over the minds of men he was engaged in undermining, could not be
expected to leave him quiet. Sermons from all the pulpits of Italy
were launched at the heretic and heathen; the people were taught to
loathe him as a monster of iniquity; and finally a Court of
Inquisition was opened, at the bar of which he was summoned to attend.
To the interrogatories of the inquisitors Valla replied that 'he
believed as Mother Church believed: it was quite true that she _knew_
nothing: yet he believed as she believed.' That was all they could
extract from the disdainful scholar, who, after openly defying them,
walked away to the king and besought him to suspend the sitting of the
Court. Alfonso told the monks that they must leave his secretary
alone, and the process was dropped.
On the death of Eugenius, Nicholas V. summoned Valla to Rome, not to
answer for his heresies and insults at the Papal bar, but to receive
the post of Apostolic Writer, with magnificent appointments. The entry
of Valla into the Roman Curia, though marked by no external ceremony,
was the triumph of humanism over orthodoxy and tradition. We need not
suppose that Nicholas was seeking to bribe a dangerous antagonist to
silence. He simply wanted to attach an illustrious scholar to his
Court, and to engage him in the labour of translation from the Greek.
To heresy and scepticism he showed the indifference of a tolerant and
enlightened spirit; with the friars who hated Valla the Pope in Rome
had nothing whatsoever in common. The attitude assumed by Nicholas on
this occasion illustrates the benefit which learning in the
Renaissance derived from the worldliness of the Papacy. It was not
until the schism of the Teutonic Churches, and the intrusion of the
Spaniards into Italy, that the Court of Rome consistently adopted a
policy of persecution and repression.
A large portion of Valla's biography is absorbed by the history of his
quarrels with Poggio, Georgios Trapezuntios, and other men of mark.
Enough has already been said about these literary feuds; nor need I
allude to them again, except for the purpose of bringing a third
Court-scholar of Alfonso's into notice. Bartolommeo Fazio, a native of
La Spezzia, occupied the position of historiographer at Naples. In
addition to his annals of the life of Alfonso, he compiled a book on
celebrated men, and won the reputation of being the neatest Latinist
in prose of his age. Fazio ventured to criticise the style of Valla,
in whose works he professed to have detected five hundred faults of
language. Eight books of invectives and recriminations were exchanged
between them; and when both died in 1457, this epigram was composed in
celebration of their animosity:--
Ne vel in Elysiis sine vindice Valla susurret,
Facius haud multos post obit ipse dies.
The amusement afforded to Roman emperors by fights in the arena, and
to feudal nobles by the squabbles of their fools, seems to have been
extracted by Italian patrons from the duels of well-matched humanists.
What personal jealousies, what anxious competition for the princely
favour, such warfare concealed may be readily imagined; nor is it
improbable that Fazio's attack on Valli was prompted by the covert
spite of Beccadelli. Scarcely less close to the person of Alfonso than
the students with whom we have been occupied, stood Giannantonio
Porcello, a native of Naples. He was distinguished by his command of
versification: the fluency with which he poured fourth Latin elegiacs
and hexameters approached that of an improvisatore of the Molo.
Alfonso sent him to the camp of the Venetians during the war waged by
their general Piccinino in 1452-3 with Sforza. Porcello, who shared
the tent of Piccinino on this occasion, wrote a Latin history of the
campaign in the style of Livy, with moral reflections, speeches, and
all the apparatus of Roman rhetoric. Piccinino figured as Scipio
Æmilianus; Sforza as Hannibal. The work was dedicated to Alfonso.[251]
[Footnote 251: It is printed in Muratori, vol. xx.]
With the exception of Lorenzo Valla,[252] the scholars of the Court of
Naples were stylists and poets rather than men of erudition. Freedom
both of speculation and of morals marked society in Southern Italy,
where the protection of a powerful monarch at war with the Church, and
the license of a luxurious capital, released the humanists from such
slight restraints as public opinion and conventional decorum placed on
them in Rome and Florence.
[Footnote 252: The protection extended to Manetti and to Filelfo
ought, however, to be here mentioned. Nearly all the contemporary
scholars of Italy dedicated works to Alfonso.]
Owing to the marked diversity exhibited by the different states of
Italy, the forms assumed by art and literature are never exactly the
same in any two cities. If the natives of the Two Sicilies were not
themselves addicted to severe scholarship, the lighter kinds of
writing flourished there abundantly, and Naples gave her own peculiar
character to literature. This was not the case with Milan. Yet Milan,
during the reigns of the last Visconti and the first Sforza, claims
attention, owing to the accident of Filelfo's residence at the Ducal
Court. Filippo Maria Visconti was one of the most repulsive tyrants
who have ever disgraced a civilised country. Shut up within his palace
walls among astrologers, minions, and monks, carefully protected from
the public eye, and watched by double sets of mutually suspicious
bodyguards, it was impossible that he should extend the free
encouragement to learned men which we admire at Naples. Around despots
of the stamp of the Visconti there must of necessity reign the
solitude and silence of a desert, where arts and letters cannot
flourish, though Pactolus be poured forth to feed their roots. The
history of humanism at Milan has, therefore, less to do with the city
or the Ducal circle than with the private labours of students allured
to Lombardy by promise of high pay.
Piero Candido Decembrio began life as Filippo Maria's secretary. To
his vigorous pen the student of Italian history owes the minutest and
most vivid sketch now extant of the habits and the vices of a tyrant.
This remains the best title of Decembrio to recollection, though his
works, original and translated, if we may trust his epitaph in S.
Ambrogio, amounted to 127 books when he died in 1447. Contemporary
with Decembrio, Gasparino da Barzizza, of whom mention has already
been made,[253] occupied the place of Court orator and letter-writer.
This office he transmitted to his son, Guiniforte, who was also
employed in the education of Francesco Sforza's children. None of
these men, however, shed much splendour upon Milan; they were simply
the instruments of ducal luxury, part of a prince's parade, at an
epoch when even warlike sovereigns sought to crowd their Courts with
pedagogues and rhetoricians.
[Footnote 253: Above, p. 78.]
With Filelfo the case was different. His singular abilities rendered
him independent of local patronage, and drew universal attention to
any place where he might choose to fix his residence. Of all the
humanists he was the most restless in his humour and erratic in his
movements. Still Milan, during a long period of his life, formed his
headquarters; to Milan he returned when fortune frowned on him
elsewhere; and with Milan his name will always be connected.
Francesco Filelfo was born in 1398 at Tolentino, in the March of
Ancona. He studied grammar, rhetoric, and Latin literature at Padua,
where he was appointed professor at the early age of eighteen. In 1417
he received an invitation to teach eloquence and moral philosophy at
Venice. Here he remained two years, deriving much advantage from the
society of Guarino da Verona and Vittorino da Feltre, and forming
useful connections with the Venetian nobility. Young as he was,
Filelfo had already made his mark, and won the consideration which
attaches to men of decided character and extraordinary powers. The
proof of this is that, after being admitted citizen of Venice by
public decree, he was appointed Secretary to the Baily (_Bailo_, or
Consul-General) of Constantinople through the interest of his friend
Lionardo Giustiniani. Giustiniani having also provided him with money
for his voyage, Filelfo set off in 1419 for the capital of Greek
learning. Of the three Italian teachers--Guarino, Aurispa, and
Filelfo--who made this journey for the express purpose of acquiring
the Greek language and collecting Greek books, Filelfo was by far the
most distinguished. The history, therefore, of his adventures may be
taken as a specimen of what befell them all. The time spent at sea
between Venice and Byzantium was five months; Filelfo did not arrive
till the year 1420 was already well advanced. He put himself at once
under the tuition of John Chrysoloras, the brother of Manuel, whose
influence at the Imperial Court brought Filelfo into favour with John
Palæologus. The young Italian student, having speedily acquired
familiarity with the Greek tongue, received the titles of Secretary
and Counsellor, and executed some important diplomatic missions for
his Imperial master. We hear, for instance, of his being sent to
Sigismund, the German Emperor, at Buda, and of his reciting an
Epithalamial Oration at Cracow on the marriage of King Ladislaus. The
Venetian Baily, again, despatched him to the Court of Amurath II., in
order to negotiate terms of treaty between the Republic and the Turk.
