FIRST PERIOD OF HUMANISM
Condition of the Universities in Italy -- Bologna -- High
Schools founded from it -- Naples under Frederick II. --
Under the House of Anjou -- Ferrara -- Piacenza -- Perugia
-- Rome -- Pisa -- Florence -- Imperial and Papal Charters
-- Foreign Students -- Professorial Staff -- Subjects taught
in the High Schools -- Place assigned to Humanism -- Pay of
the Professors of Eloquence -- Francesco Filelfo -- The
Humanists less powerful at the Universities -- Method of
Humanistic Teaching -- The Book Market before Printing --
Mediæval Libraries -- Cost of Manuscripts -- _Stationarii_
and _Peciarii_ -- Negligence of Copyists -- Discovery of
Classical Codices -- Boccaccio at Monte Cassino -- Poggio at
Constance -- Convent of S. Gallen -- Bruni's Letter to
Poggio -- Manuscripts discovered by Poggio -- Nicholas of
Treves -- Collection of Greek Manuscripts -- Aurispa,
Filelfo, and Guarino -- The Ruins of Rome -- Their Influence
on Humanism -- Dante and Villani -- Rienzi -- His Idealistic
Patriotism -- Vanity -- Political Incompetence -- Petrarch's
Relations with Rienzi -- Injury to Monuments in Rome --
Poggio's Roman Topography -- Sentimental Feeling for the
Ruins of Antiquity -- Ciriac of Ancona.
Having so far traced the quickening of a new sense for antiquity among
the Italians, it will be well at this point to consider the external
resources of Humanism before continuing the history of the Revival in
the fifteenth century. The condition of the universities, the state of
the book trade before the invention of printing, and the discovery of
manuscripts claim separate attention; nor may it be out of place to
inquire what stimulus the enthusiasm for classical studies received
from the ruins of Rome. A review of these topics will help to explain
the circumstances under which the pioneers of culture had to labour,
and the nature of the crusade they instituted against ignorance in
every part of Europe.
The oldest and most frequented university in Italy, that of Bologna,
is represented as having flourished in the twelfth century.[73] Its
prosperity in early times depended greatly on the personal conduct of
the principal professors, who, when they were not satisfied with their
entertainment, were in the habit of seceding with their pupils to
other cities. Thus high schools were opened from time to time in
Modena, Reggio, and elsewhere by teachers who broke the oaths that
bound them to reside in Bologna, and fixed their centre of education
in a rival town. To make such temporary changes was not difficult in
an age when what we have to call an university, consisted of masters
and scholars, without college buildings, without libraries, without
endowments, and without scientific apparatus. The technical name for
such institutions seems to have been _studium scholarium_, Italianised
into _studio_ or _studio pubblico_.[74] Among the more permanent
results of these secessions may be mentioned the establishment of the
high school at Vicenza by translation from Bologna in 1204, and the
opening of a school at Arezzo under similar circumstances in 1215; the
great University of Padua first saw the light in consequence of
political discords forcing the professors to quit Bologna for a
season.[75]
[Footnote 73: Tiraboschi, _Storia della Letteratura Italiana_, vol.
iv. p. 42 _et seq._, vol. v. p. 60 _et seq._ Large quarto, Modena,
1787.]
[Footnote 74: See Muratori, vol. viii. 15, 75, 372. Matteo Villani,
lib. i. cap. 8.]
[Footnote 75: 'Hoc anno translatum est Studium Scholarium de Bononiâ
Paduam.' Mur. viii. 372.]
The first half of the thirteenth century witnessed the foundation of
these _studi_ in considerable numbers. That of Vercelli was opened in
1228, the municipality providing two certified copyists for the
convenience of students who might wish to purchase text-books.[76] In
1224 the Emperor Frederick II., to whom the south of Italy owed a
precocious eminence in literature, established the University of
Naples by an Imperial diploma.[77] With a view to rendering it the
chief seat of learning in his dominions, he forbade the subjects of
the Regno to frequent other schools, and suppressed the University of
Bologna by letters general. Thereupon Bologna joined the Lombard
League, defied the emperor, and refused to close the schools, which
numbered at that period about ten thousand students of various
nationalities. In 1227 Frederick revoked his edict, and Bologna
remained thenceforward unmolested. Political and internal
vicissitudes, affecting all the Italian universities at this period,
interrupted the prosperity of that of Naples. In the middle of the
thirteenth century Salerno proved a dangerous rival; but when the
House of Anjou was established in the kingdom of the Sicilies, special
privileges were granted, restoring the high school of the capital to
the first rank. Charles I. created a separate court of jurisdiction
for its management. This consisted of a judge and three assessors, one
for the control of foreigners, another for the subjects of the Regno,
and the third for Italians from other states.
[Footnote 76: They were called 'Exemplatores.' See Tiraboschi, vol.
iv. lib. i cap. 2.]
[Footnote 77: Muratori, vii. p. 997. Amari, _Storia dei Mussulmani di
Sicilia_, vol. iii. p. 706.]
In 1264 we find a public school in operation at Ferrara. By its
charter the professors were exempt from military service. The
University of Piacenza came into existence a little earlier. Innocent
IV. established it in 1248, with privileges similar to those of Paris
and Bologna. An important group of _studi pubblici_ owed their origin
to Papal or Imperial charters in the first half of the fourteenth
century. That of Perugia was founded in 1307 by a Bull of Clement V.
That of Rome dated from 1303, in which year Boniface VIII. gave it a
constitution by a special edict; but the translation of the Papal See
to Avignon caused it to fall into premature decadence. The University
of Pisa had already existed for some years, when it received a charter
in 1343 from Clement VI. That of Florence was first founded in
1321.[78] In 1348 a place for its public buildings was assigned
between the Duomo and the Palazzo Pubblico, on the site of what was
afterwards known as the Collegium Eugenianum. A council of eight
burghers was appointed for its management, and a yearly sum was set
apart for its maintenance. In 1349 Clement VI. gave it the same
privileges as the University of Bologna, while in 1364 it received an
Imperial diploma from Charles IV. The same emperor granted charters to
Siena in 1357, to Arezzo in 1356, and to Lucca in 1369. In 1362
Galeazzo Visconti obtained a charter for his University of Pavia from
Charles IV., with the privileges of Paris, Oxford, and Bologna.
[Footnote 78: See Von Reumont, _Lorenzo de' Medici_, vol. i. p. 521.]
It will be observed that the majority of the _studi pubblici_ obtained
charters either from the Pope or the emperor, or from both, less for
the sake of any immediate benefit to be derived from Papal or Imperial
patronage, than because supreme authority in Italy was still referred
to one or other of these heads. It was a great object with each city
to increase its wealth by attracting foreigners as residents, and to
retain the native youth within its precincts. The municipalities,
therefore, accorded immunities from taxation and military service to
_bona fide_ students, prohibited their burghers from seeking rival
places of learning, and in some cases allowed the university
authorities to exercise a special jurisdiction over the motley
multitude of scholars from all countries. How miscellaneous the
concourse in some of the high schools used to be, may be gathered from
the reports extracted by Tiraboschi from their registers. At Vicenza,
for example, in 1209 we find the names of Bohemians, Poles,
Frenchmen, Burgundians, Germans, and Spaniards, as well as of Italians
of divers towns. The rectors of this _studio_ in 1205 included an
Englishman, a Provençal, a German, and a Cremonese. The list of
illustrious students at Bologna between 1265 and 1294 show men of all
the European nationalities, proving that the foreigners attracted by
the university must have formed no inconsiderable element in the whole
population.[79] This will account for the prominent part played by the
students from time to time in the political history of Bologna.[80]
[Footnote 79: In 1320 there were at least 15,000 students in Bologna.]
