Roderigo, the son of Giuffredo (or Alfonso) Lenzuoli and Juana (or
Isabella) Borgia, a sister of Pope Calixtus III, by whom the youth was
adopted and whose surname he assumed. He was elected pope in 1492
through bribery, and while striving to increase the temporal power of
the Church, directed his chief efforts towards the establishment of a
great hereditary dominion for his family. Of his five children, two
(Cesare and Lucrezia) played important parts in his plan. In 1495 he
joined the league which forced Charles VIII to retire from Italy,
although it had been partly at his instigation that the French invaded
the peninsula. In 1498 Savonarola was burned at Florence by his orders.
In 1501 he instituted the ecclesiastical censorship of books. He is
believed to have died from accidentally taking a poison designed by him
for a rich cardinal whose possessions he wished to seize. His private
life was disgraced by orgies, of which the details are unfit for
repetition. His contemporary Machiavelli says: “His entire occupation,
his only thought, was deception, and he always found victims. Never was
there a man with more effrontery in assertion, more ready to add oaths
to his promises, or to break them.” While Sismondi terms him “the most
odious, the most publicly scandalous, and the most wicked of all the
miscreants who ever misused sacred authority to outrage and degrade
mankind.”
[Illustration:
FERDINAND II OF NAPLES
1469?-1496
]
From Alinari’s photograph (no. 11305) of an anonymous bronze bust in the
National Museum at Naples.
Note 34 page 10. Pope JULIUS II, (born 1443; died 1513), was Giuliano,
the second son of Raffaele della Rovere (only brother of Pope Sixtus IV)
and Teodora Menerola. Made a cardinal soon after his uncle’s election,
he was loaded with sees and offices, including the legateship of Picene
and Avignon, which latter occasioned his prolonged absence from Italy
and afforded him an escape from the wiles of his inveterate enemy
Alexander VI. The outrages with which Alexander sought to punish his
sturdy opposition to the scandals of the Borgian court, aroused in him a
fierceness of spirit that was alien to the seeming mildness of his early
character and became the bane of his own pontificate. His younger
brother Giovanni married a sister of Duke Guidobaldo, a union that
cemented the friendship between the two families and furnished the Duchy
of Urbino an heir in the person of Francesco Maria della Rovere. When
Julius engaged Michelangelo to design his tomb, the old basilica of St.
Peter’s was found too small to contain it, whereupon the pontiff is said
to have decreed that a new church be built to receive it, and blessed
the laying of the first stone shortly before setting out on his campaign
against Bologna in 1506. In 1508 he formed the League of Cambray for the
recovery of certain papal fiefs appropriated by Venice at the time of
Cesare Borgia’s downfall, and in 1511 the so-called Holy League for the
expulsion of the French from Italy. Italian unity was the unavowed but
real goal at which his policy aimed.
Although a munificent patron of art and letters, Julius was frugal and
severe,—a man of action rather than a scholar or theologian. In giving
Michelangelo directions for the huge bronze statue at Bologna, he said:
“Put a sword in my hand; of letters I know nothing.” Another of his
reported sayings is: “If we are not ourselves pious, why should we
prevent others from being so?”
Note 35 page 10. Although unexpressed in the original, the word
‘learned’ seems necessary to complete the obvious meaning of the
passage.
From his tutor Odasio of Padua, we learn that in his boyhood Guidobaldo
was even for the time exceptionally fond of study. He could repeat whole
treatises by heart ten years after reading them, and never forgot what
he resolved to retain. Besides his classical attainments, he appreciated
the Italian poets, and showed peculiar aptitude for philosophy and
history.
Note 36 page 10. The Italian _piacevolezza_ conveys somewhat the same
suggestion of humour which the word ‘pleasantness’ carried with it to
the English of Elizabeth’s time, and which still survives in our
‘pleasantry.’
Note 37 page 11. EMILIA PIA, (died 1528), was the youngest daughter of
Marco Pio, one of the lords of Carpi. Her brother Giberto married a
natural daughter of Cardinal Ippolito d'Este (see note 64), while her
cousin Alberto Pio (1475-1530) was the pupil and became the patron and
financial supporter of the scholar-printer Aldus Manutius. In 1487 she
was married very young to the studious Count Antonio di Montefeltro (a
natural half-brother of Duke Guidobaldo), who left her a widow in 1500.