The confidence extended alike by his Venetian and Greek patrons to
Filelfo may well have inclined Chrysoloras to look with favour on the
affection which now sprang up between the Italian stranger and his
daughter Theodora. Theodora was but fourteen years of age; yet her
youth probably suggested no impediment to marriage in the
semi-Oriental society of the Greek capital. That she was connected by
blood with the Imperial family made the alliance honourable to
Filelfo; still there is no sufficient reason to conclude for certain
that the match was so unequal as to justify the malignant suggestions
thrown out at a later date by Poggio.[254] Of ancient blood there was
enough and to spare at Constantinople; but wealth was wanting, while
the talent which rendered Filelfo serviceable to great states and
empires was itself sufficient guarantee for Theodora's maintenance in
a becoming station.
[Footnote 254: 'Itaque Chrysoloras, moerore confectus, compulsus
precibus, malo coactus, filiam tibi nuptui dedit a te corruptam, quæ
si extitisset integra, ne pilum quidem tibi abrasum ab illius natibus
ostendisset. An tu illam unquam duxisses uxorem si virginitatem per te
servare potuisset? Tibi pater illam dedisset profugo, ignobili,
impuro? Primariis suæ civitatis viris servabatur virgo, non tibi,
insulsæ pecudi et asello bipedali, quem ille domi alebat tanquam canem
aliquem solent senio et ætate confectum.'--_Poggii Opp._ p. 167. This
is just one of the tales with which the invectives of that day abound,
and with which it is almost impossible to deal. It may be true; for
certainly Filelfo, by his immorality and grossness in after-life,
justified the worst calumnies that his enemies could invent. Yet there
is little but Poggio's word to prove it, while Rosmini has shown that
Filelfo's position at Byzantium was very different from what his foe
suggests. Tiraboschi accepts the charge as 'not proven;' but he
clearly leans in private against Filelfo, moved by the following
passage from a letter of Ambrogio Traversari:--'Nuper a Guarino accepi
litteras, quibus vehementer in fortunam invehitur quod filiam Joannis
Chrysoloræ clarissimi viri is acceperit, exterus, qui quantum libet
homo bono ingenio, longe tamen illis nuptiis impar esset, queriturque
substomachans uxorem Chrysoloræ venalem habuisse pudicitiam,
moechumque ante habuisse quam socerum.' Vol. vi. lib. iii. cap. v.
21. All that can be said now is that Filelfo's own morality and the
corruption of Byzantine society render a story believed by Guarino and
Traversari, and openly told by Poggio, not improbable.]
Not long after their marriage Filelfo received an offer of the Chair
of Eloquence at Venice, with a stipend of 500 sequins. In 1427,
tempted by the prospect of good pay and growing fame, he landed with
his wife, their infant son, four female slaves, and two men servants
on the quay before S. Mark's.[255] The object of his journey to
Constantinople had been amply attained. After an absence of seven and
a half years, he returned to his native country with Greek learning,
increased reputation, and a large supply of Greek books.[256] His
proud boast, frequently repeated in after-life, that no man living
but himself had mastered the whole literature of the ancients in both
languages, that no one else could wield the prose of Cicero, the verse
of Horace and of Virgil, and the Greek of Homer and of Xenophon with
equal versatility, was not altogether an empty vaunt.[257] We may
indeed smile at his pretension to have surpassed Virgil because he was
an orator, and Cicero because he was a poet, and both of them together
because he could write Greek as well as Latin.[258] We know that his
Latin hexameters are such as not only Virgil but Cicero would have
scorned to own, that his Latin orations would have been hissed before
the Roman rostra, and that his Greek style is at the same time tame
and tumid. Neither he nor his contemporaries were sufficiently
critical to comprehend the force of these objections. They only saw
that he possessed the keys to all the learning of the ancient world,
and that, besides unlocking those treasures for modern students, he
was also competent to give to current thoughts a form that aped the
classic masterpieces each in its own kind. Taken at their lowest
valuation, the claims of Filelfo, well founded in fact, mark him out
as the most universal scholar of his age. A genius he was not: for
while his perceptions were coarse, his intellect was receptive rather
than originative. Of deep thought, true taste, penetrative criticism,
or delicate fancy he knew nothing. The unimaginable bloom of style is
nowhere to be found upon his work. Yet a man of his stamp was needed
at that epoch to act as a focus for the streams of light which flooded
Italy from divers sources, to collect them in himself, and to bequeath
to students of a happier age the ideal of comprehensive scholarship
which Poliziano and Erasmus realised.
[Footnote 255: This retinue shows that Filelfo was at least able to
support a large household.]
[Footnote 256: The catalogue of his library, communicated by him in a
letter to Ambrogio Traversari, shows so clearly what the most
indefatigable student and omnivorous reader of the age, to whom all
the museums and bookshops of Byzantium must have been open, could then
collect, that I will transcribe it:--'Qui mihi nostri in Italiam libri
gesti sunt, horum nomina ad te scribo: alios autem nonnullos per
primas ex Byzantio Venetorum naves opperior. Hi autem sunt Plotinus,
Ælianus, Aristides, Dionysius Halicarnasseus, Strabo Geographus,
Hermogenes, Aristotelis Rhetorice, Dionysius Halicarnasseus de Numeris
et Characteribus, Herodotus, Dio Chrysostomus, Appollonius Pergæus,
Thucydides, Plutarchi Moralia, Proclus in Platonem, Philo Judæus,
Ethica Aristotelis, Ejus magna Moralia et Eudemia, et Oeconomica et
Politica, quædam Theophrasti Opuscula, Homeri Ilias, Odyssea,
Philostrati de Vitâ Appollonii, Orationes Libanii, et aliqui Sermones
Luciani, Pindarus, Aratus, Euripidis Tragoediæ Septem, Theocritus,
Hesiodus, Suidas, Phalaridis, Hippocratis, Platonis et multorum ex
veteribus Philosophis Epistolæ, Demosthenes, Æschinis Orationes et
Epistolæ, Pleraque Xenophontis Opera, Una Lysiæ Oratio, Orphei
Argonautica et Hymni, Callimachus, Aristoteles de Historiis Animalium,
Physica, et Metaphysica, et de Animâ, de Partibus Animalium, et alia
quædam, Polybius, Nonnulli Sermones Chrysostomi, Dionysiaca, et alii
Poetæ plurimi. Habes qui mihi sint, et his utere æque ac tuis.']
[Footnote 257: 'Unum Philelphus audet affirmare, vel insaniente
Candido, neminem esse hâc tempestate, nec fuisse unquam apud Latinos,
quantum constat ex omni hominum memoriâ, qui præter se unum idem unus
tenuerit exercuitque et Græcam pariter et Latinam orationem in omni
dicendi genere et prosâ et versu. Tu si quidem habeas alterum, memora.
Quid taces, homo miserrime?' Letter to Piero Candido Decembrio. Cf.
what P.C. Decembrio wrote to Poggio in 1453:--'Dixit (_i.e._
Philelphus) enim neminem litteras scire præter ipsum, alios
semilatinos et semigræcos esse, se autem principatum inter stultos
obtinere.' Rosmini, vol. iii. p. 150.]
[Footnote 258:
'Quod si Virgilius superat me carminis ullis
Laudibus, orator ille ego sum melior.
Sin Tulli eloquio præstat facundia nostro,
Versibus ille meis cedit ubique minor.
Adde quod et linguâ possum hæc præstare Pelasgâ
Et Latiâ. Talem quem mihi des alium?'
Lib. ix., _De Jocis et Seriis_. _Elegy to Alessandro Sforza._ Reported
by Rosmini, vol. iii. p. 149. One specimen of these boasts may stand
for thousands.]