[Footnote 80: See Sismondi, vol. iii. p. 349.]
The importance attached by great cities to their universities as a
source of strength, may be gathered from the chapter in Matteo
Villani's Chronicle describing the foundation of the _studio pubblico_
in Florence.[81] He expressly mentions that the Signory were induced
to take this step in consequence of the depopulation inflicted by the
Black Death of 1348. By drawing residents to Florence from other
States, they hoped to increase the number of the inhabitants, and to
restore the decayed fame and splendour of the commonwealth.[82] At the
same time they thought that serious studies might put an end to the
demoralisation produced in all classes by the plague. With this object
in view, they engaged the best teachers, and did not hesitate to
devote a yearly sum of 2,500 golden florins to the maintenance of
their high school. Bologna, which owed even more than Florence to its
university, is said to have lavished as much as half of its revenue,
about 20,000 ducats, on the pay of professors and other incidental
expenses. The actual cost incurred by cities through their schools
cannot, however, be accurately estimated, since it varied from year to
year according to the engagements made with special teachers. At
Pavia, for example, in 1400, the university supported in Canon Law
several eminent doctors, in Civil Law thirteen, in Medicine five, in
Philosophy three, in Astrology one, in Greek one, and in Eloquence
one.[83] Whether this staff was maintained after the lapse of another
twenty years we do not know for certain.
[Footnote 81: Lib. i. cap. 8.]
[Footnote 82: 'Volendo attrarre gente alla nostra città, e dilatarla
in onore, e dare materia a' suoi cittadini d'essere scienziati e
virtudiosi.']
[Footnote 83: Cf. Corio, p. 290. He gives the names of the professors
who attended at the funeral of Gian Galeazzo Visconti.]
The subjects taught in the high schools were Canon and Civil Law,
Medicine, and Theology. These faculties, important for the
professional education of the public, formed the staple of the
academical curriculum. Chairs of Rhetoric, Philosophy, and Astronomy
were added according to occasion, the last sometimes including the
study of judicial astrology. If we inquire how the humanists or
professors of classic literature were related to the universities, we
find that, at first at any rate, they always occupied a second rank.
The permanent teaching remained in the hands of jurists, who enjoyed
life engagements at a high rate of pay, while the Latinists and
Grecians could only aspire to the temporary occupation of the Chair of
Rhetoric, with salaries considerably lower than those of lawyers or
physicians. The cause of this inferiority is easily explained. It was
natural that important and remunerative branches of learning like law
and medicine should attract a greater number of students than pure
literature, and that their professors should be better paid than the
teachers of eloquence. Padua, Bologna, and Pavia in particular
retained their legal speciality throughout the period of the
Renaissance, and remained but little open to humanistic influences. At
Padua we find from Sanudo's Diary[84] that an eminent jurist received
a stipend of 1,000 ducats. A Doctor of Medicine at the same
university, in 1491, received a similar stipend, together with the
right of private practice. At Bologna the famous jurist Abbas Siculus
(Niccolo de' Tudeschi) drew 800 scudi yearly; at Padua Giovanni da
Imola in 1406, and Paolo da Castro in 1430, drew a sum of 600
ducats.[85] About the same time (1453) Lauro Quirino, who professed
rhetoric at Padua, was paid at the rate of only forty ducats yearly,
while Lorenzo Valla, at Pavia, filled the Chair of Eloquence with an
annual stipend of fifty sequins. The disparity between the
remuneration of jurists and that of humanists was not so great at all
the universities. Florence in especial formed a notable exception.
From the date of its commencement the Florentine _studio_ was partial
to literature; and it is worth remarking that when Lorenzo de' Medici
transferred the high school to Pisa, he retained at Florence the
professors of the liberal sciences and _belles-lettres_. The great
reputation of eminent rhetoricians, again, often secured for them
temporary engagements at a high rate. Thus we gather from Rosmini's
'Life of Filelfo' that this humanist received from Venice the offer of
500 sequins yearly as remuneration for his professorial services.
Bologna proposed an annual stipend of 450 sequins when he undertook to
lecture upon eloquence and moral philosophy. At Florence his income
amounted to 350 golden florins, secured for three years, and
subsequently raised to 450. With Siena he stipulated for 350 golden
florins for two years. At Milan his Chair of Eloquence was endowed
with 500 golden florins, and this salary was afterwards increased to
700. Nicholas V. offered him an annual income of 600 ducats if he
would devote himself to the translation of Greek books into Latin,
while Sixtus IV. tried to bring him to Rome by proposing 600 Roman
florins as the stipend of the Chair of Rhetoric.
[Footnote 84: Mur. xxii. 990.]
[Footnote 85: See Voigt, p. 447.]
The fact, however, remains that while the special study of antiquity
preoccupied the minds of the Italians, and attracted all the finer
intellects among the youth ambitious of distinction, its professors
never succeeded in taking complete possession of the universities.
Their position there was always that of wandering stars and resident
aliens. This accounts in some measure for the bitter hostility and
scorn which they displayed against the teachers of theology and law
and medicine. The real home of the humanists was in the Courts of
princes, the palaces of the cultivated burghers, the Roman Curia, and
the chanceries of the republics. As secretaries, house tutors,
readers, Court poets, historiographers, public orators, and companions
they were indispensable. We shall therefore find that the private
academies formed by the literati and their patrons, the schools of
princes established at Mantua and Ferrara, and the residences of great
nobles play a more important part in the history of humanism than do
the universities. At the same time the spirit of the new culture
diffused by the humanists so thoroughly permeated the whole
intellectual activity of the Italians, that in course of time the
special studies of the high schools assumed a more literary and
liberal form. The classics then supplied the starting-point for
juristic and medical disquisitions. Poliziano was seen lecturing upon
the Pandects of Justinian, while Pomponazzi made the Chair of
Philosophy at Padua subservient to the exposition of materialism. This
triumph of humanism, like its triumph in the Church, was effected less
by immediate working on the universities than by a gradual and
indirect determination of the whole race towards the study of
antiquity.
In picturing to ourselves the method pursued by the humanists in the
instruction of their classes, we must divest our minds of all
associations with the practice of modern professors. Very few of the
students whom the master saw before him, possessed more than meagre
portions of the text of Virgil or of Cicero; they had no notes,
grammars, lexicons, or dictionaries of antiquities and mythology, to
help them. It was therefore necessary for the lecturer to dictate
quotations, to repeat parallel passages at full length, to explain
geographical and historical allusions, to analyse the structure of
sentences in detail, to provide copious illustrations of grammatical
usage, to trace the stages by which a word acquired its meaning in a
special context, to command a full vocabulary of synonyms, to give
rules for orthography, and to have the whole Pantheon at his fingers'
ends. In addition to this he was expected to comment upon the meaning
of his author, to interpret his philosophy, to point out the beauties
of his style, to introduce appropriate moral disquisition on his
doctrine, to sketch his biography, and to give some account of his
relation to the history of his country and to his predecessors in the
field of letters. In short, the professor of rhetoric had to be a
grammarian, a philologer, an historian, a stylist, and a sage in one.
