SURGERY
Ordinarily it is assumed that surgery has received almost its only and
its greatest development in our time. Probably no development of
knowledge that has come to us in the recent revival of interest in the
history of medicine has been more surprising than the finding that
surgery had several periods of great progress before our time. One of
these and the most important came during the thirteenth and fourteenth
centuries. Another great phase of surgical advance, after a period of
decline such as seems inevitable in all human affairs, occurred during
the Renaissance. It had its origin in or at least was greatly
influenced by the publication of the chapters on surgery in the Latin
and Greek classics, though strange as that may sound to modern ears
even more was probably accomplished for surgical development by the
printing of the text-books of the later mediaeval surgeons. The new
impetus thus given affected nearly every phase of surgery and
accomplished ever so much more than we would be likely to think
possible, only that the republication of old surgical text-books in
recent years has proved such a revelation to us.
As I have said in preceding chapters, one of the greatest debts of the
modern time to the Renaissance is due for the printing of old books in
the early days of printing. Scholars were willing to give liberally of
their time and to devote patient labor to secure a good text for the
printers, and somehow or other great printers succeeded in bringing
out usually in magnificent editions, though of small size as regards
the number of copies, not only the ancient but what we have now come
to recognize as the mediaeval classics of medicine and surgery. The
chapters on surgery in such writers as Aetius, Alexander of Tralles
and the Arab writers like Abulcassis are among the most important
contributions to the medicine of {410} their time. The text-books on
surgery of such men as Theodoric, Hugo of Lucca, the Four Masters,
William of Salicet and Guy de Chauliac are landmarks in the history of
a great surgical era. All of these were reprinted usually in
magnificent editions during Columbus' Century. Without such reprinting
at a cost of time and money that we can scarcely understand, many of
these precious treasures of the history of medicine and surgery would
almost surely have been lost. Certainly very few of them would have
remained in the manuscript forms in which they then existed and at
most, only in seriously mutilated conditions. There have been several
centuries since when they would have been utterly neglected, for
almost no hint of their value survived and there was an impression
prevalent that no one knew anything either about medicine or surgery
during the Middle Ages at all worthy of preservation. This publication
of the old text-books gave an impetus to the surgeons of the time that
brought about a great new era in surgery, though there were other
important factors at work in producing this. Above all the development
of anatomy made for a corresponding development in surgery and by
increasing men's knowledge of the tissues through which operations had
to be made, added to their confidence and decreased the mortality of
surgical intervention. The magnificent hospitals of the time are of
themselves the best possible evidence of proper care for patients, not
alone in a medical, but also surgical way. It cannot be too often
repeated that whenever hospitals are well built, properly cared for
and suitably maintained, there is sure to be good medical practice and
a fine development of surgery; whenever hospitals are neglected,
medical and surgical practice both sink to a very low standard.
Hospital construction reached a very high plane during the Renaissance
period, only to sink afterwards, as did every other constructive
effort for humanitarian purposes, to what Jacobsohn, the German
historian of hospitals and care for the ailing, calls an indescribable
level of degradation. Literally, the worst hospitals in the world's
history were erected at the end of the eighteenth and the beginning of
the nineteenth century. Hospital organization and maintenance
inevitably sank in the same way. A corresponding decadence in medical
and surgical practice could {411} not help but occur,--fortunately to
be followed by the progress of our own time. There are many, however,
who seem to think that because the twentieth century is so far ahead
of the early nineteenth it must be correspondingly in advance of
preceding centuries. This assumption constitutes the most important
reason for the very common failure in our time to understand properly
the history of medicine and surgery as well, indeed, as that of every
phase of science.
This was the period when gunpowder began to be used extensively in the
operations of war and it is not surprising that a great deal of
attention was given to gunshot surgery. We have four books, treatises
in their way on gunshot wounds, that were written at this time by men
of large experience. They made mistakes of course, there is no period
in the world's history, even our own, when men have not made mistakes,
but the surgeons of Columbus' Century accumulated an immense number of
observations and gradually worked out a rather valuable set of
suggestions with regard to the treatment of various kinds of wounds.
At the beginning of the century they made the mistake of thinking that
bullets caused both poisoned and burned wounds, and they were
over-anxious to treat these imaginary consequences rather than the
mechanical effects produced in their passage. They gradually worked
out their problems however, even using experiment in order to show the
effects of wounds. Braunschweig, Felix Wuertz, De Vigo and Ferri are
the classics of the time on gunshot wounds and their books have
probably been more read in our generation than in any other since the
end of the sixteenth century. Nothing is indeed more surprising than
the recognition of the value of the observations made by these
old-time surgeons which has come in the last twenty years.
The greatest of the surgeons of Columbus' Century is the Frenchman,
Ambroise Pare, who has come to be spoken of as the Father of Modern
Surgery. He well deserves the title if we restrict it definitely to
the modern time and do not conclude, as so many do, that there had
been no surgery since the classical period, for, of course, there was
a very great era of surgery during the thirteenth and fourteenth
centuries, but as is the way with humanity a period of decadence
occurred, {412} followed by another upward phase in the curve of
history of which in his time Pare is the apex.
It is to him that we owe the treatment of gunshot wounds by simple
water dressings, or at most by aromatics. When he began his work they
were treating gunshot wounds as if they were poisoned and burned
wounds by pouring boiling oil along the track of the bullet. Pare ran
out of oil on an historical occasion but found that the wounded left
untreated recovered with less pain and complications than those
subjected to the heroic remedy. He recognized the mistake and had the
genius to correct it properly. He reinvented the ligature, though, of
course, it had been in use a number of times before and had gone out
because of the tendency to produce sepsis involved in it, and because
so often secondary hemorrhage occurred from the coming away of the
ligature in the suppuration which ensued. He deserves, as do several
others, the credit of real invention in its use. Pare himself speaks
of this discovery, which he made just at the close of Columbus'
Century, as an inspiration which came to him through Divine Grace.
In nearly every department of surgery Pare left his mark. He was a
thoroughly practical surgeon. He suggested, as did also Maggi, the
Italian surgeon at this time, exarticulation as an important mode of
amputation. This consisted of the removal of an injured limb or a
gangrenous member at the joint just above, because in this way there
was less danger of complications and a better stump could be obtained
for subsequent use. In order to demonstrate that gunshots did not make
a burned wound he demonstrated that when balls are fired even into a
bag of gunpowder it does not explode. Maggi [Footnote 43]
independently made this same observation but went further and showed
also that shot do not melt when they strike a hard surface and that
balls of wax that are fired do not spread out {413} as if the wax were
melted. This series of experiments made to demonstrate certain
valuable points in gunshot surgery is quite worthy of the most modern
time and indicates well the thoroughly scientific spirit that was
abroad at this period. Pare also suggested that cut tendons should be
sewed, the ends being carefully brought together and that no portion
of the tongue should be removed after injury, but the parts should be
brought together, for there was great power of healing in this organ.
He advised the cutting of the uvula with a ligature gradually made
tighter and he, as well as Franco, devised an apparatus to fill up the
cleft in the bone of a defective palate and other similar mechanical
appliances.
[Footnote 43: Anyone who doubts the ability of the men of this time
to discuss a practical scientific question from a thoroughly
scientific standpoint with experimental demonstrations and close
reasoning, should read Gurlt's account of Maggi's experiments with
gunshot, and the German surgeon's comparison of the conclusions of
this colleague of the early sixteenth century with the facts brought
out by the discussion of the same subject after the Franco-German
War of 1871 and the experiments which were made just afterwards
along the same line.]
[Illustration: HOLBEIN, DR. WILLIAM BUTTS ]
Indeed from the mechanical side of surgery Pare is the most
interesting. Orthopedics, that is the treatment mechanical and
surgical of deformed children, in order to bring about their cure or
at least the lessening of their deformity, is generally supposed to be
new, but there are many suggestions for it in the Renaissance period.
Helferich in his _"Geschichte der Chirurgie"_ in Puschmann's
_"Handbuch"_ says, for instance, that Pare's orthopedic armamentarium
was rather extensive. He used various apparatus and specially designed
shoes with bandages in order to bring on the over-correction of club
foot. He treated flat foot in various ways and particularly by the use
of special shoes. He invented a corset with holes in it for
ventilation to be worn for various torsions of the spine and other
spinal deformities. He and Fallopius taught the value of resections
for joint troubles of various kinds and even for deformities. Pare
declared that _genu valgum,_ that is knock-knees, were due to similar
causes as those which produced club foot, or at least that the
affections were related.
A very interesting incident in his experience is related by Pare in
his memoirs with regard to one of these surprising cases of deep
injury to the brain which seem inevitably fatal, yet the patient
survives. It is, as suggested by Dr. Mumford, a replica of the
well-known Harvard crowbar case, the most famous in American surgery,
in which a quarry man recovered from his injury in spite of the fact
that a tamping iron had passed completely through his head from
beneath the chin upwards, coming out through the top of the skull.
{414} The specimens from the case, secured long afterwards at the time
of the man's death, may still be seen in the Harvard Museum. Pare's
case was very similar but concerns a very important individual.
Francis of Lorraine, Duke of Guise, was wounded before Boulogne, "with
a thrust of a lance, which entered above the right eye, towards the
nose, and passed out on the other side between the ear and the back
of the neck, with so great a violence that the head of the lance, with
a piece of wood, was broken and remained fast; so that it could not be
drawn out save with extreme force with smith's pincers. Yet,
notwithstanding the violence of the blow, which was not without
fracture of bones, nerves, veins and arteries, and other parts torn
and broken, my lord, by the grace of God, was healed." Without the
corroboration of the possibility of this by our modern case, it is
probable that there would be serious doubts as to it.
The bone surgery of the Renaissance period is particularly
interesting. Fallopius declared for the preservation of the periosteum
of the bone just as far as was possible whenever there was bone
disease or injury. We know now that the periosteum in healthy
condition will bring about regeneration of bone, and it was evidently
because of clinical observation of the satisfactory improvement that
occurred in cases when the periosteum was interfered with just as
little as possible that brought Fallopius to this conclusion. Their
treatment of fractures was excellent and they secured good results. It
was during this time that the older methods of using force in the
reduction of dislocations yielded to the maxim that joints should be
restored along the same path through which the dislocation took place.
A series of surgeons at this time, notably Massa, Ingrassias and Vigo,
wrote about spinal disease, describing "penetrating corruption" of the
spine, persistent suppuration and the subsequent deformity, using the
term _"ventositas spinae,"_ and others that would indicate their
interest in what we know as Pott's Disease. Vigo described fractures
of the inner table of the skull when the outer table is unbroken, and
Argelata described depression without fracture as occurring in young
folks.
Considerable valuable advance was made in the treatment of fractures
of the skull and injuries of the brain. Vigo {415} brought back the
use of the crown trephine and did much to make the instrument popular.
A great many surgeons invented a variety of instruments for lifting up
depressed bone, or for removing fragments, and each one was sure that
his particular type of instrument was the best to use. It is
interesting to read Helferich's "History of Surgery" in Puschmann's
_"Handbuch"_ on these and other points, because they are arranged in
the order in which the discoveries and rediscoveries and inventions
and reinventions were made. The Renaissance is particularly full of
interesting surgical history. The late effects of brain injury,
dementia, deafness and various forms of paralyses were carefully
studied by such men as Fallopius, Pare and Della Croce.
