SECOND PERIOD OF HUMANISM
Transition from Florence to Rome -- Vicissitudes of Learning
at the Papal Court -- Diplomatic Humanists -- Protonotaries
-- Apostolic Scribes -- Ecclesiastical Sophists --
Immorality and Artificiality of Scholarship in Rome --
Poggio and Bruni, Secretaries -- Eugenius IV. -- His
Patronage of Scholars -- Flavio Biondo -- Solid Erudition --
Nicholas V. -- His Private History -- Nature of his Talents
-- His unexpected Elevation to the Roman See -- Jubilation
of the Humanists -- His Protection of Learned Men in Rome --
A Workshop of Erudition -- A Factory of Translations -- High
Sums paid for Literary Labour -- Poggio Fiorentino -- His
Early Life -- His Journeys -- His Eminence as a Man of
Letters -- His Attitude toward Ecclesiastics -- His
Invectives -- Humanistic Gladiators -- Poggio and Filelfo --
Poggio and Guarino -- Poggio and Valla -- Poggio and Perotti
-- Poggio and Georgius Trapezuntios -- Literary Scandals --
Poggio's Collections of Antiquities -- Chancellor of
Florence -- Cardinal Bessarion -- His Library -- Theological
Studies -- Apology for Plato -- The Greeks in Italy --
Humanism at Naples -- Want of Culture in Southern Italy --
Learning an Exotic -- Alfonso the Magnificent -- Scholars in
the Camp -- Literary Dialogues at Naples -- Antonio
Beccadelli -- 'The Hermaphroditus' -- Lorenzo Valla -- The
Epicurean -- The Critic -- The Opponent of the Church --
Bartolommeo Fazio -- Giannantonio Porcello -- Court of Milan
-- Filippo Maria Visconti -- Decembrio's Description of his
Master -- Francesco Filelfo -- His Early Life -- Visit to
Constantinople -- Place at Court -- Marriage -- Return to
Italy -- Venice -- Bologna -- His Pretensions as a Professor
-- Florence -- Feuds with the Florentines -- Immersion in
Politics -- Siena -- Settles at Milan -- His Fame -- Private
Life and Public Interests -- Overtures to Rome -- Filelfo
under the Sforza Tyranny -- Literary Brigandage -- Death at
Florence -- Filelfo as the Representative of a Class --
Vittorino da Feltre -- Early Education -- Scheme of Training
Youths as Scholars -- Residence at Padua -- Residence at
Mantua -- His School of Princes -- Liberality to Poor
Students -- Details of his Life and System -- Court of
Ferrara -- Guarino da Verona -- House Tutor of Lionello
d'Este -- Giovanni Aurispa -- Smaller Courts -- Carpi --
Mirandola -- Rimini and the Malatesta Tyrants -- Cesena --
Pesaro -- Urbino and Duke Frederick -- Vespasiano da
Bisticci.
In passing from Florence to Rome, we are struck with the fact that
neither in letters nor in art had the Papal city any real life of her
own. Her intellectual enthusiasms were imported; her activity varied
with the personal interests of successive Popes. Stimulated by the
munificence of one Holy Father, starved by the niggardliness of
another; petted and caressed by Nicholas V., watched with jealous
mistrust by Paul II.; thrust into the background by Alexander, and
brought into the light by Leo--learning was subjected to rude
vicissitudes at Rome. Very few of the scholars who shed lustre on the
reigns of liberal Pontiffs were Romans, nor did the nobles of the
Papal States affect the fame of patrons. We have, therefore, in
dealing with humanism at Rome, to bear in mind that it flourished
fitfully, precariously, as an exotic, its growth being alternately
checked and encouraged at the pleasure of the priest in office.
In spite of these variable conditions, one class of humanists never
failed at Rome. During the period of schisms and councils, when Pope
and Antipope were waging wordy warfare in the Courts of congregated
Christendom, it was impossible to dispense with the services of
practised writers and accomplished orators. As composers of diplomatic
despatches, letters, bulls, and protocols; as disseminators of squibs
and invectives; as redactors of state papers; as pleaders, legates,
ambassadors, and private secretaries--scholars swarmed around the
person of the Pontiff. Their official titles varied, some being called
Secretaries to the Chancery, others Apostolic Scriptors, others again
Protonotaries; while their duties were divided between the regular
business of the Curia and the miscellaneous transactions that arose
from special emergencies of the Papal See. Their services were well
rewarded. In addition to about 700 florins of pay and perquisites,
they, for the most part, entered into minor orders and held benefices.
Men of acute intellect and finished style, who had absorbed the
culture of their age, and could by rhetoric enforce what arguments
they chose to wield, found, therefore, a good market for their talents
at the Court of Rome. They soon became a separate and influential
class, divided from the nobility by their birth and foreign
connections, and from the churchmen by their secular status and avowed
impiety, yet mingling in society with both and trusting to their
talents to support their dignity. At the Council of Basle the
protonotaries even claimed to take precedence of the bishops on
occasions of high ceremony, arguing, from the nature of their office
and the rarity of their acquirements, that they had a better right
than priests to approach the person of the Sovereign Pontiff. Poggio
and Bruni, Losco, Aurispa, and Biondo raised their voices in this
quarrel, which proved how indispensable the mundane needs of the
Papacy had rendered these free-lances of literature. Through them the
spirit of humanism, antagonistic to the spirit of the Church,
possessed itself of the Eternal City; and much of the flagrant
immorality which marked Rome during the Renaissance may be ascribed to
the influence of paganising scholars, freed from the restrictions of
family and local opinion, indifferent to religion, and less absorbed
in study for its own sake than in the profits to be gained by the
exercise of a practised pen. There was a real discord between the
principles which the Church professed, and the new culture that
flourished on a heathen soil. While merely secular interests blinded
the Popes to the perils which might spring from fostering this
discord, humanistic enthusiasm had so thoroughly penetrated Italy that
to exclude it from Rome was impossible. Neopagan scholarship added,
therefore, lustre to the Papal Court, as one among the many splendours
of that worldly period which raised the See of Rome to eminence above
the States of Italy. The light it shed, however, had no vital heat.
Learning was always an article of artificial luxury at Rome, not, as
at Florence, part of the nation's life; and when the gilded pomp of
Leo dwindled down to Clement's abject misery and utter ruin, it was
found that such encouragement as Popes had given to literature had
been a source of weakness and decay. We may still be sincerely
thankful that the Pontiffs took the line they did; for had they placed
themselves in a position of antagonism to the humanistic movement,
instead of utilising and approving of it, the free development of
Italian scholarship might have sustained a dangerous check.
It was from Florence that Rome received her intellectual stimulus. The
connection began in 1402, when Boniface IX. appointed Poggio to the
post of Apostolic Secretary, which he held for fifty years. In 1405
Lionardo Bruni obtained the same office from Innocent VII. The
powerful personality of these men, in whom the energies of the
humanistic revival were concentrated, impressed the Roman Curia with a
stamp it never lost. Good Latinity became a _sine qua non_ in the
Papal Chancery; and when Gregory XII. named Antonio Losco of Verona
one of his secretaries, it was natural that this distinguished
scholar, following the Florentine example of Coluccio Salutato, should
compose a book of forms in Ciceronian style for the use of his
office.[187] During the insignificant pontificate of Martin V., while
the Curia resided in exile at Florence, the chain which was binding
Rome to the city of Italian culture continued to gain strength. The
result of all the discords which rent the Church in the first half of
the fifteenth century was to Italianise the Papal See; nor did
anything contribute to this end more powerfully than the Florentine
traditions of three successive Popes--Martin V., Eugenius IV., and
Nicholas V.
[Footnote 187: See Facius, _De Viris Illustribus_, p. 3, quoted by
Voigt, p. 278.]