Filelfo's reception at Venice by no means corresponded to the promises
by which he had been tempted, or to the value which he set on his own
services. The plague was in the city; the nobles had taken flight to
their country houses; and there was no one to attend his lectures. He
therefore very readily accepted an offer sent him from Bologna, and
early in the year 1428 we find him settled in that city as professor
of eloquence and moral philosophy, with a stipend of 450 sequins. He
was not destined to remain there long, however, for the disturbed
state of the town rendered teaching impossible; and when flattering
proposals arrived from the Florentines, he set off in haste and
transferred his whole family across the Apennines from Imola.[259] The
delight which he experienced in viewing the architectural monuments
of Florence, and the enthusiasm he aroused by his stupendous learning
in an audience of unprecedented variety and multitude, are expressed
with almost childish emphasis in his correspondence. 'The whole
State,' he writes,[260] 'is turned to look at me. All men love and
honour me, and praise me to the skies. My name is on every lip. Not
only the leaders of the city, but women also of the noblest birth make
way for me, paying me so much respect that I am ashamed of their
worship. My audience numbers every day four hundred persons, mostly
men advanced in years and of the dignity of senators.' These were the
halcyon days of Filelfo's residence at Florence,[261] when he was
still enjoying the friendship of learned men, receiving new
engagements from the University with augmentations of pay,[262] and
when as yet he had not won the hatred of the Medicean faction. His
industry at this epoch was amazing. He began the day by reading and
explaining the 'Tusculans' and rhetorical treatises of Cicero; then he
proceeded to Livy or Homer; after a brief rest at midday he resumed
his labours with Terence and a Greek author, Thucydides or Xenophon.
On holidays he read Dante to an audience assembled in the Duomo,
bestowing these lectures as a free gift on the people of Florence.
Amid these public labours, the weight of which may be estimated by
remembering what was required of professors in the fifteenth
century,[263] Filelfo still found leisure for private work. He
translated two speeches of Lysias, the 'Rhetoric' of Aristotle, two
Lives of Plutarch, and Xenophon's panegyrics of Agesilaus and the
Spartan institutions.
[Footnote 259: The invitation came from Niccoli, Lionardo Bruni,
Ambrogio Traversari, and Palla Strozzi.]
[Footnote 260: Quoted by Cantù, p. 128.]
[Footnote 261: He stayed there from 1429 till the autumn of 1434.]
[Footnote 262: Engagement renewed October 17, 1431, for two years,
with stipend of 350 sequins; again, in 1433, with stipend of 450
sequins.]
[Footnote 263: See above, pp. 90, 91.]
At the same time he had abundant energy for the prosecution of the
feuds in which he soon found himself engaged with the Florentine
scholars. So great was the arrogance displayed by Filelfo, his
meanness in private life, and his imprudence in public,[264] that even
the men who had invited him became his bitter foes. Niccolo de'
Niccoli, always jealous of superiority, and apt to take offence, was
the first with whom he quarrelled; then followed Carlo Marsuppini and
Ambrogio Traversari, until at last the whole of the Medicean party
were inflamed against him. Filelfo on his side spared neither satires
nor slanders; and when the political crisis, which for a time
depressed the Medicean faction, was impending, he declared himself the
public opponent of Cosimo. Already in the spring of 1433 he had been
stabbed in the face while walking to the University one morning by
Filippo, a cut-throat from Casale; nor does there seem any reason to
doubt that, as Filelfo himself firmly believed, the man was paid to
kill him by the Medici. When the same bravo afterwards followed him to
Siena,[265] Filelfo hired a Greek, by name Antonio Maria, to retaliate
upon his foes in Florence. It is not probable that a merely literary
quarrel would have run to these extremities. Even the foulness of
Poggio's invectives and the fury of Filelfo's satires fail to account
for the intervention of assassins. We know, however, that Filelfo had
not confined himself to calumnies and criticisms of his literary
rivals. During Cosimo's imprisonment he urged the Signory in open
terms to take his life; when he was living in exile at Venice, he
pursued him with abominable slanders; and now, on Cosimo's return,
though himself expelled from the city as a rebel and a proscript, he
kept stirring up the burghers of Florence and the Courts of Italy
against the tyrant.[266]
[Footnote 264: See Rosmini, vol. i. pp. 43, 48.]
[Footnote 265: _Ibid._ vol. i. p. 83, for the trial, torture, and
confession of this bravo.]
[Footnote 266: The original source of information concerning Filelfo's
quarrels with the Florentines is his Satires, divided into ten books
or decades, each consisting of ten satires or hecatostichæ of one
hundred verses each. In the copy of this book, printed at Paris, 1508,
by Robert and John Gourmont, these virulent libels are called 'Divinum
Francisci Philelphi Poetæ Christiani Satyrarum Opus.' As their motto
the publishers give these sentences:--'Finis laus Deo, Spes mea
Jesus.' For the abuse of the Medicean circle see Dec. i. Hec. 5; Dec.
i. Hec. 6; Dec. ii. Hec. 1, 3, 7; Dec. iii. Hec. 10; Dec. vi. 10; Dec.
viii. 5. For Filelfo's attack on Cosimo during his imprisonment, see
Dec. iv. Hec. 1. For his invective against Cosimo on his return from
exile, see Dec. iv. Hec. 9. For an appeal to Filippo Maria Visconti
against Cosimo, see Dec. v. Hec. 1. For a similar appeal to Eugenius
IV., see Dec. v. Hec. 2. For the episode of the assassin Filippo, see
Dec. v. Hec. 6. A political attack on Cosimo addressed to Rinaldo
Albizzi is contained in Dec. v. Hec. 8. A furious denunciation of
Cosimo's tyranny, in Dec. v. Hec. 9. Palla degli Strozzi, as an
opponent of Cosimo, is praised in Dec. iii. 1; Dec. vi. 4. In Dec.
vii. 8, Filelfo promises to moderate his fury. In addition to these
sources see the MS. invectives mentioned in Rosmini, vol. i. p. 47.]
The occasion of Filelfo's removal to Siena was this:--When his
position at Florence had become untenable, he received an invitation
from Antonio Petrucci to lecture for two years, with a stipend of 350
florins. Filelfo replied that he preferred small pay and quiet to a
larger income among the swords and poisons of his envious rivals.
Accordingly he took up his abode at Siena for four years in the
Piccolomini Palace. Like many greater and more admirable men, he had a
restless disposition, always pleased with what is new, yet always
grumbling when the taste of bitter mounted to his lips. The most
honourable invitations now began to shower upon him. The Council of
Basle, the Venetian Senate, the Emperor of the East, Eugenius IV., the
Universities of Perugia and Bologna, and the Duke of Milan applied for
his services. It was not, however, until the year 1439 that his love
of change, combined with the allurements of higher pay, induced him to
close with the offers of the Senate of Bologna. Once more, then, he
crossed the Apennines, and once more, after a brief sojourn of a few
months, he again quitted Bologna, and transferred himself to Milan.
His reception by Filippo Maria Visconti was most flattering. Placing a
diamond ring upon his finger, the Duke welcomed him among the nobles
of his Court on New Year's Day in 1440. Thus began Filelfo's
connection with the Lombard capital, which, though often interrupted,
was never wholly broken till his death.
The munificence of the Visconti exceeded that of any of Filelfo's
patrons,[267] while the mode of life at Milan exactly suited his
vainglorious temperament. He loved to throw his money about among
lords, to appear at high Court festivals, and to take the lead on
ceremonial occasions in his rank of orator. There was, moreover, no
rival strong enough to threaten the blasting of his popularity.[268]
We find him, during his residence at Milan, continually engaged in the
exercise of rhetoric. Public and private incidents of the most various
character employed his skill, nor is there any doubt that his large
professorial income was considerably increased by presents received
from patrons and employers.[269] In addition to the labours of his
chair, he engaged in various literary works. His Satires and Odes were
gradually growing into ponderous volumes.[270] Other fugitive pieces
in prose he put together under the title of 'Convivia Mediolanensia.'
