CHAPTER II

FIRST PERIOD OF HUMANISM

Importance of the Revival of Learning -- Mediæval Romance --

The Legend of Faustus -- Its Value for the Renaissance --

The Devotion of Italy to Study -- Italian Predisposition for

this Labour -- Scholarship in the Dark Ages -- Double

Attitude assumed by the Church -- Piety for Virgil -- Meagre

Acquaintance with the Latin Classics -- No Greek Learning --

The Spiritual Conditions of the Middle Ages adverse to Pure

Literature -- Italy no exception to the rest of Europe --

Dante and Petrarch -- Definition of Humanism -- Petrarch's

Conception of it -- His Æsthetical Temperament -- His Cult

for Cicero, Zeal in collecting Manuscripts, Sense of the

Importance of Greek Studies -- Warfare against Pedantry and

Superstition -- Ideal of Poetry and Rhetoric -- Critique of

Jurists and Schoolmen -- S. Augustine -- Petrarch's Vanity

-- Thirst for Fame -- Discord between his Life and his

Profession -- His Literary Temperament -- Visionary

Patriotism -- His Influence -- His Successors -- Boccaccio

and Greek Studies -- Translation of Homer -- Philosophy of

Literature -- Sensuousness of Boccaccio's Inspiration --

Giovanni da Ravenna -- The Wandering Professor -- His Pupils

in Latin Scholarship -- Luigi Marsigli -- The Convent of S.

Spirito -- Humanism in Politics -- Coluccio de' Salutati --

Gasparino da Barzizza -- Improved Style in Letter-writing --

Revival of Greek Learning -- Manuel Chrysoloras -- His

Pupils -- Lionardo Bruni -- Value of Greek for the

Renaissance.

I have already observed that it would be inaccurate to identify the

whole movement of the Renaissance with the process whereby the

European nations recovered and appropriated the masterpieces of Greek

and Latin literature. At the same time this reconquest of the classic

world of thought was by far the most important achievement of the

fifteenth and sixteenth centuries. It absorbed nearly the whole mental

energy of the Italians, and determined in a great measure the quality

of all their intellectual production in the period I have undertaken

to illustrate. Through their activity in the field of scholarship the

proper starting-point was given to the modern intellect. The

revelation of what men were and what they wrought under the influence

of other faiths and other impulses, in distant ages with a different

ideal for their aim, not only widened the narrow horizon of the Middle

Ages, but it also restored self-confidence to the reason of humanity.

Research and criticism began to take the place of scholastic

speculation. Positive knowledge was substituted for the intuitive

guesses of idealists and dreamers. The interests of this world

received their due share of attention, and the _litteræ humaniores_ of

the student usurped upon the _divinarum rerum cognitio_ of

theologians.

All through the Middle Ages uneasy and imperfect memories of Greece

and Rome had haunted Europe. Alexander, the great conqueror; Hector,

the noble knight and lover; Helen, who set Troy town on fire; Virgil,

the magician; Dame Venus lingering about the hill of Hörsel--these

phantoms, whereof the positive historic truth was lost, remained to

sway the soul and stimulate desire in myth and saga. Deprived of

actual knowledge, imagination transformed what it remembered of the

classic age into romance. The fascination exercised by these dreams of

a half-forgotten past over the mediæval fancy expressed itself in the

legend of Doctor Faustus. That legend tells us what the men upon the

eve of the Revival longed for, and what they dreaded, when they turned

their minds towards the past. The secret of enjoyment and the source

of strength possessed by the ancients, allured them; but they believed

that they could only recover this lost treasure by the suicide of

their soul. So great was the temptation that Faustus paid the price.

After imbibing all the knowledge of his age, he sold himself to the

Devil, in order that his thirst for experience might be quenched, his

grasp upon the world be strengthened, and the ennui of his inactivity

be soothed. His first use of this dearly-bought power was to make

blind Homer sing to him. Amphion tunes his harp in concert with

Mephistopheles. Alexander rises from the dead at his behest, with all

his legionaries; and Helen is given to him for a bride. Faustus is

therefore a parable of the impotent yearnings of the spirit in the

Middle Ages--its passionate aspiration, its conscience-stricken

desire, its fettered curiosity amid the cramping limits of imperfect

knowledge and irrational dogmatism. That for which Faustus sold his

soul, the freedom he acquired by magic, the sense of beauty he

gratified through visions, the knowledge he gained by interrogation of

demons, was yielded to the world without price at the time of the

Renaissance. Homer, no longer by the intervention of a fiend, but by

the labour of the scholar, sang to the new age. The pomp of the

empires of the old world was restored in the pages of historians. The

indestructible beauty of Greek art, whereof Helen was an emblem,

became, through the discovery of classic poetry and sculpture, the

possession of the modern world. Mediævalism took this Helen to wife,

and their offspring, the Euphorion of Goethe's drama, is the spirit of

the modern world. But how was this effected? By long and toilsome

study, by the accumulation of MSS., by the acquisition of dead

languages, by the solitary labour of grammarians, by the lectures of

itinerant professors, by the scribe, by the printing press, by the

self-devotion of magnificent Italy to erudition. In this way the

Renaissance realised the dream of the Middle Ages, and the genius of

the Italians wrought by solid toil what the myth-making imagination of

the Germans had projected in a poem.

It is impossible to exaggerate the benefit conferred upon Europe by

the Italians at this epoch. The culture of the classics had to be

reappropriated before the movement of the modern mind could begin:

before the nations could start upon a new career of progress, the

chasm between the old and new world had to be bridged over. This task

of reappropriation the Italians undertook alone, and achieved at the

sacrifice of their literary independence and their political freedom.

The history of Renaissance literature in Italy is the history of a

national genius deviating from the course of self-development into the

channels of scholarship and antiquarian research. The language created

by Dante as a thing of power, polished by Petrarch as a thing of

beauty, trained by Boccaccio as the instrument of melodious prose, was

abandoned even by the Tuscans in the fifteenth century for revived

Latin and newly-discovered Greek. Patent acquisition took the place of

proud inventiveness; laborious imitation of classical authors

suppressed originality of style. The force of mind which in the

fourteenth century had produced a 'Divine Comedy' and a 'Decameron,'

in the fifteenth was expended upon the interpretation of codices, the

settlement of texts, the translation of Greek books into Latin, the

study of antiquities, the composition of commentaries, encyclopædias,

dictionaries, ephemerides. While we regret this change from creative

to acquisitive literature, we must bear in mind that those scholars

who ought to have been poets accomplished nothing less than the

civilisation, or, to use their own phrase, the humanisation, of the

modern world.[11] At the critical moment when the Eastern Empire was

being shattered by the Turks, and when the other European nations were

as yet unfit for culture, Italy saved the arts and sciences of Greece

and Rome, and interpreted the spirit of the classics. Devoting herself

to what appears the slavish work of compilation and collection, she

transmitted an inestimable treasure to the human race; and though for

a time the beautiful Italian tongue was superseded by a jargon of dead

languages, yet the literature of the Renaissance yielded in the end

the poetry of Ariosto, the political philosophy of Machiavelli, the

histories of Guicciardini and Varchi. Meanwhile the whole of Europe

had received the staple of its intellectual education.

[Footnote 11: Poliziano, Pontano, Sannazzaro, and Bembo divided their

powers between scholarship and poetry, to the injury of the latter.]

It is necessary to repeat the observation that this absorption of

energy in the task of scholarship was no less natural to the Italians

than necessary for the world at large. The Italians were not a new

nation like the Franks and Germans. Nothing is more remarkable in the

mediæval history of Italy than the sense, shared alike by poets and

jurists, by the leaders of popular insurrections and the moulders of

philosophic thought, that the centre of national vitality existed in

the Roman Empire. It was this determination to look backward rather

than forward, to trust the past rather than the present, that

neutralised the forces of the Lombard League, and prevented the

communes from asserting their independence face to face with

foreigners who claimed to be the representatives of Cæsar. The

Italians, unlike any other European people, sacrificed the reality of

political freedom for the idea of majesty and glory, to be recovered

by the restitution of the Empire. Guelf and Ghibelline coincided in

this delusion, that Rome, whether Papal or Imperial, was destined

still to place the old Italic stock upon the throne of civilised

humanity. When the three great authors of the thirteenth century

appeared, each in turn cast his eyes to ancient Rome as the true

source of national greatness. The language of modern Italy was known

to be a scion of the Latin speech, and the Italians called themselves

_Latini_. The attempt to conform their literature to the Roman type

was therefore felt to be but a return to its true standard; the

'Æneid' of Virgil was their _Nibelungen-Lied_. Thus the humanistic

enthusiasm of the fifteenth century assumed an almost patriotic

character. In it, moreover, the doctrine that had ruled the Middle

Ages, interrupting political cohesion without acquiring the

consistency of fact, attained at last its proper sphere of

development. The ideal of Dante in the 'De Monarchiâ' had proved a

baseless dream; no emperor was destined to take his seat in Rome and

sway the world. But the ideal of Petrarch was realised; the scholars,

animated by his impulse, reacquired the birthright of culture which

belonged of old to Italy, and made her empress of the intellect for

Europe. Not political but spiritual supremacy was the real heritage of

these new Romans.

As an introduction to the history of the Revival, and in order that

the work to be performed by the Italian students may be accurately

measured, it will be necessary to touch briefly upon the state of

scholarship during the dark ages. To underrate the achievement of that

period, especially in logic, theology, and law, is only too easy,

seeing that a new direction was given to the mind of Europe by the

Renaissance, and that we have moved continuously on other lines to

other objects since the opening of the fifteenth century. Mediæval

thought was both acute and strenuous in its own region of activity.

What it lacked was material outside the speculative sphere to feed

upon. Culture, in our sense of the word, did not exist, and the

intellect was forced to deal subtly with a very limited class of

conceptions.

