1. LATIN INFLUENCE.--During the early part of the Middle Ages Latin was
the literary language of Italy, and the aim of the best writers of the
time was to restore Roman culture. The Gothic kingdom of Ravenna,
established by Theodoric, was the centre of this movement, under the
influence of Cassiodorus, Boethius, and Symmachus. It was due to the
prevailing affection for the memories of Rome, that through all the Dark
Ages the Italian mind kept alive a spirit of freedom unknown in other
countries of Europe, a spirit active, later, in the establishment of the
Italian republics, and showing itself in the heroic resistance of the
communes of Lombardy to the empire of the Hohenstaufens. While the
literatures of other countries were drawn almost exclusively from sacred
and chivalric legends, the Italians devoted themselves to the study of
Roman law and history, to translations from the philosophers of Greece,
and, above all, to the establishment of those great universities which
were so powerful in extending science and culture throughout the
Peninsula.
While the Latin language was used in prose, the poets wrote in Provençal
and in French, and many Italian troubadours appeared at the courts of
Europe.
2. EARLY ITALIAN POETRY AND PROSE.--The French element became gradually
lessened, and towards the close of the thirteenth century there arose the
Tuscan school of lyric poetry, the true beginning of Italian art, of which
Lapo Gianni, Guido Cavalcanti, Cino da Pistoia, and Dante Alighieri were
the masters. It is mainly inspired by love, and takes a popular courtly or
scholastic form. The style of Gianni had many of the faults of his
predecessors. That of Cavalcanti, the friend and precursor of Dante,
showed a tendency to stifle poetic imagery under the dead weight of
philosophy. But the love poems of Cino are so mellow, so sweet, so
musical, that they are only surpassed by those of Dante, who, as the
author of the "Vita Nuova," belongs to this lyric school. In this book he
tells the story of his love for Beatrice, which was from the first a high
idealization in which there was apparently nothing human or earthly.
Everything is super-sensual, aerial, heavenly, and the real Beatrice melts
more and more into the symbolic, passing out of her human nature into the
divine.
Italian prose writing is of a later date, and also succeeded a period when
Italian authors wrote in Latin and French. It consists chiefly of
chronicles, tales, and translations.
3. DANTE (1265-1331).--No poet had yet arisen gifted with absolute power
over the empire of the soul; no philosopher had pierced into the depths of
feeling and of thought, when Dante, the greatest name of Italy and the
father of Italian literature, appeared in the might of his genius, and
availing himself of the rude and imperfect materials within his reach,
constructed his magnificent work. Dante was born in Florence, of the noble
family of Alighieri, which was attached to the papal, or Guelph party, in
opposition to the imperial, or Ghibelline. He was but a child when death
deprived him of his father; but his mother took the greatest pains with
his education, placing him under the tuition of Brunetto Latini, and other
masters of eminence. He early made great progress, not only in an
acquaintance with classical literature and politics, but in music,
drawing, horsemanship, and other accomplishments suitable to his station.
As he grew up, he pursued his studies in the universities of Padua,
Bologna, and Paris. He became an accomplished scholar, and at the same
time appeared in public as a gallant and high-bred man of the world. At
the age of twenty-five, he took arms on the side of the Florentine
Guelphs, and distinguished himself in two battles against the Ghibellines
of Arezzo and Pisa. But before Dante was either a student or a soldier, he
had become a lover; and this character, above all others, was impressed
upon him for life. At a May-day festival, when only nine years of age, he
had singled out a girl of his own age, by the name of Bice, or Beatrice,
who thenceforward became the object of his constant and passionate
affection, or the symbol of all human wisdom and perfection. Before his
twenty-fifth year she was separated from him by death, but his passion was
refined, not extinguished by this event; not buried with her body but
translated with her soul, which was its object. On the other hand, the
affection of Beatrice for the poet troubled her spirit amid the bliss of
Paradise, and the visions of the eternal world with which he was favored
were a device of hers for reclaiming him from sin, and preparing him for
everlasting companionship with herself.