He was obliged to pretend at least to an encyclopædic knowledge of the
classics, and to retain whole volumes in his memory. All these
requirements, which seem to have been satisfied by such men as Filelfo
and Poliziano, made the profession of eloquence--for so the varied
subject matter of humanism was often called--a very different business
from that which occupies a lecturer of the present century. Scores of
students, old and young, with nothing but pen and paper on the desks
before them, sat patiently recording what the lecturer said. At the
end of his discourses on the 'Georgics' or the 'Verrines,' each of
them carried away a compendious volume, containing a transcript of the
author's text, together with a miscellaneous mass of notes, critical,
explanatory, ethical, æsthetical, historical, and biographical. In
other words, a book had been dictated, and as many scores of copies as
there were attentive pupils had been made.[86] The language used was
Latin. No dialect of Italian could have been intelligible to the
students of different nationalities who crowded the lecture-rooms. The
elementary education in grammar requisite for following a professorial
course of lectures had been previously provided by the teachers of the
Latin schools, which depended for maintenance partly on the State[87]
and partly on private enterprise. The Church does not seem to have
undertaken the management of these primary boys' schools.
[Footnote 86: Many of the earliest printed editions of the Latin poets
give an exact notion of what such lectures must have been. The text is
embedded in an all-embracing commentary.]
[Footnote 87: Cf. Villani's Statistics of Florence, and Corio's of
Milan.]
Since this was the nature of academical instruction in the humanities
before the age of printing, it followed that the professor had a
direct interest in frequently shifting his scene of operations. More
than a certain number of such books as I have just attempted to
describe could not be carried in his head. After he had dictated his
work on the 'Georgics' at Florence, he was naturally anxious to move
to Milan and to do the same. A new audience gave new value to his
lectures, and another edition, as it were, of his book was put in
circulation. In the correspondence which passed between professors and
the rectors of the high schools previously to an engagement, we
sometimes find that the former undertake to explain particular authors
during their proposed residence. On these authors they had no doubt
bestowed the best years of their lives, making them the vehicle for
all the miscellaneous learning they possessed, and grounding their
fame upon the beauty, clearness, and copiousness of their
exposition.[88]
[Footnote 88: For humorous but vivid pictures of a professor's
lecture-room, see the macaronic poems of Odassi and Fossa quoted by me
in vol. v. of this work.]
Having described the conditions under which professorial teaching was
conducted in the fifteenth century, it is now of some importance to
form a notion of the state of the book market and the diffusion of
MSS. before the invention of printing. Difficult as it is to speak
with accuracy on these topics some facts must be collected, seeing
that the high price and comparative rarity of books contributed in a
very important degree to determine the character of the instruction
provided by the humanists.
Scarcity of books was at first a chief impediment to the study of
antiquity. Popes and princes and even great religious institutions
possessed far fewer books than many farmers of the present age. The
library belonging to the Cathedral Church of S. Martino at Lucca in
the ninth century contained only nineteen volumes of abridgments from
ecclesiastical commentaries. The Cathedral of Novara in 1212 could
boast copies of Boethius, Priscian, the 'Code of Justinian,' the
'Decretals,' and the 'Etymology' of Isidorus, besides a Bible and some
devotional treatises.[89] This slender stock passed for great riches.
Each of the precious volumes in such a collection was an epitome of
mediæval art. Its pages were composed of fine vellum adorned with
pictures.[90] The initial letters displayed elaborate flourishes and
exquisitely illuminated groups of figures. The scribe took pains to
render his caligraphy perfect, and to ornament the margins with
crimson, gold, and blue. Then he handed the parchment sheets to the
binder, who encased them in rich settings of velvet or carved ivory
and wood, embossed with gold and precious stones. The edges were gilt
and stamped with patterns. The clasps were of wrought silver, chased
with niello. The price of such masterpieces was enormous. Borso
d'Este, in 1464, gave eight gold ducats to Gherardo Ghislieri of
Bologna for an illuminated Lancellotto, and in 1469 he bought a
Josephus and Quintus Curtius for forty ducats.[91] His great Bible in
two volumes is said to have cost 1,375 sequins. Rinaldo degli Albizzi
notes in his Memoirs that he paid eleven golden florins for a Bible at
Arezzo in 1406. Of these MSS. the greater part were manufactured in
the cloisters, and it was here too that the martyrdom of ancient
authors took place. Lucretius and Livy gave place to chronicles,
antiphonaries, and homilies. Parchment was extremely dear, and the
scrolls which nobody could read might be scraped and washed.
Accordingly, the copyist erased the learning of the ancients, and
filled the fair blank space he gained with litanies. At the same time
it is but just to the monks to add that palimpsests have occasionally
been found in which ecclesiastical works have yielded place to copies
of the Latin poets used in elementary education.[92]
[Footnote 89: See Cantù, _Storia della Letteratura Italiana_, p. 105,
note.]
[Footnote 90: 'Hodie Scriptores non sunt Scriptores sed Pictores,'
quoted by Tiraboschi, vol. iv. lib. i. cap. 4.]
[Footnote 91: See Cantù, loc. cit. p. 104.]
[Footnote 92: See Comparetti, vol. i. p. 114.]
Another obstacle to the diffusion of learning was the incompetence of
the copyists. It is true that at the great universities _stationarii_,
who supplied the text-books in use to students, were certified and
subjected to the control of special censors called _peciarii_. Yet
their number was not large, and when they quitted the routine to which
they were accustomed their incapacity betrayed itself by numerous
errors.[93] Petrarch's invective against the professional copyists
shows the depth to which the art had sunk. 'Who,' he exclaims, 'will
discover a cure for the ignorance and vile sloth of these copyists,
who spoil everything and turn it to nonsense? If Cicero, Livy, and
other illustrious ancients were to return to life, do you think they
would understand their own works? There is no check upon these
copyists, selected without examination or test of their capacity.
Workmen, husbandmen, weavers, artisans, are not indulged in the same
liberty.'[94] Coluccio Salutato repeats the same complaint, averring
that the copies of Dante and Petrarch no more correspond to the
originals than bad statues to the men they pretend to represent. At
the same time the copyists formed a necessary and flourishing class of
craftsmen. They were well paid. Ambrogio Traversari told his friend
Giustiniani in 1430 that he could recommend him a good scribe at the
pay of thirty golden florins a year and his keep. Under these
circumstances it was usual for even the most eminent scholars, like
Petrarch, Boccaccio, and Poggio, to make their own copies of MSS.
Niccolo de' Niccoli transcribed nearly the whole of the codices that
formed the nucleus of the Library of the Mark. Sometimes they sold
them or made advantageous changes. Poggio, for example, sold two
volumes of S. Jerome's 'Letters' to Lionello d'Este for 100 golden
florins. Beccadelli bought a Livy from him for 120 golden florins,
having parted with a farm to defray the expense. It is clear that the
first step toward the revival of learning implied three things:
first, the collection of MSS. wherever they could be saved from the
indolence of the monks; secondly, the formation of libraries for their
preservation; and, thirdly, the invention of an art whereby they might
be multiplied cheaply, conveniently, and accurately.