Long before the fall of the Roman Empire it became clear that both

fine arts and literature were gradually declining. Sculpture in the

age of Constantine had lost distinction of style; and though the

practice of verse survived as a rhetorical exercise, no works of

original genius were produced. Ausonius and Claudian, just before the

division of the Empire and the irruption of the barbarian races,

uttered the last swan's note of classic poetry. Meanwhile true taste

and criticism were extinct.[12] The Church, while battling with

Paganism, recognised her deadliest foes in literature. Not only were

the Greek and Latin masterpieces the stronghold of a mythology that

had to be erased from the popular mind; not only was their morality

antagonistic to the principles of Christian ethics: in addition to

these grounds for hatred and mistrust, the classics idealised a form

of human life which the new faith regarded as worthless. What was

culture in comparison with the salvation of the soul? Why should time

be spent upon the dreams of poets, when every minute might be well

employed in pondering the precepts of the Gospels? What was the use of

making this life refined and agreeable by study, when it formed but an

insignificant prelude to an eternity wherein mere mundane learning

would be valueless? Why raise questions about man's condition on this

earth, when the creeds had to be defined and expounded, when the

nature of God and the relation of the human soul to its Creator had to

be established? It was easy to pass from this state of mind to the

belief that learning in itself was impious.[13] 'Let us shun the lying

fables of the poets,' cries Gregory of Tours, 'and forego the wisdom

of sages at enmity with God, lest we incur the doom of endless death

by sentence of our Lord.' Even Augustine deplored his time spent in

reading Virgil, weeping over Dido's death by love, when all the while

he was himself both morally and spiritually dead. Alcuin regretted

that in his boyhood he had preferred Virgil to the legends of the

Saints, and stigmatised the eloquence of the Latin writers by the

epithet of wanton. Such phrases as _poetarum figmenta, gentilium

figmenta sive deliramenta_ (the fictions or mad ravings of Pagan

poets) are commonly employed by Christian authors of the Lives of

Saints, in order to mark the inferiority of Virgil and Ovid to their

own more edifying compositions. Relying on their spiritual

pretensions, the monkish scribes gloried in ignorance and paraded want

of grammar as a sign of grace. 'I warn the curious reader,' writes a

certain Wolfhard in the 'Life of S. Walpurgis,' 'not to mind the mass

of barbarisms in this little work; I bid him ponder what he finds upon

these pages, and seek the pearl within the dung-heap.' Gregory the

Great goes further, and defies the pedantry of pedagogues. 'The place

of prepositions and the cases of the nouns I utterly despise, since I

deem it unfit to confine the words of the celestial oracle within the

rules of Donatus.' 'Let philosophers and impure scholars of Donatus,'

writes a fanatic of Cordova, 'ply their windy problems with the

barking of dogs, the grunting of swine, snarling with skinned throat

and teeth; let the foaming and bespittled grammarians belch, while we

remain evangelical servants of Christ, true followers of rustic

teachers.' Thus the opposition of the Church to Paganism, the

conviction that Christianity was alien to culture, and the absorption

of intellectual interest in theological questions contributed to

destroy what had remained of sound scholarship in the last years of

the Empire. The task of the Church, moreover, in the Middle Ages was

not so much to keep learning alive as to moralise the savage races who

held Europe at their pleasure. Pure Latinity, even if it could have

been instilled into the nations of the North, was of less moment than

elementary discipline in manners and religion. It must not be

forgotten that the literature of ancient Rome was artificial in its

best days, confined to a select few, and dependent on the capital for

its support. After the dismemberment of the Empire the whole of Europe

was thrown open to the action of spiritual powers who had to use

unlettered barbarians for their ministers and missionaries. To submit

this vast field to classic culture at the same time that Christianity

was being propagated, would have been beyond the strength of the

Church, even had she chosen to undertake this task, and had the vital

forces of antiquity not been exhausted.

[Footnote 12: For the low state of criticism, even in a good age, see

Aulus Gellius, lib. xiv. cap. vi. He describes the lecture of a

rhetor, _quispiam linguæ Latinæ literator_, on a passage in the

seventh Æneid. The man's explanation of the word _bidentes_ proves an

almost more than mediæval puerility and ignorance.]

[Footnote 13: Most of the following quotations will be found in

Comparetti, _Virgilio nel Medio Evo_, vol. i., a work of sound

scholarship and refined taste upon the place of Virgil in the Middle

Ages.]

At this point an inevitable reaction, illustrating the compromise

thrust upon the Church by her peculiar position, made itself apparent.

In proportion as the dangers of Paganism decreased, the clergy, on

whom devolved the double duty of civilising as well as moralising

society, began to feel the need of arresting the advance of ignorance.

Knowledge of Latin was required for ecclesiastical uses, for the

interpretation of Scripture, for the study of the Fathers, and for the

establishment of a common language among many divers nationalities. A

middle course between the fanaticism which regarded classical

literature as worthless and impure, and the worldliness that might

have been encouraged by enthusiasm for the ancients, had therefore to

be steered. Grammar was taught in the schools, and where grammar was

taught, it was impossible to exclude Virgil and some other Latin

authors. A conflict in the monkish mind was the unavoidable

consequence. Since the classics alone communicated sound learning, the

study of them formed a necessary part of education; and yet these

authors were unbaptized Pagans, doomed to everlasting death because of

their impiety and immorality. Poets who had hitherto been regarded as

deadly foes, were now accepted as auxiliaries in the battle of the

Church against barbarism. While copying the elegies of Ovid, the

compassionate scribe sought to place them in a favourable light, and

to render them edifying at the cost of contradicting their plain

meaning.[14] Virgil was credited with allegorical significance; and

the strong sympathy he roused in those who felt the beauty of his

style, produced a belief that, if not quite, he was almost a

Christian. The piety and pity for Virgil as a gentle soul who had just

missed the salvation offered by Christ, found expression in the

service for S. Paul's Day used at Mantua:[15]--

Ad Maronis mausoleum

Ductus, fudit super eum

Piæ rorem lacrymæ;

Quem te, inquit, reddidissem

Si te vivum invenissem,

Poetarum maxime!

[Footnote 14: _Hoc est quod pueri tangar amore minus_, for example,

was altered into _Hoc est quod pueri tangar amore nihil_; for

_lusisset amores_ was substituted _dampnasset amores_, and so forth.]

[Footnote 15: The hymn quoted above in the text refers to a legend of

S. Paul having visited the tomb of Virgil at Naples:--

'When to Maro's tomb they brought him

Tender grief and pity wrought him

To bedew the stone with tears;

What a saint I might have crowned thee,

Had I only living found thee,

Poet first and without peers!']

Meanwhile the utter confusion consequent upon the downfall of the

Roman Empire and the irruption of the Germanic races was causing, by

the mere brute force of circumstance, a gradual extinction of

scholarship too powerful to be arrested. The teaching of grammar for

ecclesiastical purposes was insufficient to check the influence of

many causes leading to this overthrow of learning. It was impossible

to communicate more than a mere tincture of knowledge to students

separated from the classical tradition, for whom the antecedent

history of Rome was a dead letter. The meaning of Latin words derived

from the Greek was lost. Smaragdus, a grammarian, mistook _Eunuchus

Comoedia_ and _Orestes Tragoedia_, mentioned by Donatus, for the

names of authors. Remigius of Auxerre explained _poema_ by _positio_,

and _emblema_ by _habundantia_. Homer and Virgil were supposed to have

been friends and contemporaries, while the Latin epitome of the

'Iliad,' bearing the name of Pindar, was fathered on the Theban

lyrist. Theological notions, grotesque and childish beyond

description, found their way into etymology and grammar. The three

persons of the Trinity were discovered in the verb, and mystic numbers

in the parts of speech. Thus analytical studies like that of language

came to be regarded as an open field for the exercise of the

mythologising fancy; and etymology was reduced to a system of

ingenious punning. _Voluntas_ and _voluptas_ were distinguished, for

example, as pertaining to the nature of _Deus_ and _diabolus_

respectively; and, in order to make the list complete, _voluntas_ was

invented as an attribute of _homo_. It is clear that on this path of

verbal quibbling the intellect had lost tact, taste, and common sense

together.

When the minds of the learned were possessed by these absurdities to

the exclusion of sound method, we cannot wonder that antiquity

survived but as a strange and shadowy dream in popular imagination.

Virgil, the only classic who retained distinct and living personality,

passed from poet to philosopher, from philosopher to Sibyl, from Sibyl

to magician, by successive stages of transmutation, as the truth about

him grew more dim and the faculty to apprehend him weakened. Forming

the staple of education in the schools of the grammarians, and

metamorphosed by the vulgar consciousness into a wizard,[16] he waited

on the extreme verge of the dark ages to take Dante by the hand, and

lead him, as the type of human reason, through the realms of Hell and

Purgatory.

[Footnote 16: The common use of the word _grammarie_ for occult

science in our ballads illustrates this phase of popular opinion. So

does the legend of Friar Bacon. See Thoms, _Early English Prose

Romances_.]

With regard to the actual knowledge of Latin literature possessed in

the Middle Ages, it may be said in brief that Virgil was continually

studied, and that a certain familiarity with Ovid, Lucan, Horace,

Juvenal, and Statius was never lost. Among the prose-writers,

portions of Cicero were used in education; but the compilations of

Boethius, Priscian, Donatus, and Cassiodorus were more widely used. In

the twelfth century the study of Roman law was revived, and the

scholastic habit of thought found scope for subtlety in the discussion

of cases and composition of glosses. The general knowledge and

intellectual sympathy required for comprehension of the genuine

classics were, however, wanting; and thus it happened that their place

was taken by epitomes and abstracts, and by the formal digests of the

Western Empire in its decadence. This lifeless literature was better

suited to the meagre intellectual conditions of the Middle Ages than

the masterpieces of the Augustan and Silver periods.

Of Greek there was absolutely no tradition left.[17] When the names of

Greek poets or philosophers are cited by mediæval authors, it is at

second hand from Latin sources; and the Aristotelian logic of the

schoolmen came through Latin translations made by Jews from Arabian

MSS. Occasionally it might happen that a Western scholar acquired

Greek at Constantinople or in the south of Italy, where it was spoken;

but this did not imply Hellenic culture, nor did such knowledge form a

part and parcel of his erudition. Greek was hardly less lost to Europe

then than Sanskrit in the first half of the eighteenth century.

[Footnote 17: Didot, in his _Life of Aldus_, tries to make out that

Greek learning survived in Ireland longer than elsewhere.]

The meagreness of mediæval learning was, however, a less serious

obstacle to culture than the habit of mind, partly engendered by

Christianity and partly idiosyncratic to the new races, which

prevented students from appreciating the true spirit of the classics.

While mysticism and allegory ruled supreme, the clearly-defined

humanity of the Greeks and Romans could not fail to be misapprehended.

The little that was known of them reached students through a hazy and

distorting medium. Poems like Virgil's fourth Eclogue were prized for

what the author had not meant when he was writing them; while his real

interests were utterly neglected. Against this mental misconception,

this original obliquity of vision, this radical lie in the intellect,

the restorers of learning had to fight at least as energetically as

against brute ignorance and dulness. It was not enough to multiply

books and to discover codices; they had to teach men how to read them,

to explain their inspiration, to defend them against prejudice, to

protect them from false methods of interpretation. To purge the mind

of fancy and fable, to prove that poetry apart from its supposed

prophetic meaning was delightful for its own sake, and that the

history of the antique nations, in spite of Paganism, could be used

for profit and instruction, was the first step to be taken by these

pioneers of modern culture. They had, in short, to create a new mental

sensibility by establishing the truth that pure literature directly

contributes to the dignity and happiness of human beings. The

achievement of this revolution in thought was the great performance of

the Italians in the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries.