She resided at Urbino and became the trusted and inseparable companion
of the Duchess Elisabetta, whom she accompanied on journeys and in
exile, ever faithful in misfortune and sorrow. In the duchess’s
testament she was named as legatee and executrix. She seems to have died
without the sacraments of the Church, while discussing passages of the
newly published COURTIER with Count Ludovico Canossa. The part taken by
her in these dialogues evinces the charm of her winning manners as well
as her possession of a variety of knowledge and graceful accomplishment
rare even in that age of womanly genius. Always ready to lead or second
the learned and sportive pastimes by which the court circle of Urbino
gave zest to their intercourse and polish to their wit, she was of
infinite service to the duchess, whose own acquirements were of a less
brilliant kind.
Note 38 page 11. It may be doubted whether the duchess’s influence
always availed to secure what we should now regard as decorous behaviour
at her court, and in an earlier draft of THE COURTIER Castiglione
allowed himself a freedom, not to say licence, of expression singularly
in contrast with the general tone of the version published.
Note 39 page 12. The duchess and her husband were expelled from their
dominions by Cesare Borgia in 1502, and again in 1516 she was compelled
to leave Urbino for a longer time, when Leo X seized the duchy for his
nephew Lorenzo de' Medici. Her conduct on these occasions showed rare
fortitude and dignity.
Note 40 page 12. These devices, so much in vogue during the 16th century
in Italy, were the “inventions” which Giovio (a contemporary writer upon
the subject) says “the great lords and noble cavaliers of our time like
to wear on their armour, caparisons and banners, to signify a part of
their generous thoughts.” They consisted of a figure or picture, and a
motto nearly always in Latin. The fashion is said to have been copied
from the French at the time of the invasions of Charles VIII and Louis
XII.
Note 41 page 12. FEDERICO FREGOSO, (born 1480; died 1541), was a younger
brother of Ottaviano (see note 11), and was educated for holy orders
under the direction of his uncle Duke Guidobaldo, at whose court he also
perfected himself in worldly accomplishments. In 1507 Julius II made him
Archbishop of Salerno, in the kingdom of Naples, but, owing to his
supposed French sympathies, he was not allowed to enjoy this benefice,
and the next year was put in charge of the bishopric of Gubbio. In the
same year he was sent by Julius with the latter’s physician to attend
Duke Guidobaldo’s death-bed, but arrived too late. During the nine years
that followed his brother’s election as Doge of Genoa (1513), he by
turns commanded the army of the Republic, led her fleet against the
Barbary pirates (whom he routed in their own harbours), and represented
her at the papal court. During the Spanish siege of Genoa in 1522, he
escaped to France, was warmly received by Francis I, and made Abbot of
St. Bénigne at Dijon, where he devoted himself to theological study. In
1528 he returned to Italy and was appointed to the see of Gubbio. His
piety and zeal for the welfare of his flock won for him the title of
“father to the poor and refuge of the distressed.” In 1539 he was made a
cardinal, and two years later died at Gubbio, being succeeded in that
see by his friend Bembo. After his death, a discourse of his on prayer
happening to be reprinted together with a work by Luther, he was for a
time erroneously supposed to have been heretical. He was a profound
student of Hebrew, and an appreciative collector of Provençal poetry.
His own writings are chiefly doctrinal, and his reputation rests rather
upon his friends’ praise of his wit, gentleness, personal
accomplishments and learning, than upon the present value of his extant
works.