Various phases of surgery were taken up and discussed that are often
supposed to be much more modern. The whole question of the transfusion
of blood, for instance, attracted wide attention at this time. Magnus
Pegelius of Rostock suggested that the artery of one patient should be
fastened directly to the artery of another patient in order to bring
about transfusion. The use of this method of treatment, after large
losses of blood or in case of anaemia, is mentioned by a number of
men. At least as much was hoped for from it as in our time from
opotherapy. Jerome Cardan went farther than any in what he looked for
from the transfusion of blood. He always saw the possibility of
mystical results and his suggestion was that the transfusion of blood
might bring about a change in the morals of individuals. It was even
said that the use of animal's blood in the same way might bring about
an endowment of the human individual with certain animal qualities of
disposition. This is quite as absurd yet quite as reasonable as many
of our surgical attempts at the reform of criminals by operation on
their brains. In 1539 Benedictus noted the occurrence of hemophilia or
bleeders' disease. This had been noticed before in the Middle Ages,
but had been lost sight of.
With regard to varicose veins the Renaissance abandoned the older
methods of operation and suggested the use of bandages. Savonarola,
the grandfather of Savonarola the Dominican, who was burnt to death in
Florence, described various forms of bandages and suggested rest in
the prone position {416} with the feet higher than the head for the
relief of discomfort. Savonarola was much interested in the correction
of deformities and classifies rather carefully the different forms of
gibbosity of the spine, forward, backward and to the side, and
suggests their treatment with bandages that may be put on when soft
and pliable, but which harden after their application. Pare at the end
of the century used a corset made of very thin perforated iron plates
which he insisted should be well padded. This should be changed every
three months and its shape often altered so as to suit the growth of
the body and the changes brought about by itself.
Some of the developments of surgical technique at this time are
extremely interesting because they illustrate that accurate attention
to detail and inventive ability in surgery that is usually supposed to
be reserved for a much later time. Pare, for instance, invented a
whole series of special apparatus for nearly every phase of corrective
surgery, many of which have been mentioned. Fallopius insisted on
bringing the muscles of the neck together and retaining them in
position by sutures whenever they were severed, because results were
nearly always excellent and function was restored. Every important
surgeon of the time emphasized the sewing of severed tendons. Vidus
Vidius invented a gold or silver tube to be used after tracheotomy in
order to permit breathing through it, and suggested the use of this
instrument also after injuries of the larynx. Monteux devised a magnet
to aid in the extraction of swallowed iron objects that were caught in
the throat.
All the specialties developed wonderfully at this time. The story of
the Caesarean operation attests the evolution of obstetrics. In 1500
Jacob Nufer, a veterinarian, performed this operation successfully on
his own wife, and a number of others followed the example until within
twenty-five years after the close of our period, Rousset counts up his
cases of the operation as 15. Gynaecology and obstetrics always
develop together, and Weyer, the Dutch physician and surgeon, who did
so much to rid the world of the witchcraft delusion and point out its
connection with what we know as hysterical manifestations, wrote a
text-book on gynaecology, and Caspar {417} Wolff laid the deep
foundations of the science of gynaecology at this time. Wuertz, who
comes after our period, but was deeply influenced by it, and who must
indeed be considered as a follower of Paracelsus, insisted very much
on the simple treatment of wounds and emphatically opposed the common
custom of "thrusting clouts and rags, balsam, oil and salve into
them." Such teaching would have much to do with making advances in
gynaecology and obstetrics possible.
Cabrol advised the removal of the breast for cancer and insisted on
its complete removal and also of a part of the pectoral muscle, if
that seemed to the operator to be necessary, because of actual or
apparent involvement. Cabrol also declared that wounds of the heart
were not necessarily fatal and gives the details of one which he
himself had treated and had afterwards seen at autopsy, death having
taken place from another condition. He mentions the fact that stags'
hearts had been found in which there were definite indications of
healed wounds so that the long-time tradition as to the fatality of
heart wounds is not absolute. Della Croce taught that blood or pus or
other fluid should be emptied out of the thorax by aspiration. He
suggested the use of a cupping glass or a syringe, or in case of
necessity even of the mouth for this purpose. He advised the placing
of a metal tube in the thorax for drainage purposes. Arculanus advised
the opening of empyemata by a perforation of the thorax that would
permit drainage. If one had opened spontaneously and become chronic, a
lower opening for better drainage should be made.
Nor were they less ingenious in their suggestions as to surgical
intervention in conditions within the abdomen. Riolanus explained
ileus as thoroughly as anyone has ever done it and recognized exactly
what the condition was and the only way by which it could be treated.
Pare advised the letting out of gas from over-distended intestines
when these could not easily be returned to the abdomen. Fioravanti
reported a case of splenectomy with the recovery of the patient. All
sorts of bougies for strictures were invented, and many suggestions as
to instrumental relief in difficult strictures made.
Savonarola suggested the extirpation of _ranula,_ evidently {418}
after having had the experience that the mere emptying of this cyst of
the gland beneath the tongue is practically always followed by the
refilling of it. He gave the technique of puncture for ascites and has
some interesting details of cases, including one in which a fall led
to the traumatic evacuation of the fluid with subsequent cure. He
recommended the puncture of the pleural cavity for pleural effusion,
and above all for empyema whenever the case was in serious condition.
A little bit later, Berengar of Carpi, who is usually considered much
more important in anatomy than in surgery, discussed the question of
fracture of the skull by _contrecoup,_ evidently after considerable
experience. He detailed some cases of _extirpatio uteri_ for
procidentia and developed the technique of inunctions of mercury for
lues. Whether he was the first to do this or not we are not sure.
There is no doubt that his practice attracted wide attention. He was
visited by patients from all over the world and was summoned on
consultations even to great distances in order to see members of the
nobility. There probably never has been a more important discovery in
therapeutics than the use of mercury for specific disease, and the men
of this time to whom must be attributed the development of this phase
of therapeutics deserve the highest praise. It required the most
careful, patient, prolonged observation, and this was successfully
given.
While gunshot wounds were becoming so frequent as to claim much
attention, wounds from swords and other sharp instruments causing ugly
disfigurements were rather common. Cosmetic surgery attracted
attention. It might be thought that owing to their ignorance of
aseptic surgery there would be no possibility of any great development
of plastic surgery at this time. As a matter of fact, however, not a
little was done that was of great significance for the correction of
disfigurements due to injury and unsightly congenital defects or scars
after disease. A number of procedures for the correction of harelip
and of cleft palate have already been noted. Just at the beginning of
Columbus' Century the technique of the Brancas, father and son, for
the restoration of noses that had been lost by injury or disease
attracted wide attention. Their method was to make the new nose from
the skin of the arm, {419} lifting a flap from the inner portion of
the upper arm, fastening it to the forehead and bandaging the hand
firmly on top of the head so as to keep the flap in place, fed by the
circulation of the arm until it had obtained a firm hold, when the
attachment to the arm was cut and the nose fashioned from the living
tissue thus obtained. Vianeo and Aranzi both described methods of
forming the nose, and it was suggested that a portion of the skin of
the forehead might be used for that purpose. Defects of the lips and
eyelids were cured by slipping tissues over and by freshening the
edges and bringing them together.
An extremely interesting surgical writer of the beginning of the
sixteenth century is Michele Angelo Biondo, sometimes known by his
Latin name of Blondus. There are some passages in his writings with
regard to the use of warm water as the only proper dressing for wounds
that are rather startling. He tells of some physicians of his time
who, in place of liniments and all the various applications that are
made by the "wax-dealers," simply wash off their wounds with warm
water. He adds that these physicians insist that a great many surgical
patients are not killed by their disease so much as by the custom of
allowing them only small amounts of food and the unfortunate effect
produced on them by the applications to their wounds. He adds further
that these men are not wont to treat patients suffering from fevers by
keeping them on a light diet, but on the contrary they give them wine
and nourishing food instead of slops (ptisans). His comment is that
this sensible method of supporting treatment unfortunately does not
make much headway in the profession. Apparently it was too simple and
natural to appeal to the physician of the time. He adds with fine
irony, "It is said to be preferable to die methodically than to live
empirically."
Gurlt in his _"Geschichte der Chirurgie"_ (Berlin, 1898), to whom I
owe most of what is here said of the work of these old surgeons, gives
some further details of Biondo's treatment of wounds. After the
staunching of the bleeding, the wound was to be cleansed and then
covered with _oleum abjetinum,_ very probably oil of turpentine, one
part to two parts of oil of roses. With regard to the use of water in
the treatment of {420} wounds, Biondo said: "The most experienced of
the older physicians held water in such dread that they would scarcely
use it in removing dirt from the neighborhood of wounds. I myself,
however, having seen the wonderful effect of water in wounded parts,
cannot help but be amazed at its super-celestial virtue." In spite of
this strong declaration, Biondo in his book gives chapters on all the
old methods of treating wounds and the various applications that were
supposed to work wonders in bringing about healing. The consequence
was that the water doctrine was pushed into the background and
probably attracted very little attention. Here was the germ of a great
discovery, the use of boiled water, evidently with some experience
behind it, and yet it was to remain untried, its true value
unappreciated until four centuries later.
Paracelsus, who brought about the revolution in medicine at this time,
worked almost as great a change with regard to surgery. At least the
principles that he laid down were as startlingly different from much
of those accepted in his time and strikingly like those we have come
to accept in our time. He insisted that to as great an extent as
possible wounds should be left to nature, for there was a definite
tendency to cure. He inveighed strongly against meddlesome surgery and
declared that not a little of the subsequent complications in wounds
were due to misdirected efforts at cure of them. He talked about
_pestilence_ due to wounds, and declared that he had seen it spread
epidemically from one patient to another in hospital wards. He
discussed pyaemia as _Wundsucht,_ that is, an infectious disease
produced from a wound. Paracelsus described gangrene and proclaimed
its epidemic character. He is the first from whom we have a careful
study of the effects of lightning and almost the first who believed
that it was possible for a man to be struck by lightning and yet not
be killed or even fatally injured.
In general, the ideas of this time were not nearly so distant from our
own as some of the intermediate periods have been. Fallopius described
union by first intention as resembling that which occurred between two
waxed surfaces when they were brought together in parallel lines and
adhered. {421} Wuertz described a wound fever, evidently erysipelas,
and warned about the possibility of its becoming epidemic.