Eugenius was a Venetian of good family, who inherited considerable
wealth from his father. Having realised his fortune, he bestowed
20,000 ducats on charitable institutions and took orders in the
Church.[188] In 1431 he was raised to the Papacy; but the disturbed
state of Rome obliged him to quit the Vatican in mean disguise, and to
seek safety by flight from Ostia. He spent the greater portion of his
life in Tuscany, occupied less with humanistic interests than with the
reformation of monastic orders and the conduct of ecclesiastical
affairs in the Councils of Basle and Florence. Though he did not share
the passion of his age for learning, the patronage which he extended
to scholars was substantial and important. Giovanni Aurispa received
from him the title of Apostolic Secretary, and was appointed
interpreter between the Greeks and Italians at the Council of the two
Churches. Even the paganising Carlo Marsuppini was enrolled upon the
list of Papal secretaries, while Filelfo and Piero Candido Decembrio,
who added lustre at this epoch to the Court of Milan, were invited by
Eugenius with highly flattering promises. The value of these meagre
statements consists in this, that even a Pope, whose personal
proclivities were monastic rather than humanistic, felt the necessity
of borrowing all the strength he could obtain from men of letters in
an age when learning itself was power. More closely attached to his
Court than those who have been mentioned, were Maffeo Begio, the poet,
and Flavio Biondo, one of the soundest and most conscientious students
of the time.[189]
[Footnote 188: See Vespasiano, p. 6.]
[Footnote 189: He was born at Forli in 1388, and died in 1463, the
father of five sons.]
Though Biondo had but little Greek, and could boast of no beauty of
style, his immense erudition raised him to high rank among Italian
scholars. The work he undertook was to illustrate the antiquities of
Italy in a series of historical, topographical, and archæological
studies. His 'Roma Instaurata,' 'Roma Triumphans,' and 'Italia
Illustrata,' three bulky encyclopædias of information concerning
ancient manners, laws, sites, monuments, and races, may justly be said
to have formed the basis of all subsequent dictionaries of Roman
antiquities. Another product of his industry was entitled 'Historiarum
ab Inclinatione Romanorum.' Three decades and a portion of the fourth
were written, when death put a stop to the completion of this gigantic
task. In estimating the value of Biondo's contributions to history, we
must remember that he had no previous compilations whereon to base his
own researches. The vast stores of knowledge he collected and digested
were derived from original sources. He grasped the whole of Latin
literature, both classical and mediæval, arranged the results of his
comprehensive reading into sections, and furnished the learned world
with tabulated materials for the study of Roman institutions in the
State, the camp, the law courts, private life, and religious
ceremonial. Obstinate indeed must have been the industry of the
scholar, who, in addition to these classical researches, undertook to
narrate the dissolution of antique society and to present a faithful
picture of Italy in the dark ages. Biondo's 'History of the Decline
and Fall of the Roman Empire,' conceived in an age devoted to
stylistic niceties and absorbed by the attractions of renascent
Hellenism, inspires our strongest admiration. Yet its author failed in
his lifetime to win the distinction he deserved. Though he held the
office of Apostolic Secretary under four Popes, his marriage stopped
the way to ecclesiastical preferment, while his incapacity to use the
arts of the stylist, the sophist, the flatterer, and the translator,
lost him the favour his more solid qualities had at first procured.
Eugenius could appreciate a man of his stamp better than Nicholas V.,
whose special tastes inclined to elegant humanism rather than to
ponderous erudition.
The lives of all the humanists illustrate the honours and the wealth
secured by learning for her votaries in the Renaissance. No example,
however, is so striking as that furnished by the biography of Nicholas
V. Tommaso Parentucelli was born at Pisa in 1398. While he was still
an infant his parents, in spite of their poverty and humble station,
which might have been expected to shield them from political tyranny,
were exiled to Sarzana;[190] and at the age of nine he lost his father
at that place. Sarzana has consequently gained the credit of giving
birth to the first great Pope of the Renaissance period. The young
Tommaso found means, though extremely poor, to visit the University of
Bologna, where he studied theology and made himself a master in the
seven liberal arts. After six years' residence at Bologna, his total
destitution, combined, perhaps, with a desire for more instruction in
elegant scholarship than the university afforded, led him to seek work
in Florence. He must have already acquired some reputation, since
Rinaldo degli Albizzi received him as house-tutor to his children for
one year, at the expiration of which time he entered the service of
Palla degli Strozzi in a similar capacity. The money thus obtained
enabled him to return to Bologna, and to take his degree as Doctor of
Theology at the age of twenty-two. He was now fully launched in life.
The education he had received at Bologna qualified him for office in
the church, while his two years' residence at Florence had rendered
him familiar with men of polite learning and of gentle breeding.
Niccolo degli Albergati, Archbishop of Bologna, became his patron, and
appointed him controller of his household. Albergati was one of the
cardinals of Eugenius IV., a man of considerable capacity, and alive
to the intellectual interests of his age. When he followed the Papal
Court to Florence, Tommaso attended him, and here began the period
which was destined to influence his subsequent career. Inspired with
a passionate devotion to books for their own sake, and gifted with
ardent curiosity and all-embracing receptivity of intellect, the young
scholar found himself plunged into a society of which literature
formed the most absorbing occupation. He soon became familiar with
Cosimo de' Medici, and no meetings of the learned were complete
without him. A glimpse may be obtained of the literary circle he
frequented at this time from a picturesque passage in Vespasiano.[191]
'It was the wont of Messer Lionardo d'Arezzo, Messer Giannozzo
Manetti, Messer Poggio, Messer Carlo d'Arezzo, Messer Giovanni
Aurispa, Maestro Gasparo da Bologna, and many other men of learning to
congregate every morning and evening at the side of the Palazzo, where
they entered into discussions and disputes on various subjects. As
soon, then, as Maestro Tommaso had attended the Cardinal to the
Palazzo, he joined them, mounted on a mule, with two servants on foot;
and generally he was attired in blue, and his servants in long dresses
of a darker colour. At that time the pomp of the Court of Rome was not
by any means what it is nowadays. In the place I have named he was
always to be found, conversing and disputing, since he was a most
impassioned debater.'
[Footnote 190: So Vespasiano relates the cause of their removal from
Pisa. P. 20.]
[Footnote 191: P. 23.]
Tommaso was not a man of genius; his talents were better suited for
collecting and digesting what he read, than for original research and
composition. He had a vast memory, and was an indefatigable student,
not only perusing but annotating all the books he purchased. Pius II.
used to say of him that what he did not know, must lie outside the
sphere of human knowledge. In speech he was fluent, and in disputation
eager; but he never ranked among the ornate orators and stylists of
the age. His wide acquaintance with all branches of literature, and
his faculty for classification, rendered him useful to Cosimo de'
Medici, who employed him on the catalogue of the Marcian Library.
From Cosimo in return, Tommaso caught the spirit which sustained him
in his coming days of greatness. Already, at this early period, while
living almost on the bounty of the Medici, he never lost an
opportunity of accumulating books, and would even borrow money to
secure a precious MS.[192] He used to say that, if ever he acquired
wealth, he would expend it in book-buying and building--a resolution
to which he adhered when he rose to the Pontificate.
[Footnote 192: Vespasiano, p. 27.]
Soon after the death of Albergati in 1443, Eugenius promoted Tommaso
to the see of Bologna; a cardinal's hat followed within a few months;
and in 1447 he was elected Pope of Rome. So sudden an elevation from
obscurity and poverty to the highest place in Christendom has rarely
happened; nor is it even now easy to understand what combinations of
unsuccessful intrigues among the princes of the Church enabled this
little, ugly, bright-eyed, restless-minded scholar to creep into S.
Peter's seat. Perhaps the simplest explanation is the best. The times
were somewhat adverse to the Papacy, nor was the tiara quite as much
an object of secular ambition as it afterwards became. Humanism
meanwhile exercised strong fascination over every class in Italy, and
it would seem that Tommaso Parentucelli had nothing but his reputation
for learning to thank for his advancement. 'Who in Florence would have
thought that a poor bell-ringer of a priest would be made Pope, to the
confusion of the proud?' This was his own complacent exclamation to
Vespasiano, who had gone to kiss his old friend's feet, and found him
seated on a throne with twenty torches blazing round him.[193]
[Footnote 193: _Ibid._ p. 33.]