[Footnote 93: In Milan, in the fourteenth century, when the population
was estimated at about 200,000, the town could boast of only fifty
copyists. Tirab. loc. cit. cap. 4.]
[Footnote 94: _De Remediis utriusque Fortunæ_, lib. i. dial. 43, p.
42. The passage condensed above is so valuable for a right
understanding of the humanistic feeling about manuscripts that I shall
transcribe portions of the original:--'Libri innumerabiles sunt mihi.
Et errores innumeri, quidam ab impiis, alii ab indoctis editi. Illi
quidem religioni ac pietati et divinis literis, hi naturæ ac justitiæ
moribusque et liberalibus disciplinis seu historiæ rerumque gestarum
fidei, omnes autem vero adversi; inque omnibus, et præsertim primis
ubi majoribus agitur de rebus, et vera falsis immixta sunt,
perdifficilis ac periculosa discretio est ... scriptorum inscitiæ
inertiæque, corrumpenti omnia miscentique ... ignavissima ætas hæc
culinæ solicita, literarum negligens, et coquos examinans non
scriptores. Quisquis itaque pingere aliquid in membranis, manuque
calamum versare didicerit, scriptor habebitur, doctrinæ omnis ignarus,
expers ingenii, artis egens ... nunc confusis exemplaribus et
exemplis, unum scribere polliciti, sic aliud scribunt ut quod ipse
dictaveris, non agnoscas ... accedunt et scriptores nullâ frenati
lege, nullo probati examine, nullo judicio electi; non fabris, non
agricolis, non textoribus, non ulli fere artium tanta licentia est,
cum sit in aliis leve periculum, in hâc grave; sine delectu tamen
scribendum ruunt omnes, et cuncta vastantibus certa sunt pretia.']
The labour involved in the collection of classical manuscripts had to
be performed by a few enthusiastic scholars, who received no help from
the universities and their academical scribes, and who met with no
sympathy in the monasteries they were bent on ransacking. The new
culture demanded wholly new machinery; and new runners in the
torch-race of civilisation sprang into existence. The high schools
were contented with their summaries and glosses. The monks performed
at best the work of earthworms, who unwittingly preserve fragments of
Greek architecture from corrosion by heaping mounds of mould and
rubbish round them. Meanwhile the humanists went forth with the
instinct of explorers to release the captives and awake the dead. From
the convent libraries of Italy, from the museums of Constantinople,
from the abbeys of Germany and Switzerland and France, the slumbering
spirits of the ancients had to be evoked. The chivalry of learning,
banded together for this service, might be likened to Crusaders. As
the Franks deemed themselves thrice blest if they returned with relics
from Jerusalem, so these new Knights of the Holy Ghost, seeking not
the sepulchre of a risen God, but the tombs wherein the genius of the
ancient world awaited resurrection, felt holy transports when a brown,
begrimed, and crabbed copy of some Greek or Latin author rewarded
their patient quest. Days and nights they spent in carefully
transcribing it, comparing their own MS. with the original,
multiplying facsimiles, and sending them abroad with free hands to
students who in their turn took copies, till the treasure-trove became
the common property of all who could appreciate its value. This work
of discovery began with Petrarch. I have already alluded to the
journeys he undertook in the hope of collecting the lost MSS. of
Cicero. It was carried on by Boccaccio. The account given by Benvenuto
da Imola of Boccaccio's visit to Monte Cassino brings vividly before
us both the ardour of these first explorers and the apathy of the
Benedictines (who have sometimes been called the saviours of learning)
with regard to the treasures of their own libraries:[95]--'With a view
to the clearer understanding of this text ('Paradiso,' xxii. 74), I
will relate what my revered teacher, Boccaccio of Certaldo, humorously
told me. He said that when he was in Apulia, attracted by the
celebrity of the convent, he paid a visit to Monte Cassino, whereof
Dante speaks. Desirous of seeing the collection of books, which he
understood to be a very choice one, he modestly asked a monk--for he
was always most courteous in manners--to open the library, as a
favour, for him. The monk answered stiffly, pointing to a steep
staircase, "Go up; it is open." Boccaccio went up gladly; but he found
that the place which held so great a treasure, was without or
[Transcriber's Note: should be 'a'] door or key. He entered, and saw
grass sprouting on the windows, and all the books and benches thick
with dust. In his astonishment he began to open and turn the leaves of
first one tome and then another, and found many and divers volumes of
ancient and foreign works. Some of them had lost several sheets;
others were snipped and pared all round the text, and mutilated in
various ways. At length, lamenting that the toil and study of so many
illustrious men should have passed into the hands of most abandoned
wretches, he departed with tears and sighs. Coming to the cloister, he
asked a monk whom he met, why those valuable books had been so
disgracefully mangled. He answered that the monks, seeking to gain a
few _soldi_, were in the habit of cutting off sheets and making
psalters, which they sold to boys. The margins too they manufactured
into charms, and sold to women. So then, O man of study, go to and
rack your brains; make books that you may come to this!'
[Footnote 95: 'Commentary on the _Divine Comedy_,' ap. Muratori,
_Antiq. Ital._ vol. i. p. 1296.]
What Italy contained of ancient codices soon saw the light. The visit
of Poggio Bracciolini to Constance (1414) opened up for Italian
scholars the stores that lay neglected in transalpine monasteries.
Poggio's office of Apostolic Secretary obliged him to attend the
Council of Constance for the purpose of framing reports and composing
diplomatic documents. At the same time he had ample leisure on his
hands, and this he spent in exploring the libraries of Swiss and
Suabian convents. The treasures he unearthed at Reichenau, Weingarten,
and above all S. Gallen, restored to Italy many lost masterpieces of
Latin literature, and supplied students with full texts of authors who
had hitherto been known in mutilated copies. The account he gave of
his visit to S. Gallen in a Latin letter to a friend is justly
celebrated.[96] After describing the wretched state in which the
'Institutions' of Quintilian had previously existed,[97] he proceeds
as follows:--'I verily believe that, if we had not come to the rescue,
he [Quintilian] must speedily have perished; for it cannot be imagined
that a man magnificent, polished, elegant, urbane, and witty could
much longer have endured the squalor of the prison-house in which I
found him, the savagery of his jailers, the forlorn filth of the
place. He was indeed right sad to look upon, and ragged, like a
condemned criminal, with rough beard and matted hair, protesting by
his countenance and garb against the injustice of his sentence. He
seemed to be stretching out his hands, calling upon the Romans,
demanding to be saved from so unmerited a doom. Hard indeed it was
for him to bear, that he who had preserved the lives of many by his
eloquence and aid, should now find no redresser of his wrongs, no
saviour from the unjust punishment awaiting him. But as it often
happens, to quote Terence, that what you dare not wish for comes to
you by chance, so a good fortune for him, but far more for ourselves,
led us, while wasting our time in idleness at Constance, to take a
fancy for visiting the place where he was held in prison. The
monastery of S. Gallen lies at the distance of some twenty miles from
that city. Thither, then, partly for the sake of amusement and partly
of finding books, whereof we heard there was a large collection in the
convent, we directed our steps. In the middle of a well-stocked
library, too large to catalogue at present, we discovered Quintilian,
safe as yet and sound, though covered with dust and filthy with
neglect and age. The books, you must know, were not housed according
to their worth, but were lying in a most foul and obscure dungeon at
the very bottom of a tower, a place into which condemned criminals
would hardly have been thrust; and I am firmly persuaded that if
anyone would but explore those _ergastula_ of the barbarians wherein
they incarcerate such men, we should meet with like good fortune in
the case of many whose funeral orations have long ago been pronounced.