Meanwhile he carried on an active correspondence, both familiar and
hortatory, with the scholars and the princes of his day.[271] There
was no branch of letters with which, sustained by sublime
self-approval, he was not willing and eager to meddle. As he had
professed Dante at Florence, so here at Milan, by ducal command, he
undertook to comment upon Petrarch, and actually composed a poem on S.
John the Baptist in _terza rima_. There is something ludicrous in the
thought of this Visconti, would-be Herod as in truth he was,
commissioning Filelfo, the outrageous Pagan, to versify the life of
Christ's forerunner. If Filelfo despised anything more than sacred
history, it was the Italian language; and if there was a task for
which he was unfitted, it was the composition of poetry.
[Footnote 267: His professorial stipend was soon raised from 500 to
700 golden florins.]
[Footnote 268: Vespasiano says that the concourse of people to Carlo
Aretino's lectures was the first cause of Filelfo's feuds at
Florence.]
[Footnote 269: Here are the dates of some of these displays:--
1440. Funeral oration on Stefano Federigo Todeschini.
1441. Epithalamial on the Marriage of Giovanni Marliani.
1442. Discourse on Duties of a Magistrate.
1446. Panegyric of Filippo Maria Visconti, and oration on the Election
of Jacopo Borromeo to the See of Pavia.
1450. Oration of Welcome to Francesco Sforza.
1455. Epithalamial on the Marriage of Tristano Sforza to Beatrice
d'Este.
1458. Epithalamials for Antonio Crivelli and Teodoro Piatti.
1459. Oration to Pius II. on his Crusade.
1460. Oration on the Election of the Bishop of Como.
1464. Funeral oration for the Senator Filippo Borromeo.
1466. Ditto for Francesco Sforza.
It is probable that all of these were not recited; but all were
conceived in the lumbering and pedantic style that passed for
eloquence at that period. With regard to rewards received on these
occasions, note the gift of a silver basin from Jacopo Antonio
Marcello in return for a consolatory epistle. Rosmini, vol. ii. p.
127. Cf. p. 197.]
[Footnote 270: The Satires, collected into ten decades, each satire
consisting of 100 lines, were dedicated to Alfonso of Naples in 1451.
Printed at Milan, 1446. The Odes, entitled _De Seriis et Jocis_, were
finished in 1465, and dedicated partly to Malatesta Novello of Cesena,
partly to Alessandro Sforza. There were ten books, each book
containing 1,000 lines. Never printed. Rosmini, who inspected the
MSS., reports that their obscenity exceeds description, and is only
equalled by the vulgarity of the author's fancy and the coarseness of
his style. In addition to these unpublished Latin poems, Filelfo
collected three books of Greek elegies and epigrams, amounting to
2,400 verses. It is significant that he measured his poetry by lines,
and trained his jog-trot muse to paces of 100 verses.]
[Footnote 271: The Epistle to Ladislaus of Hungary on his victories
over the Turks, for instance.]
During the second year of his Milanese residence Filelfo lost his wife
Theodora. He speedily married again, choosing for his bride a
beautiful young lady of good family in Milan. Her name was Orsina
Osnaga. Since I have touched upon this matter of Filelfo's private
life, it may be well to add that when he lost his second wife, he
took in wedlock for the third time Laura Magiolini. By each of his
marriages he acquired no inconsiderable property, and all his brides
belonged to highly distinguished families. The best thing that can be
said about Filelfo as a man is, that he was undoubtedly attached to
his wives and to the numerous children they bore him.[272] This
feeling did not, however, protect him from numerous infidelities, or
save his fortune from the burden of illegitimate children.[273] It is
even doubtful whether credence should not be accorded to suggestions
of worse debauchery, repeated with every appearance of belief by his
enemies, and on his side but imperfectly refuted. Filelfo was, in
truth, a man of great physical vigour, whose energies the mere labour
of the student was insufficient to exhaust. Loves and hatreds,
domestic sympathies and turbulent passions, absorbed a portion of his
superfluous force; nor was he at any time restrained by scruples of
religion or morality. What was good for Greeks and Romans was good for
him. It is also to be noted that the innate sense of delicacy which
sometimes forms the safeguard of excessive temperaments was altogether
alien to his nature.
[Footnote 272: He had twelve sons and twelve daughters. They did not
all live.]
[Footnote 273: A curious sign of current feeling is that Filelfo
frequently boasted of being [Greek: triorchês]. See Rosmini, i. p. 15,
and the verse quoted, _ib._ p. 113. He mentioned two natural children
in his will and had many more. Rosmini, vol. iii. p. 78.]
During the disasters that befell the State of Milan on the death of
Filippo Maria, Filelfo at first espoused the cause of the burghers. A
letter to the Florentines is extant, in which he exhorts them to aid
their sister commonwealth at the extreme hour of her peril. It was not
natural, however, that a humanist, who had no zeal for freedom, and
whose personal interests led him to desire a settled government at any
price, should continue staunch to a republic so unnerved as that of
Milan. When Carlo Gonzaga played the Milanese false by admitting the
troops of Francesco Sforza, Filelfo was the first to welcome the new
monarch with a set oration. He professed great admiration for the
general who, by careful management and double-dealing, had placed
himself at the head of the third state in the peninsula. Yet his
correspondence at this period proves that his mind was uneasy, and
that he desired a change. In an impudent letter addressed to Nicholas
V., he solicited ecclesiastical preferment, suggesting that the
promise of a bishop's mitre would secure his splendid talents for the
service of the Papacy.[274] However desirous the Pope might be to
engage Filelfo for his translation factory at Rome, the price demanded
was too great. He could not recognise a vocation so clearly inspired
by mercenary motives; and to receive into the high places of the
Church, at his own request, a man accused of many vices, who had twice
been married, would have established a dangerous precedent. Filelfo,
receiving neither substantial encouragement nor a flat refusal, turned
his thoughts to matrimony for the third time, and addressed a prayer
on this occasion to Dame Venus, in which he besought the mother of
Priapus to befriend her votary. The intelligent student of the
Renaissance will not fail to notice the state of mind implied by the
juxtaposition of this letter to the Holy Father and this ode to Venus.
[Footnote 274: Rosmini, vol. ii. p. 54. It may be remembered that
Pietro Aretino hinted he should like to be a cardinal.]
Filelfo was now fain to content himself with the patronage of
Francesco Sforza, a prince who had no natural turn for literature, but
who was wise enough to know that a _parvenu_ could least of all afford
to neglect the ruling fashions of his age. The letters he wrote at
this period abound in impudent demands for money, querulous outcries
over the poverty to which the first scholar of the century was
condemned, and violent menaces of retaliation if his salary remained
in arrears.[275] Not only Francesco Sforza, but all the patrons upon
whom Filelfo thought he had a claim, were assailed with reptile
lamentations and more reptile menaces. Alessandro Sforza, Lodovico
Gonzaga, and three Popes in succession may be mentioned among the more
distinguished princes who suffered from this literary brigandage.[276]
Not without strict justice did a contemporary describe him in the
following severe terms:--'He is calumnious, envious, vain, and so
greedy of gold that he metes out praise or blame according to the
gifts he gets, both despicable as proceeding from a tainted
source.'[277] Filelfo's rapacity is truly disgusting when we remember
that he received far more than any equally distinguished student of
his age. Not the illiberality of patrons, but his own luxurious
habits, reduced him to beggary. All the while that he was screaming in
bad Latin verse, he lived expensively, indulging ostentatious tastes,
and finding money for unclean indulgences. In order to confirm his
claim on the Duke of Milan's generosity, he began a gigantic Latin
epic upon the life of Sforza. Without plan, a mere versified
chronicle, encumbered with foolish mythological machinery, and loaded
with fulsome flatteries, this leaden Sforziad crawled on until 12,800
lines had been written. Only the first eight books of it were
published in MS., nor were these ever printed.[278]
[Footnote 275: As a specimen of Filelfo's Grub Street style of
begging, I transcribe the following elegy (Rosmini, vol. ii. p.