The rejoicings with which the humanists hailed the elevation of one of
their own number to the Papal throne may be readily imagined; nor were
their golden expectations, founded on a previous knowledge of his
liberality in all things that pertained to learning, destined to be
disappointed. Nicholas V., to quote the words of Vespasiano, who knew
him well, 'was a foe to ceremonies and vain flatteries, open and
candid, without knowing how to feign; avarice he never harboured, for
he was always spending beyond his means.'[194] His revenues were
devoted to maintaining a splendid Court, rebuilding the fortifications
and palaces of Rome, and showering wealth on men of letters. In the
protection extended by this Pope to literature we may notice that he
did not attempt to restore the _studio pubblico_ of Rome, and that he
showed a decided preference for works of solid learning and
translations. His tastes led him to delight in critical and
grammatical treatises, and his curiosity impelled him to get Latin
versions made of the Greek authors. It is possible that he did nothing
for the Roman university because he considered Florence sufficient for
the humanistic needs of Italy, and his own Alma Mater for the graver
studies of the three professions. Still this neglect is noticeable in
the case of a Pontiff whose one public aim was to restore Rome to the
rank of a metropolis, and whose chief private interest was study.
[Footnote 194: Vespasiano, pp. 25, 27.]
The most permanent benefit conferred by him on Roman studies was the
foundation of the Vatican Library, on which he spent about 40,000
scudi forming a collection of some 5,000 volumes.[195] He employed the
best scribes, and obtained the rarest books; nor was there anyone in
Italy better qualified than himself to superintend the choice and
arrangement of such a library. It had been his intention to place it
in S. Peter's and to throw it open to the public; but he died before
this plan was matured. It remained for Sixtus IV. to carry out his
project.
[Footnote 195: _Ibid._ p. 38.]
During the pontificate of Nicholas Rome became a vast workshop of
erudition, a factory of translations from Greek into Latin. These
were done for the most part by Greeks who had an imperfect knowledge
of Latin, and by Italians who had not complete mastery of Greek. The
work achieved was unequal and of no great permanent value; yet for the
time being it served a purpose of utility, nor could the requirements
of the age have been so fully satisfied by any other method. Nearly
all the eminent scholars at that time in Italy were engaged in this
labour. How liberally they were rewarded may be gathered from the
following details. Lorenzo Valla obtained 500 scudi for his version of
Thucydides; Guarino received the larger sum of 1,500 scudi for Strabo;
Perotti 500 ducats for Polybius; while Manetti was pensioned at the
rate of 600 scudi per annum to enable him to carry on his sacred
studies. Nicholas delighted in Greek history. Accordingly, Appian was
translated by Piero Candido Decembrio, Diodorus Siculus and the
'Cyropædia' of Xenophon by Poggio,[196] Herodotus by Valla. Valla and
Decembrio were both engaged upon the 'Iliad' in Latin prose; but the
dearest wish of Nicholas in his last years was to see the poems of
Homer in the verse of Filelfo. Nor were the Greeks then resident in
Italy neglected. To Georgios Trapezuntios the Pope entrusted the
'Physics,' 'Problems,' and 'Metaphysics' of Aristotle. The same
scholar tried his hand at the 'Laws' of Plato, and, in concert with
Decembrio, produced a version of the 'Republic.' Gregorios Tifernas
undertook the 'Ethics' of Aristotle, and Theodorus Gaza the 'History
of Animals.' To this list should be added the Greek Fathers,
Theophrastus, Ptolemy, and minor works which it would be tedious to
enumerate.[197]
[Footnote 196: The latter was intended for Alfonso of Naples.]
[Footnote 197: Tiraboschi is the authority for these details.]
The profuse liberality of Nicholas brought him thus into relation with
the whole learned world of Italy. Among the humanists who resided at
his Court in Rome, mention must be made of Lorenzo Valla, who was
appointed Apostolic Scriptor in 1447, and who opened a school of
eloquence in 1450. Piero Candido Decembrio obtained the post of
secretary and overseer of the Abbreviators.[198] Giovanni Tortello, of
Arezzo, the author of a useful book on the orthography of Greek words,
superintended the Pope's library. Piero da Noceto, whose tomb in the
cathedral at Lucca is one of Matteo da Civitale's masterpieces, was
private secretary and comptroller of the Pope's affairs. Of the circle
gathered round Bessarion I shall have occasion to speak later on. Our
present attention must be concentrated on a man who, more even than
Nicholas himself, might claim the right to give his own name to this
age of learning.
[Footnote 198: The more complete notices which Valla and Decembrio
deserve will be given in the history of scholarship at Naples and at
Milan.]
Gian Francesco Poggio Bracciolini is better known in the annals of
literature as Poggio Fiorentino, though he was not made a burgher of
Florence until late in life. Born in 1380 at Terranova, a village of
the Florentine _contado_, he owed his education to Florence. In Latin
he was the pupil of John of Ravenna, and in Greek of Manuel
Chrysoloras. During his youth he supported himself by copying MSS. for
the Florentine market. Coluccio Salutato and Niccolo de' Niccoli
befriended the young student, who entered as early as the year 1402 or
1403 into the Papal Chancery.[199] Though Poggio's life for the
following half-century was spent in the service of the Roman Curia, he
refused to take orders in the Church, and remained at heart a
humanist. With the Florentine circle of scholars he maintained an
unremitting correspondence, sending them notices of his discoveries in
the convents of Switzerland and Germany, receiving from them literary
gossip in return, joining in their disputes, and more than once
engaging in fierce verbal duels to befriend his Medicean allies. His
duties and his tastes alike made him a frequent traveller, and not the
least of the benefits conferred by him upon posterity are his pictures
of foreign manners. At the Council of Constance, for example, he saw
and heard Jerome of Prague, in whom he admired the firmness and
intrepid spirit of a Cato.[200] At Baden in Switzerland he noticed the
custom, strange to Italian eyes, of men and women bathing together,
eating, drinking, and playing at chess or cards upon floating tables
in the water, while visitors looked down upon them from galleries
above, as they now do at Leukerbad.[201] In England he observed that
the gentry preferred residence in their country houses and secluded
parks to the town life then, as now, fashionable in Italy, and
commented upon the vast wealth and boorish habits of the great
ecclesiastics.[202] Concerning his discoveries of MSS. I have had
already occasion to write; nor need I here repeat what I have said
about his antiquarian researches among the ruins of ancient Rome.
Poggio was a man of wide sympathies, active curiosity, and varied
interests--no mere bookworm, but one whose eyes and mind were open to
the world around him.
[Footnote 199: Of his debt to Niccolo de' Niccoli Poggio speaks with
great warmth of feeling in a letter on his death addressed to Carlo
Aretino: 'Quem enim patrem habui cui plus debuerim quam Nicolao? Hic
mihi parens ab adolescentiâ, hic postmodum amicus, hic studiorum
meorum adjutor atque hortator fuit, hic consilio, libris, opibus
semper me ut filium et amicum fovit atque adjuvit.'--_Poggii Opera,
Basileæ, ex ædibus Henrici Petri_, MDXXXVIII. p. 342. To this edition
of Poggio's works my future references are made.]
[Footnote 200: 'Stabat impavidus, intrepidus, mortem non contemnens
solum sed appetens ut alterum Catonem dixeris.'--_Opp. Omnia_, p. 301.
This most interesting letter, addressed to Lionardo Bruni, is
translated by Shepherd, _Life of Poggio Bracciolini_, pp. 78-88.]
[Footnote 201: _Opera Omnia_, p. 297. See Shepherd, pp. 67-76, for a
translation of this letter to Niccolo de' Niccoli.]
[Footnote 202: Cardinal Beaufort had invited him to England.]