Besides Quintilian, we exhumed the three first books and a half of the
fourth book of the "Argonautica" of Flaccus, and the "Commentaries" of
Asconius Pedianus upon eight orations of Cicero.' Poggio, immediately
after this discovery, set himself to work at transcribing the
Quintilian, a labour accomplished in the brief space of thirty-two
days. The MS. was then despatched to Lionardo Bruni, who received it
with ecstatic welcome, as appears from this congratulatory epistle
addressed to Poggio:--
'The republic of letters has reason to rejoice not only in the works
you have discovered, but also in those you have still to find. What a
glory for you it is to have brought to light by your exertions the
writings of the most distinguished authors! Posterity will not forget
that MSS. which were bewailed as lost beyond the possibility of
restoration, have been recovered, thanks to you. As Camillus was
called the second founder of Rome, so may you receive the title of the
second author of the works you have restored to the world. Through you
we now possess Quintilian entire; before we only boasted of the half
of him, and that defective and corrupt in text. O precious
acquisition! O unexpected joy! And shall I, then, in truth be able to
read the whole of that Quintilian which, mutilated and deformed as it
has hitherto appeared, has formed my solace? I conjure you send it me
at once, that at least I may set eyes on it before I die.'
[Footnote 96: Mur. xx. 160.]
[Footnote 97: Petrarch in 1350 found a bad copy at Florence. Poggio
describes it thus:--'Is vero apud nos antea, Italos dico, ita
laceratus erat, ita circumcisus culpâ, ut opinor, temporum, ut nulla
forma, nullus habitus hominis in eo recognosceretur.']
In addition to the authors named above, Poggio discovered and copied
with his own hand MSS. of Lucretius and Columella. Silius Italicus,
Manillas, and Vitruvius owed their resurrection to his industry. At
Langres he found a copy of Cicero's oration for Cæcina; at Monte
Cassino a MS. of Frontinus. Ammianus Marcellinus, Nonius Marcellus,
Probus, Flavius Caper, and Eutyches are also to be ranked among the
captives freed by him from slavery. In exploring foreign convents
where he suspected that ancient authors might lie buried, he spared
neither trouble nor expense. 'No severity of winter cold, no snow, no
length of journey, no roughness of roads, prevented him from bringing
the monuments of literature to light,' wrote Francesco Barbaro.[98]
Nor did he recoil from theft, if theft seemed necessary to secure a
precious codex. In a letter to Ambrogio Traversari he relates his
negotiations with a monk for the fraudulent abduction of an Ammianus
and a Livy from a convent library in Hersfeld.[99] Not unfrequently
his most golden anticipations with regard to literary treasures were
deceived, as when a Dane appeared at the Court of Martin V. bragging
of a complete Livy to be found in a Cistercian convent near Röskilde.
This man protested he had seen the MS., and described the characters
in which it was written with some minuteness. At Poggio's instance the
Cardinal Orsini sent off a special messenger to seek for this, which
would have been the very phoenix of MSS. to the Latinists of that
period, while Cosimo de' Medici put his agents at Lübeck to work for
the same purpose. All their efforts were in vain, however. The Livy
could not be discovered, and the Dane passed for a liar, in spite of
the corroboration his story received from another traveller.[100]
Poggio himself, who would willingly have ransacked Europe for a MS.,
was jealous of money spent on any other object. In his treatise 'De
Infelicitate Principum' he complains that 'these exalted personages
[popes and princes] spend their days and their wealth in pleasure, in
unworthy pursuits, in pestiferous and destructive wars. So great is
their mental torpor that nothing can rouse them to search after the
works of excellent writers, by whose wisdom and learning mankind are
taught the way to true happiness.' This lamentation, written probably
under the unfavourable impression produced upon his mind by the Papal
Court, where as yet the spirit of humanism had hardly penetrated, must
not be taken in any strict sense. Never was there a time in the
world's history when money was spent more freely upon the collection
and preservation of MSS., and when a more complete machinery was put
in motion for the sake of securing literary treasures. Prince vied
with prince, and eminent burgher with burgher, in buying books. The
commercial correspondents of the Medici and other great Florentine
houses, whose banks and discount offices extended over Europe and the
Levant, were instructed to purchase relics of antiquity without
regard for cost, and to forward them to Florence. The most acceptable
present that could be sent to a king was a copy of a Roman historian.
The best credentials which a young Greek arriving from Byzantium could
use to gain the patronage of men like Palla degli Strozzi was a
fragment of some ancient; the merchandise ensuring the largest profit
to a speculator who had special knowledge in such matters was old
parchment covered with crabbed characters.
[Footnote 98: Mur. xx. 169. Cf. the Elegy of Landino quoted in the
notes to Roscoe's _Lorenzo_, p. 388.]
[Footnote 99: Voigt, p. 138.]
[Footnote 100: See Voigt, p. 139, for this story.]
The history of the foundation of libraries will form part of the next
chapter. For the present it is requisite to mention some of Poggio's
fellow-workmen in the labour of collection. Among these a certain
Nicholas of Treves, employed to receive monies due to the Papal Curia
in Germany, deserves a place, seeing that in 1429 he sent the most
complete extant copy of Plautus to Rome. Bartolommeo da Montepulciano,
following the lead of Poggio, pursued investigations while at
Constance, and discovered the lost writings of Vegetius and Pompeius
Festus. In 1409 Lionardo Bruni chanced upon a good MS. of Cicero's
letters at Pistoja, and about the year 1425 a magnificent capture of
Cicero's rhetorical treatises was made at Lodi in the Duomo by
Gherardo Landriani. The extant works of Tacitus, so ardently desired,
were not collected earlier than the reign of Leo.
While Poggio was releasing the Latin authors from their northern
prisons, and sending them to walk like princes through the Courts and
capitals of Italy, three other scholars devoted no less energy to the
collection of Greek MSS. Giovanni Aurispa, on his return from
Byzantium in 1423, brought with him 238 codices, while Guarino of
Verona and Francesco Filelfo both arrived in Italy heavily laden.
There is an old story that Guarino lost a part of his cargo at sea,
and landed with hair whitened by the grief this misfortune cost him.
Considering the special advantages enjoyed by these three scholars,
who were pupils of the learned Manuel Chrysoloras, and before whose
eager curiosity the libraries of Byzantium remained open through
nearly half a century previous to the fall of the Greek Empire, we
have good reason to believe that the greater part of Attic and
Alexandrian literature known to the later Greeks was transferred to
Italy. The avidity shown by the Florentines for codices and copies,
the opportunities afforded by their mercantile connection with
Constantinople, and the obvious interest which the Court of Byzantium
at that crisis had in gratifying their taste for such acquisitions,
contribute to render it unlikely that any of the more important and
illustrious authors were destroyed in the taking of the city by the
Turk.[101] It is probable that causes similar to those which slowly
wrought the ruin of Latin literature in the West--the apathy of an
uncultured public, the rancorous animosity of a superstitious clergy,
and the decay of students as a class--had long before the age of the
Renaissance ruined beyond the possibility of recovery those
masterpieces whereof we still deplore the loss.[102] The preservation
of Neoplatonic and Patristic literature in comparative completeness,
while so much that was more valuable perished, may be ascribed to the
theological content of these writings.