Arceo, known also by his Latin name of Francisco Arceus, a Spanish
surgeon, born near the end of the fifteenth century, illustrates the
vitality of surgery in Spain at this time. He has a number of
interesting surgical suggestions and has this to say with regard to
club foot. The foot should be soaked thoroughly for thirty days in
warm water in which some cereal has been cooked. Then the surgeon,
taking the lame foot, should exert all his force to put it back into
its due position and the form that he desires. This can usually be
accomplished without difficulty or delay, partly because of the
preceding softening of the tissues, but above all because of the
tender age and soft tissues of the child. Then a bandage should be
used to maintain the foot in this position until the correction
becomes permanent. Ambroise Pare, as I have said, accomplished similar
results, but he also used a number of forms of apparatus for the cure
of club foot and for the prevention of contractures in the joints as a
consequence of paralysis. He is the first surgeon whom we know to have
interested himself in artificial hands, arms and legs for those
deprived by amputation of members and the first to employ artificial
eyes. Fabricius of Aquapendente, born in Columbus' period, but doing
his work afterwards, recommends massage and bandaging for _pes varus_
and an iron shoe with side pieces for _pes valgus._ He made the
correction gradual. He said, "I talk from experience, as I have had
much to do with crooked legs, feet and backs and have made them
straight and proper."
That Germany was not without the distinctive spirit of the time by
thoughtful work in surgery is made clear through the writings of Hugo
von Pfolspeundt, which were found only a few years ago. In what
relates to the mechanics of surgery he made many practical suggestions
and inventions. For harelip he suggested that stitches should be
placed on the mucous surface as well as on the skin surface, after the
edges of the cleft had been freshened in order to be brought closely
together and held in coaptation. He also suggested the use of a
permanent weight extension for fractures and for certain {422}
injuries of the joints. Perhaps his most interesting surgical
development for us is a description of a silver tube with flanges to
be inserted in the intestines when there were large wounds, or when
the intestines had been severed, the ends being brought together
carefully over the tube which was allowed to remain in situ.
Pfolspeundt said that he had often seen these tubes used and the
patient live for many years afterwards. This is an early form of what
is known as the Murphy button in our time, though it was not the first
suggestion of a mechanical device to aid the repair of intestinal
injuries. One of the latest mediaeval surgeons had employed the
trachea of an animal as the tube over which the wounded intestines
were brought together. This became disintegrated after a while in the
secretions, but remained intact until after thorough agglutination of
the intestines had occurred.
Pfolspeundt was not an educated man and did not even write his own
German tongue with correctness, not to say elegance. He was just a
practical devotee of surgery, probably not even a regularly practising
physician, and yet his writings show how much there was that he knew
of technical details, extremely important for surgical practice, that
are usually supposed to be of much later origin. After all, some of
our own distinguished surgeons have not been educated men in any sense
of the word, and there has sometimes been the feeling that a surplus
of information of what had been accomplished just before his time,
sometimes deterred the physician, as well as the surgeon, from
thinking independently about problems connected with practice and
reaching valuable practical conclusions.
Besides Pfolspeundt there are at least two other German surgeons of
this time whose writings have come down to us that deserve a place in
a history of distinguished accomplishment in Columbus' Century. One of
these is Jerome of Brunschwig, whose name is spelled in many different
ways, and the other is Hans von Gerssdorff. Brunschwig, or
Braunschweig, used to be considered the oldest writer on surgery in
German until the comparatively recent discovery of Hugo von
Pfolspeundt's manuscript. He published his surgery in 1497, and it
went through nine editions in a few years. It {423} contains a number
of woodcuts, and these probably helped to give it its popularity.
Brunschwig was very proud of his calling as a surgeon, and quotes what
Galen, Rhazes, Abulcassis, Lanfranc and Guy de Chauliac had declared
should be the qualities possessed by a surgeon and insisted
particularly that he "should have deep knowledge and trained
observation of anatomy, so that whenever it may be necessary to cut or
cauterize, he shall know exactly in what regions to do it, so as to do
just as little damage as possible and that he shall be capable of
diagnosing joint conditions and know what important organs may be
injured by bullet or other wounds with weapons and be able to judge of
the danger of cutting down for their removal." He recommends above all
that the young surgeon should invariably call an older and more
experienced colleague, or even two, in consultation, if the case is
very difficult, and he has doubts about it.
Some of his details of technique are very interesting as showing how
carefully he thought out even minor problems connected with the
practice of surgery. For instance, he says as to wounds of the face,
that as "the beauty of the countenance is what above every other thing
makes men beautiful, the surgeon must take the greatest care that no
ill-looking or ugly union should take place in it, and just as far as
possible the parts should be brought together and kept in apposition,
with as delicate means as possible, until healing has taken place."
On the other hand he does not hesitate to discuss even fractures of
the breast-bone, and says that if the patient expectorates blood it is
a bad sign, for almost surely some of the arteries lying under the
bone have been ruptured. He suggests position to help in the
correction of deformity and displacement of the bone, and mentions
that some of the older surgeons sought to raise it up by means of
large dry cups. In fractures of the ribs similar recommendations were
made, but Brunschwig was of the opinion that they did more harm than
good. He recommended bandages, thickened with albumen, or leather
moulded to the part, and he covered the thorax with a large binder.
{424}
There is no doubt at all that he knew very well the books of his
predecessors and that he had thoughtfully adapted them in the way that
had been taught him by his forty years of experience. He begins his
book with a dedication to the praise of God and His Mother, not
forgetting the honorable magistrates of the city of Strassburg. He
says in the preface that he is tempted to write his book because there
are many young, inexpert masters of surgery in the care of wounds who
do not understand it and consequently inflict much harm on mankind. He
hopes to be able to instruct them and also others who, living in the
smaller towns and villages, have not had the opportunity to see the
practice of surgery and yet must be able to help the ailing and
injured. The picture of the position of the surgeon of the time is
rather interesting.
The next of the German surgeons of this period was Hans von
Gerssdorff, who practised in Strassburg. His well-known work is the
"Field Book of Surgery," in which he gives some of the experiences of
long years as a military and municipal physician. The book was issued
with a series of woodcuts, some of them anatomical but most of them
surgical in interest, which are very well executed. His illustration
of an amputation is the first one of this subject ever made, and there
are many pictures of his instruments. We have only room to note some
of his discussions of subjects usually not supposed to be thought of
in his time. He discusses wounds of the liver, especially such as
occur from large wounds of the abdomen, and says that if the liver
substance itself has been wounded the issue will surely be fatal. If
the liver is not wounded, yet appears in the wound, it should be
replaced and the external wounds sewed. His discussions of wounds of
the deep organs are all in about this same conservative strain.
Gerssdorff has much to say with regard to contractures and anchyloses.
When these deformities are to be corrected, the tissues around the
joints should be softened by means of embrocations and the rubbing in
of old oil, and the contractures gradually overcome by manipulation or
by instrumental means. He invented a number of apparatus for
stretching such contractures, and four of the large pictures reproduce
them. They are partly in the shape of armor or {425} splints so
arranged that they can be bent or made straight by means of a screw.
There is also a screw arrangement for bringing about extension in
various directions. He did not believe very much in going too slowly
about the correction, for he declares that most of the contractures
and anchyloses can be overcome in a few hours.
In discussing amputations he mentions the use of anaesthetics by the
older surgeons, and quotes from Guy de Chauliac the method of
anaesthesia employed by him, but he thinks that better results are
obtained without the use of such material. He had never employed
anaesthetics himself, though he had performed over 100 amputations.
Perhaps his Teutonic people were able to stand pain better than the
patients of the Latin countries. The refusal to use anaesthetics is
very interesting at this time, for the practice gradually disappeared
and was forgotten. Gerssdorff warns particularly against the use of
opium alone as a means of preventing pain, and Chauliac had done the
same thing earlier.
The spirit that the surgeons of the time were expected to have is very
well illustrated by a passage from John Hall, written shortly after
the close of Columbus' Century in his "Historian Expostulation," which
is referred to more at length in the chapter on Medicine. He said, "I
would therefore that all Chirurgiens should be learned, so would I
have no man think himself learned otherwise than chiefly by
experience, for learning in Chirurgery consisteth not in speculation
only, nor in practice only, but in speculation well practised by
experience."
Dr. Hall made a series of rhyming verses which were meant to be
helpful to the young surgeon to enable him to recall his duties
readily. He urged him above all never to treat a case unless he
understood it, when in doubt to call in a consultant and advises him
after consultation to console the patient, but to talk seriously to
some of the patient's friends. Above all not to disturb the patient's
feelings. Among other excellent bits of good advice he insists very
much on the knowledge of anatomy, and two of his rhyming stanzas
regarding it seem worth while quoting to show the spirit in which he
wrote:
{426}
"He is no true chirurgien
That cannot show by arte
The nature of every member
Each from other apart.
For in that noble handy work
There doth nothing excell
The knowledge of anatomy
If it be learned well."
In a chapter of this kind, almost needless to say, it is impossible to
give any formal account of the surgery of the time. All that I have
been able to do is to point out that in every country in Europe
surgeons were thinking for themselves and facing most of our modern
surgical problems and finding not inept solutions. There is scarcely a
phase of our modern surgery from antisepsis and anaesthesia to
technical details of various kinds, through plastic surgery, the use
of apparatus, manipulation and many forms of instruments, which cannot
be found in the surgical text-books of this time. Gurlt in his great
"History of Surgery" has taken some 400 pages of a large octavo
volume, with the excerpts in rather small type, to tell the story of
the surgery of Columbus' Century. Helferich occupies several hundred
pages of Puschmann's "Handbook of the History of Medicine" with the
details of what was done by the period's surgeons. The specialties
developed, and in all of them important contributions were made. The
great independent, seeking temper of the era is as noteworthy in
surgery as it is in every other department of intellectual effort at
this time.
{427}
BOOK III
THE BOOK OF THE WORDS
CHAPTER I
LATIN LITERATURE
The Latin literature produced during Columbus' period, or at least the
books written in Latin, are literally legion. There has seldom been an
age of greater literary productivity, and in every department men
wrote in Latin. It was the universal language of scholars. Every
educated man understood it; whenever he wrote for educated men he
employed it. When scholars of different languages met it was a ready
resource. This custom did not begin to lose its hold until after the
end of Columbus' Century, though it received a severe shock from
Paracelsus' refusal to use anything but the vernacular and was given
its death blow by the popularization of even theological subjects in
the vernacular during the reformation movement. Latin continued for
two centuries after Luther's time to be the medium of communication
between scholars, but its use gradually went out in the depths of the
degradation of scholarship in the eighteenth century.
There are many who apparently can see only unmixed good in the gradual
supersession of Latin by the various vernacular languages, but a
universal academic language had many advantages. As a rule, an
educated man needed to know only one language besides his own at this
time. Practical education for scientific purposes, and above all for
law and medicine and philosophy and theology, was very much
simplified. Now the student of science must know, as a rule, at least
two languages besides his own. In recent years we have come to
recognize the need of a universal language, and hence the {428}
successive waves of interest in newly-invented languages. Latin,
however, besides its practical usefulness as a common tongue, rewarded
the student of it by opening up to him a precious literature which
made it well worth his while to have devoted time and labor to its
acquisition.
The most fertile period of modern Latin was undoubtedly the era of the
Renaissance from 1450 to 1550, yet of all this Latin writing of
Columbus' Century very little endures in the sense of being read for
its own sake in our time. The old books have many of them gone up in
value, but that is mainly because of their special significance in the
history of their particular science or in the development of printing.