In literature he embraced the whole range of contemporary studies,
making his mark as a public orator, a writer of rhetorical treatises
and dialogues, a panegyrist of the dead, a violent impeacher and
impugner of the living, a translator from the Greek, an elegant
epistolographer, a grave historian, and a facetious compiler of
anecdotes and epigrams. He possessed a style at once easy and pointed,
correct in diction and varied in cadence, equally adapted for serious
discourse and witty trifling, and not less formidable in abuse than
delicate in flattery. This at least was the impression which his
copious and facile Latin, always fluent and yet always full of sense,
produced on his contemporaries. For us its finest flights of rhetoric
have lost their charm, and its best turns of phrase their point. So
impossible is it that the fashionable style of one age should retain
its magic for posterity, unless it be truly classical in form, or
weighted with sound thought, or animated with high inspiration. Just
these qualities were missed by Poggio and his compeers. Setting no
more serious aim before them than the imitation of Livy and Cicero,
Seneca and Cæsar, they fell far short of their originals; nor had they
matter to make up for their defect of elegance. Poggio's treatises 'De
Nobilitate,' 'De Varietate Fortunæ,' 'De Miseriâ Humanæ Conditionis,'
'De Infelicitate Principum,' 'An Seni sit Uxor ducenda,' 'Historia
Disceptiva Convivialis,' and so forth, were as interesting to Italy in
the fifteenth century as Voltaire's occasional essays to our more
immediate ancestors. His controversial writings passed for models of
destructive eloquence, his satires on the clergy for masterpieces of
sarcastic humour, his Florentine history for a supreme achievement in
the noblest Latin manner. Yet the whole of this miscellaneous
literature seems coarse and ineffective to the modern taste. We read
it, not without repugnance, in order to obtain an insight into the
spirit of the author's age.
Two important points in Poggio's biography will serve to illustrate
the social circumstances of the humanists. The first is the attitude
adopted by him toward the churchmen, with whom he passed the best
years of his life in close intimacy; the second, his fierce warfare
waged with rivals and opponents in the field of scholarship. Though
Poggio served the Church for half a century, no one exposed the vices
of the clergy with more ruthless sarcasm, or turned the follies of the
monks to ridicule with more relentless scorn. After reading his
'Dialogue against the Hypocrites,' his 'Invective against Felix the
Antipope,' and his 'Facetiæ,' it is difficult to understand how a
satirist who knew the weak points of the Church so intimately, and
exposed them so freely, could have held high station and been honoured
in the Papal Curia. They confirm in the highest degree all that has
been written in the previous volume about the division between
religion and morality in Italy, the cynical self-satisfaction of the
clergy, and the secular indifference of the Papacy, proving at the
same time the proudly independent position which the talents of the
humanists had won for them at Rome. At the end of the 'Facetiæ'--a
collection of grossly indecent and not always very witty
stories--Poggio refers to the meetings with which he and his comrades
entertained themselves after the serious business of the day was
over.[203] Their place of resort was in the precincts of the Lateran,
where they had established a club which took the name of 'Bugiale,' or
Lie Factory.[204] Apostolic secretaries, writers to the Chancery,
protonotaries, and Papal scribes here met together after laying down
the pens they had employed in drafting Bulls and dispensations,
encyclical letters and diplomatic missives. To make puns, tell
scandalous stories, and invent amusing plots for novelettes was the
chief amusement of these Roman wits. Their most stinging shafts of
satire were reserved for monks and priests; but they spared no class
or profession, and made free with the names of living persons.[205]
Against the higher clergy it might not have been safe to utter even
the truth, except in strictest privacy, seeing that preferment had to
be expected from the Sacred College and the Holy Father. The mendicant
orders and the country parsons, therefore, bore the brunt of their
attack, while the whole tone of their discourse made it clear how
little they respected the religion and the institutions of the Church.
Such fragments of these conversations as Poggio thought fit to
preserve, together with anecdotes borrowed from the 'Cent Nouvelles
nouvelles' and other sources, he committed to Latin, and printed in
the later years of his life. The title given to the book was
'Facetiarum Liber.' It ran speedily through numerous editions, and was
read all over Europe with the same eagerness that the 'Epistolæ
Obscurorum Virorum' afterwards excited. Underneath its ribaldry and
nonsense, however, there lay no serious intention. The satires on the
clergy were contemptuous and flippant, arguing more liking on the part
of their author for scurrilous jests than any earnest wish to prove
the degradation of monasticism. Not a word of censure from the Vatican
can I find recorded against this marvellous production of a Papal
secretary's pen. Here, by way of illustration, it may be mentioned
that Filelfo, on his way through Rome to Naples, placed his
satires--the most nauseous compositions that coarse spite and filthy
fancy ever spawned--in the hands of Nicholas V. The Pope retained them
for nine days, read them, returned them with thanks, and rewarded
their author with a purse of 500 ducats.
[Footnote 203: _Poggi Florentini Facetiarum Libellus Unicus_, Londini,
1798, vol. i. p. 282.]
[Footnote 204: 'Mendaciorum veluti officina' is Poggio's own
explanation of the phrase.]
[Footnote 205: 'Ibi parcebatur nemini, in lacessendo ea quæ non
probabantur a nobis.']
The 'Dialogue against the Hypocrites' contains less of mere
scurrility and more that bears with real weight on the vices of the
clergy. Begging friars, preachers, confessors, and aspirants to the
fame of holiness are cited by name and scourged with pitiless
impartiality, while the worldly ambition of the Roman churchmen is
unmasked. The 'Fratres Observantiæ,' who flourished under Pope
Eugenius, receive stern castigation at the hands of Carlo Aretino.
Shepherd remarks, not without justice, on this dialogue that, had the
author 'ventured to advance the sentiments which it contains in the
days of Eugenius, he would in all probability have expiated his
temerity by the forfeit of his life.[206] Nicholas V., who appreciated
the pungency of its satiric style, instead of resenting its free
speech, directed his friend Poggio's pen against his rival Felix.
Raised to the Papacy by the Council of Basle in 1439, Amadeus, the
ex-Duke of Savoy, still persisted in his Papal title after the
election of Nicholas; and though the Sovereign of the Vatican could
well afford to scorn the hermit of Ripaille, he thought it prudent to
discharge the heavy guns of humanistic eloquence against the Antipope.
A ponderous invective was the result, wherein Poggio described the
unfortunate Felix as 'another Cerberus,' 'a rapacious wolf,' 'a golden
calf,' 'a perverter of the faith and foe to true religion,' 'a high
priest of malignity,' 'a roaring lion'--stigmatising the Council to
whom he owed his election as 'that sink of iniquity the Synagogue of
Basle,' 'a monstrous birth,' 'conventicle of reprobates,' 'tumultuary
band of debauched men,' 'apostates, fornicators, ravishers, deserters,
men convicted of most shameful crimes, blasphemers, rebels against
God.'[207] To such amenities of controversial rhetoric did even Popes
descend, substituting sound and fury for sense, and trusting to
vituperation in the absence of more valid arguments.
[Footnote 206: _Life of Poggio_, p. 423.]
[Footnote 207: _Opera Omnia_, pp. 155-164.]
