FOURTH PERIOD OF HUMANISM
Fall of the Humanists -- Scholarship permeates Society -- A
New Ideal of Life and Manners -- Latinisation of Names --
Classical Periphrases -- Latin Epics on Christian Themes --
Paganism -- The Court of Leo X. -- Honours of the Church
given to Scholars -- Ecclesiastical Men of the World --
Mæcenases at Rome -- Papal and Imperial Rome -- Moral
Corruption -- Social Refinement -- The Roman Academy --
Pietro Bembo -- His Life at Ferrara -- At Urbino -- Comes to
Rome -- Employed by Leo -- Retirement to Padua -- His
Dictatorship of Letters -- Jacopo Sadoleto -- A Graver
Genius than Bembo -- Paulus Jovius -- Latin Stylist -- His
Histories -- Baldassare Castiglione -- Life at Urbino and
Rome -- The Courtly Scholar -- His Diplomatic Missions --
Alberto Pio -- Gian Francesco Pico della Mirandola -- The
Vicissitudes of his Life -- Jerome Aleander -- Oriental
Studies -- The Library of the Vatican -- His Mission to
Germany -- Inghirami, Beroaldo, and Acciaiuoli -- The Roman
University -- John Lascaris -- Study of Antiquities --
Origin of the 'Corpus Inscriptionum' -- Topographical
Studies -- Formation of the Vatican Sculpture Gallery --
Discovery of the Laocoon -- Feeling for Statues in
Renaissance Italy -- Venetian Envoys in the Belvedere --
Raphael's Plan for excavating Ancient Rome -- His Letter to
Leo -- Effect of Antiquarian Researches on the Arts --
Intellectual Supremacy of Rome in this Period -- The Fall --
Adrian VI. -- The Sack of Rome -- Valeriano's Description of
the Sufferings of Scholars.
What is known as the Revival of Learning was accomplished before the
close of the fifteenth century, and about this time humanism began to
lose credit. The professional scholars who had domineered in Italy
during the last hundred years, were now regarded with suspicion as
pretentious sophists, or as empty-pated pedants. Their place was taken
by men of the world, refined courtiers, and polite stylists who
piqued themselves on general culture. This revolution in public
opinion was the result of various causes which I shall attempt to set
forth in another chapter. It is enough for my present purpose to
observe that the learning possessed at first by a few teachers,
acquired with effort, and communicated with condescension, had now
become the common property of cultivated men. In proportion as a
knowledge of the classic authors diffused itself over a wider area,
the mere reputation of sound scholarship ceased to form a valid title
to celebrity. It was necessary that the man of letters, educated by
antiquity, should give proof of his genius by some originality of
mind. The age of acquisition had ended; the age of application had
begun. To this result the revived interest in Italian literature
powerfully contributed. Writers were no longer, like Bruni and Poggio,
ashamed of their _cose volgari_. On the contrary, the most splendid
productions of the first half of the sixteenth century, the Histories
of Guicciardini and Machiavelli, the Epic of Ariosto, the 'Cortegiano'
of Castiglione, and the burlesque poems of Berni were penned in
powerful and delicate Italian. To what extent the influence of Lorenzo
de' Medici, who was always more partial to vernacular literature than
to scholarship, determined the change in question, is a matter for
opinion. That Florence led the way by her great writers of Italian
poetry and prose admits of no doubt.
At the same time the erudition of the fifteenth century had steeped
the whole Italian nation. Humanism penetrated every sphere of
intellectual activity, and gave a colour to all social customs. The
arts of painting and of sculpture felt its influence. A new style of
architecture, formed upon the model of Roman monuments, sprang up.
Science took a special bias from the classics, and philosophy was so
strongly permeated by antique doctrines that the Revival of Learning
may be justly said to have checked the spontaneity of the Italian
intellect. There was not enough time for students to absorb antiquity
and pass beyond it, before the mortmain of the Church and the Spaniard
was laid upon the fairest provinces of thought. To trace the course of
Italian philosophy, is, however, no part of my scheme in this volume.
The Aristotelian and Platonic controversies on the nature of the soul,
the materialism of Pietro Pomponazzo, the gradual emergence of
powerful thinkers like Bruno and Campanella, the theological
rationalism of Aonio Paleario, and the final suppression of free
thought by the Church, belong to the history of the Counter-Reformation.
To the same sad chapter of Italian history must be relegated the
labours of the earliest mathematicians, astronomers, and
cosmographers, who, poring over the texts of Ptolemy and Euclid,
anticipated Copernicus, impelled Columbus to his enterprise, and led
the way for Galileo. The infamy of having rendered science and
philosophy abortive in Italy, when its early show of blossom was so
promising, falls upon the Popes and princes of the last half of the
sixteenth century. The narrative of their emergence from the studies
of the humanists must form the prelude to a future work treating of
Farnesi and Caraffas, Inquisitors and Jesuits. Only by showing the
growth which might have been, can we demonstrate the atrophy that was.