Books like Vesalius' _"Fabrica Humani Corporis"_ have become classics
that every scholarly student of medicine must have seen, though in
practical value they have been superseded by later books. Some of the
philosophical and theological works of the period and a number of the
mystical and spiritual works are still read for their own sake, but
with certain exceptions, like Thomas a Kempis' works and others that
we shall mention, these are rather curiosities that appeal to the
erudition of the special student than real living books to be
consulted.
An immense amount of Latin verse was written at this time. Sannazaro,
one of the ablest members of the Academy of Naples, wrote a poem
comparable in size to Virgil's AEneid on "The Birth of Christ." This
is only one instance. There were literally hundreds of scholars at
this time who thought because they could write Latin verses in which
the rules of grammar and prosody were not violated, and above all if
they could use the words that had been employed by their favorite
Latin authors and repeat felicitously the expressions of Virgil and
Horace and the classic poets generally, that they were making
literature at least if not poetry. Men have always had such illusions,
have always written what was only of interest for their own time and
have had the pleasure and satisfaction derived from the occupation of
mind and the anticipations of reputation and glory. None of this Latin
poetry has survived, and indeed it is only a very rare specialist in
Latin literature, and usually one who has devoted himself to
Renaissance Latin, who is likely to know anything about it.
Undoubtedly some {429} of it was eminently scholarly. There is no
doubt either that not a little of it was of fair poetic quality. It
was all, however, of distinctly academic character, and it has gone
into the limbo of forgotten writing, which now contains such an
immense amount of material.
There is probably nothing which shows so clearly that the writer, and
above all the poet, is born and not made, that it is originality of
thought and not mode of expression that makes for enduring literature,
as the fate of so much of the product of these Renaissance writers. On
the other hand, there is nothing that better illustrates the value of
originality of thought apart from style than the preservation as
enduring influences upon mankind of a series of books in which style
was probably the last thing that the author thought about, and the
mode of expression had almost no place in his mind compared to his
desire to set forth his thought effectively.
Three of the books that have lived from this time and will, so far as
human judgment can foresee, always continue to live, are Thomas a
Kempis' _"De Imitatione Christi"_ Sir Thomas More's "Utopia" and St.
Ignatius of Loyola's _"Exercitia Spiritualia"_ All three of them were
written in Latin because that was the language in which they would
appeal to most readers at the time. All three of the authors probably
thought nothing at all about the language that they were using except
for its convenience for others, inasmuch as it could be read by the
men of all nations whom they most wished to reach. All of them are
direct, simple, even forcible in their modes of expression, but there
was surely little filing done and probably very little rewriting.
Thomas a Kempis' book, almost without a doubt, flowed from his pen
just in the way that his words flowed out of his full heart in the
spiritual conferences that he gave to his brethren. There was probably
never a thought given to verbal nicety except to secure as simple an
expression of his overflowing ideas as possible. The "Utopia" is
written in correct, but not classical Latin, and it is very likely
that Erasmus would have found many faults of usage in it, while the
Ciceronians of that time would surely have been horrified at the very
thought of having to read such Latin and would scarcely be able to
understand how anyone could write {430} such unCiceronian phrases. As
was said of Michelangelo, St Ignatius wrote things rather than words,
and the "Spiritual Exercises" are a mine of thought, but not a model
of style in any sense.
There has been question as to whether the "Imitation of Christ" was
really written by Thomas a Kempis, but that question has now, I think,
been definitely settled. Everything points to the authorship by the
brother of the Common Life, who was born in the little town of Kempen
and lived some seventy years in the Monastery of St. Agnes, acting as
spiritual adviser to his brethren, giving them consolation and advice
in times of trial, directing their thoughts always to the higher life.
There are many Flemicisms, that is, Latin usages which were common in
the Netherlands of this time, in most of the manuscripts. It has been
argued that since these do not exist in all the manuscripts, the
argument founded on them is not absolute. The preponderance of
evidence, however, is for the Flemish copies as being nearer the
original, and the absence of these special modes of expression in
other manuscripts only indicates that a great many copyists of the
time, particularly in Italy and France, were quite aware of these
imperfections of language and endeavored to correct them out of their
better knowledge of Latin. This only serves to show how little the
style of the book had to do with its popularity and that it was the
thought that appealed to the world of the time and has continued ever
since to give the work wide popularity.
A Kempis himself was born in the fourteenth century, but as he lived
to be past ninety, dying in 1471, more than twenty years of his life,
during which he was active and in possession of his faculties, were
passed in our period. The "Imitation of Christ" was probably written
some twenty years before Columbus' Century began, but did not take the
definitive form in which we know it until about the beginning of our
period. It has a right to a place, therefore, among the great works of
the time. I have sometimes suggested that three men, whose names begin
with _k_ sounds, accomplished magnificent broadenings of human
knowledge at this time. Columbus discovered a new continent,
Copernicus revealed a new universe and a Kempis unveiled a wonderful
new world in man's own soul. {431} He did as much for the microcosm
man as Copernicus for the cosmos or Columbus for our earth. Hitherto
unexplored regions were laid bare and the beginning of the mapping out
of them was made. More than either of his great contemporaries,
however, a Kempis finished his work. Very little has been added to
what he was able to accomplish for man's self-revelation in his little
book.
[Illustration: CIMA DA CONEGLIANO, CHRIST (DRESDEN)]
The work did not spring into popularity at once, though it gradually
began to be known and used by chosen spirits in many places, and some
of the greatest of the men of the time learned to appreciate it. It is
a charming testimony to the fact that a Kempis himself first did and
then taught that he cared so little for the reputation attached to his
work, that his name was not directly associated with it, and in the
course of time there came to be some doubt about its authorship. "If
thou wilt profitably know and learn," he had said, "desire to be
unknown." It is one of the most difficult of tasks, but the humble
brother of the Common Life who had written a sublimely beautiful book
had learned it. He had written other books, indeed there are probably
at least a dozen attributed to him on reasonably good evidence, yet
had said, "In general we all need to be silent more than to speak,
indeed there are few who are too slow to speak." None of his other
books are quite equal to the "Imitation," yet many of them, as "The
Little Garden of Roses" and "The Valley of Lilies," are well worth
reading and exhibit many of the traits of charming simplicity,
marvellous insight and psychological power that have given his
greatest work its reputation.
All down the centuries since men have admired and praised the
"Imitation." It has not been a classic in the sense of a book that
everyone praises and very few read, but on the contrary it has been
the familiar reading of a great many of the chosen spirits among
mankind ever since. To have been the favorite book of Sir Thomas More,
Bossuet and Massillon, of Loyola and Bellarmine, of John Wesley,
Samuel Johnson, Lamartine, La Harpe, Michelet, Leibnitz and Villemain
is indeed a distinction. Nor has it appealed only to Christians, for
men like Renan and Comte almost in our own time have praised it very
highly. Far from its reading being confined {432} to scholars by
profession or those much occupied with the things of the spirit, we
find that it was the favorite reading of General Chinese Gordon,
General Wolseley, the late Emperor Frederick and Stanley the explorer.
George Eliot shows her deep appreciation of it in "The Mill on the
Floss," where she says that "It works miracles to this day, turning
bitter waters into sweetness." Sir James Stephen speaks of it as a
work "which could not fail to attract notice and which commended
itself to all souls driven to despair." The late Lord Russell of
Killowen always carried a copy of it with him and used to read a
chapter in it every day quite as Ignatius of Loyola had done three
centuries and a half before. The frequent surprise is the contrast of
the men devoted to it. Pobiedonostseff, the head of the Holy Russian
Synod, the power behind the Czar for so long, used to read in it every
day.
St. Francis de Sales said of "The Imitation," "Its author is the Holy
Spirit." Pascal said of it, "One expects only a book and finds a man."
De Quincey declared: "Next to the Bible in European publicity and
currency this book came forward as an answer to the sighing of
Christian Europe for light from heaven." Dr. Samuel Johnson declared
that "Thomas a Kempis must be a good book, as the world has opened its
arms to receive it." The sentence in it which he repeated most
frequently and which evidently had come home to him is "Be not angry
that you cannot make others as you wish them to be, since you cannot
make yourself as you wish to be." Matthew Arnold, whose religious
views might possibly be thought to bias his judgment with regard to it
and whose feeling for style might be supposed to be deterred by its
lack of finish in language, called the "Imitation" "The most exquisite
document after those of the New Testament of all that the Christian
spirit has ever inspired." What may be more surprising to some, he
even did not hesitate to add that "Its moral precepts are equal to the
best ever furnished by the great masters of morals--Epictetus or
Marcus Aurelius."
Some of the expressions used with regard to the "Imitation" are among
the most laudatory that have ever been used of any book. They come
from men of all kinds, in all generations, {433} in all nations since,
and many of them among the most respected of their time. Fontenelle
declared the "Imitation" "the finest book ever issued from the hand of
man." Caro, the French philosopher, compares it with other books
famous in the same ethical line, only to put it on a pinnacle by
itself. "Open the 'Imitation,'" he says, "after having read the _'De
Officiis'_ of Cicero or the _'Enchiridion'_ of Epictetus, and you will
feel yourself transported into another world as in a moment."
Lamennais declared that the "Imitation" "has made more saints than all
the books of controversy. The more one reads, the more one marvels.
There is something celestial in the simplicity of this wonderful
book." Henri Martin, the French historian, declared, "This book has
not grown old and never will grow old, because it is the expression of
the eternal tenderness of the soul. It has been the consolation of
thousands--one might say of millions--of souls."
Lamartine in his "Jocelyn" (and it must not be forgotten that
Lamartine was an historian and a critic as well as a poet) wrote:
"Harassed by an inward strife,
I find in the 'Imitation' a new life--
Book obscure, unhonored, like to potter's clay.
Yet rich in Gospel truths as flowers in May.
Where loftiest wisdom, human and Divine,
Peace to the troubled soul to speak, combine."
La Harpe, a dramatist as well as a critic, whose "Cours de
Litterature" was a standard text-book for so long, was in prison and
sadly in need of comfort and consolation when he began to appreciate
the "Imitation." There is almost no limit to his praise of it, and
praise under these circumstances must indeed be considered to come
from the heart. He wrote: "Never before or since have I experienced
emotion so violent and yet so unexpectedly sweet--the words, 'Behold I
am here,' echoing unceasingly in my heart, awakening its faculties and
moving it to the uttermost depths."
It is not surprising then to find that Dean Church says of it, "No
book of human composition has been the companion of {434} so many
serious hours, has been prized in widely different religious
communions, has nerved and comforted so many and such different
minds--preacher and soldier and solitary thinker--Christians, or even
it may be those unable to believe." Dean Milman in his "Latin
Christianity" declared "that this book supplies some imperious want in
the Christianity of mankind, that it supplied it with a fulness and
felicity which left nothing to be desired, its boundless popularity is
the one unanswerable testimony." He even has some words of praise for
a Kempis' style: "The style is ecclesiastical Latin, but the
perfection of ecclesiastical Latin of pure and of sound construction."