Poggio, next to Filelfo, was the most formidable gladiator in that age
of literary duellists. 'In his invectives he displayed such
vehemence,' writes Vespasiano,[208] 'that the whole world was afraid
of him.' Even Alfonso of Naples found it prudent to avert his anger by
a timely present of 600 ducats, when Poggio complained of his
remissness in acknowledging the version of Xenophon's 'Cyropædia,'[209]
and hinted at the same time that a scholar's pen was powerful enough
to punish kings for their ingratitude. The overtures, again, made to
Poggio by Filippo Maria Visconti, and the consideration he received
from Cosimo de' Medici, testified to the desire of princes for the
goodwill of a spiteful and unscrupulous pamphleteer.[210] The most
celebrated of Poggio's feuds with men of letters began when Filelfo
assailed the character of Cosimo, and satirised the whole society of
Florence in 1433. The full history of Filelfo's animosity against the
Florentines belongs to the biography of that famous scholar. It is
enough here to mention that he ridiculed Cosimo under the name of
Mundus, described Poggio as Bambalio, Carlo Aretino as Codrus, and
Niccolo de' Niccoli as Outis,[211] accusing them of literary
imbecility, and ascribing to them all the crimes and vices that
disgrace humanity. Poggio girded up his loins for the combat, and, in
reply to Filelfo's ponderous hexameters, discharged a bulky invective
in prose against the common adversary. This was answered by more
satires, Poggio replying with new invectives. The quarrel lasted over
many years; when, having heaped upon each other all the insults it is
possible for the most corrupt imagination to conceive, they joined
hands and rested from the contest.[212] To sully these pages with
translations of Poggio's rank abuse would be impossible. I must
content myself with referring readers, who are anxious to gain a more
detailed acquaintance with the literary warfare of that age, to the
excerpts preserved by Shepherd and Rosmini.[213] Suffice it to say
that he poured a torrent of the filthiest calumnies upon Filelfo's
wife and mother, that he accused Filelfo himself of the basest vice in
youth and the most flagrant debauchery in manhood, that he represented
him as a public thief, a professed cut-purse, a blasphemous atheist,
soiled with sordid immoralities of every kind, and driven by his
exposed felonies from town to town in search of shelter for his hated
head. Filelfo replied in the same strain. All the resources of the
Latin language were exhausted by the combatants in their endeavours to
befoul each other's character, and the lowest depths of human nature
were explored to find fresh accusations. The learned world of Italy
stood by applauding, while the valiant antagonists, like gladiators of
the Roman arena, plied their diverse weapons, the one discharging
darts of verse, the other wielding a heavy club of prose.[214]
Unhappily, there was enough of scandalous material in both their lives
to give some colour to their accusations. Yet the virulence with which
they lied against each other defeated its own object. Raking that
literary dunghill, it is now impossible to distinguish the true from
the false; all proportion is lost in the mass of overcharged and
indiscriminate scurrility. That such encounters should have been
enjoyed and applauded by polite society is one of the strangest signs
of the times; and that the duellists themselves should have imagined
they were treading in the steps of Cicero and Demosthenes is even more
astounding.
[Footnote 208: P. 422.]
[Footnote 209: _Ibid._ p. 423.]
[Footnote 210: See the correspondence between Filippo Maria and
Poggio, _Opp._ pp. 333-358. Letter to Cosimo, p. 339.]
[Footnote 211: 'The World, the Stammering Simpleton, the Execrable
Poet, and the Nobody.' See _Auree Francisci Philelphi Poete
Oratorisque Celeberrimi Satyre_. Paris, 1508. Passim.]
[Footnote 212: _Opp. Omn._ pp. 164-187. The first invective is the
most venomous, and deserves to be read in the original. The last,
entitled 'Invectiva Excusatoria et Reconciliatoria,' is amusing from
its tone of sulky and sated exhaustion.]
[Footnote 213: _Life of Poggio_, pp. 263-272, 354. _Vita di Filelfo._]
[Footnote 214: The language of the arena was used by these literary
combatants. Thus Valla, in the exordium of his _Antidote_, describes
his weapon of attack in this sentence:--'Hæc est mea fusana,
quandoquidem gladiator a gladiatore fieri cogor, et ea duplex et
utraque tridens,' p. 9.]
The dispute with Filelfo was rather personal than literary. Another
duel into which Poggio entered with Guarino turned upon the respective
merits of Scipio and Julius Cæsar. Poggio had occasion to explain, in
correspondence with a certain Scipione Ferrarese, his reasons for
preferring the character of Scipio Africanus. Guarino, with a view to
pleasing his pupil Lionello d'Este, a professed admirer of Cæsar, took
up the cudgels in defence of the dictator,[215] and treated Poggio,
whom he called Cæsaromastix, with supreme contempt. Poggio replied in
a letter to the noble Venetian scholar Francesco Barbaro.[216] Hard
words were exchanged on both sides, and the antagonists were only
reconciled on the occasion of Poggio's marriage in 1435. Rome,
however, was the theatre of his most celebrated exploits as a
disputant. It chanced one day that he discovered a copy of his own
epistles annotated by a Spanish nobleman who was a pupil of Lorenzo
Valla.[217] Poggio's Latinity was not spared in the marginal
strictures penned by the young student; and the fiery scholar, flying
to the conclusion that the master, not the pupil, had dictated them,
discharged his usual missile, a furious invective, against Valla. Thus
attacked, the author of the 'Elegantiæ' responded in a similar
composition, entitled 'Antidotum in Poggium,' and dedicated to
Nicholas V.[218] Poggio followed with another invective; nor did the
quarrel end till he had added five of these disgusting compositions to
his previous achievements in the same style, and had drawn a young
Latinist of promise, Niccolo Perotti, into the disgraceful fray.[219]
What makes the termination of the squabble truly comic is that
Filelfo, himself the worst offender in this way, was moved at last to
write a serious letter of admonishment to the contending parties,
exhorting them to consult their own dignity and to lay down arms.[220]
Concerning the invectives and antidotes by which this war was carried
on Tiraboschi writes, 'Perhaps they are the most infamous libels that
have ever seen the light; there is no sort of vituperation which the
antagonists do not vomit forth against each other, no obscenity and
roguery of which they are not mutually accused.'
[Footnote 215: See Rosmini, _Vita di Guarino da Verona_, vol. ii. p.
96.]
[Footnote 216: _Poggii Opera_, p. 365.]
[Footnote 217: 'Adolescens quidam auditor meus,' says Valla in the
_Antidotum_, p. 2. The story is told at length, p. 151. I quote from
the Cologne edition of 1527: 'Laurentii Vallæ viri clarissimi in
Pogium Florentinum antidoti libri quatuor: in eundem alii duo libelli
in dialogo conscripti.']
[Footnote 218: See Shepherd's _Poggio_, pp. 470, 471, for specimens of
the scurrility on both sides.]
[Footnote 219: The invectives against Valla fill from p. 188 to p. 251
of Poggio's collected works. Part of them is devoted to a defence of
his own Latinity, and to a critique of Valla's _Elegantiæ_. But by far
the larger part consists of vehement incriminations. Heresy, theft,
lying, forgery, cowardice, filthy living of the most odious
description, drunkenness, and insane vanity--such are the accusations,
supported with a terrible array of apparent evidence. As in the case
of Filelfo, Poggio does not spare his antagonist's father and mother,
but heaps the vilest abuse upon everyone connected with him. Valla's
_Antidote_ is written in a more tempered spirit and a purer Latin
style.]
[Footnote 220: Shepherd, _Life of Poggio_, p. 474.]
The inconceivably slight occasions upon which these learned men rushed
into the arena, and flung dirt upon one another, may be imagined when
we find Lorenzo Valla at feud on the one side with Georgios
Trapezuntios because the one preferred Cicero and the other
Quintilian, and on the other with Benedetto Morando because that
scholar doubted whether Lucius and Aruns were the grandsons of
Tarquinius Priscus. Sometimes private incidents aroused their wrath,
as in the curious rupture between Lionardo Bruni and Niccolo de'
Niccoli at Florence. The story, since it is characteristic of the
time, may be briefly told. Niccolo had stolen his brother's mistress
Benvenuta, and made her his concubine.[221] His relatives, indignant
at the domestic scandal, insulted Benvenuta in the street, and Niccolo
bemoaned himself to all his friends. Lionardo, to whom he applied for
sympathy, very properly observed that a student ought to be better
occupied than with the misfortunes of a kitchen wench. This tart reply
roused Niccolo's bile, and set his caustic tongue wagging against his
old friend; whereupon Lionardo Bruni launched a fierce invective _in
nebulonem maledicum_ against him, and the learned society of Florence
indulged in a free fight on both sides.
[Footnote 221: Ambrogio Traversari, General of the Camaldolese Order,
called her 'fidelissima foemina.']
Such quarrels were not always confined to words. There is no doubt
that the dagger was employed against Filelfo by the Medicean party,
while it now and then happened that the literary gladiators came to
actual fisticuffs. A scene of this sort occurred at Rome in public.
