 1375.

The _Decameron_, the work to which Boccaccio is at the present day

indebted for his highest celebrity, is a collection of one hundred novels

or tales. He has ingeniously united them, under the supposition of a

party formed in the dreadful pestilence of 1348, composed of a number of

cavaliers, and young, intelligent, and accomplished women, retired to a

delightful part of the country, to escape the contagion. It was there

agreed that each person, during the space of ten days, should narrate,

daily, a fresh story. The company consisted of ten persons, and thus

the number of stories amounted to one hundred. The description of the

enchanting country in the neighbourhood of Florence, where these gay

recluses had established themselves; the record of their walks, their

numerous fêtes, and their repasts, afforded Boccaccio an opportunity of

displaying all the treasures of his powerful and easy pen.

These stories, which are varied with infinite art, as well in subject

as in style, from the most pathetic and tender to the most sportive,

and, unfortunately, the most licentious, exhibit a wonderful power of

narration; and his description of the plague in Florence, which serves

as an introduction to them, may be ranked with the most celebrated

historical descriptions which have descended to us. The perfect truth

of colouring; the exquisite choice of circumstances, calculated to

produce the deepest impression, and which place before our eyes the

most repulsive scenes, without exciting disgust; and the emotion of the

writer, which insensibly pervades every part, give to this picture that

true eloquence of history which, in Thucydides, animates the relation of

the plague in Athens. Boccaccio had, doubtless, this model before his

eyes; but the events, to which he was a witness, had vividly impressed

his mind, and it was the faithful delineation of what he had seen, rather

than the classical imitation, which served to develop his talent.

The praise of Boccaccio consists in the perfect purity of his language,

in his elegance, his grace, and above all in that _naïveté_ which is the

chief merit of narration, and the peculiar charm of the Italian tongue.

Unfortunately Boccaccio did not prescribe to himself the same purity in

his images as in his phraseology. The character of his work is light and

sportive. He has inserted in it a great number of tales of gallantry;

he has exhausted his powers of ridicule on the duped husband, on the

depraved and depraving monks, and on subjects, in morals and religious

worship, which he himself regarded as sacred; and his reputation is thus

little in harmony with the real tenor of his conduct. The _Decameron_

was published towards the middle of the fourteenth century (in 1352 or

1353), when Boccaccio was at least thirty-nine years of age; and from the

first discovery of printing, was freely circulated in Italy, until the

Council of Trent proscribed it in the middle of the sixteenth century. At

the solicitation of the grand duke of Tuscany, and after two remarkable

negotiations between this prince and popes Pius V and Sixtus V, the

_Decameron_ was again published, in 1573 and 1582, purified and corrected.

Many of the tales of Boccaccio appear to be borrowed from popular

recitation, or from real occurrences. We trace the originals of several,

in the ancient French _fabliaux_; of some, in the Italian collection of

the _Centi Novelli_; and of others, again, in an Indian romance, which

passed through all the languages of the East, and of which a Latin

translation appeared as early as the twelfth century, under the name of

_Dolopathos_, or _The King and the Seven Wise Men_. Invention, in this

class of writing, is not less rare than in every other; and the same

tales, probably, which Boccaccio had collected in the gay courts of

princes, or in the squares of the cities of Italy, have been repeated to

us anew in all the various languages of Europe. They have been versified

by the early poets of France and England, and have afforded reputation

to three or four imitators of Boccaccio. But, if Boccaccio cannot boast

of being the inventor of these tales, he may still claim the creation

of this class of letters. Before his time, tales were only subjects

of social mirth. He was the first to transport them into the world of

letters; and, by the elegance of his diction, the just harmony of all

the parts of his subject, and the charm of his narration, he superadded

the more refined gratifications of language and of art, to the simpler

delight afforded by the old narrators.