Dean Plumptre, whose studies of Dante and the great Greek poets gave
him so good a right to judge of the place of books in the world's
literature, is one of the worshippers at the shrine of the
"Imitation." The Rev. Dr. Liddon, the great Greek lexicographer,
called it "the very choicest of devotional works, the product of the
highest Christian genius and one of the books that have touched the
heart of the world."
More than this could scarcely be said of any book. Was there ever a
chorus of praise quite so harmonious? Did praise ever come from men by
whom one could more wish to be praised? Evidently, the "Imitation of
Christ" is for all men at all times. It is the poem of our common
human nature.
When Sir John Lubbock included the "Imitation" in his list of the
hundred best books some people expressed surprise. The editor of the
_Pall Mall Gazette_ invited the opinions of his readers on the
subject, and some of the most distinguished of English churchmen, as
well as many English men of distinction, said their praise of it
publicly. Archdeacon Farrar, whose sympathies with the fourth book of
the "Imitation" would certainly be very slight and whose opposition to
many Catholic doctrines that a Kempis received devoutly might possibly
be expected to prejudice him somewhat against it, wrote that "If all
the books in the world were in a blaze the first twelve I should
snatch from the flames would be the Bible, 'The Imitation of Christ,'
'Homer,' 'AEschylus,' 'Thucydides,' 'Tacitus,' 'Virgil,' 'Marcus
Aurelius,' 'Dante,' 'Shakespeare,' 'Milton' and 'Wordsworth.'" {435}
The men with whom a Kempis is thus placed in association are among the
accepted geniuses of literary history before as well as since his
time. It would not be difficult to make a sheaf of quotations each one
of them scarcely less laudatory than this of Archdeacon Farrar. They
come from all manner of men, devout and undevout, bookish and
practical, spiritual and worldly, men of wide experience in life, who
have done things that the world will not soon forget, and who, if any,
have the right to speak for the race as regards the significance of
life and what any book can mean for direction and guidance in the
living of it and consolation in its trials and difficulties.
Lamartine in his "Entretiens Familiers" called it "the poem of the
soul," and declared that it "condensed into a few pages the practical
philosophy of men of all climates and of all countries who have
sought, have suffered, have studied and prayed in their tears ever
since flesh suffered and the mind reflected."
To adopt his term, the "Imitation" is literally a great poem. It is a
creation and it is a vision. The poet is the creator and the seer. The
greater he is, the more capable he is of taking the ordinary materials
of life and making great poetry of them. The greater the poet, the
more of mankind he appeals to. It is the vision of the experiences of
man and not of individual men that the poet sees. What all have seen
and felt, but none so well expressed is the theme of poetry. The more
one reads of the "Imitation," the more one realizes all the truth of
this characterization of it as poetry. If one takes passages of it as
they have been put into rhythmic sentences the feeling of the poetry
in them is brought home very clearly. For instance, this from Chapter
XXII of the third book:
"Why one has less, another more;
Not ours to question this, but Thine
With Whom each man's deserts are strictly watched.
Wherefore, Lord God, I think it a great blessing
Not to have much which outwardly seems worth
Praise or glory--as men judge of them."
Or if the ode--for such it really is--on Love from the fifth chapter
of the third book be read alongside one of the great {436} choruses
from the Greek tragedians, as above all some of those of Sophocles in
"Antigone" or the "Oedipus at Colonos," the lofty poetic quality will
be easier to grasp:
"A great thing is love,
A great good every way.
Making all burdens light,
Bearing all that is unequal,
Carrying a burden without feeling it.
Turning all bitterness to a sweet savor.
The noble love of Jesus
Impelleth men to good deeds
And exciteth them always
To desire that which is better.
Love will tend upwards
Nor be detained
By things of earth
It would be free.
Nothing is sweeter than love,
Nothing stronger, nothing higher.
Nothing fuller, nothing better
Nor more pleasant in heaven or earth.
For love is born of God
Nor can it rest
Except in Him
Above all things created.
Love is swift, sincere.
Pious, pleasant and delightsome.
Brave, patient, faithful,
Careful, long suffering, manly.
Never seeking its own good;
For where a man looks for himself
He falls away from love."
The next most significant book of the Latin literature of the time is
Sir Thomas More's "Utopia." Few books are more surprising in the midst
of their environment. Probably no one {437} has ever so risen above
the social atmosphere around him and breathed the rarefied air of
ideal social conditions as More in the "Utopia." It was written under
the influence of his first acquaintance with Plato's "Republic" and as
a result of his talks with that great French scholar and friend of
Erasmus, Peter Giles, or as he is known in the history of scholarship,
Aegidius. More discussed not merely literary topics, but the
application of the Greek literature that they were both interested in
to the contemporary politics of Europe and the social conditions of
their time. Not yet thirty years of age, More's powers of observation
were at their highest, and his principles of life had not yet been
hardened into conventional form by actual contact with too many
difficulties. With no experience as yet of government and with the
highest ideals of fellowship and unselfishness, he wrote out a
wonderful scheme of ideal government by which the happiness of mankind
would be attained. He saw clearly through all the social illusions and
the social problems, and with almost youthful enthusiasm put forth his
solution of all the difficulties he saw.
Undoubtedly the "Utopia" is the main literary monument of Sir Thomas
More's great genius. Sir Sidney Lee in his "Great Englishmen of the
Sixteenth Century" (Scribner's, 1904) declares that "it is as
admirable in literary form as it is original in thought. It displays a
mind rebelling in the power of detachment from the sentiment and the
prejudices which prevailed in his personal environment. To a large
extent this power of detachment was bred of his study of Greek
literature." There is, perhaps, no greater series of compliments for
the significance of the classics in education than the fact that these
men of the Renaissance found in the Greek books not only the source of
their literature, but also their art and architecture and even their
science, and above all were given the breadth of mind to follow the
suggestions that they met with. It must not be forgotten, however,
that More was also deeply influenced by St. Augustine's _"De Civitate
Dei"_ Evident traces of this can be found. It is known that he had
been reading the work of the great Latin father of the Church and that
he admired him very deeply. Without any narrowness or bigotry,
inspired by Augustine's great work, it was a {438} Christian Republic
of Plato that the future Lord Chancellor of England sketched for his
generation.
"Utopia" was published at the end of 1516 in Louvain, then probably
the most prominent and undoubtedly the most cosmopolitan centre of
academic learning in Europe. There were perhaps 5,000 students at the
University there at the moment, and it was one of the large
universities of the world. A new edition was published only four
months later from a famous press in Paris, and within the year the
great scholar-printer, Froben of Basel, produced what we would now
call an _edition de luxe_ at the suggestion and under the editorship
of Erasmus, and with illustrations by Erasmus' friend, for whom More
was to be such a beneficent patron later in England--Hans Holbein.
It is not surprising to hear that the book was warmly welcomed by all
the scholars of Europe. The epithets which the publishers bestowed on
it in the title page, _aureus, saluiatis, festivus_--a golden,
wholesome, optimistic book--were adopted from expressions of opinion
uttered by some of the best scholars of Europe. Erasmus was loud in
his praise of it, it was warmly welcomed in France, it found its way
everywhere among the scholars of Italy, it was read, though not too
openly, in England, where there was some suspicion of its critical
quality as regards English government and where Tudor wilfulness did
not brook critical review of its acts.
The book was eminently interesting; there probably never has been a
_social Tendens_ novel before or since that has been so full of
interest. The preliminary chapter of the book is, as Sidney Lee says,
"a vivid piece of fiction which Defoe could not have excelled." More
relates how he accidentally came upon his scholarly friend, Peter
Giles, in the streets of Antwerp in conversation with an old sailor
named Raphael or Ralph Hythlodaye. This name means an observer of
trifles. More takes advantage of the current interest in the
discoveries of the Western Continent by making him a sailor lately
returned from a voyage to the New World under the command of Amerigo
Vespucci. The name America after Amerigo was just gaining currency at
that time and this added to the interest. Ralph had been impressed by
the beneficent forms of {439} government which prevailed in the New
World. He had also visited England and had noticed social evils there
which called for speedy redress. The poor were getting poorer, the
rich were getting richer, the degradation of the masses was sapping
the strength of the country, the wrong things were in honor and social
reform must come, it was hinted, or there would be social revolution.
The book contained a fearless exposure of the social evils very
commonly witnessed in every country in Europe at that time, though
tinged more by More's experience in England than anywhere else.
Since its publication, the book has been read in every generation that
has taken its social problems seriously. It was not published in
England until 1551, but was translated into English again by Bishop
Burnet in a form that has made it an English classic. It contains such
a surprising anticipation of so many suggestions for the relief of
social evils that are now discussed that I have preferred to put a
series of quotations from it in the Appendix in order to show how
little there is new in human thinking, and above all how a sympathetic
genius at any time succeeds in seeing clearly and solving as well the
problems of mankind as at any other time, in utter contradiction of
the so much talked of evolution that is presumed to bring these
problems gradually before the bar of human justice and secure their
amelioration. The book is worthy to be placed beside Plato's
"Republic," and it will be more read in the near future than probably
any other work of similar nature. In our own generation editions of it
have been issued in every modern language and a number of editions in
English. It is one of the enduring books of mankind that a scholar of
any nation cannot afford to confess not having read and in which the
social reformer will ever find suggestions for human uplift and the
greatest happiness for the greatest number.
The third great book of the Latin literature of the century is St.
Ignatius's _"Exercitia Spiritualia."_ This is not a book to be read,
however, but to be lived. It is a book of material for thought rather
than of words to be conned. It has deeply influenced every generation
of men ever since. If it had done nothing else but form all the
members of his own order ever {440} since, that would be enough of
itself to stamp it as a very great human document. It has, however,
deeply influenced all the religious orders both of men and women since
it was written, and is now the basis of nearly all of the formative
exercises on which the modern religious life is based. It is
undoubtedly the work of a great spiritual and intellectual genius who
above all knew how to suppress himself. There is not a word too much
in it, and the one complaint has been of an abbreviation beyond what
would make it readily intelligible. Those who have studied it most
deeply, however, find no difficulty of understanding, though they
recognize the impossibility, unless perhaps after many years of
devotion to it, of comprehending all of its precious significance. It
is the directions for the spiritual life in shorthand, and it is
surprising that a man should have committed it to all the
possibilities of misunderstanding in its present form, but its lack of
too great detail makes it all the more precious and leaves that room
for the expression of the individuality of the one who gives the
exercises that is so necessary.
The fourth book that deserves a place in any account of the Latin
literature of this period is Erasmus' _"Colloquia"_ though doubtless
some might plead for a place for the _"Encomium Moriae,"_ which has
had an academic immortality at least. The _"Colloquia"_ is eminently a
book for scholars written in the elegant Latin that Erasmus could
employ so effectively, and it went through many editions in his
lifetime and has had many reprints ever since. It was distinctly a
book of style rather than of matter and of academic rather than
popular interest. Scholars at all times have turned to its pages for
refreshment and information and have been regaled by its charming
style and its wit. It is entirely too bitter to be always admirable,
but many of its satirical parts give an excellent idea, though
undoubtedly exaggerated if taken as a picture of the times, of the
conditions of education at the moment. It has not been often
translated, and hence, in our generally complacent ignorance of Latin,
is less known in our time than in any other since its publication. Its
career in comparison with the three other volumes of Latin literature
in this chapter, its contemporaries, emphasizes the difference between
the place of {441} style and thought in the world literature. The
scholars of the period doubtless looked upon Erasmus' book as a very
triumph of scholarship, a great contribution to world literature. "The
Imitation of Christ," "Utopia" and the "Spiritual Exercises" were read
originally not for themselves, but for a purpose. These have
maintained an active life, however, while at most the _"Colloquia"_
has enjoyed a rather inanimate academic existence.