During the dark ages Italy had in no sense enjoyed superiority of

culture over the rest of Europe. On the contrary, the first abortive

attempt at a revival of learning was due to Charlemagne at Aix, the

second to the Emperor Frederick in Apulia and Sicily; and while the

Romance nations had lost the classical tradition, it was still to some

extent preserved by the Moslem dynasties. The more we study the

history of mediæval learning, the more we recognise the debt of

civilised humanity to the Arabs for their conservation and

transmission of Greek thought in altered form to Europe. Yet, though

the Italians came comparatively late into the field, their action was

decisive. Neither Charlemagne nor Frederick, neither the philosophy of

the Arabian sages nor the precocious literature of Provence, succeeded

in effecting for the education of the modern intellect that which

Dante and Petrarch performed--the one by the production of a

monumental work of art in poetry, the other by the communication of a

new enthusiasm for antiquity to students.

Dante does not belong in any strict sense to the history of the

Revival of Learning. The 'Divine Comedy' closes the Middle Ages and

preserves their spirit. It stands before the vestibule of modern

literature like a solitary mountain at the entrance of a country rich

in all varieties of landscape. In order to become acquainted with its

grandeur, we must leave the fields and forests that we know, ascend

the heights, and use ourselves to an austerer climate. In spite of

this isolation, Dante's influence was powerful upon succeeding

generations. The modern mind first found in him its scope, and

recognised its freedom; first dared and did what placed it on a level

with antiquity in art. Many ideas, moreover, destined to play an

important part in the coming age, received from him their germinal

expression. It may thus be truly said that Dante initiated the

movement of the modern intellect in its entirety, though he did not

lead the Revival considered as a separate moment in this evolution.

That service was reserved for Petrarch.

There are spots upon the central watershed of Europe where, in the

stillness of a summer afternoon, the traveller may listen to the

murmurs of two streams--the one hurrying down to form the Rhine, the

other to contribute to the Danube or the Po. Born within hearing of

each other's voices, and nourished by the self-same clouds that rest

upon the crags around them, they are henceforth destined to an

ever-widening separation. While the one sweeps onward to the Northern

seas, the other will reach the shores of Italy or Greece and mingle

with the Mediterranean. To these two streamlets we might compare Dante

and Petrarch, both of whom sprang from Florence, both of whom were

nurtured in the learning of the schools and in the lore of chivalrous

love. Yet how different was their mission! Petrarch marks the rising

of that great river of intellectual energy which flowed southward to

recover the culture of the ancient world. The current of Dante's

genius took the contrary direction. Borne upon its mighty flood, we

visit the lands and cities of the Middle Ages, floating toward

infinities divined and made the heritage of human nature by the

mediæval spirit.

In speaking of Petrarch here, it is necessary to concentrate attention

upon his claims to be considered as the apostle of scholarship, the

inaugurator of the humanistic impulse of the fifteenth century. We

have nothing to do with his Italian poetry. The _Rime_ dedicated to

Madonna Laura have eclipsed the fame of the Latin epic, philosophical

discourses, epistles, orations, invectives, and dissertations, which

made Petrarch the Voltaire of his own age, and on which he thought his

immortality would rest. Yet it is with these latter products of his

genius, not with the _Canzoniere_, that we are now concerned; nor can

it be too emphatically asserted that his originality was even more

eminently displayed in the revelation of humanism to the modern world

than in the verses that impressed their character upon Italian

literature. To have foreseen a whole new phase of European culture, to

have interpreted its spirit, and determined by his own activity the

course it should pursue, is in truth a higher title to fame than the

composition of even the most perfect sonnets. The artist, however, has

this advantage over the pioneer of intellectual progress, that his

delicate creations are indestructible, and that his work cannot be

merged in that of a continuator. Therefore Petrarch lives and will

live in the memory of millions as the poet of Laura, while only

students know how much the world owes to his humanistic ardour.

As I cannot dispense with the word Humanism in this portion of my

work, it may be well to fix the sense I shall attach to it.[18] The

essence of humanism consisted in a new and vital perception of the

dignity of man as a rational being apart from theological

determinations, and in the further perception that classic literature

alone displayed human nature in the plenitude of intellectual and

moral freedom. It was partly a reaction against ecclesiastical

despotism, partly an attempt to find the point of unity for all that

had been thought and done by man, within the mind restored to

consciousness of its own sovereign faculty. Hence the single-hearted

devotion to the literature of Greece and Rome that marks the whole

Renaissance era. Hence the watchword of that age, the _Litteræ

Humaniores_. Hence the passion for antiquity, possessing thoughtful

men, and substituting a new authority for the traditions of the

Church. Hence the so-called Paganism of centuries bent upon absorbing

and assimilating a spirit no less life-giving from their point of view

than Christianity itself. Hence the persistent effort of philosophers

to find the meeting-point of two divergent inspirations. Hence, too,

the ultimate antagonism between the humanists, or professors of the

new wisdom, and those uncompromising Christians who, like S. Paul,

preferred to remain fools for Christ's sake.

[Footnote 18: The word Humanism has a German sound, and is in fact

modern. Yet the generic phrase _umanità_ for humanistic culture, and

the name _umanista_ for a professor of humane studies, are both pure

Italian. Ariosto, in his seventh satire, line 25, writes--

'Senza quel vizio son pochi umanisti.']

Humanism in this, the widest, sense of the word was possessed by

Petrarch intuitively. It belonged to his nature as much as music to

Mozart; so that he seemed sent into the world to raise, by the pure

exercise of innate faculties, a standard for succeeding workers.

Physically and æsthetically, by the fineness of his ear for verbal

harmonies, and by the exquisiteness of his sensibilities, he was

fitted to divine what it took centuries to verify. While still a boy,

long before he could grasp the meaning of classical Latin, he used to

read the prose of Cicero aloud, delighting in the sonorous cadence and

balanced periods of the master's style.[19] Nor were the moral

qualities of industry and perseverance, needed to supplement these

natural gifts, defective. In his maturity he spared no pains to

collect the manuscripts of Cicero, sometimes transcribing them with

his own hand, sometimes employing copyists, sending and journeying to

distant parts of Europe where he heard a fragment of his favourite

author might be found.[20] His greatest literary disappointment was

the loss of a treatise by Cicero on Glory, a theme exceedingly

significant for the Renaissance, which he lent to his tutor

Convennevole, and which the old man pawned.[21] Though he could not

read Greek, he welcomed with profoundest reverence the codices of

Homer and Plato sent to him from Constantinople, and exhorted

Boccaccio to dedicate his genius to the translation of the sovran poet

into Latin.[22] In this susceptibility to the melodies of rhetorical

prose, in this special cult of Cicero, in the passion for collecting

manuscripts, and in the intuition that the future of scholarship

depended upon the resuscitation of Greek studies, Petrarch initiated

the four most important momenta of the classical Renaissance. He,

again, was the first to understand the value of public libraries;[23]

the first to accumulate coins and inscriptions, as the sources of

accurate historical information; the first to preach the duty of

preserving ancient monuments. It would seem as though, by the instinct

of genius, he foresaw the future for at least three centuries, and

comprehended the highest uses whereof scholarship is capable.

[Footnote 19: See the interesting letter to Luca di Penna, _De Libris

Ciceronis_, p. 946, and compare _De Ignorantiâ sui ipsius_, &c. p.

1044. These references, as well as those which follow under the

general sign _Ibid._, are made to the edition of Petrarch's collected

works, Basle, 1581.]

[Footnote 20: _Ibid._ p. 948. Cf. the fine letter on the duty of

collecting and preserving codices (_Fam. Epist._ lib. iii. 18, p.

619). 'Aurum, argentum, gemmæ, purpurea vestis, marmorea domus, cultus

ager, pictæ tabulæ, phaleratus sonipes, cæteraque id genus mutam

habent et superficiariam voluptatem: libri medullitus delectant,

colloquuntur, consulunt, et vivâ quâdam nobis atque argutâ

familiaritate junguntur.']

[Footnote 21: _De Libris Ciceronis_, p. 949. Cf. his _Epistle to

Varro_ for an account of a lost MS. of that author. _Ibid._ p. 708.]

[Footnote 22: _Ibid._ p. 948. Cf. _De Ignorantiâ_, pp. 1053, 1054.

See, too, the letter to Nicolaus Syocerus of Constantinople, _Epist.

Var._ xx. p. 998, thanking him for the Homer and the Plato, in which

Petrarch gives an account of his slender Greek studies. 'Homerus tuus

apud me mutus, immo vero ego apud illum surdus sum. Gaudeo tamen vel

aspectu solo, et sæpe illum amplexus et suspirans dico.... Plato

philosophorum princeps ... nunc tandem tuo munere Philosophorum

principi Poetarum princeps asserit. Quis tantis non gaudeat et

glorietur hospitibus?... Græcos spectare, et si nihil aliud, certe

juvat.' The letter urging Boccaccio to translate Homer--'an tuo

studio, meâ impensâ fieri possit, ut Homerus integer bibliothecæ huic,

ubi pridem Græcus habitat, tandem Latinus accedat'--will be found

[Transcriber's Note: original missing 'in'] _Ep. Rer. Sen._ lib. iii.

5, p. 775. In another letter, _Ep. Rer. Sen._ lib. vi. 2, p. 807, he

thanks Boccaccio for the Latin version.]

[Footnote 23: _De Remediis utriusque Fortunæ_, p. 43. A plea for

public as against private collections of useful books. 'Multos in

vinculis tenes,' &c.]