At the age of thirty-five he was elected prior, or supreme magistrate of
Florence, an honor from which he dates all his subsequent misfortunes.
During his priorship, the citizens were divided into two factions called
the Neri and Bianchi, as bitterly opposed to each other as both had been
to the Ghibellines. In the absence of Dante on an embassy to Rome, a
pretext was found by the Neri, his opponents, for exciting the populace
against him. His dwelling was demolished, his property confiscated,
himself and his friends condemned to perpetual exile, with the provision
that, if taken, they should be burned alive. After a fruitless attempt, by
himself and his party, to surprise Florence, he quitted his companions in
disgust, and passed the remainder of his life in wandering from one court
of Italy to another, eating the bitter bread of dependence, which was
granted him often as an alms. The greater part of his poem was composed
during this period; but it appears that till the end of his life he
continued to retouch the work.
The last and most generous patron of Dante was Guido di Polenta, lord of
Ravenna, and father of Francesca da Rimini, whose fatal love forms one of
the most beautiful episodes of this poem. Polenta treated him, not as a
dependent but as an honored guest, and in a dispute with the Republic of
Venice he employed the poet as his ambassador, to effect a reconciliation;
but he was refused even an audience, and, returning disappointed and
broken-hearted to Ravenna, he died soon after at the age of fifty-six,
having been in exile nineteen years.
His fellow-citizens, who had closed their hearts and their gates against
him while living, now deeply bewailed his death; and, during the two
succeeding centuries, embassy after embassy was vainly sent from Florence
to recover his honored remains. Not long after his death, those who had
exiled him and confiscated his property provided that his poem should be
read and expounded to the people in a church. Boccaccio was appointed to
this professorship. Before the end of the sixteenth century, the "Divine
Comedy" had gone through sixty editions.
The Divine Comedy is one of the greatest monuments of human genius. It is
an allegory conceived in the form of a vision, which was the most popular
style of poetry at that age. At the close of the year 1300 Dante
represents himself as lost in a forest at the foot of a hill, near
Jerusalem. He wishes to ascend it, but is prevented by a panther, a lion,
and a she-wolf which beset the way. He is met by Virgil, who tells him
that he is sent by Beatrice as a guide through the realm of shadows, hell,
and purgatory, and that she will afterwards lead him up to heaven. They
pass the gates of hell, and penetrate into the dismal region beyond. This,
as represented by Dante, consists of nine circles, forming an inverted
cone, of the size of the earth, each succeeding circle being lower and
narrower than the former, while Lucifer is chained in the centre and at
the bottom of the dreadful crater. Each circle contains various cavities,
where the punishments vary in proportion to the guilt, and the suffering
increases in intensity as the circles descend and contract. In the first
circle were neither cries nor tears, but the eternal sighs of those who,
having never received Christian baptism, were, according to the poet's
creed, forever excluded from the abodes of bliss. In the next circle,
appropriated to those whose souls had been lost by the indulgence of
guilty love, the poet recognizes the unhappy Francesca da Rimini, whose
history forms one of the most beautiful episodes of the poem. The third
circle includes gluttons; the fourth misers and spendthrifts; each
succeeding circle embracing what the poet deems a deeper shade of guilt,
and inflicting appropriate punishment. The Christian and heathen systems
of theology are here freely interwoven. We have Minos visiting the Stygian
Lake, where heretics are burning; we meet Cerberus and the harpies, and we
accompany the poet across several of the fabulous rivers of Erebus. A
fearful scene appears in the deepest circle of the infernal abodes. Here,
among those who have betrayed their country, and are entombed in eternal
ice, is Count Ugolino, who, by a series of treasons, had made himself
master of Pisa. He is gnawing with savage ferocity the skull of the
archbishop of that state, who had condemned him and his children to die by
starvation. The arch-traitor, Satan, stands fixed in the centre of hell
and of the earth. All the streams of guilt keep flowing back to him as
their source, and from beneath his threefold visage issue six gigantic
wings with which he vainly struggles to raise himself, and thus produces
winds which freeze him more firmly in the marsh.