This does not detract from the merit of the book, however, nor from
that of Erasmus' other contributions to the Latin literature of the
time. Latin was at best an adopted language, however, and the
expression of native genius in it could scarcely be expected. The
prose has been eminently more fortunate than the verse, and it is to
the former, not the latter, that we turn in order to find some of the
great contributions of the period to world literature.
{442}
CHAPTER II
ITALIAN LITERATURE
As I have said in the Introduction, in spite of the supreme greatness
of the artistic products of Columbus' Century, its paintings,
sculpture and architecture, the literature of the time was not only
not neglected, but occupies a place in the history of culture only
second to that of the Periclean age of Athens. For a long time,
indeed, the Age of Leo X, as it was called, was considered to be a
serious rival in its literary treasures to that marvellous period of
Greek thinking and writing. Subsequently the literary world passed
through a period of exaggerated critical depreciation of it. There has
been, however, a growing tendency in recent years, indeed during the
last half century, to restore older appreciation of the literature of
this period and to value it highly.
In every country in Europe there were books written during this time
which not only will never die, but which are part of the familiar
reading of the scholars at least of all time. Not that there are not
many popular elements in this literature, but its scholarliness has
made it a special favorite, and there are not a few books written at
this time which no one with any pretence to education would willingly
confess to being ignorant of. Ariosto, Machiavelli, Rabelais, Villon,
Sir Thomas More, Erasmus, St. Teresa, Marguerite of Navarre and the
Pleiades, as well as the Collects of the English Prayer Book, all
these have an enduring significance in the realm of world literature
that has brought about the publication of editions and translations of
them in every cultivated language even in our generation over four
centuries after their original production.
[Illustration: TITIAN, ARIOSTO ]
The Italian literature of the century is especially rich. It would be
quite impossible to give it any adequate treatment in a chapter, for
this is the Renaissance period, and the literature {443} of the
Italian Renaissance has been treated in many volumes. The most
important of the writers is undoubtedly Ariosto, who has been much
more appreciated by his own people than by other countries, though at
times of deep interest in literature he has always had a profound
influence on writers beyond the bounds of Italy. Saintsbury, in "The
Earlier Renaissance," has summed up his best qualities in some
sentences that, considering the distance in time and place and
temperament which separate poet and critic, may very well be taken as
highest praise. Ariosto, he says, "is very nearly if not quite supreme
in more than one respect. It may also be said that he never fails and
that this freedom from failure is not due to tame faultlessness or a
cowardly absence from the most difficult attempts--that it will go
hard--but we must rank him, at lowest, just below the very greatest of
all. Such a place is, I believe, his right even on the calculus of
those who refuse the historic estimate or at least admit it with
grudging. It has been said that as Rabelais he represents the greatest
literature of his time penetrated most fully by the extra literary as
well as the literary characteristics of that time; and it may be added
not merely that few times have been so thoroughly represented, but
that few have ever so thoroughly lent themselves to representation."
With what is perhaps almost pardonable compatriotic enthusiasm,
considering his really great merits as a poet, he has been called the
Italian Homer, and his great work, _"Orlando Furioso"_ has been called
"the most beautiful and varied and wonderful romantic poem that the
literature of the world can boast of." In it are woven together with
charming art the two great romantic cycles of Charlemagne and Arthur.
It is the poetic apotheosis of chivalry written in wonderful
perfection of style and taking form and with marvellous variety of
incident. While the great poem has been a favorite rather with the
Italians than with foreigners, when one realizes how deeply cultured
Italian readers have been as a rule for all the centuries since
Ariosto's time, it is probable that no higher compliment than this
devotion of his compatriots could be paid to him. The "Orlando" has
not been without honor, however, in foreign countries, among those
whose opinion is most {444} to be valued. It cast into the shade the
numberless poetical romances that had been written during the
preceding century. None of the many imitations that it evoked have
approached it either in beauty of form or style or in deep underlying
human interest. Ariosto knew above all the human heart and had
excellent control of pathos. He is especially capable in making the
impossible or the improbable seem reasonable. Now, after four
centuries, we know that he is of all time and belongs to the culture
of all centuries.
Modern readers unacquainted with the writings of the older time are
often inclined to think that the interests of the older writers were
very different from those of humanity to-day and that, as a
consequence, the reading of them would surely be a great bore. Even a
little reading of Ariosto would show how eminently human and for all
time a classic writer is and how literally it is true that he is often
a commentary on the morning paper. One or two of Ariosto's comparisons
which show his interest in humanity and in life around him will serve
to illustrate this. His observation of children is as close as that of
Dante:
"Like to a child that puts a fruit away
When ripe, and then forgets where it is stored,
If it should chance that after many a day
Thither his step returns where is his hoard.
He wonders to behold it in decay.
Rotten and spoiled, and richness all outpoured;
And what he loved of old with keen delight
He hates, spurns, loathes, and flings away in spite."
Like Dante, too, he was an observer of animals and noted especially
the ways of dogs.
"And as we see two dogs the combat wage,
Whether by envy moved, or other hate,
Approaching whet the teeth, nor yet engage.
With eyes askance, and red as coals in grate,
Then to their biting come, on fire with rage.
With bitter cries, and backs with spite elate,
{445}
So came with swords and cries and many a taunt
Circassia's knight and he of Chiaramont."
Ariosto's other poems, besides his Epic, are of minor significance. He
wrote a series of satires that are rather chatty essays, on subjects
literary and personal, in verse, than satires in our sense of the
word. Above all, Ariosto took his own disappointments in life
good-humoredly, and his optimism would remind one of Cervantes in
certain ways. Garnett in his "History of Italian Literature" (page
151) says, "His lyrical pieces are not remarkable, except one
impressive sonnet in which he appears to express compunction for the
irregularities of his life:
"How may I deem that Thou in heaven wilt hear,
O Lord divine, my fruitless prayer to Thee,
If for all clamor of the tongue Thou see
That yet unto the heart the net is dear?
Sunder it Thou, who all behold'st so clear,
Nor heed the stubborn will's oppugnancy.
And this do Thou perform, ere, fraught with me,
Charon to Tartarus his pinnace steer.
By habitude of ill that veils Thy light.
And sensual lure, and paths in error trod.
Evil from good no more I know aright.
Ruth for frail soul submissive to the rod
May move a mortal; in her own despite
To drag her heavenward is work of God."
In Italy the _sacre rappresentazioni,_ as the Miracle and Mystery
plays were called, had a distinct period of development, though not
equal to that of the English, and good specimens of them have not been
preserved for us. We have evidence of the influence of them, however,
in the fact that some of the scholarly poets of the time wrote plays
founded on the myths of the old Olympian religion after the model of
some of these mystery plays. Politian's _"Orfeo"_ is perhaps the best
example of this. It was little better than an improvisation composed
in the short space of two days at Mantua on the {446} occasion of
Cardinal Francesco Gonzaga's visit to his native town in 1472, but it
marks an epoch in the evolution of Italian poetry. Addington Symonds
has even gone so far as to say that "it is the earliest example of the
secular drama, containing within the compass of its brief scenes the
germ of the opera, the tragedy and the pastoral play." It contained
portions that were to be sung as well as to be spoken, and there are
episodes of _terza rima,_ Madrigals, a Carnival song, a Ballata as
well as the choral passages that are distinctly operatic. After
Orpheus has violated the law that he must not look upon his wife until
they have reached the upper world, his complaint is of lyric quality
that has something of the Grecian choric ode in it. Addington Symonds
in his "Sketches and Studies in Southern Europe" has translated the
passages so as to give an excellent idea of the character of the play:
"Who hath laid laws on Love?
Will pity not be given
For one short look so full thereof?
Since I am robbed of heaven,
Since all my joy so great is turned to pain,
I will go back and plead with Death again!
TISIPHONE
Nay, seek not back to turn!
Vain is thy weeping, all thy words are vain.
Eurydice may not complain
Of aught but thee--albeit her grief is great.
Vain are thy verses 'gainst the voice of fate!
How vain thy song! For death is stern!
Try not the backward path: thy feet refrain!
The laws of the abyss are fixed and firm remain."
Addington Symonds has given a number of examples of the popular
Italian poetry of the Renaissance [Footnote 44] which show the
qualities of this mode of literature very well, and above all
illustrate how like in its character it is to the lighter modes of
{447} verse at all times and especially our own. Politian, the great
scholar whose learning filled the lecture rooms of Florence with
students of all nations and whose critical and rhetorical works marked
an epoch in the history of scholarship, was able to unbend at times
and write _ballate,_ as they were called, though they were very
different from our ballads, which were to be sung during the dances in
the piazzas on summer evenings. Stanzas from some of these will serve
to show their character. The last stanza, for instance, of his May
Ballad is on the world-old theme, "Gather ye rose-buds while ye may."
"I went a-roaming, maidens, one bright day.
In a green garden in mid month of May.
For when the full rose quits her tender sheath.
When she is sweetest and most fair to see.
Then is the time to place her in thy wreath,
Before her beauty and her freshness flee.
Gather ye therefore roses with great glee.
Sweet girls, or ere their perfume pass away.
I went a-roaming, maidens, one bright day,
In a green garden in mid month of May."
[Footnote 44: "Sketches and Studies in Southern Europe,"
New York, 1880]
Many of the Italian scholars of the period gave the time to the
writing of ballads, and one which has been ascribed to Lorenzo dei
Medici is often quoted. In it the word _signore,_ which means lord, is
used instead of the name of the lady, because she is the lord of the
singer's soul.
"How can I sing light-souled and fancy-free
When my loved lord no longer smiles on me?
One only comfort soothes my heart's despair.
And mid this sorrow lends my soul some cheer;
Unto my lord I ever yielded fair
Service of faith untainted pure and clear;
If then I die thus guiltless, on my bier
It may be she will shed one tear for me. {448}
How can I sing light-souled and fancy-free
When my loved lord no longer smiles on me?"
These ballads were often on the pagan theme of snatching life's
opportunities while one might, a popular expression of the Renaissance
time, an echo of Horace's _Carpe diem,_ "snatch the day," which the
Roman had taken from his Greek models. Every now and then, however,
there is a more serious note in the Carnival songs written to be sung
during the revels at the Carnival time, when it is surprising to find
such a thought emphasized. One of the best known of these Carnival
songs is attributed to Lorenzo de' Medici:
"Fair is youth and void of sorrow;
But it hourly flies away.
Youths and maids, enjoy to-day;
Naught ye know about to-morrow.