It is unnecessary to speak here of Boccaccio’s other Italian works,

beyond naming his romances _Fiammetta_ and _Filocopo_, and his heroic

poems _La Teseide_ and _Filostrato_. The Latin compositions of Boccaccio

are voluminous, and materially contributed, at the time they were

written, to the advancement of letters. The most celebrated of these

works are two treatises; the one on the genealogy of the gods, and

the other on mountains, forests, and rivers. In the first, he gave

an exposition of the ancient mythology; and in the second, rectified

many errors in geography. These two works have fallen into neglect,

since the discovery of manuscripts then unknown, and in consequence

of the facilities which the art of printing, by opening new sources,

has afforded to the study of antiquity. In the age in which they were

composed, they were, however, equally remarkable for their extensive

information and for the clearness of their arrangement; but the style

is by no means so pure and elegant as that of Petrarch. But, while the

claim to celebrity, in these great men, is restricted to the Italian

poetry of Petrarch and to the novels of Boccaccio, our gratitude to them

is founded on stronger grounds. They felt more sensibly than any other

men that enthusiasm for the beauties of antiquity, without which we in

vain strive to appreciate its treasures; and they each devoted a long and

laborious life to the discovery and the study of ancient manuscripts.

The most valued works of the ancients were at that time buried among

the archives of convents, scattered at great distances, incorrect and

incomplete, without tables of contents or marginal notes. Nor did those

resources then exist, which printing supplies, for the perusal of works

with which we are not familiar; and the facilities which are afforded by

previous study, or the collation of the originals with each other, were

equally wanting. It must have required a powerful intellect to discover,

in a manuscript of Cicero, for example, without title or commencement,

the full meaning of the author, the period at which he wrote, and other

circumstances, which are connected with his subject; to correct the

numerous errors of the copyists; to supply the chasms, which, frequently

occurring at the beginning and the end, left neither title nor divisions

nor conclusions, nor anything that might serve as a clew for the perusal;

in short, to determine how one manuscript, discovered at Heidelberg,

should perfect another, discovered at Naples. It was, in fact, by long

and painful journeys that the scholars of those days equipped themselves

for this task. The copying a manuscript, with the necessary degree of

accuracy, was a work of great labour and expense. A collection of three

or four hundred volumes was, at that time, considered an extensive

library; and a scholar was frequently compelled to seek, at a great

distance, the completion of a work, commenced under his own roof.

Petrarch and Boccaccio, in their frequent travels, obtained copies of

such classics as they found in their route. Among other objects, Petrarch

proposed to himself to collect all the works of Cicero; in which he

succeeded after a lapse of many years. Boccaccio, with a true love of

letters, introduced the study of the Greek to the Italians, not only

with the view of securing the interests of commerce or of science, but

of enriching their minds, and extending their researches to the other

half of the ancient world of letters, which had, till then, remained

hidden from his contemporaries. He founded, in Florence, a chair for

the teaching of the Greek language; and he himself invited thither, and

installed as professor, Leontius Pilatus, one of the most learned Greeks

of Constantinople. He received him into his own house, although he was

a man of a morose and disagreeable temper; placed him at his table, as

long as this professor could be induced to remain at Florence; inscribed

himself among the first of his scholars, and procured at his own expense,

from Greece, the manuscripts, which were thus distributed in Florence,

and which served as subjects for the lectures of Leontius Pilatus.

For the instruction of those days consisted in the public delivery of

lectures with commentaries, and a book, of which there perhaps existed

only a single copy, sufficed for some thousand scholars.

LESSER CONTEMPORARIES OF PETRARCH AND BOCCACCIO

There is an infinite space between the three great men whose works we

have just enumerated, and even the most esteemed of their contemporaries;

and, though these latter have preserved, until the present day, a

considerable reputation, yet we shall only pause to notice their

existence, and the epoch to which they belong. Perhaps the most

remarkable are the three Florentine historians of the name of Villani.

Giovanni, the eldest, who died in the first plague, in 1348; Matteo, his

brother, who died in the second plague, in 1361; and Filippo, the son

of Matteo, who continued the work of his father to the year 1364, and

who wrote a history of the literature of Florence, the first attempt of

this kind in modern times. Two poets of this age shared with Petrarch

the honours of a poetic coronation: Zanobi di Strada, whom the emperor

Charles IV crowned at Pisa in 1355, with great pomp, but whose verses

have not reached us; and Coluccio Salutati, secretary of the Florentine

Republic, one of the purest Latinists, and most eloquent statesmen whom

Italy in that age produced. The latter, indeed, did not live to enjoy the

honour which had been accorded him by the emperor, at the request of the

Florentines. Coluccio died in 1406, at the age of seventy-six, before the

day appointed for his coronation, and the symbol of glory was deposited

on his tomb; as, at a subsequent period, a far more illustrious crown was

placed on the tomb of Tasso.