285):--
'Hæc autem altisone dum carmina celsius effert
Defecisse suo sentit ab ore tubam,
Nam quia magnifici data non est copia nummi
Cogitur huic uti carmine raucidulo.
Quod neque mireris; vocem pretiosa canoram
Esca dat, et potus excitat ingenium.
Ingenium spurco suevit languescere vino,
Humida mugitum reddere rapa solet.'
Francesco Sforza's anxiety to retain Filelfo in his service is
expressed in a letter to his treasurer (_ib._ p. 295):--'Noi per niuno
modo el vogliamo perdere, la qual cosa seguirebbe quando gli paresse
essere deluso, e non potesse seguitare per manchamento delli dicti 250
fiorini la nobilissima opera per lui in nostra gloria comenzata nè
suplire agli altri suoi bisogni.' The _tuba_ and the _nobilissima
opera_ both refer to Filelfo's Sforziad.]
[Footnote 276: I may call particular attention to Filelfo's behaviour
with regard to Pius II.--the free pension of 200 florins granted
(Rosmini, vol. ii. p. 106), the menaces because it is not paid (_ib._
p. 115), the scurrilous epigrams on the Pope's death (_ib._ p. 321),
the abusive letter addressed to Paul II. (_ib._ p. 136), the sentence
of imprisonment for calumny issued against him and his son Mario
(_ib._ p. 140), the final palinode in which he basely praises the Pope
whom he had basely abused (_ib._ p. 146). The whole series of
transactions is disgraceful.]
[Footnote 277: Letter of Gregorio Lollio to the Cardinal of Pavia,
reported by Rosmini (vol. ii. p. 147).]
[Footnote 278: The whole poem ran to sixteen books. Therefore,
according to Filelfo's art of poetry, the first eight contained 6,400
verses.]
By fair means and by foul, Filelfo had managed to secure a splendid
reputation throughout Italy. His journey to Naples in 1453 resembled a
triumphal progress. Nicholas V. entertained him with distinction, read
his infamous satires, presented him with a purse of 500 ducats, and
offered him a yearly stipend of 600 if he would dedicate his talents
to translation. Alfonso dubbed him knight, and placed the poet's
laurel on his brow with his own royal hands. As he passed through
their capitals, the princes received him like an equal. At Ferrara he
enjoyed the hospitalities of Duke Borso, at Mantua the friendship of
the Marchese Lodovico Gonzaga; the terrible Gismondo Pandolfo
Malatesta welcomed him in Rimini, and the General Jacopo Piccinino in
his camp at Fossombrone. Nor was this fame confined to Italy. On the
fall of Constantinople he addressed a letter to the Sultan, beseeching
him to release his mother-in-law and her two daughters from captivity;
the humanist's eloquence obtained this favour from the Turkish
conqueror, who refused to accept a ransom for the relatives of so
illustrious an orator.[279]
[Footnote 279: See Rosmini, vol. ii. p. 90. The Greek epistle which he
sent is printed, _ib._ p. 305.]
Until the death of Francesco Sforza Milan continued to be the city of
Filelfo's choice. After that event he turned his thoughts to Rome.
Pius II., Paul II., and Sixtus IV., in succession, had testified their
regard for him, either by moderate presents, sufficient to excite his
cupidity and check his slanderous temper, or by negotiations which
came to nothing. At last, in 1474, he received from Rome the offer of
a professorial chair, with a stipend of 600 florins, and the promise
of the first vacant post in the Apostolic Chancery.
The old man of seventy-seven years once more journeyed across the
plains of Lombardy, ascended the Apennines, passed through
Florence,[280] and began his lectures with the 'Tusculans' of Cicero,
on the twelfth day of January, 1475, in Rome. The marks of favour with
which Sixtus had received him were highly honourable. Filelfo was
permitted to sit in the Pope's presence, and on Christmas Day he stood
among the ambassadors while Sixtus celebrated mass. The vigorous old
scholar at first felt that all his previous life had been a tedious
prologue to this blissful play. Soon, however, a cloud arose on the
horizon. The Pope's treasurer, Milliardo Cicala, was remiss in
payments. Filelfo retaliated by describing Cicala's vices in the most
lurid colours to Sixtus.[281] Though his style and eloquence were
always vulgar, the concentrated fury and impassioned hatred of these
invectives cannot fail to impress the imagination. Such a picture of
the dissolute and grasping treasurer, painted by Filelfo and sent to
Sixtus, has a sinister humour which might recommend itself to the
audience of an infernal comedy. It is only necessary to have some
knowledge of the three men in order to perceive its force. Nor did
Sixtus himself long continue in Filelfo's graces. Frequent journeys
prove how unsettled he became; at last he left Rome in 1476, never to
return. When the Pazzi Conjuration failed at Florence, Filelfo wrote
to congratulate Lorenzo de' Medici on his escape, and undertook the
task of composing a history of the whole intrigue. Two long and
violent letters addressed to Sixtus, accusing him of participation in
the conspiracy, and heaping on him charges of vice, were the result of
this determination.[282] These epistles were dated from Milan, whither
Filelfo had retired in 1476, to find his third wife dead of the
plague, and buried on the eve of his arrival. His sorrow on this
occasion was genuine; nor is it likely that he derived much comfort
from a curious epistle addressed to him by Paolo Morosini, who,
himself a husband and father, attempted to console the septuagenarian
professor by elaborate abuse of matrimony.[283] To such ridiculous
vagaries did the rhetorical spirit of humanism lead its votaries.
[Footnote 280: He had long since made peace with the Medici.]
[Footnote 281: See the original letters in Rosmini, vol. ii. pp.
411-419.]
[Footnote 282: Rosmini, vol. ii. p. 261, note.]
[Footnote 283: _Ib._ p. 248.]
Filelfo's last journey was undertaken in 1481. Ill at ease, and sore
of heart, the veteran of scholarship still longed for further
triumphs. All his wishes for some time past had been set on ending his
days at Florence, near the person of Lorenzo de' Medici; and when an
invitation to the Chair of Greek Literature arrived, it found him
eager to set forth. He was so poor, however, that the Duke's
secretary, Jacopo Antiquari, had to lend him money for the
journey.[284] He just managed to reach Florence, where he died of
dysentery a fortnight after his arrival, at the age of eighty-three.
The Florentines buried him in the Church of the Annunziata.
[Footnote 284: I cannot allow this mention of Antiquari's name to pass
without a note upon his life and services to letters. He was born and
educated at Perugia, entered the service of the Papal Legate Battista
Savelli as secretary at Bologna, and afterwards received the post of
secretary and diplomatic writer to the Sforza family at Milan. The
Duke Galeazzo Maria was his first master. At Milan he played the part
of an amiable and refined Mæcenas, while he carried on a
correspondence in Latin--still delightful to read--with Poliziano and
all the greatest scholars of his age. His biography, written at some
length, with valuable miscellaneous appendices by Vermiglioli, was
published at Perugia in 1819.]
The sketch which I have given of Filelfo's life, abounds in details
beyond the just proportions of the present chapter. This is due partly
to the copiousness and the excellence of the authorities collected by
Rosmini in his exhaustive biography, but more to the undoubted fact
that Filelfo ranks as the typical humanist of his age. The
universality of his acquirements and the impression they made upon
contemporaries, his enormous physical vigour and incessant mental
activity, the vehemence with which he prosecuted his literary warfares
and the restlessness that drove him from capital to capital in Italy,
are themselves enough to mark him out as the representative hero of
the second period of humanism. Not less characteristic were the
quality and the form of his literary work--ridiculously over-valued
then, and now perhaps too readily depreciated. There is something
pathetic in the certainty of everlasting fame that sustained the
student through so many years of unremitting labour. It makes us
wonder whether the achievements of the human intellect, in science and
discovery, acceptable as these may be to their own time, are not,
equally with Filelfo's triumph of scholarship, foredoomed to speedy
obscuration. Nothing is imperishable but high thought, to which art
has communicated the indestructible form of beauty.
The 'Age of the Despots'[285] contains a promise of further details
concerning Vittorino da Feltre, to redeem which the time has now come.