Midas treads a wearier measure:
All he touches turns to gold:
If there be no taste of pleasure,
What's the use of wealth untold?
What's the joy his fingers hold,
When he's forced to thirst for aye?
Youths and maids, enjoy to-day;
Naught ye know about to-morrow."
[Illustration: PALMA VECCHIO, POET (SOMETIMES CALLED ARIOSTO)]
After Lorenzo's death one of these Carnival songs, to express the
grief of his people for him, written by Antonio Alamanni, was sung by
maskers habited as skeletons who rode on a car of death, the music to
it being that of a dead march. As a contrast to the less serious songs
it is worth quoting:
"Sorrow, tears, and penitence
Are our doom of pain for aye:
This dead concourse riding by
Hath no cry but penitence! {449}
E'en as you are, once were we:
You shall be as now we are:
We are dead men, as you see:
We shall see you dead men, where
Naught avails to take great care.
After sins, of penitence.
We too in the Carnival
Sang our love-songs through the town
Thus from sin to sin we all
Headlong, heedless, tumbled down;--
Now we cry, the world around.
Penitence! oh, penitence!
Senseless, blind, and stubborn fools!
Time steals all things as he rides:
Honors, glories, states, and schools,
Pass away, and naught abides;
Till the tomb our carcass hides.
And compels this penitence."
Strange as it may seem, the Italian prose of Columbus' Century has had
a wider vogue and influence than its poetry. Two literary springs in
prose have flowed out of Italy--fiction and history. The greatest of
modern historical writers is undoubtedly Machiavelli. His name has
been so much deprecated because of the doctrines that he is thought to
have suggested that very few people realize what a profound student of
human nature he was and how deep was his philosophy. His famous book,
_"Il Principe"_ (The Prince), was written within a decade of Columbus'
death and at once attracted wide attention. This great political
monograph is a calm analysis of the various methods whereby an
ambitious conscienceless man may rise to sovereign power. It is
usually supposed to be a setting forth of his own absolutely
principleless philosophy. As a matter of fact, it is quite as much a
lesson in politics for all the world, and while it might be studied
faithfully by a man who wanted to usurp sovereign authority in a free
state, it contains a series of lessons, which he who {450} runs may
read, for all citizens to know just how the downfall of their
liberties may be brought about. There probably was never a
contribution to political philosophy that has attracted so much
attention. It is one of the few books that the serious politicians of
all countries and nearly every generation since Machiavelli's time
have considered it worth while to read. As a matter of fact, it is
esteemed so highly as a human document that it is almost considered a
serious defect in scholarship for anyone who claims to be educated to
confess ignorance of it.
After a set of discourses on Livy, Machiavelli was commissioned to
write the history of Florence. This is the first attempt in any
literature to trace the political life of a people, showing all the
forces at work upon them and the consequent effects. He places the
portrait of Florence on the background of a very striking group of
pictures drawn from Italian history. Necessarily, since he was
employed at their suggestion for the purpose, the Medici are given a
place of first rank and very great prominence. This was not mere
subserviency, however, but was a very proper estimation of the role
played by that house in the fortunes of Florence. He puts into the
mouths of his historical characters speeches after the manner of Livy
and Thucydides, and some of these speeches are masterpieces of Italian
oratory. His style is vigorous and without any thought of
ornamentation, informed only by the effort to express his meaning
completely and forcibly. Later he wrote a play which John Addington
Symonds, the English critic whose deep knowledge of Italian literature
gives his opinion much weight, did not hesitate to call "the ripest
and most powerful single play in the Italian language." There may be
difference of opinion as to Machiavelli's place in philosophy, and
above all in ethics, but there can be no doubt about his genius as an
historian and a writer, as a profound student of men and their ways
and one of the greatest contributors to political philosophy.
We have come to discount all that has been said in derogation of
Machiavelli's personal character, though it must not be forgotten that
even in the older time there were men who realized that his book was
an essay in political philosophy that {451} made a wonderful
revelation and not in any sense a confession of personal opinions. It
has been said that we owe the expression, "Old Nick," as used
familiarly for the devil, to the fact that Machiavelli's first name
Was Nicholas. Sam Butler long ago wrote:
"Nick Machiavelli had ne'er a trick,
Though he gave his name to our old Nick."
In our own time some of the men whose wide knowledge and large
experience have best fitted them to express an opinion on Machiavelli
have been most emphatic in their high estimation of his character and
influence. Above all, they have insisted on the enduring character of
his work and the fact that it appeals to the essential in human
nature, not to the passing fads of any single generation. Two such
different men in intellectual training as John Morley and Lord Acton
are agreed on this as they could not have agreed on most other things.
Morley said that "Machiavelli was a contemporary of any age and a
citizen of any country." Lord Acton said that he was "no vanishing
type, but a constant and contemporary influence."
Besides a novel, which we quote from later in this chapter, and his
political and historical works, Machiavelli wrote a series of plays
and poems which are of high literary value. Garnett in his "Italian
Literature" says that "he came nearer than any contemporary, except
Leonardo da Vinci, to approving himself a universal genius. No man of
his time stands higher intellectually, and his want of moral elevation
is largely redeemed by his ample endowment with the one virtue chiefly
needful to an Italian of his day, but of which too many Italians were
destitute--patriotism."
Another of Columbus' great contemporaries among Italian writers was
Guicciardini, the Italian historian (1483-1540). Unlike most of the
great historians, he was a man of affairs. When less than twenty he
was sent as Florentine Ambassador to the King of Spain, and in his
early twenties, under Pope Leo X, governed Modena and Reggio with such
talent as drew wide attention to him. He was the Lieutenant-General of
the Anti-Imperial Army in 1527, later was one of the Eight at {452}
Florence, and from 1531 to 1534 ruled Bologna as Papal Vice-Legate. He
tells the story of Italy from 1492 to 1534 in great detail. He writes
as an eye-witness who had himself been prominent in most of the scenes
that he describes. The mass of matter is not allowed to obscure the
picture as a whole, and the work has distinct literary value. Probably
never in the world's history has such a description of events come
from a man who was himself one of the most prominent actors in them.
His work has been declared "the greatest historical work that had
appeared since the beginning of the modern era" ("Encyclopaedia
Britannica").
About the middle of the nineteenth century Guicciardini's hitherto
unpublished works were given to the public in ten volumes and served
to throw wonderful light on the historian himself. His _"Ricordi
Politici"_ deserve to be placed beside Machiavelli's "Prince," and it
is easy to understand, after reading them, that Guicciardini regarded
his friend Machiavelli somewhat as "an amiable visionary or political
enthusiast." There has probably never been a set of human documents
that illuminated the heights and depths of humanity so well as these
writings of the Renaissance. To read Machiavelli, Guicciardini's
_"Ricordi,"_ Benvenuto Cellini's "Autobiography" and Rabelais is to
see the contradictions that there are in this microcosm man better
than is possible in any other way. If we but add Montaigne, who was
educated in our century, the picture is complete. These men of the
Renaissance saw clearly and deeply into humanity through the lens of
themselves. Guicciardini, devoid of passion as well as of high moral
standards in personal life, eminently loyal to his patrons at all
times, just so far as administration of law went, and unquestionably
able, possesses all that ordinarily is assumed to bring the admiration
if not the respect of men, yet no one can read his "Reminiscences"
without feeling the deepest repugnance for his cynicism, selfishness
and distrust of men. Ranke has impugned his good faith as an
historian, and his quondam repute is gone. It is this very contrast,
as exhibited in his writings, that makes Guicciardini's works as
valuable a contribution to the story of humanity as the many
masterpieces of his contemporaries.
{453}
One of the writers of this time who must not be omitted, though his
merit has not always been recognized, is Vasari, whose "Lives of the
Painters" has interested every generation in every country who have
occupied themselves much with the great artists. Himself an artist,
living on intimate terms with many of the men whose lives he sketched
and gathering anecdotes about them and rescuing many a personal trait
from oblivion that otherwise would have been lost to posterity, Vasari
succeeded in making an extremely valuable as well as interesting book.
Some of his anecdotes have been discredited, and he has often been
open to the criticism of lack of critical acumen in his compilations
of materials, but his industry, his recognition of what was likely to
be of interest and his untiring efforts to make his sketch as complete
as possible, deserve the recognition which they have obtained. While
his style is apparently most artless, he possesses, as Garnett has
said, "either the science or the knack of felicitous composition to an
extraordinary degree." It must not be forgotten that this apparent
lack of art is often the highest art, and so it is not surprising to
hear Vasari spoken of as the Herodotus of art. His good taste in art
as well as in literature is demonstrated by his admiration for the
first fruits of the early Tuscan school which were neglected in his
day. He was one of the genial, lovable men of the time who made many
friends.
The most popularly interesting phase of the literature of the
Renaissance and Columbus' Century for our time is doubtless the
fiction that was written so plentifully and so widely read during the
period. Whenever a large number of people become interested in
reading, after a time more and more superficial reading is provided
for them until finally the most trivial of story-telling becomes the
vogue. This has happened at a number of times in the world's history.
It can be traced in Rome with the decadence, in the Oriental
countries, as Burton's edition of the "Thousand and One Nights" shows
so clearly, and in our own time as well as during the fifteenth and
sixteenth century. Another interesting development is the tendency for
the fiction that is popular among the better and supposedly more
educated classes, gradually {454} to be occupied more and more with
sex problems and sexual questions of all kinds. Whenever many have
leisure and a smattering of education, this occurs. It is quite
noticeable during the Renaissance period, though a great many good
stories were written of excellent literary quality without any tinge
of this.
The writing of novels in Italy had begun with Boccaccio in the
fourteenth century, and continued with Sacchetti and Giovanni Il
Fiorentino. About the middle of the fifteenth century, however, this
mode of writing became all the fashion, and the number of novels,
though of course by the word _novelle_ the Italians meant a short
story, is almost without end. Very many of them have been lost, but a
very large number have been preserved. The first of the writers of the
time was Massuccio Salernitano, who flourished during the latter half
of the fifteenth century and died towards its close. Doni has said of
him, "Hail then to the name of Salernitano, who, scorning to borrow
even a single word from Boccaccio, has produced a work which he may
justly regard as his own." It is to him that we owe the first form of
what afterwards became "Romeo and Juliet." Massuccio was a realist and
called "Heaven to witness that the whole of his stories are a faithful
narrative of events occurring during his own time." Fifty of his
novels at least are extant.
Often these novel writers did not attempt any other mode of
literature, and indeed not infrequently were not scholarly in any
sense of the word, but the next of the Italian novelists of the time,
Savadino degli Arienti, was an accomplished scholar and historian. His
history of his native city Bologna is still considered very valuable
by his countrymen. He entitled his tales "Porretane" because he
declared that they had been recited at the baths of Porreto, which was
the favorite summer resort and place of public amusement for the
Bolognese. The recital of these would be supposed to occupy somewhat
the place that moving pictures do now. There is a variety of amusing
adventures, witty stories, love tales, and sometimes tragic incidents
for contrast. Besides his novels and his history, Ariente wrote an
account of illustrious ladies, _Delle Donne Clare,_ dedicated to
Giunipera Sforza Bentivoglio, {455} which shows very clearly how the
women of the Renaissance, as we have come to know them, were
appreciated by their masculine contemporaries very early in Columbus'
Century.