Of the prose writers of Tuscany, Franco Sacchetti, born at Florence about

the year 1335, and who died before the end of the century, after filling

some of the first offices in the republic, approaches the nearest to

Boccaccio. He imitated Boccaccio in his novels, and Petrarch in his lyric

poems; but the latter were never printed, while of his tales there have

been several editions. Whatever praise be due to the purity and eloquence

of his style, we find his pages more valuable as a history of the manners

of the age, than attractive for their powers of amusement, even when the

author thinks himself most successful. His 258 tales consist, almost

entirely, of the incidents of his own time, and of his own neighbourhood;

domestic anecdotes, which in general contain little humour; tricks,

exhibiting little skill, and jests of little point; and we are often

surprised to find a professed jester vanquished by the smart reply of a

child or a clown, which scarcely deserves our attention. After reading

these tales, we cannot help concluding that the art of conversation had

not made, in the fourteenth century, an equal progress with the other

arts; and that the great men, to whom we owe so many excellent works,

were not so entertaining in the social intercourse of life as many

persons greatly their inferiors in merit.

Two poets of this time, of some celebrity, chose Dante for their

model, and composed after him in _terza rima_, long allegories, partly

descriptive, partly scientific. Fazio de’ Uberti, in his _Dettamondo_,

undertook the description of the universe, of which the different parts,

personified in turns, relate their history. Federigo Frezzi, bishop of

Foligno, who died in 1416, at the Council of Constance, has, in his

_Quadriregio_, described the four empires of Love, Satan, Virtue, and

Vice. In both of these poets we meet, occasionally, with lines not

unworthy of Dante; but they formed a very false estimate of the works of

genius, when they regarded the _Divina Commedia_ not as an individual

poem, but as a species of poetry which anyone might attempt.

The passionate study of the ancients, of which Petrarch and Boccaccio had

given an example, suspended, in an extraordinary manner, the progress of

Italian literature, and retarded the perfection of that tongue. Italy,

after having produced her three leading classics, sank, for a century,

into inaction. In this period, indeed, erudition made wonderful progress;

and knowledge became much more general, but sterile in its effects. The

mind had preserved all its activity, and literary fame all its splendour;

but the unintermitted study of the ancients had precluded all originality

in the authors. Instead of perfecting a new language, and enriching

it with works in unison with modern manners and ideas, they confined

themselves to a servile copy of the ancients. A too scrupulous imitation

thus destroyed the spirit of invention; and the most eminent scholars may

be said to have produced, in their eloquent writings, little more than

college themes. In proportion as a man was qualified by his rank, or by

his talents, to acquire a name in literature, he blushed to cultivate

his mother-tongue. He almost, indeed, forced himself to forget it, to

avoid the danger of corrupting his Latin style; and the common people

thus remained the only depositaries of a language which had exhibited

so brilliant a dawn, and which had now again almost relapsed into

barbarism.[e]

ART IN THE THIRTEENTH AND FOURTEENTH CENTURIES

Turning from literature to the not distantly related field of art, let us

glance at some of the tentative efforts which prepared the way for the

succession of Florentine masters that were presently to take the lead in

this field and hold it for some centuries.

The Renaissance, that is, the resurrection, in the beginning of the

fifteenth century, of ideas and forms of classic antiquity, was preceded

by individual efforts which, though often failing to reach the mark,

ought to be taken account of in the history of this great revolution.

The plastic memories of the Græco-Roman world have played in the

preoccupation of the Middle Ages a more considerable rôle than is

usually thought. Mere force of events put our ancestors in the presence

of ancient _chefs-d’œuvre_, and they had to look at them whether they

would or not. Some saw in them only idolatrous monuments, and have

found fault with them as such. Others attributed to them magic virtues;

some have given themselves up to the admiration they felt in looking

at the immensity of Roman ruins, the richness of early materials, the

perfection of the handiwork. These latter, it might be affirmed, are the

most numerous. Even during the most sombre period of the Middle Ages, all

Europe felt the fascination that Rome, the oldest city _par excellence_,

exercised for twenty centuries. That which attracted from far and near

thousands of visitors to the banks of the Tiber was not only the promise

of indulgencies, a desire to pray on the tomb of martyrs, to contemplate

basilics resplendent with gold and precious stones, but also memories

left by the cæsars.