After leaving the infernal regions, and entering purgatory, they find an
immense cone divided into seven circles, each of which is devoted to the
expiation of one of the seven mortal sins. The proud are overwhelmed with
enormous weights; the envious are clothed in garments of horse-hair, their
eye-lids closed; the choleric are suffocated with smoke; the indolent are
compelled to run about continually; the avaricious are prostrated upon the
earth; epicures are afflicted with hunger and thirst; and the incontinent
expiate their crimes in fire. In this portion of the work, however, while
there is much to admire, there is less to excite and sustain the interest.
On the summit of the purgatorial mountain is the terrestrial paradise,
whence is the only assent to the celestial. Beatrice, the object of his
early and constant affection, descends hither to meet the poet. Virgil
disappears, and she becomes his only guide. She conducts him through the
nine heavens, and makes him acquainted with the great men who, by their
virtuous lives, have deserved the highest enjoyments of eternity. In the
ninth celestial sphere, Dante is favored with a manifestation of divinity,
veiled, however, by three hierarchies of attending angels. He sees the
Virgin Mary, and the saints of the Old and New Testament, and by these
personages, and by Beatrice, all his doubts and difficulties are finally
solved, and the conclusion leaves him absorbed in the beatific vision.
The allegorical meaning of the poem is hidden under the literal one.
Dante, traveling through the invisible world, is a symbol of mankind
aiming at the double object of temporal and eternal happiness. The forest
typifies the civil and religious confusion of society deprived of its two
judges, the pope and the emperor. The three beasts are the powers which
offered the greatest obstacles to Dante's designs, Florence, France, and
the papal court. Virgil represents reason and the empire, and Beatrice
symbolizes the supernatural aid, without which man cannot attain the
supreme end, which is God.
But the merit of the poem is that for the first time classic art is
transferred into a Romance form. Dante is, above all, a great artist.
Whether he describes nature, analyzes passions, curses the vices, or sings
hymns to the virtues, he is always wonderful for the grandeur and delicacy
of his art. He took his materials from mythology, history, and philosophy,
but more especially from his own passions of hatred and love, breathed
into them the breath of genius and produced the greatest work of modern
times.
The personal interest that he brings to bear on the historical
representation of the three worlds is that which most interests and stirs
us. The Divine Comedy is not only the most lifelike drama of the thoughts
and feelings that moved men at that time, but it is also the most
spontaneous and clear reflection of the individual feelings of the poet,
who remakes history after his own passions, and who is the real chastiser
of the sins and rewarder of the virtues. He defined the destiny of Italian
literature in the Middle Ages, and began the great era of the Renaissance.
4. PETRARCH.--Petrarch (1304-1374) belonged to a respected Florentine
family. His father was the personal friend of Dante, and a partaker of the
same exile. While at Avignon, then the seat of the papal court, on one
occasion he made an excursion to the fountain of Vaucluse, taking with him
his son, the future poet, then in the tenth year of his age. The wild and
solitary aspect of the place inspired the boy with an enthusiasm beyond
his years, leaving an impression which was never afterwards effaced, and
which affected his future life and writings. As Petrarch grew up, unlike
the haughty, taciturn, and sarcastic Dante, he seems to have made friends
wherever he went. With splendid talents, engaging manners, a handsome
person, and an affectionate and generous disposition, he became the
darling of his age, a man whom princes delighted to honor. At the age of
twenty-three, he first met Laura de Sade in a church at Avignon. She was
only twenty years of age, and had been for three years the wife of a
patrician of that city. Laura was not more distinguished for her beauty
and fortune than for the unsullied purity of her manners in a licentious
court, where she was one of the chief ornaments. The sight of her beauty
inspired the young poet with an affection which was as pure and virtuous