Note 42 page 12. PIETRO BEMBO, (born at Venice 1470; died at Rome 1547),
was the son of a noble Venetian, Bernardo Bembo (a man of much
cultivation, who paid for the restoration of Dante’s tomb at Ravenna),
and Elena Marcella. Having received his early education at Florence,
where his father was Venetian ambassador, he studied Greek at Messina
under Lascaris (a native of Hellas, whose grammar of that tongue was the
first Greek book ever printed, 1476), and philosophy at Padua and
Ferrara, where his father was Venetian envoy and introduced him to the
Este court. Here he became acquainted with Lucrezia Borgia, who had
recently wedded Duke Ercole’s son Alfonso, and to whom he dedicated his
dialogues on love, _Gli Asolani_. By some writers indeed he is said to
have been her lover, but the report is hardly confirmed by the character
of the letters exchanged between the two, 1503-1516. Having been
entertained at Urbino in 1505, he spent the larger part of the next six
years at that court, where he profited by the fine library, delighted in
many congenial spirits, and became the close friend of Giuliano de'
Medici, who took him to Rome in 1512 and recommended him to the future
pope, Leo X. On attaining the tiara, Leo at once appointed him and his
friend Sadoleto (see note 242) papal secretaries, an office for which
his learning and courtly accomplishments well fitted him. His laxity of
morals and his paganism were no disqualification in the eyes of the
pope, whom he served also in several diplomatic missions, and from whom
he received benefices and pensions sufficient to enrich him for life. In
1518 his friend Castiglione sent him the MS. of THE COURTIER, requesting
him to “take the trouble ... to read it either wholly or in part,” and
to give his opinion of it. Ten years later, when the book was printed,
it was Bembo to whom the proofs were sent for correction, the author
being absent in Spain. Even before the death of Leo X in 1521, Bembo had
entered upon a life of literary retirement at Padua, where his library
and art collection, as well as the learned society that he drew about
him, rendered his house famous. Nor was it less esteemed by reason of
the presence, at its head, of an avowed mistress (Morosina), who bore
him several children. After her death, he devoted himself to theology,
entered holy orders, reluctantly accepted a cardinal’s hat in 1539, and
in 1541 succeeded his friend Fregoso in the bishopric of Gubbio, to
which was added that of Bergamo. His death was occasioned by a fall from
his horse, and he was buried at Rome in the Minerva church, between his
patrons Leo X and Clement VII. His works are noteworthy less for their
substance than for the refining influence exerted by their form. He is
said to have subjected all his writings to sixteen (some say forty)
separate revisions, and a legend survives to the effect that he advised
a young cleric (Sadoleto) to avoid reading the Epistles of St. Paul,
lest they might mar the youth’s style. His numerous private and official
letters have preserved many valuable facts and furnish interesting
illustration of contemporary manners and character. Humboldt praises him
as the first Italian author to write attractive descriptions of natural
scenery, and cites especially his dialogue on Mt. Ætna.
[Illustration:
GIACOMO SADOLETO
1477-1547
]
Head enlarged from a photograph, specially made by Alinari, of a part of
the fresco, “Leo X's Entry into Florence,” in the Palazzo Vecchio at
Florence, by Giorgio Vasari (1511-1574). See Milanesi’s edition of
Vasari’s _Opere_, viii, 142. The chief facts of his life are given
in note 242, at page 369 of this volume.
Note 43 page 12. CESARE GONZAGA, (born about 1475; died 1512), was a
native of Mantua, being descended from a younger branch of the ruling
family of that city, and a cousin of Castiglione, with whom he
maintained a close friendship. His father’s name was Giampietro, and he
had a brother Luigi. Having received a courtly and martial education at
Milan, and after spending some time with his relatives at Mantua, he
entered the service of Duke Guidobaldo of Urbino. In 1504 he shared
Castiglione’s lodgings after their return from a campaign against Cesare
Borgia’s strongholds in Romagna, and in the carnival of 1506 they
together recited Castiglione’s eclogue _Tirsi_, in the authorship of
which he is by some credited with a part. A graceful canzonet, preserved
in Atanagi’s _Rime Scelte_, attests his skill in versification. On
Guidobaldo’s death in 1508, the two friends remained in the service of
the new duke, Francesco Maria. In 1511 Cesare fought bravely against the
French at Mirandola, and the next year took part in the reduction of
Bologna, where he soon died of an acute fever. Little more is known of
him, beyond the fact that he was a knight of St. John of Jerusalem, that
Leo X sent him on a mission to Charles V of Spain, and that he was among
the many friends of the famous Isabella d'Este (see note 397).
Note 44 page 12. Count LUDOVICO DA CANOSSA, (born 1476; died 1532),
belonged to a noble Veronese family (still honourably extant), and was a
close friend of Castiglione and a cousin of the latter’s mother. His
boyhood was passed at Mantua, and his happiest years at Urbino, where he
was received in 1496. In the pontificate of Julius II he went to Rome,
and was made Bishop of Tricarico, in southern Italy, 1511. Under Leo X
he was entrusted with several embassies, one of which (1514) was to
England to reconcile Henry VIII with Louis XII, and another (1515) was
to the new French king, Francis I, at whose court he continued to
reside, and through whose influence he was made Bishop of Bayeux in
1516. In 1526 and 1527 he served as French ambassador to Venice. His
ability and zeal as a diplomatist are shown not only by the importance
of the posts that he held, but by his numerous letters that have been
preserved. At the time of his friend Bibbiena’s death in 1520, Canossa
remarked that it was a fixed belief among the French that every man of
rank who died in Italy was poisoned.