[Footnote 101: See the emphatic language about Palla degli Strozzi,
Cosimo de' Medici, and Niccolo de' Niccoli, in Vespasiano's _Lives_.
Islam, moreover, as is proved by Pletho's Life, was at that period
more erudite than Hellas.]
[Footnote 102: I have touched upon this subject elsewhere. See
_Studies of Greek Poets_, second series, pp. 304-307. In order to form
a conception of the utter decline of Byzantine learning after Photius,
it is needful to read the passages in Petrarch's letters, where even
Calabria is compared favourably with Constantinople. In a state of
ignorance so absolute as he describes, it is possible that treasures
existed unknown to professed students, and therefore undiscovered by
Filelfo and his fellow-workers. The testimony of Demetrius
Chalcondylas, quoted by Didot, _Alde Manuce_, p. xiv., goes to show
that the Greeks attributed their losses in large measure to the malice
of the priests.]
Not to render some account of the effect produced upon the minds of
scholars in the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries by the sight of
Roman ruins in decay, would be to omit an important branch of the
subject I have undertaken. Yet this part of the inquiry leads us into
a region somewhat different from that hitherto traversed in the
present chapter, since it properly belongs to the history of
enthusiasm. No small portion of the motive impulse that determined the
Revival was derived from the admiration, curiosity, and awe excited by
the very stones of ancient Rome. During the Middle Ages the right
point of view for studying the architectural works of the Romans had
been lost. History yielded ever more and more to legend, until at last
it was believed that demons and magicians had suspended those gigantic
vaults in air. Telesmatic virtues were attributed to figures carved on
temple-fronts and friezes, while the great name of Virgil attached
itself to what remained unhurt of Latin art in Rome and Naples.[103]
The Rome of the _Mirabilia_ was supposed to be the handiwork of fiends
constrained by poets of the bygone age with spells of power to move
hell from its centre. This transference of interest from the real to
the fanciful, from the substantial to the visionary, was
characteristic of the whole attitude assumed by the mind in the Middle
Ages. History, literature, and art alike submitted to the alchemy of
the imagination.[104] At the same time the very grossness of these
fables testified to the profound impression produced by the ruins of
the Eternal City, and to the haunting magic of a memory surviving
degradation and decay. When the Anglo-Saxon pilgrims returned from
Rome in the eighth century, the fascination of the great works they
had seen expressed itself in a memorable prophecy.[105] 'As long as
the Coliseum stands, Rome shall stand; when the Coliseum falls, Rome
will fall; when Rome falls, the world will fall.'
[Footnote 103: The details of Virgil's romance occupy the first half
of Comparetti's second volume on _Virgil in the Middle Ages_. For the
English version of this legend see Thoms.]
[Footnote 104: See above, pp. 38-49.]
[Footnote 105: Gibbon, ch. lxxi.]
About the year 1300 a new historic sense appears to have arisen in
Italy. Instead of dreams and legends, the positive facts of the past
began to have once more their value. This change might be compared to
the discovery we make upon the borderland of sleep and waking, when
what we fancied was a figure draped in white by our bedside turns out
to be the wall with moonlight shining on it. Giovanni Villani, when he
gazed upon the baths and amphitheatres of Rome, was not moved to think
of the fiends who raised them, but of the buried grandeur of the Roman
commonwealth.[106] What Rome once was, Florence may one day become,
was the reflection that impelled him to write the chronicle of his
native town. Dante, who with Villani witnessed the Jubilee of 1300,
cried that the very stones of Rome were sacred. 'Whoso robs her, or
despoils her, with blasphemy of act offendeth God, who only for His
own use made her holy.'[107] The city was to him the outward symbol
and terrestrial station of that God-appointed Monarchy for ruling all
the peoples of the earth in peace. His most enthusiastic speculations,
as well as the practical policy set forth in his epistles, attached
themselves to Rome as a reality; nor did he ever tire of bidding
German emperors return and fix their throne upon the bank of Tiber. We
know now that this idealism was a delusion, no less incapable of
realisation than it was pernicious to the liberties of the Italians.
It haunted the imagination of the race, however, until at last, as I
have said above, the proper vent was found in humanism.
[Footnote 106: Vol. I., _Age of the Despots_, p. 200.]
[Footnote 107: _Purg._ xxxiii. 58.]
The same passion for Rome took different form in the mind of another
and less noble patriot. It impelled Rienzi to conceive the plan of
rehabilitating the Republic. The Popes were far away at Avignon. The
emperors seemed to have forgotten Italy. Yet Rome remained, and the
mere name of Rome was Empire. Why should not the _Senatus Populusque
Romanus_, whose initials still survived in uncial letters upon blocks
of travertine and marble, be restored to place and power? Wandering
among those spacious vaults, and lingering beneath the triumphal
arches, where the marks of chariot-wheels were traced upon the massive
paved work of the Roman ways, the young enthusiast conceived that even
he might live to be the Tribune of that people, born invincible, and
called by destiny to rule the world. With what energy he devoted
himself to studying the histories of Livy, Sallust, and Valerius
Maximus; how he strove to master the meaning of inscriptions found
among the wrecks of Rome; with what eloquence he moved his
fellow-citizens to sympathy--are familiar matters not only to
scholars, but to readers of romance. His vision of the restored
Republic seemed for a moment destined to become reality. The Romans
placed the power of life and death, of revenues and armies, in the
hands of the seer, who had stirred them by his rhetoric. Rienzi took
rank among the potentates of Italy. Even the Papal Court acknowledged
him.
What followed proved the political incapacity of the new dictator, his
want of critical insight into the ideal he had set before himself.
There is something both pathetic and ridiculous in the vanity
displayed by this barber's son exalted to a place among the princes. Not
satisfied with calling himself Tribune and Knight, the style he affected
in his correspondence with Clement VI. ran as follows:--'Candidatus,
Spiritus Sancti Miles, Nicolaus Severus et Clemens, Liberator Urbis,
Zelator Italiæ, Amator Orbis, et Tribunus Augustus.' Like Icarus, he
spread these waxen wings to the sun's noontide blaze. The same
extravagant confusion of things sacred and profane, classical and
mediæval, marked the pageantry of his State ceremonials in Rome. On
August 15, 1347, in celebration of his election to the Tribunate, he
assumed six crowns--of ivy, myrtle, laurel, oak, olive, and gilt
silver. His arms were blazoned with the keys of Peter and the letters
S.P.Q.R. His senatorial sceptre was surmounted, not with the eagle or
the wolf of Romulus, but with a golden ball and cross enclosing the
relic of a saint. The poetic fancy could not have suggested a more
striking allegory to illustrate an undiscriminating reverence for the
Imperial and Pontifical prestige of Rome, than was presented in this
tragic farce of actual history. Not in this way, by a mixture of
Christian and Pagan titles, by emblematic pomp, by heraldry and
declamation, could the old Republic be brought to life again. The very
attempt to do so proved how far the mind of man, awaking from the long
sleep of the Middle Ages, was removed from the severe simplicity that
gave its strength to ancient Rome. Along those giddy parapets of fame
we watch Rienzi walking through his months of glory like a somnambule
sustained by an internal dream. That he should fall was inevitable.