as it was tender and passionate. He poured forth in song the fervor of his
love and the bitterness of his grief. Upwards of three hundred sonnets,
written at various times, commemorate all the little circumstances of this
attachment, and describe the favors which, during an acquaintance of
fifteen or twenty years, never exceeded a kind word, a look less severe
than usual, or a passing expression of regret at parting. He was not
permitted to visit at Laura's house; he had no opportunity of seeing her
except at mass, at the brilliant levees of the pope, or in private
assemblies of beauty and fashion: but she forever remained the dominant
object of his existence. He purchased a house at Vaucluse, and there, shut
in by lofty and craggy heights, the river Sorgue traversing the valley on
one side, amidst hills clothed with umbrageous trees, cheered only by the
song of birds, the poet passed his lonely days. Again and again he made
tours through Italy, Spain, and Flanders, during one of which he was
crowned with the poet's laurel at Rome, but he always returned to
Vaucluse, to Avignon, to Laura. Thus years passed away. Laura became the
mother of a numerous family, and time and care made havoc of her youthful
beauty. Meanwhile, the sonnets of Petrarch had spread her fame throughout
France and Italy, and attracted many to the court of Avignon, who were
surprised and disappointed at the sight of her whom they had believed to
be the loveliest of mortals. In 1347, during the absence of the poet from
Avignon, Laura fell a victim to the plague, just twenty-one years from the
day that Petrarch first met her. Now all his love was deepened and
consecrated, and the effusions of his poetic genius became more
melancholy, more passionate, and more beautiful than ever. He declined the
offices and honors that his countrymen offered him, and passed his life in
retirement. He was found one morning by his attendants dead in his
library, his head resting on a book.
The celebrity of Petrarch at the present day depends chiefly on his
lyrical poems, which served as models to all the distinguished poets of
southern Europe. They are restricted to two forms: the sonnet, borrowed
from the Sicilians, and the canzone, from the Provençals. The subject of
almost all these poems is the same--the hopeless affection of the poet for
the high-minded Laura. This love was a kind of religious and enthusiastic
passion, such as mystics imagine they feel towards the Deity, or such as
Plato believes to be the bond of union between elevated minds. There is no
poet in any language more perfectly pure than Petrarch--more completely
above all reproach of laxity or immorality. This merit, which is equally
due to the poet and to his Laura, is the more remarkable, considering the
models which he followed and the court at which Laura lived. The labor of
Petrarch in polishing his poems did much towards perfecting the language,
which through him became more elegant and more melodious. He introduced
into the lyric poetry of Italy the pathos and the touching sweetness of
Ovid and Tibullus, as well as the simplicity of Anacreon.
Petrarch attached little value to his Italian poems; it was on his Latin
works that he founded his hopes of renown. But his highest title to
immortal fame is his prodigious labor to promote the study of ancient
authors. Wherever he traveled, he sought with the utmost avidity for
classic manuscripts, and it is difficult to estimate the effect produced
by his enthusiasm. He corresponded with all the eminent literati of his
day, and inspired them with his own tastes. Now for the first time there
appeared a kind of literary republic in Europe united by the magic bond of
Petrarch's influence, and he was better known and exercised a more
extensive and powerful influence than many of the sovereigns of the day.
He treated with various princes rather in the character of an arbitrator
than an ambassador, and he not only directed the tastes of his own age,
but he determined those of succeeding generations.
5. BOCCACCIO AND OTHER PROSE WRITERS.--The fourteenth century forms a
brilliant era in Italian literature, distinguished beyond any other period
for the creative powers of genius which it exhibited. In this century,
Dante gave to Europe his great epic poem, the lyric muse awoke at the call
of Petrarch, while Boccaccio created a style of prose, harmonious,
flexible, and engaging, and alike suitable to the most elevated and to the
most playful subjects.