Note 45 page 12. GASPAR PALLAVICINO, (born 1486; died 1511), was a
descendant of the marquesses of Cortemaggiore, near Piacenza. He appears
in THE COURTIER as the youthful woman-hater of the company, and was a
friend of Castiglione and Bembo. For an interesting discussion of his
rôle in the dialogues, see Miss Scott’s paper, cited above (page 316).
Note 46 page 12. LUDOVICO PIO belonged to the famous family of the lords
of Carpi (a few miles north of Modena), and was a brave captain in the
service of the Aragonese princes, of Duke Ludovico Sforza of Milan, and
of Pope Julius II. His father Leonello and more celebrated uncle Alberto
had been pupils of Aldus, and were second cousins of Emilia Pia. His
wife was the beautiful Graziosa Maggi of Milan, who is immortalized in
the paintings of Francia and the writings of Bembo.
Note 47 page 12. SIGISMONDO MORELLO DA ORTONA is presented in THE
COURTIER as the only elderly member of the company, and the object of
many youthful jests. He is known to have taken part in the ceremony of
the formal adoption of Francesco Maria della Rovere as heir to the duchy
in 1504, is referred to in Castiglione’s _Tirsi_, and seems to have been
something of a musician.
[Illustration:
LOUIS XII OF FRANCE
1462-1515
]
Much enlarged from a negative, specially made by Berthaud, of a part of
a pen-drawing in the National Library at Paris. The drawing is
touched with gold, and forms part of a series illustrating a MS.
chronicle (nos. 20360-2) engrossed at Genoa in 1510 by Anthoine
Bardin. See note 250.
Note 48 page 12. Of ROBERTO DA BARI little more is known than that his
surname was MASSIMO, and that he was taken ill in the campaign of 1510
against the Venetians and retired to Mantua. Thither Castiglione sent a
letter to his mother, warmly recommending Roberto to her hospitality,
and saying that he loved the man like a brother.
Note 49 page 12. BERNARDO ACCOLTI, (born about 1465; died 1535), was
generally known as the UNICO ARETINO, from the name of his birthplace
(Arezzo) and in compliment to his ‘unique’ faculty for extemporising
verse. His father Benedetto was a jurist, and the author of a dull Latin
history of the First Crusade, from which Tasso is believed to have drawn
material for the _Gerusalemme Liberata_. His poetical celebrity
commended him to the court of Urbino, where (as at Rome and in other
places) he was in the habit of reciting his verses to vast audiences of
rich and poor alike. When an exhibition by him was announced, guards had
to be set to restrain the crowds that rushed to secure places, the shops
were closed, and the streets emptied. His life was a kind of lucrative
poetic vagabondage: thus we find him flourishing, caressed and
applauded, at the courts of Urbino, Mantua, Naples, and especially at
that of Leo X, who bestowed many offices upon him, of which, however,
his wealth (acquired by his recitations) rendered him independent,
enabling him to indulge in a life of literary ease. His elder brother
Pietro became a cardinal, bought Raphael’s house, and is said to have
had a hand in drafting the papal bull against Luther in 1520. He was an
early patron of his notorious fellow-townsman Pietro Aretino. Such of
his verse as has survived is so bald and stilted as to excite no little
wonderment at the esteem which he enjoyed among his contemporaries. In
THE COURTIER he poses as the sentimental and afflicted lover, the
“slayer” of duchesses and other noble ladies, who (according to his own
account) kept flocking in his train, but who more probably were often
making sport of him.
Note 50 page 12. GIANCRISTOFORO ROMANO, (born about 1465; died 1512),
was the son of Isaia di Pippo of Pisa and the pupil of Paolo Romano.
Perhaps best known as a sculptor, he possessed skill also as a
goldsmith, medallist, architect and crystal carver, cultivated music and
wrote verse. During the last years of the Sforza power at Milan, he
accompanied the duke’s wife, Beatrice d'Este, from place to place, and
is now identified as the author of her portrait bust in the Louvre. He
executed also at least two portrait medals of her sister Isabella
d'Este, acted as adviser and agent of the Gonzagas in the purchase of
art objects, worked at Venice, Cremona, Rome and Naples, and is known to
have been at Urbino about the time of the Courtier dialogues. In a long
letter written by him to Bembo in 1510, he describes the court of Urbino
as “a true temple of chastity, decorum and pudicity.” In 1512 he was
directing architect at Loreto (see note 311), where he died in May,
bequeathing his collection of medals and antiques to a hospital, for the
purpose of having three masses said weekly for the repose of his soul.