His father's name was Bruto de' Rambaldoni; but having been born at
Feltre in the year 1378, he took from his birthplace the surname by
which he is best known.
[Footnote 285: Pp. 138, 139.]
Like the majority of his contemporaries, Vittorino studied Latin under
John of Ravenna and rhetoric under Gasparino da Barzizza. His poverty
compelled him at the same time to support himself by taking pupils;
this drudgery, however, was so unremunerative that, when he wanted to
attend the mathematical lectures of Biagio Pelacane, he had to pay
that avaricious and eccentric teacher by personal service. As Haydn
got his much-desired instruction from Porpora by playing the part of
valet,[286] so Vittorino became the scullery boy of Pelacane,[287] in
order that he might acquire geometry. These early studies were carried
on at Padua, from which town he appears to have moved about the year
1417 to Venice. Here he entered into friendship with Guarino da
Verona, and having learned Greek, returned to his old university as
professor of rhetoric.[288] The bias of Vittorino's genius inclined
toward private teaching, and it is this by which he is distinguished
among contemporary humanists. Accordingly we find that, as soon as he
was settled in Padua, he opened a school for a fixed number of young
men, selected without regard to rank or wealth. From the richer pupils
he required fees proportioned to their means; from the poor he exacted
nothing: thus the wealthy were made to support the needy, while the
teacher obtained for himself the noble satisfaction of relieving
aspirants after knowledge from the pressure of want and privation.
Other gain than this he never thought of. Only genuine students were
allowed to remain in Vittorino's school; the moral rule was strict,
and high thinking and plain living were expected from all his pupils.
This generous devotion to the cause of learning for its own sake
contrasts strongly with the self-seeking and vainglory of other
humanists. When Filelfo was urged on one occasion to open a school for
promising young men, of noble birth, he asked disdainfully whether his
friends expected him to take rank as a licensed victualler.[289] He
was unable to comprehend the possibility of doing anything that would
not reflect lustre on himself or place him in the light of popular
applause.
[Footnote 286: Grove's _Dictionary of Music and Musicians_, vol. i. p.
704 b.]
[Footnote 287: 'Usque ad mundandam supellectilem quæ sumpto cibo
lavare consuerit.'--Rosmini, _Vita di Vittorino_, p. 38, note.]
[Footnote 288: In 1422 apparently.]
[Footnote 289: _Locandiere._ Rosmini, vol. i. p. 67.]
Vittorino found it difficult to govern his school at Padua as strictly
as he wished. The public Gymnasium was ill-ordered, and great license
of life was permitted to its students. He therefore removed to Venice
in 1423, where he continued his work as private tutor. By this time,
however, he had acquired considerable reputation as an educator, to
whose care the youth of both sexes might be entrusted with implicit
confidence--no small testimony to his goodness in that age of
ungoverned passions and indescribable vices. The Marchese Gian
Francesco Gonzaga was looking out for a master for his children, and
his choice fell on Vittorino. The admiration of antiquity was no mere
matter of fashion with this prince. He loved history for its own sake,
and professed a special reverence for the Roman Camillus. His
practical good sense made him understand that, if he wished his sons
and daughters to become thoroughly educated, not only in the
humanities and mathematics, but also in the republican virtues of the
ancients, which then formed the ideal of life in Italy, he must be
willing to commit them wholly to the charge of their appointed
governor. Vittorino, who would have undertaken the duty on no other
condition, obtained full control of the young princes and their
servants. An appointment of twenty sequins per month was assigned to
him, together with a general order on the treasury of Mantua. A villa,
called Casa Zojosa, which we may translate Joyous Gard, was allotted
to the new household, and there Vittorino established himself as
master in 1425. He had much to do before this dwelling could be
converted from the pleasure house of a mediæval sovereign into the
semi-monastic resort of earnest students. Through its open galleries
and painted banquet chambers the young Gonzaghi lounged with favourite
friends selected from the Mantuan nobility. The tables groaned under
gold and silver plate, while perfumed lacqueys handed round rich wines
and highly seasoned dishes, and the garden alleys echoed to the sound
of lute and viol. Without making any brusque or sudden reformation,
Vittorino managed, by degrees, and on various pretexts, to dismiss the
more dangerous friends and servants of his pupils. A strict
house-porter was engaged, with orders to exclude suspicious visitors.
Plain clothes, simple habits, and frugal meals became the rule of the
household, Vittorino contriving to render these changes no less
agreeable than salutary to his pupils. When complaints arose from the
former companions of the princes and their parents, he laid his plan
of training clearly before the Marquis, who had the good sense to
approve of all that he had done.
The eldest of Gian Francesco's children, Lodovico, was a youth of lazy
habits, inclined to gluttony, and already too fat for his age. The
next, Carlo, had outgrown his strength, and needed more substantial
food. Vittorino devised systems of diet and physical training suited
to their several temperaments, making it his one object to increase
their vigour, and by multiplying sources of rational enjoyment to
dispose them to the energetic exercise of their faculties. He by no
means neglected what we call athletics. Indeed, it was a fundamental
axiom of his method that a robust body could alone harbour a healthy
mind. Boys who sat poring over books, or haunted solitary places, lost
in dreaming, found no favour in his eyes. To exercises in the
gymnasium or the riding-school he preferred games in the open air;
hunting and fishing, wrestling and fencing, running and jumping, were
practised by his pupils in the park outside their palace. To harden
them against severities of heat and cold, to render them temperate in
food and drink, to train their voices, and to improve their carriage
was his first care. Since he could not himself superintend their
education in all its branches, he engaged a subordinate staff of
tutors; grammarians, logicians, mathematicians, painters, and masters
of riding, dancing, singing, swimming, fencing, began to crowd the
halls of Joyous Gard. Each had his own allotted task to perform, while
Vittorino surveyed the whole scheme. 'Perhaps,' says Rosmini,[290]
'the only sciences that were not taught in this academy were civil and
canon law and natural physics.'
[Footnote 290: P. 111.]
It must not be imagined that so extensive an apparatus existed solely
for the young Gonzaghi. Noble youths from all the Courts of Italy, and
students from remote parts of Europe, sought admittance to Vittorino's
school. The more promising of these pupils, who were fitted by their
rank and disposition to associate with his princely charges, the
master housed under his own roof; while for the rest he provided
suitable lodgings near at hand. Many were the poor students who thus
owed to his generosity participation in the most refined and
scientific culture their century afforded.[291] While paying this
tribute to Vittorino da Feltre, we must remember the honour that is
also due to Gian Francesco Gonzaga. Had this prince not been endowed
with true liberality of soul and freedom from petty prejudice,
Vittorino could never have developed a system based upon pure
democratic principles, which even now may rank as an unrivalled
educational ideal. If the master, again, was able to provide for sixty
poor scholars at a time--teaching, feeding, clothing, and furnishing
them with costly books, his friend the Marquis must, we feel sure,
have supplied his purse with extra funds for charitable purposes.[292]
[Footnote 291: Sixty poor scholars were taught, fed, clothed, and
provided with implements of study at his cost. He also subsidised
their families in distress. Rosmini, _Vita di Vittorino_, pp. 165,
166.]
[Footnote 292: Rosmini, _Vita di Vittorino_, p. 165. Vespasiano, p.
492, tells a story which illustrates these relations between Vittorino
and the Marquis. Cf., too, p. 494.]