Boccaccio (1313-1875) was the son of a Florentine merchant; he early gave
evidence of superior talents, and his father vainly attempted to educate
him to follow his own profession. He resided at Naples, where he became
acquainted with a lady celebrated in his writings under the name of
Fiammetta. It was at her desire that most of his early pieces were
written, and the very exceptionable moral character which attaches to them
must be attributed, in part, to her depraved tastes. The source of
Boccaccio's highest reputation, and that which entitles him to rank as the
third founder of the national literature, is his "Decameron," a collection
of tales written during the period when the plague desolated the south of
Europe, with a view to amuse the ladies of the court during that dreadful
visitation. The tales are united under the supposition of a party of ten
who had retired to one of the villas in the environs of Naples to strive,
in the enjoyment of innocent amusement, to escape the danger of contagion.
It was agreed that each person should tell a new story during the space of
ten days, whence the title Decameron. The description of the plague, in
the introduction, is considered not only the finest piece of writing from
Boccaccio's pen, but one of the best historical descriptions that have
descended to us. The stories, a hundred in number, are varied with
considerable art, both in subject and in style, from the most pathetic and
sportive to the most licentious. The great merit of Boccaccio's
composition consists in his easy elegance, his _naïveté_, and, above all,
in the correctness of his language.
The groundwork of the Decameron has been traced to an old Hindu romance,
which, after passing through all the languages of the East, was translated
into Latin as early as the twelfth century; the originals of several of
these tales have been found in the ancient French _Fabliaux_, while others
are believed to have been borrowed from popular recitation or from real
occurrences. But if Boccaccio cannot boast of being the inventor of all,
or even any of these tales, he is still the father of this class of modern
Italian literature, since he was the first to transplant into the world of
letters what had hitherto been only the subject of social mirth. These
tales have in their turn been repeated anew in almost every language of
Europe, and have afforded reputations to numerous imitators. One of the
most beautiful and unexceptionable tales in the Decameron is that of
"Griselda," the last in the collection. It is to be regretted that the
author did not prescribe to himself the same purity in his images that he
did in his phraseology. Many of these tales are not only immoral but
grossly indecent, though but too faithful a representation of the manners
of the age in which they were written. The Decameron was published towards
the middle of the fourteenth century; and, from the first invention of
printing, it was freely circulated in Italy, until the Council of Trent
proscribed it in the middle of the sixteenth century. It was, however,
again published in 1570, purified and abridged.
Boccaccio is the author of two romances, one called "Fiammetta," the other
the "Filocopo;" the former distinguished for the fervor of its expression,
the latter for the variety of its adventures and incidents. He wrote also
two romantic poems, in which he first introduced the _ottava rima_, or the
stanza composed of six lines, which rhyme interchangeably with each other,
and are followed by a couplet. In these he strove to revive ancient
mythology, and to identify it with modern literature. His Latin
compositions are voluminous, and materially contributed to the advancement
of letters.
While Boccaccio labored so successfully to reduce the language to elegant
and harmonious forms, he strove like Petrarch to excite his contemporaries
to the study of the ancient classics. He induced the senate of Florence to
establish a professorship of Greek, entered his name among the first of
the students, and procured manuscripts at his own expense. Thus Hellenic
literature was introduced into Tuscany, and thence into the rest of
Europe.
Boccaccio, late in life, assumed the ecclesiastical habit, and entered on
the study of theology. When the Florentines founded a professorship for
the reading and exposition of the Divine Comedy, Boccaccio was made the
first incumbent. The result of his labors was a life of Dante, and a
commentary on the first seventeen cantos of the Inferno. With the death of
Petrarch, who had been his most intimate friend, his last tie to earth was
loosed; he died at Certaldo a few months later, in the sixty-third year of
his age. His dwelling is still to be seen, situated on a hill, and looking
down on the fertile and beautiful valley watered by the river Elsa.
Of the other prose writers of the fourteenth century the most remarkable
are the three Florentine historians named Villani, the eldest of whom
(1310-1348) wrote a history of Florence, which was continued afterwards by
his brother and by his nephew; a work highly esteemed for its historical
interest, and for its purity of language and style; and Franco Sacchetti
(1335-1400), who approaches nearest to Boccaccio. His "Novels and Tales"
are valuable for the purity and eloquence of their style, and for the
picture they afford of the manners of his age.