Georgios Trapezuntios complained that the credit of Poggio's
translations from Diodorus and Xenophon really belonged to him, since
he had done the work of them. Poggio shrieked out, 'You lie in your
throat!' Georgios retorted with a box on Poggio's ears. Then Poggio
came to close quarters, catching his adversary by the hair; and the
two professors pommelled each other till their respective pupils
parted them.[222] Such anecdotes might be multiplied indefinitely. Nor
would it be unprofitable to give some account of the vehement warfare
waged in Italy between the Platonists and Aristotelians, were it not
that enough has already been said to illustrate the acrimonious temper
of the times.
[Footnote 222: Tiraboschi, vol. vi. lib. ii. cap. 2, sect. 15.]
The animosity displayed by scholars in these disputes may be taken as
a proof of their enthusiasm for their studies. Men have always
quarrelled about politics, because politics furnish matter of profound
interest to everyone. Theology, for a similar reason, never fails to
rouse the deepest rancours, hatreds, and hostilities of which the
human breast is capable. Science, as we know from the annals of our
days, sets the upholders of antagonistic theories by the ears; and at
times when politics have been dull, theology dormant, and science
undemonstrative, even music has been found sufficient to excite a
nation. In the fifteenth century scholarship was all-absorbing. It
corresponded to science in our age, since it engaged the talents of
the strongest workers and supplied the sources of progressive
intellectual discovery. Moreover, it included both philosophy and
theology, and formed the most attractive topic in all conversation. No
wonder, therefore, that the limpid fountains of classical erudition
were troubled by the piques and jealousies of students.
It is pleasant to turn from Poggio's wrangling to more honourable
passages in his biography. Since the year 1434 he had owned a farm not
far from Florence. Here he built a country residence, vying, if not in
splendour, at least in elegance, with the villas of the Florentine
burghers. He called it his Valdarniana, and adorned it with the
fragments of antique sculpture, inscriptions, and coins, collected by
him partly in person on the Roman Campagna and partly by purchase from
Greece. In the following year (1435) Poggio, then a man of fifty-five,
married a girl of eighteen, named Vaggia, of the noble Buondelmonte
blood. In forming this connection he had to separate from a mistress
who had borne him fourteen children, four of them then living. His
biographer, Shepherd, indulges in some sentimental reflections upon
the pain this leave-taking must have cost him. Yet the impartial
critic will hardly be brought to pity Poggio, seeing that he cancelled
the brief whereby he had previously legitimised his natural children,
and responded with raptures to the congratulations of friends upon his
new engagement. He had already been admitted to the burghership of
Florence, and exempted from its taxes in consideration of his literary
services; so that, on the death of his friend Carlo Aretino, in 1453,
no one was found more fitting for the post of Chancellor to the
Republic. As an increase of dignity, Poggio fulfilled the office of
Prior, and sat among the Signory. The 'History of the Florentine
Republic,' written in continuation of Lionardo Aretino's, occupied the
closing years of his life. He left it still unfinished in the year
1459, when he died, and was buried in the Church of Santa Croce. I
cannot find that his funeral was accompanied by the peculiar honours
voted in the case of his two predecessors. The Florentines, however,
erected his statue on the façade of Santa Maria del Fiore, and placed
his picture by Antonio dal Pollajuolo in the hall of the Proconsolo.
The fate of this statue, a work of Donatello's, was not a little
curious. On the occasion of some alterations in 1560, it was removed
from its first station, and set up as one among the Twelve Apostles in
another part of the cathedral.
Any survey of the Court of Nicholas V. would be incomplete without
some notice of the Cardinal Bessarion. Early in life he rose to high
station in the Greek Church, and attended the Council of Florence as
Archbishop of Nicea. Eugenius IV., by making him a cardinal in 1439,
converted him to the Latin faith; and, as it so happened, he missed
the Papacy almost by an accident thirty-two years later.[223] His
palace at Rome became the meeting-place of scholars of all
nations,[224] where refugee Greeks in particular were sure of finding
hearty welcome. In obedience to the reigning passion for
book-collecting, he got together a considerable library of Greek and
Latin authors, the number of which Vespasiano estimated at 600
volumes, while Platina reckoned their total cost at 30,000 scudi. In
1468 he offered this collection to the Church of S. Mark at Venice.
The Republic accepted his gift, but showed no alacrity to build the
library. It was not until the next century that Bessarion's books
were finally housed according to their dignity.[225] The Cardinal's
own studies lay in the direction of theological philosophy. We have
already seen that in his youth he was a pupil of Gemistos, and he now
appears as the defender of Plato. Georgios Trapezuntios had published
a treatise in the year 1458, in which, on the pretence of upholding
Aristotle, he vilified Plato's moral character, accused him of having
ruined Greece, and maintained that Mahomet was a far better
legislator. Bessarion replied by the oration 'In Calumniatorem
Platonis,' vindicating the morality of the philosopher and supporting
him against Aristotle. This book was printed by Sweynheim and Pannartz
in the infancy of the Roman press. Theodoros Gaza,[226] who, on his
settlement in Rome in 1450, had been received into Bessarion's
household, entered the lists with a critique of Gemistos; to which
Bessarion replied: and so the warfare begun by Gennadios at Byzantium
was continued by the Greek exiles at Rome. The titles of the works
issued in this contest, among which we find 'De Naturâ et Arte,'
'Utrum Natura Consilio Agat,' 'Comparationes Philosophorum Aristotelis
et Platonis,' sufficiently indicate the extent of ground traversed.
The chief result was the rousing of Italian scholars to weightier
points of issue in philosophy than had at first been raised by
mystical Neoplatonists and pedantic Peripatetics.
[Footnote 223: Vespasiano, p. 146.]
[Footnote 224: See Platina's panegyric, quoted by Tiraboschi, vol. vi.
lib. i. cap. 3, 22. Platina and Perotti were among his Italian
_protégés_.]
[Footnote 225: A striking instance of the want of literary enthusiasm
at Venice.]
[Footnote 226: He first came to Italy in 1430, professed Greek at
Ferrara from 1441 to 1450, and died in Campania about 1478. He
translated many works of Aristotle. His own book on Grammar was
printed by Aldus in 1495.]
Among the Greeks protected by Bessarion, passing notice may be made of
Andronicus Callistus, whose lectures found less favour at Rome than
they afterwards obtained at Florence, where he had the great Poliziano
for his pupil. He was one of the first of the Greeks to seek fortune
in France.[227] Nor must Demetrius Chalcondylas be omitted, who fled
from Byzantium to Rome about the year 1447, and afterwards professed
Greek in the University of Perugia. A letter written by one of his
pupils, Gian Antonio Campano,[228] gives such an agreeable impression
of the effect he produced in the city of the Baglioni, that I will
translate a portion of it. 'A Greek has just arrived, who has begun to
teach me with great pains, and I to listen to his precepts with
incredible pleasure, because he is a Greek, because he is Athenian,
and because he is Demetrius. It seems to me that in him is figured all
the wisdom, the civility, and the elegance of those so famous and
illustrious ancients. Merely seeing him, you fancy you are looking on
Plato; far more when you hear him speak.' It was a young man of
twenty-three who wrote this, the companion, probably, of such
magnificent youths as Signorelli loved to paint and Matarazzo to
describe.[229] It is interesting to compare this letter with the
panegyric passed upon Ognibene da Lonigo five years after his death by
Bartolommeo Pagello in an oration delivered at Vicenza. The young men
of Vicenza, said the rhetorician, left their dice, their duels, their
wine cups, and their loves to listen to this humanist; his learning
wrought a reformation in the morals of the town.[230] Such were the
fascinations of scholarship in the fifteenth century.
[Footnote 227: Raffaello Volaterrano, quoted by Tiraboschi, vol. vi.
lib. iii. cap. 2, 16.]
[Footnote 228: See Tiraboschi, vol. vi. lib. iii. cap. 2, 17.]
[Footnote 229: See my _Sketches in Italy and Greece_, article
'Perugia.']
[Footnote 230: Tiraboschi, vol. vi. lib. iii. cap. 5, 46.]