After having heard with a kind of incredulity the marvels of this

incomparable city, one is further amazed by the number of its temples,

palaces, baths, and amphitheatres. Have not reliable authors told us that

she lately possessed thirty-six triumphal arches, twenty-eight libraries,

856 public baths, twenty-two equestrian statues in gilded bronze,

eighty-four of the same in ivory, obelisks, and innumerable colossi?

[Illustration: DOORWAY, PALAZZO VECCHIO, FLORENCE]

From the twelfth century popular imagination laid hold of these pictures,

transforming and amplifying them. Wondrous tales became current and were

incorporated in works received as authoritative--the _Descriptis plenaria

Votius Urbis_, the _Graphia aurea urbis Romæ_, and lastly the _Mirabilia

civitatis Romæ_. Again at the end of the fifteenth century the valiant

Charles VIII, wanting to give his subjects some idea of the town into

which he had lately entered lance in hand, caused one of these records of

another age to be translated for them. A few extracts will show with what

strong faith these stories worthy of _The Thousand and One Nights_ were

received before the Renaissance:

“Inside the capital was the greater part of a golden palace adorned

with precious stones and said to equal the third part of the world,

in which there were as many statues of images as there are provinces

in all the world. Each image had a tambourine round its neck, placed

with mathematical art, so that if any region was in rebellion against

the Romans, immediately the image of the province turned its back to

the image of the city of Rome, which was the largest and dominated the

others, and the tambourine at its neck sounded. Then immediately the

Capitol guards told this to the senate, and people were forthwith sent to

expugn that province.

“The horses and nude men denote that in the time of the emperor Tiberius

there were two young philosophers, that is, Praxiteles and Phitas, who

said they were so wise that anything the emperor said in his room,

they not being there, could report word for word. And they did as they

said, not demanding money for it, but to be always remembered, so the

philosophers have two marble horses with their feet on the ground, which

denote the princes of this century. And they who are naked on the horses

denote that their arm, high and held out, and their bent backs speak of

things to come, and as they are naked, so the science of this world was

naked and open to their understanding.”

From admiration to imitation is only one step. Artists in their turn

went to work and took without scruple from what was a common heritage.

Doubtless many of these borrowings are unconscious or really only show

up the immense inferiority of the copyist. But is the influence of

the antique less striking? One must recall in this order of ideas the

splendid creations of architects in the Roman period--the duomo, the

campanile, and the baptistery of Pisa, the baptistery of Florence,

and the basilica of San Miniato, the duomo of Lucca, and so many

_chefs-d’œuvre_ raised according to principles that innovators of the

following age, the champions of Gothic style, were so audaciously to

trample underfoot.

Nicholas Crescentius (son of the celebrated tribune) in the eleventh

century, impelled by a desire to renew the ancient splendour of Rome,

had the elegant little house at Ponte Rotto built of antique fragments.

Similarly the emperor Frederick Barbarossa (1121-1190) had these

former glories in mind, when he had graven on his seal a view of Rome

with the Colosseum. But it was to his illustrious grandson Frederick

II (1184-1250) that the honour is due of first pleading the cause of

the Renaissance, and he should rightly be placed at the head of the

precursors. We possess numerous witnesses of his love for the monuments

of ancient art.

Now we see him striking _Augustales_, those curious imitations of Roman

imperial money, bearing on one side an effigy crowned with laurels, with

the epigraph AVG. IMP. ROM. and draped in the fashion of the cæsars; on

the reverse an eagle with outspread wings with the epigraph FREDERICVS.

Again he buys for a considerable sum (230 oz. of gold) an onyx cup and

other curiosities. From Grotta Ferrata he takes away two bronzes, statues

of a man and of a cow serving for a fountain, and carries them to Lucera.

The church of St. Michael of Ravenna furnishes the monolithic columns he

requires for his buildings at Palermo. Near Augusta in Sicily, he caused

excavations to be made in the hope of discovering ancient remains. Once,

it is true, yielding to urgent necessity he had several Roman monuments

at Brindisi destroyed that he might use the materials in constructing a

citadel. He tried just as he was departing for Palestine to make the town

safe from any attacks, but political reasons outweighed his antiquarian

scruples.