With him expired the Utopia of a Roman commonwealth, to be from time
to time revived as an ineffectual fancy in the brains of a few
visionaries.[108]
[Footnote 108: Stefano Porcari, for example. See Vol. I., _Age of the
Despots_, pp. 296, 302.]
The relations of Petrarch to Rienzi offer matter for curious
reflection, while they illustrate the part played by the enthusiasm
for ancient Rome in the early history of humanism. Petrarch and Rienzi
had been friends and correspondents before the emergence of the latter
into public notice; and when the Tribune seemed about to satisfy the
dearest desire of the poet's heart by re-establishing the Roman
commonwealth, Petrarch addressed him with an animated letter of
congratulation and encouragement.[109] In his charmed eyes he seemed
a hero, _vir magnanimus_, worthy of the ancient world, a new Romulus,
a third Brutus, a Camillus. The Roman burghers, that scum and sediment
of countless races, barbarised by the lingering miseries of the Middle
Ages, needed nothing, it appeared, but words and wishes to make them
once again _cives Romani_, no longer clamorous for bread and games,
but ready to reconquer all their ancestors had lost.[110] 'Where,'
cried Petrarch, 'can the empire of the world be found, except in Rome?
Who can dispute the Roman right? What force can stand against the name
of Romans?' Neither the patriot nor the scholar discerned that the
revival they were destined to inaugurate was intellectual. Though the
spirit of the times refused a political Renaissance, refused to Italy
the maintenance of even such freedom as she then possessed, far more
refused a resuscitation of ancient Rome's imperial sway, yet both
Rienzi and Petrarch persisted in believing that, because they glowed
with fervour for the past, because they could read inscriptions,
because they expressed their desires eloquently, the world's great age
was certain to begin anew. It was a capital fault of the Renaissance
to imagine that words could work wonders, that a rhetorician's
_stylus_ might become the wand of Prospero. Seeming passed for being
in morals, politics, and all affairs of life. I have already touched
on this as a capital defect in Petrarch's character; but it was a
weakness inherent not only in him and in the age he inaugurated, but
one, moreover, that has influenced the whole history of the Italians
for evil. Sounding phrases like the _barbaros expellere_ of Julius
II., like the _va fuori d'Italia_ of Garibaldian hymns, from time to
time have roused the nation to feverish enthusiasm, too soon succeeded
by dejected apathy. When the inefficiency of Rienzi was proved, all
that remained for Petrarch was to warn and scold.
[Footnote 109: _De Capessendâ Libertate_, _Hortatoria_, p. 535.]
[Footnote 110: See Petrarch's _Epistle to the Roman People_, p. 712.]
The interest excited in Petrarch by the sight of Rome's ruins was
important for his humanistic ideal. They stirred him as a moralist, an
antiquarian, and a man who owed his mental vigour to the past. He
tells how often he used to climb above the huge vaults of the Baths of
Diocletian in company with his friend Giovanni Colonna.[111] Seated
there among the flowering shrubs and scented herbs that clothed decay
with loveliness, they held discourse concerning the great men of old,
and deplored the mutability of all things human. Whatever the poet had
read of Roman grandeur was brought back to his mind with vivid meaning
during his long solitary walks. He never doubted that he knew for
certain where Evander's palace stood, and where the cave of Cacus
opened on the Tiber. The difficulties of modern antiquarian research
had not been yet suggested, and his fancy was free to map out the
topography of the seven hills as pleased him best. Yet he complained
that nowhere was less known about Rome than in Rome itself.[112] This
ignorance he judged the most fatal obstacle to the resurrection of the
city.[113] The palaces where dwelt those heroes of the past, had
fallen into ruins; the temples of the gods were desecrated; the
triumphal arches were crumbling; the very walls had yielded to decay.
None of the Romans cared to arrest destruction; they even robbed the
marble columns and entablatures in order to deck Naples with the
spoils.[114] The last remnants of the city would soon, he exclaimed,
be levelled with the ground. Time has been unable to destroy them; but
man was ruining what Time had spared.[115]
[Footnote 111: _Epist. Fam._ lib. ii. 14, p. 605; lib. vi. 2, p. 657.]
[Footnote 112: 'Qui enim hodie magis ignari rerum Romanarum sunt, quam
Romani Cives? Invitus dico, nusquam minus Roma cognoscitur quam Romæ.'
_Epist. Fam._ lib. ii. 14, p. 658.]
[Footnote 113: 'Quis enim dubitare potest, quin illico surrectura sit
si coeperit se Roma cognoscere?' _Ibid._]
[Footnote 114: 'Vi vel senio collapsa palatia, quæ quondam ingentes
tenuere viri, diruptos arcus triumphales ... indignum de vestris
marmoreis columnis, de liminibus templorum, ad quæ nuper ex toto orbe
concursus devotissimus fiebat, de imaginibus sepulchrorum, sub quibus
patrum vestrorum venerabilis cinis erat, ut reliquas sileam, desidiosa
Neapolis adornatur.' _Ibid._ p. 536.]
[Footnote 115:
'Quanta quod integræ fuit olim gloria Romæ,
Reliquiæ testantur adhuc, quas longior ætas
Frangere non valuit, non vis, aut ira cruenti
Hostis, ab egregiis franguntur civibus heu, heu.'
Petr. _Epist. Metr._ lib. ii. p. 98.]
There is no doubt that, shortly before the date of Petrarch's visits
to Rome, the city had suffered grievously in its monuments. We know,
for instance, that the best preserved of the theatres, baths, and
tombs formed the residences and fortresses of nobles in the Middle
Ages; and when we read that in 1258 the senator Brancaleone found it
necessary to destroy one hundred and forty of these fortified
dwellings, we obtain a standard for measuring the injury that must
have ensued to precious works of classic architecture. The ruins,
moreover, as Petrarch hinted, had been used as quarries. What was
worse, the burghers burned the marbles, rich, perhaps, with
inscriptions and carved bas-reliefs, for lime. We shall shortly see
what Poggio relates upon this topic. For the present it will suffice
to quote an epigram of Pius II., written some time after the revival
of enthusiasm for antiquity:--
Oblectat me, Roma, tuas spectare ruinas,
Ex cujus lapsu gloria prisca patet.
Sed tuus hic populus muris defossa vetustis
Calcis in obsequium marmora dura coquit.
Impia ter centum si sic gens egerit annos,
Nullum hic indicium nobilitatis erit.[116]
[Footnote 116: It delights me to contemplate thy ruins, Rome, the
witness amid desolation to thy pristine grandeur. But thy people burn
thy marbles for lime, and three centuries of this sacrilege will
destroy all sign of thy nobleness.' Compare a letter from Alberto
degli Alberti to Giovanni de' Medici, quoted by Fabroni, _Cosmi Vita_,
Adnot. 86. The real pride of Rome was still her ruins. Nicolo and Ugo
da Este journeyed in 1396 to Rome, 'per vedere quelle magnificenze
antiche che al presente si possono vedere in Roma.' Murat. xxiv.
845.]