The numerous biographers of Vittorino have transmitted many details in
illustration of his method of teaching. He used to read the classic
authors aloud, prefixing biographical notices by way of introduction,
and explaining the matter, as well as the language of his text, as he
proceeded. Sometimes he made his pupils read, correcting their
pronunciation, and obliging them to mark the meaning by emphasis. He
relied much on learning by heart and repetition, as the surest means
of forming a good style. Gifted with a finer instinct for language
than the majority of his contemporaries, he was careful that his
pupils should distinguish between different types of literary
excellence, not confounding Cicero with Seneca or Virgil with Lucan,
but striving to appreciate the special qualities of each. With a view
to the acquisition of pure principles of taste, he confined them at
first to Virgil and Homer, Cicero and Demosthenes. These four authors
he regarded as the supreme masters of expression. Ovid was too
luxuriant, Juvenal too coarse, to serve as guides for tiros. Horace
and Persius among the satirists, Terence among the comic poets, might
be safely studied. In spite of Seneca's weight as a philosophic
essayist, Vittorino censured the affectations of his rhetoric; and
while he praised the beauty of the Latin elegists, he judged them
ill-suited for the training of the young. Criticism of this kind,
though it may sound to us obvious and superficial, was extremely rare
in the fifteenth century, when scholars were too apt to neglect
differences of style in ancient authors, and to ignore the ethics of
their works. The refinement which distinguished Vittorino, made him
prefer the graces of a chastened manner to the sounding phrases of
emphatic declamation. His pupils were taught to see that they had
something to say first, and then to say it with simplicity and
elegance.
This purity of taste was no mere matter of æsthetic sensibility with
Vittorino. Habits which brutalise the mind or debase the body, however
sanctioned by the usage of the times, met with little toleration in
his presence. Swearing, obscene language, vulgar joking, and angry
altercation were severely punished. Personal morality and the
observance of religious exercises he exacted from his pupils. Lying
was a heinous offence. Those who proved intractable upon these points
were excluded from his school. Of the rest Vespasiano writes with
emphasis that 'his house was a sanctuary of manners, deeds, and
words.'[293]
[Footnote 293: P. 492.]
Concerning the noble Italian youths who were educated with the Gonzaga
family at Mantua, enough has been said in another place.[294] Appended
to Rosmini's copious biography will be found, by those who are curious
to read such details, the notices of forty more or less distinguished
pupils.[295] Beside the two sons of Gian Francesco Gonzaga already
mentioned, Vittorino educated three other children of his
master--Gianlucido, Alessandro, and Cecilia.[296] Wholly dedicated to
the cares of teaching, and more anxious to survive in the good fame of
his scholars than to secure the immortality of literature, Vittorino
bequeathed no writings to posterity. He lived to a hale and hearty old
age; and when he died, in 1446, it was found that the illustrious
scholar, after enjoying for so many years the liberality of his
princely patron, had not accumulated enough money to pay for his own
funeral. Whatever he possessed, he spent in charity during his
lifetime, trusting to the kindness of his friends to bury him when
dead. Few lives of which there is any record in history, are so
perfectly praiseworthy as Vittorino's; few men have more nobly
realised the idea of living for the highest objects of their age; few
have succeeded in keeping themselves so wholly unspotted by the vices
of the world around them.
[Footnote 294: Vol. I., _Age of the Despots_, p. 138.]
[Footnote 295: Pp. 249-476.]
[Footnote 296: See Rosmini, p. 183, and Vespasiano, p. 493, for the
record of her virtues, her learning, and her refusal to wed the
infamous Oddo da Montefeltro.]
By the patronage extended to Vittorino da Feltre the Court of Mantua
took rank among the high schools of humanism in Italy. Ferrara won a
similar distinction through the liberality of the House of Este. What
has already been said about Milan applies, however, in a less degree
to Ferrara. The arts and letters, though they flourished with
exceeding brilliance beneath the patrons of Boiardo, Ariosto, and
Tasso, were but accessories to a splendid and voluptuous Court life.
Literature was little better than an exotic, cultivated for its rarity
and beauty by the princes of the Este family.
The golden age of culture at Ferrara began in 1402, when Niccolo III.
reopened the university. Twenty-seven years later Guarino da Verona
made it one of the five chief seats of Southern learning. The life of
this eminent scholar in many points resembles that of Filelfo, though
their characters were very different. Guarino was born of respectable
parents at Verona in 1370. He studied Latin in the school of Giovanni
da Ravenna, and while still a lad of eighteen travelled to
Constantinople at the cost of a noble Venetian, Paolo Zane, in order
to learn Greek. After a residence of five years in Greece he returned
to Venice, and began to lecture to crowded audiences.[297] Like all
the humanists, he seems to have preferred temporary to permanent
engagements--passing from Venice to Verona, from Trent to Padua, from
Bologna to Florence, and everywhere acquiring that substantial
reputation as a teacher to which he owed the invitation of Niccolo
d'Este in 1429. He was now a man of nearly sixty, master of the two
languages, and well acquainted with the method of instruction. The
Marquis of Ferrara engaged him as tutor to his illegitimate son
Lionello, heir apparent to his throne. For seven years Guarino devoted
himself wholly to the education of this youth, who passed for one of
the best scholars of his age. Granting that the reputation for
learning was lightly conferred on princes by their literary parasites,
it seems certain that Lionello derived more than a mere smattering in
culture from his tutor. Amid the pleasures of the chase, to which he
was passionately devoted, and the distractions of the gayest Court in
Italy, he found time to correspond on topics of scholarship with
Poggio, Filelfo, Decembrio, and Francesco Barbaro. His conversation
turned habitually upon the fashionable themes of antique ethics, and
his favourite companions were men of polite education. It is no wonder
that the humanists, who saw in him a future Augustus, deplored his
early death with unfeigned sorrow, though we, who can only judge him
by the general standard of his family, may be permitted to reserve our
opinion. The profile portrait of Lionello, now preserved in the
National Gallery, does not, at any rate, prepossess us very strongly
in his favour.
[Footnote 297: See his Life by Rosmini, p. 11, for his brilliant
reception at Venice.]
Guarino, like his friend Vittorino, was celebrated for the method of
his teaching and for the exact order of his discipline.[298] Students
flocked from all the cities of Italy to his lecture-room; for, as soon
as his tutorial engagements with the prince permitted, he received a
public appointment as professor of eloquence from the Ferrarese
Consiglio de' Savi. In this post he laboured for many years,
maintaining his reputation as a student and filling the universities
of Italy with his pupils. A sentence describing his manner of life in
extreme old age might be used to illustrate the enthusiasm which
sustained the vital energy of scholars in that generation:--'His
memory is marvellous, and his habit of reading is so indefatigable,
that he scarcely takes the time to eat, to sleep, or to go abroad; and
yet his limbs and senses have the vigour of youth.[299] Guarino was
one of the few humanists whose moral character won equal respect with
his learning. When he died at the age of ninety, the father of six
boys and seven girls by his wife Taddea Cendrata of Verona, it was
possible to say with truth that he had realised the ideal of a
temperate scholar's life. Yet this incomparable teacher of youth
undertook the defence of Beccadelli's obscene verses: this anchorite
of humanism penned virulent invectives with the worst of his
contemporaries.[300] Such contrasts were common enough in the
fifteenth century.
[Footnote 298: See the details collected by Rosmini, _Vita di
Guarino_, pp. 79-87.]
[Footnote 299: Timoteo Maffei, quoted by Tiraboschi, vol. vi. lib.
iii. cap. 5, 8.]
[Footnote 300: He carried on literary feuds with Niccolo de' Niccoli,
Poggio, Filelfo, and Georgios Trapezuntios.]
The name of Giovanni Aurispa must not be omitted in connection with
Ferrara. Born in 1369 at Noto in Sicily, he lived to a great age, and
died in 1459. He too travelled in early youth to Constantinople, and
returned, laden with MSS. and learning, to profess the humanities in
Italy. His life forms, therefore, a close parallel with that of both
Guarino and Filelfo. Aurispa, however, was gifted with a less
unresting temper than Filelfo; nor did he achieve the same
professorial success as Guarino. In his school at Ferrara he enjoyed
the calmer pleasures of a student's life, 'devoted,' as Filelfo
phrased it, 'to the placid Muses.'[301]
[Footnote 301: 'Placidis Aurispa Camoenis Deditus,' _Sat._, dec. i.
hec. 5. Valla, _Antid. in Pogium_, p. 7, describes him as 'virum
suavissimum et ab omni contentione remotissimum.']