The work dreamed of by Frederick II as amateur was realised by his

contemporary Nicholas of Pisa (1207?-1278) who, in the thirteenth

century, held imitation of the antique as a principle, and used it as

a mirror by which nature might be the more clearly shown. His attempt

seems prodigious to us to-day; it supposes a power of initiative which

Giotto, Brunelleschi, Donatello, and Van Eyck have hardly equalled.

Imitation with him was not confined to accessories--ornaments, costumes,

armour--nor to types, nor to proportions of figures, which are all

stumpy, as in the Roman sarcophagi of the decadence. The spirit of his

work recalls ancient models.

“Nicholas,” says M. Gebhardt,[n] “in the pulpits of Pisa and Siena,

and in the shrine of San Dominico at Bologna, recalls the traditions

of a great art with a naïve gravity and assured taste. He is hardly a

neo-Greek or a superstitious antiquary, but is imbued with the most

generous principles of antique sculpture--the harmonious ordering of the

scenes, the skilful employ of space where many persons move in a narrow

frame, the majestic tranquillity of pose, the finely ordered draperies,

the noble heads. But his eye and hand still express the fashion of

primitive sculpture; the movements express awkward timidity, the faces

are sometimes heavy. He gives an impression of Roman work at the end

of the empire. Nicholas of Pisa (Niccolo Pisano), if he discovered and

studied the Greek, did not renounce nature, and, in his best pieces, he

has returned to a study of life. It is in this that he shows himself an

intelligent disciple of the ancients. Apart from Nicholas of Pisa, the

Italian masters each put their own personality in the antique; none were

servile copyists, and it is Nicholas, the first and consequently the

least learned, whose chisel has left the most instructive reminiscences.”

One of the most noted pupils and collaborators of Nicholas, Brother

Guglielmo of Pisa (born about 1238, died after 1313), was inspired with

like principles, but not so strongly. In the pulpit of San Giovanni

Fuorcivitas at Pistoia, he has succeeded better than his master, in

reconciling pagan reminiscences with Christian ideas.

The historic sentiment is one of the distinctive traits of the school

of Nicholas of Pisa. It has recourse not only to antique marbles as

models of style, but to documents as well. Whilst, in the fourteenth

and fifteenth centuries, painters and sculptors gave the costume of the

period to sacred characters, their predecessors of the thirteenth century

tried to restore, aided by archæology, the costumes of Christ and his

family, the apostles, martyrs, as absolutely as did the Renaissance

champions two hundred years later. Fra Guglielmo has pushed these

scruples very far; his apostles wear the toga, tunic, and sandals, and

hold a rolled volume in the hand.

In the _Descent of the Holy Ghost_ he seeks, moreover, faithfully to

reproduce the types of the primitive church, above all in the figures of

St. Peter, St. Paul, and St. John. As with the sculptors of sarcophagi

in Rome, Milan, and the south of France, there is a complete absence of

nimbi, showing to what extent Nicholas of Pisa and his like disdained

mediæval tradition, at least as regards types, costumes, and attributes.

In the scene just mentioned one remarks also the grouping of the

apostles. They are placed in two ranks, one behind the other, just as in

a curious mosaic in the chapel of St. Aguilino (church of St. Lawrence

at Milan). An arrangement differing very little is found in another

bas-relief on the pulpit--that is, Christ washing the disciples’ feet.

The women’s dresses deserve special mention. In the _Annunciation_ and

_Visitation_, Mary and Elizabeth have the head half covered with a fold

of their mantle so as to expose the forehead and the greater part of the

hair. They might be Roman matrons.

In his quality as a member of the order of St. Dominican, Fra Guglielmo

had more than once to reprove the too pagan tendencies of his master.

The position of another disciple of Nicholas, Arnolfo of Cambio (died in

1310), the architect of the dome of Florence, was not less delicate, but

for other reasons. One is surprised to see this master, the promoter of

a style departing so singularly from antique tradition, returning to the

latter when he exchanges the builder’s compass for the sculptor’s chisel.