So far the outside only of Petrarch's instinct for humanism has been

touched. How fully he possessed its large and liberal spirit is shown

by the untiring war he carried on against formalism, tradition,

pedantry, and superstition. Whatever might impede the free play of the

intellect aroused his bitterest hatred. Against the narrow views of

scholastic theologians, against the futile preoccupations of the

Middle-Age materialists, against the lawyers and physicians and

astrologers in vogue, he declared inexorable hostility.[24] These

men, by their puerilities and falsities, obstructed the natural action

of the mind; therefore Petrarch attacked them. At the same time he

recognised the liberators of the reason by a kind of tact. Though he

could not interpret the sixteen dialogues of Plato he possessed in

Greek, he perceived intuitively that Plato, as opposed to Aristotle,

would become the saint of liberal philosophy, surveyed by him as in a

Pisgah-view. His enthusiasm for Cicero and Virgil was twofold; in both

respects he proved how capable he was of moulding the taste and

directing the mental force of his successors. As an artist, he

discerned in their style the harmonies of sound and the proprieties of

diction, whereby Latin might once again become the language of fine

thoughts and delicate emotions. As a champion of intellectual

independence, he saw that, studying their large discourse of all

things which the reason and imagination can appropriate, the thinkers

of the modern age might shake off scholastic fetters, and enter into

the inheritance of spiritual freedom. Poetry and rhetoric he regarded

not merely as the fine arts of literature, but as two chief

instruments whereby the man of genius arrives at self-expression,

perpetuates the qualities of his own soul, and impresses his character

upon the age. Since this realisation of the individual in a high and

puissant work of art appeared to him the noblest aim of man on earth,

it followed that the inspired speech of the poet and the eloquence of

the orator became for Petrarch the summit of ambition, the two-peaked

Parnassus he struggled through his lifetime to ascend.[25] The ideal

was literary; but literature implied for Petrarch more than words and

phrases. It was not enough to make melodious verse, or to move an

audience with well-sounding periods. The hexameters of the epic and

the paragraphs of the oration had to contain solid thought, to be the

genuine outcome of the poet's or the rhetorician's soul. The writer

was bound to be a preacher, to discover truth, and make the truths he

found agreeable to the world.[26] His life, moreover, ought to be in

perfect harmony with all he sought to teach.[27] Upon the purity of

his enthusiasm, the sincerity of his inspiration, depended the future

well-being of the world for which he laboured.[28] Thus for this one

man at least the art of letters was a priesthood; and the earnestness

of his vocation made him fit to be the master of succeeding ages. It

is not easy for us to appreciate the boldness and sincerity of these

conceptions. Many of them, since the days of Petrarch, have been

overstrained and made ridiculous by false pretensions. Besides, the

whole point of view has been appropriated; and men invariably

undervalue what they feel they cannot lose. It is only by comparing

Petrarch's own philosophy of literature with the dulness of the

schoolmen in their decadence, and with the stylistic shallowness of

subsequent scholars, that we come to comprehend how luminous and novel

was the thesis he supported.

[Footnote 24: See the four books of Invectives, _Contra Medicum

quendam_, and the treatise _De sui ipsius et aliorum Ignorantiâ_. Page

1038 of the last dissertation contains a curious list of frivolous

questions discussed by the Averrhoists. Cf. the letter on the

decadence of true learning, _Ep. Var._ 31, p. 1020; the letter to a

friend exhorting him to combat Averrhoism, _Epist. sine titulo_, 18,

p. 731; two letters on physicians, _Epist. Rerum Senilium_, lib. xii.

1 and 2, pp. 897-914; a letter to Francesco Bruno on the lies of the

astrologers, _Epist. Rer. Sen._ lib. i. 6, p. 747; a letter to

Boccaccio on the same theme, _Epist. Rer. Sen._ lib. iii. 1, p. 765;

another on physicians to Boccaccio, _Epist. Rer. Sen._ lib. v. 4, p.

796. Cf. the Critique of Alchemy, _De Remediis utriusque Fortunæ_, p.

93.]

[Footnote 25: In comparing the orator and the poet, Petrarch gives the

palm to the former. He thought the perfect rhetorician, capable of

expressing sound philosophy with clearness, was rarer than the poet.

See _De Remediis utriusque Fortunæ_, lib. ii. dial. 102, p. 192.]

[Footnote 26: See, among other passages, _Inv. contra Medicum_, lib.

i. p. 1092. 'Poetæ studium est veritatem veram pulchris velaminibus

adornare.' Cf. p. 905, the paragraph beginning 'Officium est ejus

fingere,' &c.]

[Footnote 27: See the preface to the _Epistolæ Familiares_, p. 570.

'Scribendi enim mihi vivendique unus (ut auguror) finis erit.']

[Footnote 28: For his lofty conception of poetry see the two letters

to Boccaccio and Benvenuto da Imola, pp. 740, 941. _Epist. Rerum

Senilium_, lib. i. 4, lib. xiv. 11.]

Having thus conceived of literature, Petrarch obtained a standard for

estimating the barren culture of his century. He taxed the

disputations of the doctors with lifeless repetition unmeaning

verbiage. Schoolman after schoolman had been occupied with formal

trifles. The erudition of the jurist and the theologian revealed

nothing fruitful for the heart or intellect; and everything was

valueless that did not come straight from a man's soul, speaking to

the soul of one who heard him. At the same time he read the Fathers

and the Scriptures in a new light. Augustine, some few of whose

sentences had been used as links in the catena of dogmatic orthodoxy,

seemed to Petrarch no longer a mere master of theology, but a man

conversing with him across the chasm of eight centuries. In the

'Confessions,' 'running over with a fount of tears,' the poet of

Vaucluse divined a kindred nature; one who used exalted eloquence for

the expression of vital thoughts and passionate emotions; one,

moreover, who had reached the height of human happiness in union with

God.[29] Not less real was the grasp he laid upon the prophets and

apostles of the Bible. All words that bore a message to his heart were

words of authority and power. The _ipse dixit_ of an Aristotle or a

Seraphic doctor had for him no weight, unless it came home to him as a

man.[30] Even Cicero and Seneca, the saints of philosophical

antiquity, he dared to criticise for practising less wisdom than they

preached.[31]

[Footnote 29: The references to Augustine as a 'divine genius,' equal

to Cicero in eloquence, superior to the classics in his knowledge of

Christ, are too frequent for citation. See, however, _Fam. Epist._

lib. ii. 9, p. 601; the letter to Boccaccio, _Variarum_, 22, p. 1001;

and _Fam. Epist._ lib. iv. 9, p. 635. The phrase describing the

_Confessions_, quoted in my text, is from Petrarch's letter to his

brother Gerard, _Epist. Var._ 27, p. 1012, 'Scatentes lachrymis

Confessionum libros.']

[Footnote 30: 'Sum sectarum negligens, veri appetens.' _Epist. Rer.

Sen._ lib. i. 5, p. 745. 'Nam apud Horatium Flaccum, nullius jurare in

verba magistri, puer valde didiceram.' _Epist. Fam._ lib. iv. 10, p.

637.]

[Footnote 31: See the letters addressed to Cicero and Seneca, pp. 705,

706.]

While regarding Petrarch as the first and, in some respects, the

greatest of the humanists, we are bound to recognise the faults as

well as the good qualities he shared with them. To dwell on these in

detail would be a thankless task, were it not for the conviction that

his personality impressed itself too strongly on the fourteenth

century to escape our criticism. We cannot afford to leave even the

foibles of the man who gave a pattern to his generation unstudied.

Foremost among these may be reckoned his vanity, his eagerness to

grasp the poet's crown, his appetite for flattery, his restless change

from place to place in search of new admirers, his self-complacent

garrulity. This vanity was perhaps inseparable from the position he

assumed upon the threshold of the modern world. It was hardly possible

that the prophet of a new phase of culture should not look down with

contempt upon the uneducated masses, and believe that learning raised

a man into a demigod. Study of the classics taught him to despise his

age and yearn for immortality; but the assurance of the honours that

he sought, could only come to him upon the lips of his contemporaries.

In conflict with the dulness and the darkness of preceding centuries,

he felt the need of a new motive, unrecognised by the Church and

banished from the cloister. That motive was the thirst for fame, the

craving to make his personality eternal in the minds of men. Meanwhile

he was alone in a dim wilderness of transitory interests and sordid

aims, where human life was shadowy, and where, when death arrived,

there would remain no memory of what had been. The gloom of this

present in contrast with the glory of the past he studied, and the

glory of the future he desired, confirmed his egotism. His name and

fame depended on his self-assertion. To achieve renown by writing, to

wrest for himself even in his lifetime a firm place among the

immortals, became his feverish spur to action. He was conscious how

deep a hold the passion for celebrity had taken on his nature; and not

unfrequently he speaks of it as a disease.[32] The Christian within

him wrestled vigorously with the renascent Pagan. Religion taught him

to renounce what ambition prompted him to grasp. Yet he continued to

deceive himself. While penning dissertations on the worthlessness of

praise and the futility of fame, he trimmed his sails to catch the

breeze of popular applause; and as his reputation widened, his desires

grew ever stronger. The last years of his life were spent in writing

epistles to the great men of the past, in whom alone he recognised his

equals, and to posterity, in whom he hoped to meet at last with judges

worthy of him.

[Footnote 32: 'Ægritudo' is a phrase that constantly recurs in his

epistles to indicate a restless, craving habit of the soul. See, too,

the whole second book of the _De Contemptu Mundi_.]

This almost morbid vanity, peculiar to Petrarch's temperament and

encouraged by the circumstances of his life, introduced a division

between his practice and his profession. He was never tired of

praising solitude, and many years of his manhood he spent in actual

retirement at Vaucluse.[33] Yet he only loved seclusion as a contrast

to the society of Courts, and would have been most miserable if the

world, taking him at his own estimate, had left him in peace. No one

wrote more eloquently about equal friendship, or professed a stronger

zeal for candid criticism. Yet he admitted few but professed admirers

to his intimacy, and regarded his literary antagonists as personal

detractors. The same sensitive egotism led him to depreciate the fame

of Dante, in whom he cannot but have recognised a poet in the highest

sense superior to himself.[34] Again, while he complained of celebrity

as an obstacle to studious employment, he showed the most acute

interest when the details of his life were called in question.[35]

Nothing, if we took his philosophic treatises for record, would have

pleased him better than to live unnoticed. His letters make it

manifest that he believed the eyes of the whole world were fixed upon

him, and that he courted this attention of the public with a greedy

appetite.

[Footnote 33: See the treatise _De Vitâ Solitariâ_, pp. 223-292, and

the letters on 'Vaucluse,' pp. 691-697.]

[Footnote 34: See the discussion of this point in Baldelli's _Vita del

Boccaccio_, pp. 130-135.]

[Footnote 35: Compare the chapter in the dissertation _De Remediis_ on

troublesome notoriety, p. 177, with the letter on his reception at

Arezzo, p. 918, the letter to Nerius Morandus on the false news of his

death, p. 776, and the letter to Boccaccio on his detractors, p. 749.]