Among the ascetic writers of this age St. Catherine of Siena occupies an
important place, as one who aided in preparing the way for the great
religious movement of the sixteenth century. The writings of this
extraordinary woman, who strove to bring back the Church of Rome to
evangelical virtue, are the strongest, clearest, most exalted religious
utterance that made itself heard in Italy in the fourteenth century.
6. THE FIRST DECLINE OF ITALIAN LITERATURE.--The passionate study of the
ancients, of which Petrarch and Boccaccio had given an example, suspended
the progress of Italian literature in the latter part of the fourteenth
century, and through almost all the fifteenth. The attention of the
literary men of this time was wholly engrossed by the study of the dead
languages, and of manners, customs, and religious systems equally extinct.
They present to our observation boundless erudition, a just spirit of
criticism, and nice sensibility to the beauties and defects of the great
authors of antiquity; but we look in vain for that true eloquence which is
more the fruit of an intercourse with the world than of a knowledge of
books. They were still more unsuccessful in poetry, in which their
attempts, all in Latin, are few in number, and their verses harsh and
heavy, without originality or vigor. It was not until the period when
Italian poetry began to be again cultivated, that Latin verse acquired any
of the characteristics of genuine inspiration.
But towards the close of the fifteenth century the dawn of a new literary
era appeared, which soon shone with meridian light. At this time, the
universities had become more and more the subjects of attention to the
governments; the appointment of eminent professors, and the privileges
connected with these institutions, attracted to them large numbers of
students, and the concourse was often so great that the lectures were
delivered in the churches and in public squares. Those republics which
still existed, and the princes who had risen on the ruins of the more
ephemeral ones, rivaled each other in their patronage of literary men; the
popes, who in the preceding ages had denounced all secular learning, now
became its munificent patrons; and two of them, Nicholas V. and Pius II.,
were themselves scholars of high distinction. The Dukes of Milan, and the
Marquises of Mantua and Ferrara, surrounded themselves in their capitals
with men illustrious in science and letters, and seemed to vie with each
other in the favors which they lavished upon them. In the hitherto free
republic of Florence, which had given birth to Dante, Petrarch, and
Boccaccio, literature found support in a family which, at no distant
period, employed it to augment their power, and to rule the city with an
almost despotic sway. The Medici had been long distinguished for the
wealth they had acquired by commercial enterprise, and for the high
offices which they held in the republic. Cosmo de' Medici had acquired a
degree of power which shook the very foundations of the state. He was
master of the moneyed credit of Europe, and almost the equal of the kings
with whom he negotiated; but in the midst of the projects of his ambition
he opened his palace as an asylum to the scholars and artists of the age,
turned its gardens into an academy, and effected a revolution in
philosophy by setting up the authority of Plato against that of Aristotle.
His banks, which were scattered over Europe, were placed at the service of
literature as well as commerce. His agents abroad sold spices and bought
manuscripts; the vessels which returned to him from Constantinople,
Alexandria, and Smyrna were often laden with volumes in the Greek, Syriac,
and Chaldaic languages. Being banished to Venice, he continued his
protection of letters, and on his return to Florence he devoted himself
more than ever to the cause of literature. In the south of Italy, Alphonso
V., and, indeed, all the sovereigns of that age, pursued the same course,
and chose for their chancellors and ambassadors the same scholars who
educated their sons and expounded the classics in their literary circles.
This patronage, however, was confined to the progress of ancient letters,
while the native literature, instead of redeeming the promise of its
infancy, remained at this time mute and inglorious. Yet the resources of
poets and orators were multiplying a thousand fold. The exalted
characters, the austere laws, the energetic virtues, the graceful
mythology, the thrilling eloquence of antiquity, were annihilating the
puerilities of the old Italian rhymes, and creating purer and nobler
tastes. The clay which was destined for the formation of great men was
undergoing a new process; a fresh mould was cast, the forms at first
appeared lifeless, but ere the end of the fifteenth century the breath of
genius entered into them, and a new era of life began.