Poggio Bracciolini opens a new epoch in Roman topography. The ruins
that had moved the superstitious wonder of the Middle Ages, that had
excited Rienzi to patriotic enthusiasm, and Petrarch to reflections on
the instability of human things, were now for the first time studied
in a truly antiquarian spirit. Poggio read them like a book, comparing
the testimony they rendered with that of Livy, Vitruvius, and
Frontinus, and seeking to compile a catalogue of the existing
fragments of old Rome. The first section of his treatise 'De Varietate
Fortunæ,' forms by far the most important source of information we
possess relating to the state of Rome in the fifteenth century.[117]
It appears that the Baths of Caracalla and Diocletian could still
boast of columns and marble incrustations, but that within Poggio's
own recollection the marbles had been stripped from Cæcilia Metella's
tomb, and the so-called Temple of Concord had been pillaged.[118]
Among the ruins ascribed to the period of the Republic are mentioned a
bridge, an arch, a tomb, a temple, a building on the Capitol, and the
pyramid of Cestius.[119] Besides these, Poggio enumerates, as
referable chiefly to the Imperial age, eleven temples, seven _thermæ_,
the Arches of Titus, Severus, and Constantine, parts of the Arches of
Trajan, Faustina, and Gallienus, the Coliseum, the Theatres of Pompey
and Marcellus, the Circus Agonalis and Circus Maximus, the Columns of
Trajan and Antonine, the two horses ascribed to Pheidias and
Praxiteles, together with other marble statues, one bronze equestrian
statue, and the mausoleums of Augustus and Hadrian.
[Footnote 117: My references are made to the Paris edition of 1723.
The first book is sometimes cited under the title of _Urbis Romæ
Descriptio_.]
[Footnote 118: 'Juxta viam Appiam, ad secundum lapidem, integrum vidi
sepulchrum L. Cæciliæ Metellæ, opus egregium, et id ipsum tot sæculis
intactum, ad calcem postea majori ex parte exterminatum' (p. 19).
'Capitolio contigua forum versus superest porticus ædis Concordiæ,
quam, cum primum ad urbem accessi, vidi fere integram, opere marmoreo
admodum specioso; Romani postmodum, ad calcem ædem totam et porticûs
partem, disjectis columnis, sunt demoliti.' _Ibid._]
[Footnote 119: Pp. 8, 9.]
We have to regret that Poggio's description was subservient and
introductory to a rhetorical dissertation. Had he applied himself to
the task of tabulating more minutely what he had observed, his work
would have been infinitely precious to the archæologist. No one knew
more about the Roman buildings than he did. No one felt the impression
of their majesty in desolation more profoundly. The mighty city
appeared to him, he said, like the corpse of a giant, like a queen in
slavery. The sight of her magnificence, despoiled and shorn of
ornaments as she had been, moved him daily to deeper admiration. It
was his custom to lead strangers from point to point among the ruins,
in order to enjoy the effect produced upon fresh minds by their
stupendous evidence of strength and greatness in decay.
The pathos of this former empress of the world exposed to insult and
indignity had not been first felt by Poggio. Petrarch described her as
an aged matron with grey hair and pale cheeks, whose torn and sordid
raiment ill accorded with the nobleness of her demeanour.[120] Fazio
degli Uberti personified her as a majestic woman, wrapped around with
rags, who pointed out to him the ruins of her city, 'to the end that
he might understand how fair she was in years of old.'[121]
[Footnote 120: _De Pacificandâ Italiâ, Ad Carolum Quartum_, p. 531.]
[Footnote 121: In the _Dittamondo_, about 1360.]
In this way a sentimental feeling for the relics of the past grew up
and flourished side by side with the archæological interest they
excited. The literature of the Renaissance abounds in matter that
might be used in illustration of this remark,[122] while nothing was
commoner in art than to paint for backgrounds broken arches and
decayed buildings, 'whose ruins are even pitied.' The double impulse
of romantic sentiment and antiquarian curiosity, set going in this age
of the Revival, contributed no little to the development of
architecture, sculpture, and painting. In the section of my work which
deals with the fine arts in Italy will be found the proper sequel to
this subject. Meanwhile the history of antiquarian research in Rome
itself will be resumed in another chapter of this volume.
[Footnote 122: Such, for example, as Boccaccio's description of the
ruins of Baiæ in the _Fiammetta_, Sannazzaro's lines on the ruins of
Cumæ, Æneas Sylvius Piccolomini's notes on ancient sites in Italy.]
Among the representative men of the first period of the Revival must
be mentioned an enthusiast who devoted his whole life to topographical
studies and to the copying of classical inscriptions. Ciriaco de'
Pizzicolli was born about 1404 at Ancona, and from this town he took
the name he bears among the learned. Like many other pioneers of
erudition, he was educated for commerce, and had slender opportunities
for acquiring the dead languages in his youth. His manhood was spent
in restless journeying, at first undertaken for the purposes of trade,
but afterwards for the sole object of discovery. Smitten with the zeal
for classical antiquity, he made himself a tolerable Latin scholar,
and gained a fair knowledge of Greek. In the course of his long
wanderings he ransacked every part of Italy, Greece, and the Greek
islands, collecting medals, gems, and fragments of sculpture, buying
manuscripts, transcribing records, and amassing a miscellaneous store
of archæological information. The enthusiasm that possessed him was so
untempered by sobriety that it excited the suspicion of
contemporaries. Some regarded him as a man of genuine learning; others
spoke of him as a flighty, boastful, and untrustworthy fanatic.[123]
The mistakes he made in copying inscriptions depreciated the general
value of his labours, while he was even accused of having passed off
fabrications on the credulity of the public. The question of his
alleged forgeries has been discussed at length by Tiraboschi.[124] To
settle it at this distance of time is both unimportant and impossible.
While we may well believe that Ciriac was a conceited enthusiast,
accepting as genuine what he ought to have rejected, and interpreting
according to his fancy rather than the letter of his text, his life
retains real value for the student of the Revival. In him the
curiosity of the new age reached its acme of expansiveness. The
passion for discovery pursued him from shore to shore, and the vision
of the past, to be reconquered by the energy of the present, haunted
his imagination till the moment of his death. When asked what object
he had set his heart upon in those perpetual journeyings, he answered,
'I go to awake the dead.' That word, the motto for the first age of
the Revival, explains the fanaticism of Ciriac, and is a sufficient
title to fame.
[Footnote 123: Filippo Maria Visconti is said to have denounced him as
an impostor. Ambrogio Traversari mentions his coins and gems with
mistrust. Poggio describes him as a conceited fellow with no claim to
erudition. On the other hand, he gained the confidence of Eugenius
IV., and received the panegyrics of Filelfo, Barbaro, Bruni, and
others. See Tiraboschi, vol. vi. lib. i. cap. 5.]
[Footnote 124: In the place just cited. The temptation, at this epoch
of discovery, when criticism was at a low ebb, and curiosity was
frantic, to pass off forgeries upon the learned world must have been
very great. The most curious example of this literary deception is
afforded by Annius of Viterbo, who, in 1498, published seventeen books
of spurious histories, pretending to be the lost works of Manetho,
Berosus, Fabius Pictor, Archilochus, Cato, &c. Whether he was himself
an impostor or a dupe is doubtful. A few of his contemporaries
denounced the histories as patent fabrications. The majority accepted
them as genuine. Their worthlessness has long been undisputed. See
Tiraboschi, vol. vi. lib. iii. cap. 1.]