These qualities and contradictions mark Petrarch as a man of letters,

not of action. He belonged essentially to the _genus irritabile

vatum_, for whom the sphere of thoughts expressed on paper is more

vivid than the world of facts. We may trace a corresponding weakness

in his chief enthusiasms. Unable to distinguish between the realities

of existence and the dreamland of his study, he hailed in Rienzi the

restorer of old Rome, while he stigmatised his friends the Colonnesi

as barbarian intruders.[36] The Rome he read of in the pages of Livy,

seemed to the imagination of this visionary still alive and powerful;

nor did he feel the absurdity of addressing the mediæval rabble of the

Romans in phrases high-flown for a Gracchus.[37] While he courted the

intimacy of the Correggi, and lived as a house-guest with the

Visconti, he denounced these princes as tyrants, and appealed to the

Emperor to take the reins and bring all Italy beneath his yoke.[38]

Herein, it may be urged, Petrarch did but share a delusion common to

his age. This is true; but the point to notice is the contradiction

between his theories and the habits of his life. He was not a partisan

on the Ghibelline side, but a believer in impossible ideals. His

patriotism was no less literary than his temperament. The same

tendency to measure all things by a student's standard made him

exaggerate mere verbal eloquence. Words, according to his view, were

power. Cicero held the highest place in his esteem, because his

declamation was most copious. Aristotle, in spite of his profound

philosophy, was censured for his lack of rhetoric.[39] Throughout the

studied works of Petrarch we can trace this vice of a stylistic ideal.

Though he never writes without some solid germ of thought, he loves to

play with phrases, producing an effect of unreality, and seeming

emulous of casuistical adroitness.[40]

[Footnote 36: See the _Epistles to Rienzi_, pp. 677, 535.]

[Footnote 37: Epistle to the Roman people, beginning 'Apud te

invictissime domitorque terrarum popule meus,' p. 712.]

[Footnote 38: Epistle to Charles IV., _De Pacificandâ Italiâ_, p. 531.

This contradiction struck even his most ardent admirers with painful

surprise. See Boccaccio quoted in Baldelli's _Life_, p. 115.]

[Footnote 39: _Rerum memorandarum_, lib. ii. p. 415.]

[Footnote 40: This is particularly noticeable in the miscellaneous

collection of essays called _De Remediis utriusque Fortunæ_, where

opposite views on a wide variety of topics are expressed with great

dexterity.]

The foregoing analysis was necessary because Petrarch became, as it

were, a model for his followers in the field of scholarship. Italian

humanism never lost the powerful impress of his genius, and the value

of his influence can only be appreciated when the time arrives for

summing up the total achievement of the Revival.[41] It remains to be

regretted that the weaknesses of his character, his personal

pretension and literary idealism, were more easily imitated than his

strength. Petrarch's egotism differed widely from the insolent conceit

of Filelfo and the pedantic boasts of Alciato. Nor did his enthusiasm

for antiquity degenerate, like theirs, into a mere uncritical and

servile worship. His humanism was both loftier and larger. He never

forgot that Christianity was an advance upon Paganism, and that the

accomplished man of letters must acquire the culture of the ancients

without losing the virtues or sacrificing the hopes of a Christian. If

only the humanists of the Renaissance could have preserved this point

of view intact, they would have avoided the worst evils of the age,

and have secured a nobler liberation of the modern reason. Petrarch

created for himself a creed compounded of Roman Stoicism and Christian

doctrine, adapting the precepts of the Gospels and the teaching of the

Fathers, together with the ethics of Cicero and Seneca, to his own

needs. Herein he showed the freedom of his genius, and led the way for

the most brilliant thinkers of the coming centuries. The fault of his

successors was a tendency to recede from this high vantage-ground, to

accept the customary creed with cynical facility, while they inclined

in secret to a laxity adopted from their study of the classics. By

separating himself from tradition, without displaying an arrogant

spirit of revolt against authority, Petrarch established the principle

that men must guide their own souls by the double lights of culture

and of conscience. His followers were too ready to make culture all in

all, and lost thereby the opportunity of grounding a rational

philosophy of life upon a solid basis for the modern world. Petrarch

made it his sincere aim to be both morally and intellectually his

highest self; and if he often failed in practice--if he succumbed to

carnal frailty while he praised sobriety--if he sought for notoriety

while professing indifference to fame--if he mistook dreams for

realities and words for facts--still the ideal he proposed to himself

and eloquently preached to his contemporaries, was a new and lofty

one. After the lapse of five centuries, few as yet have passed beyond

it. Even Goethe, for example, can claim no superiority of humanism

above Petrarch, except by right of his participation in the scientific

spirit.

[Footnote 41: See the last chapter of this volume.]

We are therefore justified in hailing Petrarch as the Columbus of a

new spiritual hemisphere, the discoverer of modern culture. That he

knew no Greek, that his Latin verse was lifeless and his prose style

far from pure, that his contributions to history and ethics have been

superseded, and that his epistles are now only read by antiquaries,

cannot impair his claim to this title. From him the inspiration

needed to quicken curiosity and stimulate a zeal for knowledge

proceeded. But for his intervention in the fourteenth century, it is

possible that the Revival of Learning, and all that it implies, might

have been delayed until too late. Petrarch died in 1374. The Greek

Empire was destroyed in 1453. Between those dates Italy recovered the

Greek classics; but whether the Italians would have undertaken this

labour if no Petrarch had preached the attractiveness of liberal

studies, or if no school of disciples had been formed by him in

Florence, remains more than doubtful. We are brought thus to recognise

in him one of those heroes concerning whose relation to the spirit of

the ages Hegel has discoursed in his 'Philosophy of History.'

Petrarch, by anticipating the tendencies of the Revival, created the

intellectual milieu required for its evolution.[42] Yet we are not

therefore justified in saying that he was not himself the product of

already existing spiritual forces in his century. The vast influence

he immediately exercised, while Dante, though gifted with a far more

powerful individuality, remained comparatively inoperative, proves

that the age was specially prepared to receive his inspiration.

[Footnote 42: The lines from the _Africa_ used as a motto for this

volume are a prophecy of the Renaissance.]

What remains to be said about the first period of Italian humanism is

almost wholly concerned with men who either immediately or indirectly

felt the influence of Petrarch's genius.[43] His shadow stretches over

the whole age. Incited by his brilliant renown, Boccaccio, while still

a young man, began to read the classical authors, bemoaning the years

he had wasted in commerce and the study of the law to please his

father. From what the poet of the 'Decameron' has himself told us

about the origin of his literary enthusiasm, it appears that

Petrarch's example was decisive in determining his course. There is,

however, another tale, reported by his fellow-citizen Villani, so

characteristic of the age that to omit it in this place would be to

sacrifice one of the most attractive legends in the history of

literature.[44] 'After wandering through many lands, now here, now

there, for a long space of time, when he had reached at last his

twenty-eighth year, Boccaccio, at his father's bidding, took up his

abode at Naples in the Pergola. There it chanced one day that he

walked forth alone for pleasure, and came to the place where Virgil's

dust lies buried. At the sight of this sepulchre, he fell into long

musing admiration of the man whose bones it covered, brooding with

meditative soul upon the poet's fame, until his thoughts found vent in

lamentations over his own envious fortunes, whereby he was compelled

against his will to give himself to things of commerce that he

loathed. A sudden love of the Pierian Muses smote his heart, and

turning homeward, he abandoned trade, devoting himself with fervent

study to poetry; wherein very shortly, aided alike by his noble genius

and his burning desire, he made marvellous progress. This when his

father noted, and perceived the heavenly inspiration was more powerful

within his son than the paternal will, he at last consented to his

studies, and helped him as best he could, although at first he tried

to make him turn his talents to the canon law.'

[Footnote 43: It is very significant of Petrarch's influence that his

contemporaries ranked him higher, even as a sonnet-writer, than Dante.

See _Coluccio de' Salutati's Letters_, part ii. p. 57.]

[Footnote 44: Filippo Villani, _Vite d'Uomini Illustri Fiorentini_,

Firenze, 1826, p. 9.]

The hero-worship of Boccaccio, not only for the august Virgil, but

also for Dante, the master of his youth and the idol of his mature

age, is the most amiable trait in a character which, by its geniality

and sweetness, cannot fail to win affection.[45] When circumstances

brought him into personal relations with Petrarch, he transferred the

whole homage of his ardent soul to the only man alive who seemed to

him a fit inheritor of ancient fame.[46] Petrarch became the director

of his conscience, the master of his studies, the moulder of his

thoughts upon the weightiest matters of literary philosophy. The

friendship established between the poet of Vaucluse and the lover of

Fiammetta lasted through more than twenty years, and was only broken

by the death of the former. Throughout this long space of time

Boccaccio retained the attitude of a humble scholar, while in his

published works, the 'Genealogiâ Deorum' and the 'Comento sopra i

Primi Sedici Capitoli dell' "Inferno" di Dante,' he uniformly spoke of

Petrarch as his father and his teacher, the wonder of the century, a

heavenly poet better fitted to be numbered with the giants of the past

than with the pygmies of a barren age. The fame enjoyed by Petrarch,

the honours showered upon him by kings and princes, his own vanity,

and even the discrepancies between his habits and his theories,

produced no bitterness in Boccaccio's more modest nature. It was

enough for the pupil to use his talents for the propagation of his

master's views; and thus the influence of Petrarch was communicated to

Florence, where Boccaccio continued to reside.[47]

[Footnote 45: With his own hand Boccaccio transcribed the _Divine

Comedy_, and sent the MS. to Petrarch, who in his reply wrote

thus:--'Inseris nominatim hanc hujus officii tui escusationem, quod

tibi adolescentulo primus studiorum dux, prima fax fuerit.' Baldelli,

p. 133. The enthusiasm of Boccaccio for Dante contrasts favourably

with Petrarch's grudging egotism.]

[Footnote 46: Boccaccio was present at Naples when Petrarch disputed

before King Robert for his title to the poet's crown (_Gen. Deor._

xiv. 22); but he first became intimate with him as a friend during

Petrarch's visit to Florence in 1350.]

[Footnote 47: Salutato, writing to Francesco da Brossano, describes

his conversations with Boccaccio thus:--'Nihil aliud quam de Francisco

(_i.e._ Petrarcha) conferebamus. In cujus laudationem adeo libenter

sermones usurpabat, ut nihil avidius nihilque copiosius enarraret. Et

eo magis quia tali orationis generi me prospiciebat intentum.

Sufficiebat enim nobis Petrarcha solus, et omni posteritati sufficiet

in moralitate sermonis, in eloquentiæ soliditate atque dulcedine, in

lepore prosarum et in concinnitate metrorum.' _Epist. Fam._ p. 45.]

In obedience to Petrarch's advice, Boccaccio in middle life applied

himself to learning Greek. Petrarch had never acquired a real

knowledge of the language, though he received a few lessons at Avignon

from Barlaam, a Calabrian, who had settled in Byzantium, and who

sought to advance his fortunes in Italy and Greece by alternate acts

of apostasy, and afterwards at Venice from Leontius Pilatus.[48] The

opportunities of Greek study enjoyed by Boccaccio were also very

meagre, and his mastery of the idiom was superficial. Yet he advanced

considerably beyond the point reached by any of his predecessors, so

that he deserves to be named as the first Grecian of the modern world.