Note 51 page 12. Of PIETRO MONTE little more is known than that he was a
master of military exercises at the Urbino court, and perhaps a captain
in the duke’s army. He may have been identical with one Pietro dal
Monte, who is mentioned as a soldier in the pay of Venice (1509), and
described as “blind in one eye, but of great valour, gentle speech, and
not unlearned in letters,” and as “commanding 1500 infantry, and a man
of great experience not only in war but in affairs of the world.”
Note 52 page 12. ANTONIO MARIA TERPANDRO, one of the most jovial and
welcome visitors at Urbino, is said by Dennistoun to have been a musical
ornament of the court. He enjoyed the heartiest friendship of Bembo and
Bibbiena.
Note 53 page 12. NICCOLῸ FRISIO or FRIGIO is mentioned in a letter by
Bembo as a German, but seems more probably to have been an Italian.
Dennistoun speaks of him as a musician. In a letter from Castiglione to
his mother (1506), the writer warmly commends to her “one messer Niccolò
Frisio, who I hear is there [i.e., in Mantua], and I earnestly hope that
you will treat him kindly, for I am under the greatest obligation to him
with respect to my Roman illness.... I am sure he loves me well.” In
another letter by a friend of Bembo, Frisio is described (1509) as an
Italian long resident in courts, sure of heart, gentle, a good linguist,
faithful to his employers, and as having been used by Julius II in
negotiating the League of Cambray against Venice. He had relations also
with the marchioness Isabella of Mantua (see note 397), whom he aided in
the collection of antiquities. Growing weary of worldly life, he became
a monk in 1510, and retired to the Certosa of Naples.
Note 54 page 12. According to Cian, _omini piacevoli_ (rendered
‘agreeable men’) here means ‘buffoons.’
Note 55 page 13. This passage establishes the date of the first dialogue
as 8 March 1507.
Note 56 page 13. My lady Emilia contends that she has already told her
choice of a game, in proposing that the rest of the company should tell
theirs.
Note 57 page 14. COSTANZA FREGOSA was a sister of the two Fregoso
brothers already mentioned, and a faithful companion of the Duchess of
Urbino. She married Count Marcantonio Landi of Piacenza, and bore him
two worthy children, Agostino and Caterina, to the former of whom Bembo
stood sponsor and became a kind of second father. Three letters by the
lady have been preserved.
Note 58 page 15. Belief in the efficacy of music as a cure for the bite
of the tarantula still survives in Andalusia, Sardinia and parts of
southern Italy. In a note on the tarantella dance, Goethe wrote: “It has
been remarked that in the case of mental ailments, and of a tarantula
bite, which is probably cured by perspiration, the movements of this
dance have a very salutary effect on the softer sex.” “Travels in Italy”
(Ed. Bohn, 1883), page 564.
Note 59 page 15. The _moresca_ (mime or morris-dance) seems to have been
a kind of ballet or story in dance, often very intricate and fanciful.
At the courts of this period, it was generally introduced as an
interlude between the acts of a comedy. In a letter quoted by Dennistoun
(“Memoirs of the Dukes of Urbino,” ii, 141), Castiglione describes a
_moresca_ on the story of Jason, which was thus performed at the first
presentation of Bibbiena’s _Calandra_ before the court of Urbino, 6
February 1513.
Note 60 page 16. FRA MARIANO FETTI, (born 1460; died 1531), was a native
of Florence, and beginning life as a barber to Lorenzo de' Medici,
always remained faithful to that family. At Rome, during the pontificate
of Julius II, he won the reputation and enjoyed the privileges of “the
prince of jesters,” and became even more famous under Leo X, upon whom
as a child he had bestowed affectionate care, and who as pope did not
forget his kindness. Thus in 1514 he was made _Frate piombatore_, or
affixer of lead seals to papal bulls, in which office he followed the
architect Bramante, was succeeded by the painter Sebastiano Luciani
(better known as “del Piombo”), and admitted earning yearly what would
now be the equivalent of about £1600, by turning lead into gold. While
it remains uncertain whether he was more buffoon or friar, he had a
great love for artists, and even composed verse. He seems to have
continued in the enjoyment of fame and favour during the reign of the
second Medicean pope, Clement VII.
Note 61 page 16. FRA SERAFINO was probably a Mantuan, and had a brother
Sebastiano. He lived long at the Gonzaga court, where he was employed in
organizing festivals, and at Urbino, where the few of his letters that
have survived show him in familiar relations with other interlocutors in
THE COURTIER. While at Rome in 1507, with the suite of the Duchess of
Urbino, he was seriously wounded in the head by an unknown assailant,
probably in return for some lampoon or scandal of his against the papal
court.