The Greeks hitherto mentioned quitted their country before the capture
of Constantinople. It is, therefore, wrong to ascribe to that event
the importation of Hellenic studies into Italy. Their Italian pupils
carried on the work they had begun, with wider powers and nobler
energy. All the great Grecians of the third age of humanism are
Italians. Florence received learning from Byzantium at the very moment
when the Greek Empire was about to be extinguished, and spread it far
and wide through Europe, herself achieving by far the largest and most
arduous portion of the task.
In passing down to Naples, we find a marked change in the external
conditions under which literature flourished. Men of learning at the
Courts of Italy occupied a position different from that of their
brethren in the Papal Chancery. They had to suit their habits to the
customs of the Court and camp, to place their talents at the service
of their patron's pleasure, to entertain him in his hours of idleness,
to frame compliments and panegyrics, and to repay his bounty by the
celebration of his deeds in histories and poems. Their footing was
less official, more subject to the temper and caprices of the reigning
sovereign, than at Rome; while the peculiar advantages, both political
and social, which, even under the sway of the Medicean family, made
Florence a real republic of letters, existed in no other town of
Italy.
At Naples there was no such thing as native culture. The semi-feudal
nobility of the South were addicted to field sports, feats of arms,
and idleness. The people of the country were sunk in barbarism. In the
cities there was no middle class analogous to that of the more
northerly republics. Nevertheless, the kingdom of the Two Sicilies
played an important part in the development of Italian literature.
While the Mussulmans held sway at Palermo, Sicily was the most refined
and enlightened state of Southern Europe. Under the Norman dynasty
this Arabic civilisation began to influence North Italy, and during
the reign of Frederick II. Naples bade fair to become the city of
illumination for the modern world. The failure of Frederick's attempt
to restore life to arts and letters in the thirteenth century belongs
to the history of his warfare with the Church. What his courtiers
effected for the earliest poetry of the Italians is told by Dante in
the treatise 'De Vulgari Eloquio.' For our present purpose it is
enough to notice that the zeal for knowledge planted by the Arabs,
tolerated by the Normans, and fostered by the House of Hohenstauffen
in the south of Italy, was an exotic which took no deep root in the
people. No national poem was produced in the golden age of Frederick's
brief supremacy; no stories are told of Neapolitan carters and boatmen
reciting the sonnets of his courtiers. As culture began, so it
continued to exist at Naples--flourishing at intervals in close
connection with the sovereign's taste, and owing to local influences
not life and vigour, but colour and complexion, suavity and softness,
caught from the surrounding beauties of the sea and shore.
Each of the dynasties which held the throne of the Two Sicilies could
boast a patron of literature. Robert of Anjou was proud to call
himself the friend of Petrarch, and Boccaccio found the flame of
inspiration at his Court.[231] In the second age of humanism, with
which we are now occupied, Alfonso of Aragon deserved the praise
bestowed on him by Vespasiano of being, next to Nicholas V., the most
munificent promoter of learning.[232] His love of letters was genuine.
After making all deductions for the flattery of official
historiographers, it is clear that Alfonso found his most enduring
satisfaction in the company of students, listening to their debates on
points of scholarship, attending their public lectures, employing them
in the perusal of ancient poets and historians, insisting on their
presence in his camp, and freely supplying them with money for the
purchase of books and for their maintenance while engaged in works of
erudition. Vespasiano relates that Beccadelli's daily readings to his
master were not interrupted during the campaign of 1443, when Alfonso
took the field against Francesco Sforza's armies in the March.[233]
The Neapolitan captains might be seen gathered round their monarch,
listening to the scholar's exposition of Livy, instead of wasting
their leisure at games of hazard. Beccadelli himself professes to have
cured an illness of Alfonso's in three days by reading aloud to him
Curtius's Life of Alexander, while Lorenzo Valla describes the
concourse of students to his table during the recitations of Virgil or
of Terence.[234] Courtiers with no taste for scholarship were excluded
from these literary meetings; but free access was given to poor youths
who sought to profit by the learning of the lecturers. The king,
meantime, sat at meat, now and then handing fruits or confectionery to
refresh the reader when his voice seemed failing. His passion for the
antique assumed the romantic character common in that age. When the
Venetians sent him one of the recently discovered bones of Livy, he
received it like the relic of a saint; nor could the fears of his
physicians prevent him from opening and reading the MS. of Livy
forwarded from Florence by Cosimo de' Medici, who was then suspected
of wishing to poison him. On his military excursions he never
neglected the famous sites of antiquity, saluting the _genius loci_
with pious thanks at Ovid's birthplace, and expressly forbidding his
engineers to trespass on the site of Cicero's villa at Gaeta.[235]
Alfonso was no less assiduous than his contemporaries in the
collection of books. The Palace library at Naples was his favourite
place of recreation; here Giannozzo Manetti found him among his
scholars on the famous occasion when the king sat through a long
congratulatory oration like a brazen statue, without so much as
brushing away the flies that settled on his face. His MSS. were
dispersed when Charles VIII. occupied Naples, and what became of them
is doubtful.[236]
[Footnote 231: I may refer to Petrarch's Letters passim, and to the
solemn peroration of the _Africa_.]
[Footnote 232: See Vol. I., _Age of the Despots_, pp. 445, 446.]
[Footnote 233: _Vita di Alfonso_, p. 59. _Vita di Manetti_, p. 451.]
[Footnote 234: See Tiraboschi, vol. vi. lib. i. cap. 2, 17.]
[Footnote 235: Pontano, _De Principe_, and Panormita, _De Dictis et
Factis Alphonsi Regis_, furnish these anecdotes.]
[Footnote 236: The MS. of Livy referred to above is now in the library
at Holkham; see Roscoe's _Lorenzo_, p. 389.]
Among the humanists who stood nearest to the person of this monarch,
Antonio Beccadelli, called from his birthplace Il Panormita, deserves
the first place. Born at Palermo in 1394, he received his education at
Siena, where he was a fellow-student with Æneas Sylvius Piccolomini.
The city of Siena, _molles Senæ_, as the poet himself called it, was
notorious throughout Italy for luxury of living. Here, therefore, it
may be presumed that Beccadelli in his youth enjoyed the experiences
which he afterwards celebrated in 'Hermaphroditus.'[237] Nothing is
more striking in that amazing collection of elegies than the frankness
of their author, the free and liberal delight with which he dwells on
shameless sensualities, and the pride with which he publishes his own
name to the world. Dedicated to Cosimo de' Medici, welcomed with
applause by the grey-headed Guarino da Verona,[238] extolled to the
skies by Antonio Losco, eagerly sought after by Bartolommeo, Bishop of
Milan--this book, which Strato and Martial might have blushed to own,
passed from copyist to copyist, from hand to hand. Among the learned
it found no serious adversaries. Poggio, indeed, gently reminded the
poet that even the elegance of its Latinity and the heat of its
author's youth were hardly sufficient excuses for its wantonness.[239]
Yet the almost unanimous verdict of students was favourable. Its open
animalism, as free from satire as from concealment, took the world by
storm; while the facile elegance of fluent verse with which the sins
of Sodom and Gomorrha were described placed it, in the opinion of
scholars, on a level with Catullus.[240] When the Emperor Sigismund
crowned Beccadelli poet at Siena in 1433, he only added the weight of
Imperial approval to the verdict of the lettered public.
[Footnote 237: Published at Paris in 1791 among _Quinque illustrium
Poetarum Lusus in Venerem_, and again at Coburg in 1824, with
annotations by F.G. Forberg.]
[Footnote 238: A man of about sixty-three, and father of twelve
legitimate children.]
[Footnote 239: _Poggii Opera_, pp. 349-354.]
[Footnote 240: Poggio, while professing to condemn the scandals of
these poems, writes thus:--'Delectatus sum mehercle varietate rerum et
elegantiâ versuum, simulque admiratus sum res adeo impudicas, adeo
ineptas, tam venuste, tam composite, a te dici, atque ita multa
exprimi turpiuscula ut non enarrari sed agi videantur, nec ficta a te
jocandi causâ, ut existimo, sed acta existimari possint.'--_Poggii
Opera_, p. 349.]