Leontius Pilatus, a Southern Italian and a pupil of Barlaam, who, like

his teacher, had removed to Byzantium and renounced the Latin faith,

arrived at Venice on his way to Avignon in 1360. Boccaccio induced him

to visit Florence, received him into his own house, and caused him to

be appointed Greek Professor in the University. Then he set himself to

work in earnest on the text of Homer. The ignorance of the teacher

was, however, scarcely less than that of his pupil. While Leontius

possessed a fair knowledge of Byzantine Greek, his command of Latin

was very limited, and his natural stupidity was only equalled by his

impudent pretensions. Of classical usages he seems to have known

nothing. The imbecility of his master could scarcely have escaped the

notice of Boccaccio. Indeed, both he and Petrarch have described

Leontius as a sordid cynic with a filthy beard and tangled hair,

morose in his temper and disgusting in his personal habits, who

concealed a bovine ignorance beneath a lion's hide of ostentation. It

was, however, necessary to make the best of him; for Greek in Northern

Italy could nowhere else be gained, and Boccaccio had not thought, it

seems, of journeying to Byzantium in search of what he wanted.[49]

Boccaccio, accordingly, drank the muddy stream of pseudo-learning and

lies that flowed from this man's lips, with insatiable avidity. The

nonsense administered to him by way of satisfying his thirst for

knowledge may best be understood from the following etymologies.

[Greek: Achilleus] was derived from [Greek: a] and [Greek: chilos],

'without fodder.'[50] The names of the Muses gave rise to these

extraordinary explanations:[51]--Melpomene is derived from _Melempio

comene_, which signifies _facente stare la meditazione_; Thalia is the

same as _Tithonlia_ or _pognente cosa che germini_; Polyhymnia,

through _Polium neemen_, is the same as _cosa che faccia molta

memoria_; Erato becomes _Euruncomenon_ or _trovatore del simile_, and

Terpsichore is described as _dilettante ammaestramento_.

[Footnote 48: _Epist. Rer. Sen._, lib. xi. 9, p. 887; lib. vi. 1, p.

806; lib. v. 4, p. 801.]

[Footnote 49: Petrarch's letter to Ugone di San Severino, _Epist. Rer.

Sen._ lib. xi. 9, p. 887, deserves to be read, since it proves that

Italian scholars despaired at this time of gaining Greek learning from

Constantinople. They were rather inclined to seek it in Calabria.

'Græciam, ut olim ditissimam, sic nunc omnis longe inopem disciplinæ

... quod desperat apud Græcos, non diffidit apud Calabros inveniri

posse.']

[Footnote 50: _De Gen. Deor._ xv. 6, 7.]

[Footnote 51: _Comento sopra Dante, Opp. Volg._ vol. x. p. 127. After

allowing for the difficulty of writing Greek, pronounced by an

Italian, in Italian letters, and also for the errors of the copyist

and printer, it is clear that a Greek scholar who thought Melpomene

was one 'who gives fixity to meditation,' Thalia one 'who plants the

capacity of growth,' Polyhymnia she 'who strengthens and expands

memory,' Erato 'the discoverer of similarity,' and Terpsichore

'delightful instruction,' was on a comically wrong track.]

Such was the bathos reached by erudition in Byzantium. Yet Boccaccio

made what use he could of his contemptible materials. At the dictation

of Leontius he wrote out the 'Iliad' and 'Odyssey' in Latin; and this

was the first translation made of Homer for modern readers. The

manuscript, despatched to Petrarch, was, as we have seen already,

greeted with enthusiasm.[52] This moment in the history of scholarship

is so memorable that I may be excused for borrowing Baldelli's

extract from an ancient copy of Boccaccio's autograph.[53] Lycaon

addresses his last prayer to Achilles:--

Genu deprecor te Achilles: tu autem venerare et me miserere.

Vada Servus. Jove genite venerabilis.

Penes enim te primo gustavi Cereris farinam,

Die illo, quando me cepisti in bene facto viridario;

Et me transtulisti procul ferens patreque amicisque

Lemnon ad gloriosam. Hecatombium autem honorem inveni,

Nunc autem læsus ter tot ferens. Dies autem mihi est

Hæc duodecima, quando ad Ilion veni

Multa passus. Nunc iterum me in tuis manibus posuit

Fatum destructibile. Debeo odio esse Jovi patri,

Qui me tibi iterum dedit, medio cuique, me mater

Genuit Lathoi, filia Altai senis.

[Footnote 52: See above, p. 53, note 4.]

[Footnote 53: _Vita del Boccaccio_, p. 264. The autograph was probably

burned with other books of Boccaccio, and some of the unintelligible

passages in the above quotation may be due to the ignorance of the

copyist.]

Only by keeping firmly in mind that such men as Petrarch and

Boccaccio, the two chief masters of Italian literature, prized this

wretched stuff as an inestimable treasure, can we justly conceive how

utterly Greek had been lost, and what an effort it required to restore

it to the modern world.

Indefatigable industry was Boccaccio's great merit as a student. He

transcribed the whole of Terence with his own hands, and showed a real

sense of the advantage to be gained by a critical comparison of texts.

In his mythological, geographical, and historical collections he

bequeathed to posterity a curious mass of miscellaneous knowledge,

forming, as it were, the first dictionaries of biography and antiquity

for modern scholars.[54] Far from sharing the originality of

Petrarch's humanistic ideal, he remained at best a laborious

chronicler of facts and anecdotes. The author of the 'Decameron,' so

richly gifted with humour, pathos, and poetic fancy, when he wrapped

his student's robe around him, became a painstaking pioneer of

antiquarian research.

[Footnote 54: _De Genealogiâ Deorum_; _De Casibus Virorum ac Feminarum

Illustrium_; _De Claris Muliebribus_; _De Montibus, Silvis, Fontibus_,

&c.]

One very important part of Petrarch's programme was eloquently

supported by Boccaccio. The fourteenth and fifteenth books of the

'Genealogiâ Deorum' form what may be termed the first defence of

poesy, composed in honour of his own art by a poet of the modern

world. In them Boccaccio expounds a theory already sketched in outline

by Petrarch. We have seen that the worst obstacle to humanistic

culture lay, not so much in ignorance, as in misconceptions based upon

prejudice and scruple. The notion of fine literature as an elevating

and purifying influence had been lost. To restore it was the object of

these earliest humanists. By poetry, contends Boccaccio, we must

understand whatever of weighty in argument, deep in doctrine, and

vivid in imagination the man of genius may produce with conscious art

in prose and verse. Poetry is instruction conveyed through allegory

and fiction. Theology itself, he reasons, is a form of poetry; even

the Holy Ghost may be called a Poet, inasmuch as He used the vehicle

of symbol in the visions of the prophets and the Revelation of S.

John.[55] To such strained arguments was the apostle of culture driven

in order to persuade his hearers, and to drag literature from the

Avernus of mediæval neglect. We must not, however, imagine that

Boccaccio was himself superior to a point of view so puerile. Allegory

appeared to him a necessary condition of art: only a madman could deny

the hidden meaning of the 'Georgics' and the 'Æneid;'[56] while the

verses of Dante and of Petrarch owed their value to the Christian

mysteries they shrouded. The poet, according to this mediæval

philosophy of literature, was a sage and teacher wrapping up his

august meanings in delightful fictions.[57] Though the common herd

despised him as a liar and a falsehood-fabricator, he was, in truth, a

prophet uttering his dark speech in parables. How foolish, therefore,

reasons the apologist, are the enemies of poetry--sophistical

dialecticians and avaricious jurists, who have never trodden the

Phoebean hill, and who scorn the springs of Helicon because they do

not flow with gold! Far worse is the condition of those monks and

hypocrites who accuse the divine art of immorality and grossness,

instead of reading between the lines and seeking the sense conveyed to

the understanding under veils of allegory. Truly, proceeds Boccaccio,

we do well to shun the errors of Pagans; nor can it be denied that

poets of antiquity have written verse abhorrent to the Christian

spirit. But, Jesus Christ be praised, the faith has triumphed. Strong

in the doctrines of the Gospel and the Church, the student may safely

approach the masterpieces of classic literature without fearing the

seductions of the Siren.

[Footnote 55: 'La teologia e la poesia quasi una cosa si possono dire

... la teologia niuna altra cosa è che una poesia d'Iddio.' _Vita di

Dante_, p. 59. Cf. _Comento sopra Dante_, loc. cit. p. 45. The

explanation of the Muses referred to above is governed by the same

determination to find philosophy in poetry.]

[Footnote 56: See Petrarch's letter 'De quibusdam fictionibus

Virgilii.' _Ep. Rer. Sen._ lib. iv. 4, p. 785.]

[Footnote 57: See the privilege granted to Petrarch by the Roman

senator in 1343, _Petr. Opp._ tom. iii. p. 6.]

This argument, forming the gist of the 'Apology for Poetry' in the

'Genealogiâ Deorum,' is repeated in the 'Comment upon Dante.' It is

doubly interesting, both as showing the popular opinion of poetry and

the prejudices Boccaccio thought it needful to attack, and also as

containing a full exposition of the allegorising theories with which

humanism started. For some time after Boccaccio's death the paragraphs

condensed above supplied the champions of culture with weapons to be

used against their ecclesiastical and scholastic antagonists; nor was

it until humanism had triumphed, that the allegorical interpretation

of the ancients was finally abandoned.

Independently of his contributions to learning, Boccaccio occupies a

prominent place in the history of the Revival through the new spirit

he introduced into the vulgar literature. He was the first who

frankly sought to justify the pleasures of the carnal life, whose

temperament, unburdened by asceticism, found a congenial element in

amorous legends of antiquity. The romances of Boccaccio, with their

beautiful gardens and sunny skies, fair women and luxurious lovers,

formed a transition from the chivalry of the early Italian poets to

the sensuality of Beccadelli and Pontano. He prepared the nation for

literary and artistic Paganism by unconsciously divesting thought and

feeling of their spiritual elevation. Dante had made the whole world

one in Christ. Petrarch put humanity to school in the lecture-room of

Roman sages and in the councils of the Church. A terrestrial paradise

of sensual delight, where all things were desirable and delicate,

contented the poet of the 'Fiammetta' and 'Filostrato.' To the

beatific vision of the 'Divine Comedy,' to the 'Trionfo della Morte,'

succeeded the 'Visione Amorosa'--a review of human life, in which

Boccaccio begins by invoking Dame Venus and ends with earthly love,

_Il Sior di tutta pace_.