After Savadino comes Luigi da Porto. Crippled by a wound early in
life, he turned from the army to literature and became the friend of
many of the scholars of the time, especially Cardinal Bembo and
members of the Gonzaga family. To him we owe "Juliet" in its best and
purest form. It is the only story we have from him, but it secured
world-wide reputation at the time and has never lost its interest for
mankind. Porto was followed by Leonardo Illicini, another writer of a
single novel which has been preserved and has gone through a number of
editions. Illicini, or Licinio, as his name is sometimes given, was a
physician, for a time the court physician to the Duke of Milan,
afterwards professor of medicine at Ferrara and one of the
distinguished philosophers of the time. Every man is said to have one
good story in him, if he only has the time and energy to write it, and
Illicini wrote his and attracted the attention of his distinguished
friends and contemporaries by the nobleness and beauty of the
sentiments which he incorporated into it and which make it a singular
exception to the usual tenor of Italian novels.
Like Illicini, Machiavelli, the historian and political philosopher,
took it upon himself to write a novel which few people have read and
yet which has a certain exaggeration of social satire which sets it
rather closely in touch with our time. The story represents indeed a
curious ever-recurring phase of the attitude that men are
accustomed--for jest purposes only--to assume toward marriage.
According to the story, the devils were very much disturbed over the
fact that most of the married men who came to hell blamed their coming
on their wives. Hell had been well enough so long as people were
willing to admit that they were punished deservedly, but society there
became very uncomfortable under this new dispensation. The devils
resolved to send one of their number up to earth to find out about it.
Belphagor, one of the fallen Archangels, having assumed the body of a
handsome man of thirty and a large fortune, is commissioned {456} to
marry and live with a wife for ten years. He finds no difficulty in
getting a bride, having "soon attracted the notice of many noble
citizens blessed with large families of daughters and small incomes.
The former of these was soon offered to him, and Belphagor chose a
very beautiful girl with the name of Onesta." The name, which
signifies purity, is evidently chosen for a purpose by Machiavelli,
for, while the wife is as pure as an angel, she has more than the
pride of Lucifer.
A good idea of the way the story develops can only be obtained by
quoting a passage from the translation of the novel:
"He had not long enjoyed the society of his beloved Onesta before he
became tenderly attached to her, and was unable to behold her suffer
the slightest inquietude or vexation. Now, along with her other
gifts of beauty and nobility, the lady had brought into the house of
Roderigo such an insufferable portion of pride that in this respect
Lucifer himself could not equal her, for her husband, who had
experienced the effects of both, was at no loss to decide which was
the most intolerable of the two. Yet it became infinitely worse when
she discovered the extent of Roderigo's attachment to her, of which
she availed herself to obtain an ascendency over him and rule him
with an iron rod. Not content with this, when she found he would
bear it, she continued to annoy him with all kinds of insults and
taunts, in such a way as to give him the most indescribable pain and
uneasiness. For what with the influence of her father, her brothers,
her friends and relatives, the duty of the matrimonial yoke, and the
love he bore her, he suffered all for some time with the patience of
a saint. It would be useless to recount the follies and
extravagancies into which he ran in order to gratify her taste for
dress and every article of the newest fashion, in which our city,
ever so variable in its nature, according to its usual habits, so
much abounds. Yet, to live upon easy terms with her, he was obliged
to do more than this; he had to assist his father-in-law in
portioning off his other daughters; and she next asked him to
furnish one of her brothers with goods to sail for the Levant,
another with silks for the West, while a third was to be set up in a
goldbeater's establishment at Florence. In such objects the greatest
part of his fortune was soon consumed. At length the carnival season
was at hand; the festival of St. John was to be celebrated, and the
whole city, as usual, was in a ferment. Numbers of the noblest
families were about to vie with each other in the splendor of their
parties, and the Lady Onesta, being resolved not to be outshone by
her acquaintance, insisted that Roderigo should exceed them all in
the richness of their feasts. For the reason above stated he
submitted to her will; nor, indeed, would he have scrupled at doing
much more, however difficult it {457} might have been, could he have
flattered himself with a hope of preserving the peace and comfort of
his household and of awaiting quietly the consummation of his ruin.
But this was not the case, inasmuch as the arrogant temper of his
wife had grown to such a height of asperity, by long indulgence,
that he was at a loss in what way to act. His domestics, male and
female, would no longer remain in the house, being unable to support
for any length of time the intolerable life they led. The
inconvenience which he suffered, in consequence of having no one to
whom he could intrust his affairs, it is impossible to express. Even
his own familiar devils, whom he had brought along with him, had
already deserted him, choosing to return below rather than longer
submit to the tyranny of his wife. Left, then, to himself, amidst
his turbulent and unhappy life, and having dissipated all the ready
money he possessed, he was compelled to live upon the hopes of the
returns expected from his ventures in the East and the West. Being
still in good credit, in order to support his rank, he resorted to
bills of exchange; nor was it long before, accounts running against
him, he found himself in the same situation as many other unhappy
speculators in the market. Just as his case became extremely
delicate, there arrived sudden tidings, both from the East and West,
that one of his wife's brothers had dissipated the whole of
Roderigo's profits in play, and that while the other was returning
with a rich cargo uninsured, his ship had the misfortune to be
wrecked, and he himself was lost."
Belphagor fled and, having suffered much from his pursuers, finally
escapes, and at the end of the novel is having a rather good time at
the court of the King of France, where he has entered into possession
of the daughter of the King and is attracting much appreciated
attention from friends, relatives, courtiers, physicians and the
clergy by the acts which he causes her to perform. An Italian to whom
Belphagor had confided his secret comes to Court and recognizes the
particular devil's activities. He tries to persuade Belphagor to leave
his victim, but the demon refuses absolutely. Finally the Italian,
catching Belphagor unawares, calls out that his wife is coming after
him. With a shriek, the poor devil abandons his victim and is glad to
find his way back to hell.
During the first half of the sixteenth century there are a whole
series of Italian novelists, each one of them the writer of many
novels. One of the earliest of these is Firenzuola, who is said to
have been a monk and who was a scholar, for among his collected works
are a translation of "Apuleius' {458} Golden Ass," treatises on
animals, two comedies, as well as critical and literary work of other
kinds. After him came Cinthio, who wrote "Hecatomithi or Hundred
Fables." He was a very prolific writer, perhaps the most popular in
his own time, with recurring periods of popularity since. His praises
were celebrated by nearly all the scholars of the period. His writing
was vivid but daring, and the style shows the beginning of that
degeneration, from over-consciousness of effort to make it scholarly,
so often characteristic of a period when genius is giving place to
mere talent. One of his stories furnished the incidents for
Shakespeare's "Tragedy of Othello," and this has given Cinthio a place
in the commentators on Shakespeare. Another of the Italian novelists
whose memory has been frequently renewed for a similar reason was
Matteo Bandello, who is often spoken of as the best from a literary
standpoint, as he is the most voluminous of the Italian novelists of
this period. He is almost the only one of them, besides Boccaccio,
known beyond the confines of Italy, and though he was a priest and
afterwards a bishop, his stories are as immoral as those of the other
novelists of the time.
Indeed, the most important characteristic of all this novel-writing in
Italy is that most of the stories were quite without moral qualities,
not a few of them were licentious and some of them made their appeal
mainly through the liking for descriptions of cruelty to which mankind
is apparently always attracted. In our time the corresponding reading
is the daily newspaper. The stories of the crime and cruelty of the
day before that are told each morning are about of the average length
of these _novelle_ as written by the Italian novelists of the
Renaissance. There is the same demand for them and they are just as
much talked about. For literary quality the novels are infinitely
higher than our modern newspaper stories. The interesting thing about
these novels of indecency and cruelty is that the claim of their
authors at least was that they were written in order to bring about
reformation and the correction of evil by spreading the knowledge of
it and so making people realize its hideousness. Whenever any excuse
is given for our publication of the cruel and immoral details {459} of
crime in our newspapers, it follows this same specious line of
reasoning. Not a few of the writers of the popular novels were
clergymen. Bandello was made a bishop, yet continued his writing of
novels. It is perfectly possible for good, well-meaning men at any
time to be mistaken in the accomplishment of a purpose, and popularity
was as great a bait as the making of money is in our time.
One of the most interesting contributions to Italian prose at this
time is the "Autobiography" of Benvenuto Cellini, which finds its
place very properly after the fiction of the period. The book has been
famous in the modern time, particularly since Goethe translated it,
and has gone through many editions in nearly every language in Europe.
Long ago, Walpole pronounced it "more amusing than any novel," and it
is probably rather as fiction than as genuine autobiography that it
must be judged. The style is simple, direct, straightforward, and the
wonderful romance has great historical value, for Cellini was in
contact with most of the great men and many of the higher nobility of
his time, and he has used his experiences as the groundwork of the
story. It is hard to tell now how much of it may be true, for
Cellini's great works of art would seem to contradict it, in so far as
it represents him as a frequent brutal murderer, while the amount of
labor that he must have given to the many works we have from him would
seem to make impossible that he should have spent quite so much time
as his life would hint in light living and idleness, while the
affection of his contemporaries and their respect for him in his
declining years would seem to be further contradiction. He was
evidently one of those men who like to be thought worse than they
really are and like so many of the artists of all times who are
anxious to produce the impression that their works were flashes of
genius and not the result of careful patient labor as well.
One of the books that had a very wide influence at this period and
which deserves much more than Benvenuto's romance to be thought
typical of the time is Baldassare Castiglione's _"Cortigiano,"_ in
which the author depicts the ideal courtier or gentleman of the time.
The method of presentation is by a series of conversations held at the
Court of {460} Urbino among the distinguished persons who frequented
it in the time when most of the best-known characters of the
Renaissance found their way occasionally up to the little hill town.
Castiglione's standard for the gentleman is very high, not only in
personal conduct, but especially in intellectual accomplishment. His
purpose to draw the picture of a scholar-gentleman, the ideal of an
accomplished knight, seemed to his contemporaries to have been
successfully fulfilled. The book was widely read. It influenced not
only Italy and France and the Latin-American countries, but above all
affected the English deeply. Mr. Courthope says that, "Carried to the
North of Europe and grafted on the still chivalrous manners of the
English aristocracy, the ideal of Castiglione contributed to form the
character of Sir Philip Sidney. Augustus Hare in his "Ladies of the
Italian Renaissance" (New York, 1904) says:
"Spenser declared that the aim of his book is the same: 'To fashion
a gentleman in noble person, in virtuous and gentle discipline.' We
might fill a volume with instances of the marvellous influence which
the work of Castiglione had upon Elizabethan literature, as we hear
it echoing through the sonnets of Shakespeare, Spenser's hymns 'Of
Heavenly Love,' Ben Jonson, Marlowe, Burton, the poets and early
dramatists, even the grave Ascham; and, amongst later writers,
Shelley's 'Hymn to Intellectual Beauty' is steeped in the same
Italian Platonism."