The Church could not, however, tolerate the scandal. Ever since the
days of Petrarch and Boccaccio, monks had regarded the study of
antique poetry with suspicion. Now their worst fears were realised.
Beccadelli had proved that the vices of renascent Paganism were not
only corrupting Italian society in secret, but that a young scholar of
genius could openly proclaim his participation in the shame, abjure
the first principles of Christian morality, and appeal with confidence
to princes and humanists for sympathy. The Minorite Friars denounced
the 'Hermaphroditus' from their pulpits, and burned it, together with
portraits of the poet, on the public squares of Bologna, Milan, and
Ferrara.[241] Eugenius IV. proscribed the reading of it under penalty
of excommunication. Dignitaries of the Church, who found it in the
hands of their secretaries, did not scruple to tear it to pieces, as a
book forbidden by the Pope and contrary to sound morality.[242] Yet
all this made but little difference to Beccadelli's reputation.[243]
He lectured with honour at Bologna and Pavia, received a stipend of
800 scudi from the Visconti, and in 1435 was summoned to the Court of
Naples. Alfonso raised him to the rank of noble, and continually
employed him near his person, enjoying his wit, and taking special
delight in his readings of classic authors. As official
historiographer, Beccadelli committed to writing the memorable deeds
and sayings of his royal master.[244] As ambassador and orator, he
represented the King at foreign Courts. As tutor to the Crown Prince,
Ferdinand, he prepared a sovereign for the State of Naples. This
favour lasted till the year 1471, when he died, old, rich, and
respected, in his lovely villa by the Bay of Naples. A more signal
instance of the value attached in this age to pure scholarship,
irrespective of moral considerations, and apart from profound
learning--since Beccadelli was, after all, only an elegant
Latinist--cannot be adduced. The 'Hermaphroditus,' therefore, deserves
a prominent place in the history of Renaissance manners.
[Footnote 241: Especially Bernardino da Siena, Roberto da Lecce, and
Alberto da Sarteano. See the note to p. 353 of Vol. I., _Age of the
Despots_.]
[Footnote 242: See Vespasiano, _Vita di Giuliano Cesarini_, p. 134.]
[Footnote 243: A curious letter from Guarino to Beccadelli (Rosmini's
_Vita di Guarino_, vol. ii. p. 44, and notes, p. 171) describes the
enthusiastic reception given in public to an impostor who pretended to
be the author of _Hermaphroditus_.]
[Footnote 244: _De Dictis et Factis Alphonsi Regis Memorabilibus._
Æneas Sylvius wrote a commentary on this work, in the preface to which
he says, 'Legere potui, quod feci, corrigere vero non potui; nam quid
est quod manu tuâ emissum correctione indigeat?'--_Opp. Omnia_, p.
472. This proves Beccadelli's reputation as a stylist.]
Those among us who have had the curiosity to study Beccadelli's
'Hermaphroditus' will find sufficient food for reflection upon his
post of confidence and honour at the Court of Alfonso.[245] Yet the
position of Lorenzo Valla at the same Court is even more remarkable.
While Beccadelli urged the levity of youth in extenuation of his
heathenism, and spoke with late regret of his past follies,[246] Valla
showed the steady front of a deliberate critic, hostile at all points
to the traditions and the morals of the Church. The parents of this
remarkable man were natives of Piacenza, though, having probably been
born at Rome, he assumed to himself the attribute of Roman.[247]
Before he fixed his residence at Naples, he had already won
distinction by a 'Dialogue on Pleasure,' in which he contrasted the
principles of the Stoics and Epicureans, making it clear, in spite of
cautious reservation, that he upheld the rights of the flesh in
opposition to the teaching of philosophies and Churches. The virtue of
virginity, so strongly prized by Christian saints, was treated by him
as a violence to nature's laws, an intolerable torment inflicted upon
man as God has made him.[248]
[Footnote 245: What the biographers, especially Vespasiano, relate of
Alfonso's ceremonious piety and love of theological reading makes the
contrast between him and his Court poet truly astounding.]
[Footnote 246:
'Hic fæces varias Veneris moresque profanos,
Quos natura fugit, me docuisse pudet.']
[Footnote 247: 'Romam, in quâ natus sum ... ego sum ortus Romæ
oriundus a Placentiâ.']
[Footnote 248: The naïve surprise with which Vespasiano records the
fact of virginity (see especially the Lives of Ambrogio Traversari and
the Cardinal Portogallo) shows how rare the virtue was, and what
mysterious honour it conferred upon men who were reputed to be
chaste.]
The attack opened by Valla upon the hypocrisies and false doctrines of
monasticism was both powerful and novel. Humanistic freedom of
thought, after assuming the form of witty persiflage in Poggio's
anecdotes and appearing as pure Paganism in Beccadelli's poems, now
put on the sterner mask of common sense and criticism in Lorenzo
Valla. The arms which he assumed in his first encounter with Church
doctrine, he never laid aside. To the end of his life Valla remained
the steady champion of unbiassed criticism, the living incarnation of
that 'verneinender Geist' to which the reason of the modern world has
owed its motive force.
Before leaving Rome at the age of twenty-four, Valla tried to get the
post of Apostolic Secretary, but without success. It is probable that
his youth told less against him than his reputation for plain speech
and fearlessness. In 1431 we hear of him at Pavia, where, according to
the slanders of his enemies,[249] he forged a will and underwent
public penance at the order of the Bishop. This, however, is just one
of those stories on which the general character of the invectives that
contain it, throws uncertainty. Far more to our purpose is the fact
that at this period he became the supreme authority on points of Latin
style in Italy by the publication of his 'Elegantiæ.' True to his own
genius, Valla displayed in this masterly treatise the qualities that
gave him a place unique among the scholars of his day. The forms of
correct Latinity which other men had picked out as they best could by
close adherence to antique models, he subjected to critical analysis,
establishing the art of style on scientific principles.
[Footnote 249: Poggio and Fazio are the authorities for this
incident.]
When Alfonso invited Valla to Naples in 1437, giving him the post of
private secretary, together with the poet's crown, he must have known
the nature of the man who was to play so prominent a part in the
history of free thought. It is not improbable that the feud between
the House of Aragon and the Papal See, which arose from Alfonso's
imperfect title to the throne of Naples, and was embittered by the
intrigues of the Church, disposed the King to look with favour on the
uncompromising antagonist of Papacy. At all events, Valla's treatise
on 'Constantine's Donation,' which appeared in 1440, assumed the
character of a political pamphlet.[250] The exordium contained fierce
personal abuse of Eugenius IV. and Cardinal Vitelleschi. The body of
the tract destroyed the fabric of lies which had imposed upon the
Christian world for centuries. The peroration ended with a menace.
Worse chastisement was in store for a worldly and simoniacal
priesthood, if the Popes refused to forego their usurped
temporalities, and to confess the sham that criticism had unmasked.
War to the death was thus declared between Valla and Rome. The storm
his treatise excited, raged at first so wildly that Valla thought it
prudent to take flight. He crossed the sea to Barcelona, and remained
there a short while, until, being assured of Alfonso's protection, he
once more returned to Naples. From beneath the shield of his royal
patron, he now continued to shoot arrow after arrow at his enemies,
affirming that the letter of Christ to Abgarus, reported by Eusebius,
was a palpable forgery, exposing the bad Latin style of the Vulgate,
accusing S. Augustine of heresy on the subject of predestination, and
denying the authenticity of the Apostles' Creed. That a simple
humanist, trusting only to his learning, should have dared to attack
the strong places of orthodoxy--its temporalities, its favourite code
of ethics, its creed, and its patristic authorities--may well excite
our admiration. With the stones of criticism and the sling of
rhetoric, this David went up against the Goliath of the Church; and
though he could not slay the Philistine, he planted in his forehead
the first of those many missiles with which the battery of the reason
has assailed tyrannical tradition in the modern world.
[Footnote 250: _De falso Creditâ et Ementitâ Constantini Donatione._]