The name given to Boccaccio by contemporaries, _Giovanni della

Tranquillità_, sufficiently indicates his peaceful temperament. He

was, in fact, the scholar, working in his study, and contributing to

the erudition of his age by writings. Another of Petrarch's disciples,

Giovanni Malpaghino, called from his birthplace Giovanni da Ravenna,

exercised a more active personal influence over the destinies of

scholarship. While still a youth he had been employed by Petrarch as

secretary and amanuensis. His general ability, clear handwriting, and

enthusiasm for learning first recommended him to the poet, who made

use of him for copying manuscripts and arranging his familiar letters.

In the course of this work John of Ravenna became himself a learned

man, acquiring a finer sense of Latinity than was possessed by any

other scholar of his time. Something, too, of the sacred fire he

caught from Petrarch, so that in his manhood the very faults of his

nature became instrumental in diffusing throughout Italy the passion

for antiquity. He could not long content himself with being even

Petrarch's scribe. Irresistible restlessness impelled him to seek

adventures in the outer world, to mix with men and gain the glory he

was always reading of. Petrarch, incapable of comprehending that any

honour was greater than that of being his satellite, treated this

ambitious pupil like a wilful child. A quarrel ensued. Giovanni left

his benefactor's house and went forth to try his fortunes. Without

repeating the vicissitudes of his career in detail, it is enough to

mention that want and misery soon drove him back to Petrarch; that

once more the vagrant impulse came upon him, and that for a season he

filled the post of chancellor in the little principality of

Carrara.[58] The one thing, however, which he could not endure, was

the routine of fixed employment. Therefore we find that he abandoned

the Court of the Malaspini, and betook himself to the more congenial

work of a wandering professor. His prodigious memory, by enabling him

to retain, word for word, the text of authors he had read, proved of

invaluable service to him in this career. His passionate poetic temper

made him apt to raise enthusiasm in young souls for literary studies.

Giovanni da Ravenna was in fact the first of those vagabond humanists

with whom we shall be occupied in the next chapters, and of whom

Filelfo was the most illustrious example. Florence, Padua, Venice, and

many other cities of Italy received the Latinist, whose reputation now

increased with every year. In each of these towns in succession he

lectured upon Cicero and the Roman poets, pouring forth the knowledge

he had acquired in Petrarch's study, and transmitting to his audience

the inspiration he had received from his master. The school thus

formed was compared a century later to the Trojan horse, whence issued

a band of heroes destined to possess the capital of classic learning.

As a writer, he produced little that is worth more than a passing

notice. His real merit consisted, as Lionardo Bruni witnessed, in his

faculty of arousing a passion for pure literature, and especially for

the study of Cicero. Among his most illustrious pupils may be

mentioned Francesco Barbaro, Palla degli Strozzi, Roberto de' Rossi,

Francesco Filelfo, Carlo Marsuppini, Poggio Bracciolini, Lionardo

Bruni, Guarino da Verona, Vittorino da Feltre, Ambrogio Traversari,

Ognibene da Vicenza, and Pier Paolo Vergerio. This list, as will

appear from the sequel of my work, includes nearly all those scholars

who devoted their energies to erudition at Venice, Florence, Rome,

Mantua, Ferrara, and Perugia in the fifteenth century. Giovanni da

Ravenna deserves, therefore, to be honoured as the link between the

age of Petrarch and the age of Poggio, as the vessel chosen for

communicating the sacred fire of humanism to the Courts and Republics

of Italy. None but a wanderer, _vagus quidam_, as Petrarch, half in

scorn and half in sorrow, called his protégé, could so effectually

have carried on the work of propagation.[59]

[Footnote 58: De Sade, in his _Memoirs of Petrarch_, gives an

interesting account of this romantic episode in his life. See too

Petrarch, _Epist. Rer. Sen._ lib. v. 6 and 7, pp. 802-806.]

[Footnote 59: _Epist. Rer. Sen._ lib. xiv. 14, p. 942.]

The name of the next student claiming our attention as a disciple of

Petrarch, brings us once more back to Florence. Luigi Marsigli was a

monk of the Augustine Order of S. Spirito. Petrarch, noticing his

distinguished abilities, had exhorted him to make a special study of

theology, and to enter the lists as a champion of Christianity against

the Averrhoists.[60] Under the name of Averrhoists in the fourteenth

century were ranged all freethinkers who questioned the fundamental

doctrines of the Church, doubted the immortality of the soul, and

employed their ingenuity in a dialectic at least as trivial as that

of the schoolmen, but directed to a very different end.[61] Petrarch

disliked their want of liberal culture as much as he abhorred their

affectation of impiety. The stupid materialism they professed, their

gross flippancy, and the idle pretence of natural science upon which

they piqued themselves, were regarded by him as so many obstacles to

his own ideal of humanism. He only saw in them another set of

scholastic wranglers, worse than the theologians, inasmuch as they had

cast off Christ. Against Averrhoes, 'the raging hound who barked at

all things sacred and Divine,' Petrarch therefore sought to stimulate

the young Marsigli. Marsigli, however, while he shared Petrarch's

respect for humane culture, seems to have sympathised with the

audacity and freedom of his proposed antagonists. The Convent of S.

Spirito became under his influence the centre of a learned society,

who met there regularly for disputations. The theme chosen for

discussion was posted up upon the wall of the debating-room,

metaphysical and ethical subjects forming the most frequent matter of

inquiry.[62] Among the members of the circle who sharpened their wits

in this species of dialectic, we find Coluccio de' Salutati, Roberto

de' Rossi, Niccolo de' Niccoli, and Giannozzo Manetti. The influence

of Marsigli in forming their character was undoubtedly powerful.

Poggio, in his funeral oration upon Niccolo de' Niccoli, tells us that

'the house of Marsigli was frequented by distinguished youths, who set

themselves to imitate his life and habits; it was, moreover, the

resort of the best and noblest burghers of this city, who flowed

together from all quarters to him as to some oracle of more than human

wisdom.'[63] His intellectual acuteness, solid erudition, and winning

eloquence were displayed in moral disquisitions upon Virgil, Cicero,

and Seneca. In this way he had the merit of combining the dialectic

method and the bold spirit of the Averrhoists with the sound learning

and polite culture of the newly-discovered humanities. The Convent of

S. Spirito has to be mentioned as the first of those many private

academies to which the free thought and the scholarship of Italy were

afterwards destined to owe so much.

[Footnote 60: _Epist. sine titulo_, xviii. p. 732.]

[Footnote 61: See the exhaustive work of Renan, _Averroès et

l'Averroïsme_.]

[Footnote 62: See Manetti's _Life_, Mur. xx. col. 531. Other

references will be found in Vespasiano's _Lives_. Boccaccio's library

was preserved in this convent.]

[Footnote 63: _Poggii Opera_, p. 271.]

It is my object in this chapter to show how humanistic scholarship,

starting from Petrarch, penetrated every department of study, and

began to permeate the intellectual life of the Italians. We have now

to notice its intrusion into the sphere of politics. Petrarch died in

1374, Boccaccio in 1375. The latter date is also that of Coluccio de'

Salutati's entrance upon the duties of Florentine Chancellor.

Salutato, the friend of Boccaccio and the disciple of Marsigli, the

professed worshipper of Petrarch and the translator of Dante into

Latin verse, was destined to exercise an important influence in his

own department as a stylist. Before he was called to act as secretary

to the Signory of Florence in his forty-sixth year, he had already

acquired the learning and imbibed the spirit of his age. He was known

as a diligent collector of manuscripts and promoter of Greek studies,

as a writer on mythology and morals, as an orator and miscellaneous

author.[64] His talents had now to be concentrated on the weightier

business of the Florentine Republic; but his study of antiquity

caused him to conceive his duties and the political relations of the

State he served, in a new light. During the wars carried on with

Gregory XI. and the Visconti, his pen was never idle. For the first

time he introduced into public documents the gravity of style and

melody of phrase he had learned in the school of classic rhetoricians.

The effect produced by this literary statesman, as elegant in

authorship as he was subtle in the conduct of affairs, can only be

estimated at its proper value when we remember that the Italians were

now ripe to receive the influence of rhetoric, and only too ready to

attribute weight to verbal ingenuity. Gian Galeazzo Visconti is said

to have declared that Salutato had done him more harm by his style

than a troop of paid mercenaries.[65] The epistles, despatches,

protocols, and manifestoes composed by their Chancellor for the

Florentine priors, were distributed throughout Italy. Read and copied

by the secretaries of other states, they formed the models of a new

State eloquence.[66] Elegant Latinity became a necessary condition of

public documents, and Ciceronian phrases were henceforth reckoned

among the indispensable engines of a diplomatic armoury. Offices of

trust in the Papal Curia, the courts of the Despots, and the

chanceries of the republics were thus thrown open to professional

humanists. In the next age we shall find that neither princes, popes,

nor priors could do without the services of trained stylists.

[Footnote 64: Salutato's familiar letters, _Lini Coluci Pieri Salutati

Epistolarum Pars Secunda, Florentiæ_, MDCCXXXXI., are a valuable

source of information respecting scholarship at the close of the

fourteenth century. See especially his letter to Benvenuto da Imola on

the death of Petrarch (p. 32), his letter to the same about Petrarch's

_Africa_ (p. 41), another letter about the preservation of the

_Africa_ (p. 79), a letter to Petrarch's nephew Francesco da Brossano

on the death of Boccaccio (p. 44), and a letter to a certain Comes

Magnificus on the literary and philosophical genius of Petrarch (p.

49).]

[Footnote 65: 'Galeacius Mediolanensium Princeps crebro auditus est

dicere non tam sibi mille Florentinorum equites quam Colucii scripta

nocere.' _Pii Secundi Europæ Commentarii_, p. 454.]

[Footnote 66: 'Costui fu de' migliori dittatori di pistole al mondo,

perocchè molti quando ne potevano avere, ne toglieano copie; si

piaceano a tutti gl'intendenti: e nelle corte di Re e di signori del

mondo, e anchora de' cherici era di lui in questa arte maggiore fama

che di alcuno altro uomo.' From the Chronicle of Luca da Scarparia.

These epistles were collected and printed by Josephus Rigaccius,

Bibliopola Florentinus Celeberrimus, in 1741. Among the letters

written for the Signory of Florence, that of congratulation to Gian

Galeazzo Visconti on his murder of Bernabo (p. 16), that to the French

Cardinals (p. 18), to Sir John Hawkwood, or Domino Joanni Aucud (p.