To give an account of all the minor Courts, where humanism flourished
under the patronage of petty princes, would be tedious and
unprofitable. It is enough to notice that the universities, in this
age of indefatigable energy, kept forming scholars, eager to make
their way as secretaries and tutors, while the nobles competed for the
honour and the profit to be derived from the service of illustrious
wits and ready pens. The seeds of classic culture were thus sown in
every little city that could boast its castle. Carpi, for example, was
preparing the ground where Aldus and Musurus flourished. At Forli the
Ordelaffi, doomed to extinction at no distant period, gave protection
to Codrus Urceus.[302] Mirandola was growing fit to be the birthplace
of the mighty Pico. Alessandro and Costanzo Sforza were adorning their
lordship of Pesaro with a library that rivalled those of Rome and
Florence.[303] In the fortress of Rimini, Sigismondo Pandolfo
Malatesta conversed with men of learning whenever his intrigues and
his military duties gave him leisure. The desperate and godless
tyrant, whose passions bordered upon madness, and whose name was a
byeword for all the vices that disgrace humanity, curbed his temper
before petty witlings like Porcellio, and carved a record of his
burning love for learning on the temple raised to celebrate his fame
in Rimini. To the same passion for scholarship in his brother,
Malatesta Novello, the tiny burgh of Cesena owed the foundation of a
library, not only well supplied with books, but endowed with a yearly
income of 300 golden florins for its maintenance. The money spent on
scholarship at these minor Courts was gained, for the most part, in
military service--the wealth of Florentine and Venetian citizens, of
Milanese despots, and ambitious Popes flowing through the hands of
professional war-captains into the pockets of booksellers and
students. It consequently happened that the impulse given at this time
to learning in the lesser cities was but temporary. With the fall of
the Malatesti and the Sforza family, for instance, erudition died at
Rimini and Pesaro.
[Footnote 302: Cf. Tiraboschi, vi. lib. iii. cap. 5, 58.]
[Footnote 303: Vespasiano, pp. 113-117, gives an interesting account
of these lettered and warlike princes.]
This might have been the case at Urbino also, if the House of
Montefeltro had not succeeded, by wise conduct and prudent marriages,
in resisting the encroachments of the Church, and transmitting its
duchy to the Della Rovere family. As it was, Urbino retained for three
generations the stamp of culture and refinement impressed upon it by
the good Duke Frederick. Of his famous library, Vespasiano, who was
employed in its formation, has given us minute and interesting
details.[304] During more than fourteen years the Duke kept thirty or
forty copyists continually employed in transcribing Greek and Latin
MSS. Not only the classics in both languages, but the ecclesiastical
and mediæval authors, the Italian poets, and the works of contemporary
humanists found a place in his collection. The cost of the whole was
estimated at considerably over 30,000 ducats. Each volume was bound in
crimson, with silver clasps; the leaves were of vellum, exquisitely
adorned with miniatures; nor could you find a printed book in the
whole library, for the Duke would have been ashamed to own one.
Vespasiano's admiration for these delicately finished MSS. and the
contempt he expresses for the new art of printing are highly
characteristic.[305] Enough has been already said by me elsewhere
about Federigo da Montefeltro and his patronage of learning.[306] The
Queen's collection at Windsor contains a curious picture, attributed
to Melozza da Forli, of which I may be allowed to speak in this place,
since it possesses more than usual interest for the student of
humanism at the Italian Courts. In a large rectangular hall, lighted
from above by windows in a dome, the Duke of Urbino is seated, wearing
the robes and badges of the Garter, and resting his left hand on a
folio. His son Guidobaldo, a boy of about eleven years of age, or
little more, stands at the Duke's knee, dressed in yellow damask
trimmed with pearls. Behind them, on a raised bench with a desk before
it, sit three men, one attired in the red suit of a prelate, the
second in black ecclesiastical attire, and the third in secular
costume. At a door, opening on a passage, stand servants and lesser
courtiers. The whole company are listening attentively to a
grey-haired, black-robed humanist, seated in a sort of pulpit opposite
to the Duke and his son. A large book, bound in crimson, with silver
clasps is open on the desk before him; and by the movement of his
mouth it is clear that he is reading aloud passages from some
classical or ecclesiastical author, and explaining them for the
benefit of his illustrious audience. To identify the scholar and the
three men behind Federigo would not be impossible, if the exact date
of this curious work could be ascertained; for they are clearly
portraits. I like to fancy that in the layman we may perhaps recognise
the excellent Vespasiano. Such conjectures are, however, hazardous;
meanwhile the picture has intrinsic value as the unique
representation, so far as I know, of a scene of frequent occurrence in
the Courts of Italy, where listening to lectures formed a part of
every day's occupation.
[Footnote 304: See pp. 94-99.]
[Footnote 305: P. 99.]
[Footnote 306: Vol. I., _Age of the Despots_, pp. 136-142.]
This is the proper place to speak of Vespasiano da Bisticci, on whose
'Lives of Illustrious Men' I have had occasion to draw so copiously.
Peculiar interest attaches to him as the last of mediæval scribes, and
at the same time the first of modern booksellers.[307] Besides being
the agent of Cosimo de' Medici, Nicholas V., and Frederick of Urbino,
Vespasiano supplied the foreign markets, sending MSS. by order to
Hungary, Portugal, Germany, and England. The extent of his trade
rendered him the largest employer of copyists in Europe at the moment
when this industry was about to be superseded, and when scholars were
already inquiring for news about the art that saved expense and
shortened the labour of the student.[308] Vespasiano, who was born in
1421 at Florence, lived until 1498; so that after having helped to
form the three greatest collections of MSS. in Italy, he witnessed the
triumph of printing, and might have even handled the Musæus issued
from the Aldine Press in 1493. Vespasiano was no mere tradesman. His
knowledge of the books he sold was accurate; continual study enabled
him to overlook the copyists, and to vouch for the exactitude of their
transcripts.[309] At the same time his occupation brought him into
close intimacy with the chief scholars of the age, so that the new
culture reached him by conversation and familiar correspondence. As a
biographer Vespasiano possessed rare merit. Personally acquainted with
the men of whom he wrote, he drew their characters with praiseworthy
succinctness and simplicity. There is no panegyrical emphasis, no
calumnious innuendo, in his sketches. It may even be said that they
suffer from reservation of opinion and suppression of facts.
Vespasiano's hatred of vice and love of virtue were so genuine that,
in his eagerness to honour men of letters and their patrons, he
softened down harsh outlines and passed over all that is condemnable
in silence. He was less anxious to paint character in the style of
Tacitus or Guicciardini, than to relate what he knew about the
progress of learning in his age. The ethical intention in his work is
obvious. The qualities he loves to celebrate are piety, chastity,
generosity, devotion to the cause of liberal culture, and high-souled
patriotism. Of the vices that added a lurid lustre to the age in which
he lived, of the political rancours that divided the cities into
hostile parties, and of the imperfections in the characters of eminent
men, we hear nothing from Vespasiano. It is pleasant to conclude this
chapter with an expression of gratitude to a man so blameless in his
life, so charitable in his judgments, and so trustworthy in his record
of contemporary history.
[Footnote 307: In the register of his death he is described as
Vespasiano, Cartolaro.]
[Footnote 308: See Rosmini, _Vita di Filelfo_, vol. ii. p. 201. 'I
have made up my mind to buy some of those codices they are now making
without any trouble, and without the pen, but with certain so-called
types, and which seem to be the work of a skilled and exact scribe.
Tell me, then, at what price are sold the _Natural History_ of Pliny,
the three Decades of Livy, and Aulus Gellius.' Letter to Nicodemo
Tranchedino, sent from Siena to Rome, dated July 25, 1470.]
[Footnote 309: See this passage from a panegyric quoted by Angelo
Mai:--'Tu profecto in hoc nostro deteriori sæculo hebraicæ, græcæ
atque latinæ linguarum, omnium voluminum dignorum memoratu notitiam,
eorumque auctores memoriæ tradidisti.'--_Vite di Uomini Illustri_,
preface, p. xxiii.]