Let us hasten to add that the departure is not so great as one might

think. In his tomb of the cardinal of Braye at Orvieto, Arnolfo has known

how to give the Virgin a serene majesty, a simplicity which does not lack

grandeur, without pushing imitation as far as his master. He shows still

more entire independence in the tabernacle of St. Paul beyond the walls,

near Rome. If one did not know Arnolfo to have been Nicholas’ disciple,

it would be difficult to imagine it in looking at this hybrid monument.[i]

Without attempting even to name the other lesser schools of sculpture and

of architecture that were beginning to make their influence felt, let us

turn to culminating artistic achievements of the epoch, as represented in

the work of the great Florentines Cimabue and Giotto.

_The Tuscan School of Painters_

It is an undisputed fact that the revival of painting, like that of

sculpture, commenced in Tuscany. It is equally certain that about the

middle of the thirteenth century, or a little later, which is the point

at which improvement first manifested itself, the prevailing style was

the Byzantine, introduced by Greek artists from Constantinople. But it

has not by any means been clearly discerned wherein the peculiarities of

that style consisted; and it has been usually assumed that it was a rude

and defective manner which, as the first step in advance, the Italian

painters had to discard. Materials are extant which justify a different

conclusion, and evince that the introduction of this foreign taste, gross

and faulty as it was, truly formed the first stage in improvement.

From the ninth century till the middle of the thirteenth, painting among

the Byzantine artists differed from contemporary Italian works in several

important particulars. In both quarters art was timidly imitative; but in

the Eastern Empire the models from which it borrowed were more various

than in the West, and the execution was usually better; the fashion

of the drapery and ornament had a peculiar character of semi-oriental

barbarism; and, while in both countries the drawing of the figure was

generally bad, the common tendency of the Greeks was to lengthen it

disproportionally, and that of the Italians to represent it as short

and squab. But the most palpable distinctions were two in the technical

treatment. First, in the oldest Italian paintings the vehicle of the

colours is transparent, and the tone is therefore light and clear; in

the works from Constantinople the tone is dark and yellowish, being

produced by the use of some colouring matter which, if modern chemists

have rightly analysed it, was wax. The second difference was this--that

the Greeks, besides ornamenting their draperies richly with gilding,

surrounded their figures with a golden ground; a barbarous practice,

of which the oldest Italian works exhibit no trace. In those early

productions of the thirteenth century, where we can trace the first

ameliorations of art, we discover most, or all, of these peculiarities

derived from the Greek style; some of them prevailed very long; and the

most objectionable, the flaunting ground, was not entirely discarded even

in the time of Raffaelle.

[Illustration: CAMPANILE OF GIOTTO, FLORENCE]

The oldest name celebrated in Italian painting is that of Cimabue,

who, born about 1240, died in 1300. On the strength of his merit the

Florentines claim the glory of having resuscitated art--a pretension

which the school of Siena seems to have some right, in the person of

Duccio, to contest with them. The works of Cimabue were Byzantine,

in their style, in their colouring, and in their blaze of gold; and

tradition says that he was taught in his youth by Greek artists. He

improved, it is true, upon that school; but, though everything regarding

him is obscure, there is no sufficient reason for believing that his

improvement consisted in any departure from its principles. To him are

commonly assigned some ill-preserved fresco paintings in the church of

St. Francis at Assisi, which at all events give an idea of the masters

from whom he learned; but his boldness and loftiness of conception are

more clearly evinced by two rudely grand figures of Madonnas on wood,

both at Florence, the more celebrated of the two in the church of Santa

Maria Novella, the other in the Ducal Gallery.

[Illustration: FROM A PAINTING BY GIOTTO]

To this great artist succeeds the Florentine Giotto (1276-1336), whose

history and works are somewhat better known. The Italian novelists have

preserved anecdotes of his wealth, his ugliness, and his profane wit.

The story which describes him as a shepherd boy, discovered by Cimabue

drawing rude figures on a stone, is perhaps too picturesque to be true;