107), to the Marquis of Moravia (p. 110), and to the Romans (p. 141)

deserve to be read.]

While concentrating attention upon this chief contribution of Salutato

to Italian scholarship, I must not omit to notice, however briefly,

the patronage he exercised at Florence. Both Poggio Bracciolini and

Lionardo Bruni owed their advancement to his interest.[67] Giacomo da

Scarparia, the first Florentine who visited Byzantium with a view to

learning Greek, received from him the warmest encouragement, together

with a commission for the purchase of manuscripts. To his activity in

concert with Palla degli Strozzi was due the establishment of a Greek

chair in the University of Florence. Nor was this zeal confined to the

living. He composed the Lives of Dante, Petrarch, and Boccaccio,

translated a portion of the 'Divine Comedy' into Latin for its wider

circulation through the learned world, and caused the 'Africa' of

Petrarch to be published.[68] When the illustrious Chancellor died, in

the year 1406, at the age of seventy-six, he was honoured with a

public funeral; the poet's crown was placed upon his brow, a

panegyrical oration was recited, and a monument was erected to him in

the Duomo.[69]

[Footnote 67: See the letter of Lionardo Bruni, quoted in _Lini Coluci

Pieri Salutati Epistolæ_, p. xv. Coluccio's own letter recommending

Lionardo to Innocent VII., ib. p. 5, and his numerous familiar letters

to Poggio, ib. pp. 13, 173, &c.]

[Footnote 68: 'Certe cogitabam revidere librum, et si quid, ut

scribis, vel absonum, vel contra metrorum regulam intolerabile

deprehendissem, curiosius elimare et sicut Naso finxit in Æneida,

singulos libros paucis versiculis quasi in argumenti formam brevissime

resumere, et exinde pluribus sumptis exemplis, et per me ipsum

correctis et diligenter revisis, unum ad Bononiense gymnasium, unum

Parisiis, unum in Angliam cum meâ epistolâ de libri laudibus

destinare, et unum in Florentiâ ponere in loco celebri,' &c.

_Epistolæ_, part ii. p. 80.]

[Footnote 69: Among the other _laureati_ who filled the post of

Florentine Chancellor may be mentioned Dante's tutor, Brunetto Latini,

Lionardo Bruni, Carlo Marsuppini, Poggio Bracciolini, and Benedetto

Accolti, of whom more hereafter.]

What Salutato accomplished for the style of public documents,

Gasparino da Barzizza effected for familiar correspondence. After

teaching during several years at Venice and Padua, he was summoned to

Milan in 1418 by Filippo Maria Visconti, who ordered him to open a

school in that capital. Gasparino made a special study of Cicero's

Letters, and caused his pupils to imitate them as closely as possible,

forming in this way an art of fluent letter-writing known afterwards

as the _ars familiariter scribendi_. Epistolography in general,

considered as a branch of elegant literature, occupied all the

scholars of the Renaissance, and had the advantage of establishing a

link of union between learned men in different parts of Italy. We

therefore recognise in Gasparino the initiator, after Petrarch, of a

highly important branch of Italian culture. This, when it reached

maturity, culminated in the affectations of the Ciceronian purists. It

must be understood that neither Salutato nor Gasparino attained to

real polish or freedom of style. Compared even with the Latinity of

Poggio, theirs is heavy and uncouth; while that of Poggio seems

barbarous by the side of Poliziano's, and Poliziano in turn yields the

palm of mere correctness to Bembo. It was only by degrees that the

taste of the Italians formed itself, and that facility was acquired in

writing a lost language. The fact that mediæval Latin was still used

in legal documents, in conversation, in the offices of the Church, and

in the theological works which formed the staple of all libraries,

impeded the recovery of a classic style. When the Italians had finally

learned how to polish prose, it was easy to hand on the art to other

nations; while to sneer at their pedantry, as Erasmus did, was no

matter of great difficulty. By that time their scrupulous and anxious

preoccupation with purity of phrase threatened danger to the interests

of liberal learning.

Hitherto, with the exception only of Boccaccio's Greek studies, I have

had to trace the rise of Latin letters and to call particular

attention to the cult of Cicero in Italy. It is now necessary to

mention the advent of a man who played a part in the revival of

learning only second to that of Petrarch. Manuel Chrysoloras, a

Byzantine of noble birth, came to Italy during the Pontificate of

Boniface IX., charged by the Emperor Palæologus with the mission of

attempting to arm the states of Christendom against the Turk. Like all

the Greeks who visited Western Europe, Chrysoloras first alighted in

Venice; but the Republic of the Lagoons neither understood the secret

nor felt the need of retaining these birds of passage. After a few

months they almost invariably passed on to Florence--the real centre

of the intellectual life of Italy. As soon as it was known that

Chrysoloras, who enjoyed the fame of being the most accomplished and

eloquent Hellenist of his age, had arrived with his companion,

Demetrios Kydonios, in Venice, two noble Florentines, Roberto de'

Rossi and Giacomo d'Angelo da Scarparia, set forth to visit him. The

residence of the Greek ambassadors in Italy on this occasion was but

brief; they found that, politically, they could effect nothing. But

Giacomo da Scarparia journeyed in their society to Byzantium; while

Roberto de' Rossi returned to Florence, full of the impression which

the erudite philosophers had left upon him. The report he made to his

fellow-citizens awoke a passionate desire in Palla degli Strozzi and

Niccolo de' Niccoli to bring Chrysoloras in person to Florence. Their

urgent appeals to the Signory resulted in an invitation whereby

Chrysoloras in 1396 was induced to fill the Greek chair in the

university. A yearly stipend of 150 golden florins, raised afterwards

to 250, was voted for his maintenance. This engagement secured the

future of Greek erudition in Europe. The merit of having brought the

affair to a successful issue belongs principally to Palla degli

Strozzi, of whom Vespasiano wrote: 'There being in Florence exceeding

good knowledge of Latin letters, but of Greek none, he resolved that

this defect should be remedied, and therefore did all he could to make

Manuel Grisolora visit Italy, using all his influence thereto and

paying a large portion of the expense incurred.'[70] We must not,

however, omit the share which Coluccio Salutato,[71] by his influence

with the Signory, and Niccolo de' Niccoli, by the interest he exerted

with the Uffiziali dello Studio, may also claim. Among the audience of

this the first true teacher of Greek at Florence were numbered Palla

degli Strozzi, Roberto de' Rossi, Poggio Bracciolini, Lionardo Bruni,

Francesco Barbaro, Giannozzo Manetti, Carlo Marsuppini, and Ambrogio

Traversari--some of them young men of eighteen, others old and

grey-haired, nearly all of them the scholars in Latinity of Giovanni

da Ravenna. Nor was Florence the only town to receive the learning of

Chrysoloras. He opened schools at Rome, at Padua, at Milan, and at

Venice; so that his influence as a wandering professor was at least

equal to that exercised by Giovanni da Ravenna.

[Footnote 70: _Vite d'Uomini Illustri_, p. 271.]

[Footnote 71: Cf. the letter quoted by Voigt (p. 130) to Giacomo da

Scarparia, which shows Coluccio's enthusiasm for Greek.]

The impulse communicated to the study of antiquity by Chrysoloras, and

the noble enthusiasm of his scholars for pure literature, may best be

understood from a passage in the 'Commentaries' of Lionardo Bruni,

whereof the following is a compressed translation:[72]--'Letters at

this period grew mightily in Italy, seeing that the knowledge of

Greek, intermitted for seven centuries, revived. Chrysoloras of

Byzantium, a man of noble birth and well skilled in Greek literature,

brought to us Greek learning. I at that time was following the civil

law, though not ill-versed in other studies; for by nature I loved

learning with ardour, nor had I given slight pains to dialectic and

to rhetoric. Therefore, at the coming of Chrysoloras, I was made to

halt in my choice of lives, seeing that I held it wrong to desert law,

and yet I reckoned it a crime to omit so great an occasion of learning

the Greek literature; and oftentimes I reasoned with myself after this

manner:--Can it be that thou, when thou mayest gaze on Homer, Plato,

and Demosthenes, together with other poets, philosophers, and orators,

concerning whom so great and so wonderful things are said, and mayest

converse with them, and receive their admirable doctrine--can it be

that thou wilt desert thyself and neglect the opportunity divinely

offered thee? Through seven hundred years no one in all Italy has been

master of Greek letters; and yet we acknowledge that all science is

derived from them. Of civil law, indeed, there are in every city

scores of doctors; but should this single and unique teacher of Greek

be removed, thou wilt find no one to instruct thee. Conquered at last

by these reasonings, I delivered myself over to Chrysoloras with such

passion that what I had received from him by day in hours of waking,

occupied my mind at night in hours of sleep.'

[Footnote 72: Mur. xix. 920.]

The earnestness of this paragraph is characteristic of the whole

period. The scholars who assembled in the lecture-rooms of

Chrysoloras, felt that the Greek texts, whereof he alone supplied the

key, contained those elements of spiritual freedom and intellectual

culture without which the civilisation of the modern world would be

impossible. Nor were they mistaken in what was then a guess rather

than a certainty. The study of Greek implied the birth of criticism,

comparison, research. Systems based on ignorance and superstition were

destined to give way before it. The study of Greek opened

philosophical horizons far beyond the dream-world of the churchmen and

the monks; it stimulated the germs of science, suggested new

astronomical hypotheses, and indirectly led to the discovery of

America. The study of Greek resuscitated a sense of the beautiful in

art and literature. It subjected the creeds of Christianity, the

language of the Gospels, the doctrine of S. Paul, to analysis, and

commenced a new era for Biblical inquiry. If it be true, as a writer

no less sober in his philosophy than eloquent in his language has

lately asserted, that, 'except the blind forces of nature, nothing

moves in this world which is not Greek in its origin,' we are

justified in regarding the point of contact between the Greek teacher

Chrysoloras and his Florentine pupils as one of the most momentous

crises in the history of civilisation. Indirectly, the Italian

intellect had hitherto felt Hellenic influence through Latin

literature. It was now about to receive that influence immediately

from actual study of the masterpieces of the Attic authors. The world

was no longer to be kept in ignorance of those 'eternal consolations'

of the human race. No longer could the scribe omit Greek quotations from

his Latin text with the dogged snarl of obtuse self-satisfaction--_Græca

sunt, ergo non legenda_. The motto had rather to be changed into a cry

of warning for ecclesiastical authority upon the verge of

dissolution--_Græca sunt, ergo periculosa_: since the reawakening

faith in human reason, the reawakening belief in the dignity of man,

the desire for beauty, the liberty, audacity, and passion of the

Renaissance, received from Greek studies their strongest and most

vital impulse.