and his undoubted pieces display a marked dissimilarity in spirit to

those of his alleged teacher, while they deviate also from the Byzantine

style in colouring, if in nothing else, having a clear rosy hue which

indicates a return to the older Italian method, though it is also an

improvement on it. In the theory of his art, however, Giotto departed

essentially from all his predecessors. When we combine the criticisms

of the older writers with the few pictures which still can be certainly

or probably identified as his, we may describe his characteristics

as consisting in an attempt, made under manifold difficulties, but

attended with surprising success, to establish, instead of the rude,

vague, devotional loftiness of Cimabue, a beauty derived from a closer

observation of life, as well as enlivened by a better and less formal

expression of ordinary human feeling. His only existing work, which is

ascertained by a genuine inscription, is one in the church of the Santa

Croce in Florence, containing five divisions, of which that in the

centre represents the Saviour crowning the Virgin. The gallery of the

Florentine Accademia delle Arti contains some small compositions of his,

representing, in a fashion half religious and half comic, events from

the history of St. Francis. Frescoes in the upper church of that saint

at Assisi, assigned to Giotto by some critics, have been pronounced

by others to be inferior, and unlike his genuine remains; but others

on the vaulted roof of the subterranean part of the same building are

undoubtedly his, and resemble the pieces of the academy both in execution

and in spirit. Other pictures laying claim to his name occur in various

galleries throughout Italy as well as elsewhere.[e]

Notwithstanding all the enthusiasm that has been bestowed upon the

paintings of Giotto, it must frankly be admitted that these are to be

regarded as remarkable only when viewed in relation to the art of the

time in which they were produced. To extol them as masterpieces according

to the standards that were developed by the later Florentines would be to

throw criticism to the winds. But the architectural efforts of Giotto may

be praised with less reserve. The Campanile of Florence has aroused the

enthusiasm of most critics who have viewed it; Ruskin[k] declares that

“of living Christian works, none is so perfect as the tower of Giotto.”

The same writer speaks with equal enthusiasm of Giotto’s work in another

field: “Of representations of human art under heavenly guidance,” he

says, “the series of bas-reliefs which stud the base of this tower of

Giotto must be held certainly the chief in Europe. Read but these inlaid

jewels of Giotto once with patient following, and your hour’s study

will give you strength for all your life.” This may be held by colder

criticism to be an over-enthusiastic estimate, but few who have come

under the spell of the Campanile will wish to modify the eloquent words

in which Ruskin characterises that structure as a whole.[a]

_Ruskin’s Estimate of Giotto’s Tower_

“The characteristics of power and beauty,” he says, “occur more or

less in different buildings, some in one and some in another. But all

together, and all in their highest possible relative degrees, they exist,

as far as I know, only in one building in the world, the Campanile of

Giotto. In its first appeal to the stranger’s eye there is something

unpleasing--a mingling, as it seems to him, of over-severity with

over-minuteness. But let him give it time, as he should to all other

consummate art. I well remember how, when a boy, I used to despise that

Campanile, and think it meanly smooth and finished. But I have since

lived beside it many a day, and looked out upon it from my windows by

sunlight and moonlight, and I shall not soon forget how profound and

gloomy appeared to me the savageness of the northern Gothic, when I

afterwards stood, for the first time, beneath the front of Salisbury.

The contrast is indeed strange if it could be quickly felt, between

the rising of those gray walls out of their quiet swarded space, like

dark and barren rocks out of a green lake, with their rude, mouldering,

rough-grained shafts and triple lights, without tracery or other ornament

than the martins’ nests in the height of them, and that bright, smooth,

sunny surface of glowing jasper, those spiral shafts and fairy traceries,

so white, so faint, so crystalline, that their slight shapes are hardly

traced in darkness on the pallor of the eastern sky, that serene height

of mountain alabaster, coloured like a morning cloud and chased like

a sea-shell. And if this be, as I believe it, the model and mirror of

perfect architecture, is there not something to be learned by looking

back to the early life of him who raised it? I said that the power of

human mind had its growth in the wilderness; much more must the love and

the conception of that beauty, whose every line and hue we have seen to

be, at the best, a faded image of God’s daily work, and an arrested ray

of some star or creation, be given chiefly in the places which he has

gladdened by planting there the fir-tree and the pine. Not within the

walls of Florence, but among the far-away fields of her lilies, was the

child trained who was to raise that headstone of beauty above her towers

of watch and war. Remember all that he became; count the sacred thoughts

with which he filled the heart of Italy; ask those who followed him what

they learned at his feet; and when you have numbered his labours and

received their testimony, if it seem to you that God had verily poured

out upon this his servant no common nor restrained portion of his spirit,

and that he was indeed a king among the children of men, remember also

that the legend upon his crown was that of David’s: ‘I took thee from the

sheep-cote and from following the sheep.’”[k]

FOOTNOTES

[13] 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.

[14] There was a comic poet named Plato.

[Illustration]

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