It remains in this chapter to describe the fourth period of humanism,
when Italy, still permeated with the spirit of the classical revival,
laid down laws of social breeding for the nations of the North. Few
things are more difficult than to set forth without exaggeration, and
yet with sufficient force, the so-called Paganism of Renaissance
Italy. At first sight, and from certain points of view, it seems as
though the exclusive study of the classics had wrought a thorough
metamorphosis of morality and manners. When, on reflection, this
appearance is seen to be illusory, we incline, perhaps, to the
contrary conclusion that scholarship only set a kind of fashion
without taking deep hold even on the imagination of the people. A
more complete acquaintance with the period makes it clear that the
imitation of the ancients in thought, sentiment, and language was no
mere affectation, and that, however partial its influences may have
been, they were not superficial. In the first volume of this work I
tried to show to what extent the patriotism of tyrannicides and the
profligacy of courtiers were alike related to the prevailing study of
the ancient world. It was no small matter that the vices and the
virtues, the worldliness and the enthusiasm, of that many-featured
age, together with its supreme achievements in art, its ripest
productions in literature, should have gradually assumed a classic
form. The standards of moral and æsthetic taste were paganised, though
the nation at large remained unchanged in Catholicity. It was
precisely this discord between the professed religion of the people
and the heathenism of its ideal that inspired Savonarola with his
prophecy.
Classical style being the requirement of the age, it followed that
everything was sacrificed to this. In christening their children the
great families abandoned the saints of the calendar and chose names
from mythology. Ettorre, Achille, Atalanta, Pentesilea, Lucrezia,
Porzia, Alessandro, Annibale, Laomedonte, Fedro, Ippolito, and many
other antique titles became fashionable. Those who were able to do so
turned their baptismal names into Latin or Greek equivalents. Janus or
Jovianus passed for Giovanni, Pierius for Pietro, Aonius for Antonio,
Lucius Grassus for Luca Grasso; the German prelate John Goritz was
known as Corycius,[371] and the Roman professor Gianpaolo Parisio as
Janus Parrhasius. Writers who undertook to treat of modern or
religious themes, were driven by their zeal for purism to the
strangest expedients of language. God, in the Latin of the sixteenth
century, is _Jupiter Optimus Maximus_; Providence becomes _Fatum_; the
saints are _Divi_, and their statues _simulacra sancta Deorum_. Our
Lady of Loreto is changed into _Dea Lauretana_, Peter and Paul into
_Dii tutelares Romæ_, the souls of the just into _Manes pii_, and the
Pope's excommunication into _Diræ_. The Holy Father himself takes the
style of _Pontifex Maximus_; his tiara, by a wild confusion of ideas,
is described as _infula Romulea_. Nuns are Vestals, and cardinals
Augurs. For the festivals of the Church periphrases were found,
whereof the following may be cited as a fair specimen:[372] '_Verum
accidit ut eo ipso die, quo domum ejus accesseram, ipse piæ rei caussâ
septem sacrosancta Divûm pulvinaria supplicaturus inviserit; erant
enim lustrici dies, quos unoquoque anno quadragenos purificatione
consecravit nostra pietas._'
[Footnote 371:
Namque sub Oebaliæ memini me turribus altis
Qua niger humectat flaventia culta Galesus
_Corycium_ vidisse _senem_.--Virg. _Georg._ lib. iv. 125.]
[Footnote 372: From the exordium to Valeriano's treatise _De
Infelicitate Literatorum_.]
It need hardly be added that, when the obligations of Latinity had
reached this point, to read Cicero was of far more importance than to
study the Fathers of the Church. Bembo, it is well known, advised
Sadoleto to 'avoid the Epistles of S. Paul, lest his barbarous style
should spoil your taste: _Omitte has nugas, non enim decent gravem
virum tales ineptiæ_.' The extent, however, to which formal purism in
Latinity was carried, may be best observed in the 'Christiad' of Vida,
and the poem 'De Partu Virginis' of Sannazzaro.[373] Sannazzaro not
only invokes the muses of Helicon to sing the birth of Christ, but he
also makes Proteus prophesy his advent to the river-god of Jordan. The
archangel discovers Mary--described by the poet as _spes fida
Deorum_--intent on reading nothing less humanistic than the Sibyls;
and after she has received his message, the spirits of the patriarchs
are said to shout because they will escape from Tartarus and Acheron
and the hideous baying of the triple-throated hound.
[Footnote 373: Lilius Gyraldus, in his dialogue 'De Poetis Nostri
Temporis,' _Opp._ vol. ii. p. 384, mentions a critic who was so stupid
as to _desiderare in Pontano et si deis placet in Sanazario
Christianam elocutionem, hoc est barbaram_!]
It might be reasonably urged against Milton that in the 'Paradise
Regained' he somewhat impairs the religious grandeur of his subject by
investing it with the forms of the classical epic. If he has erred in
this direction, it is as nothing compared with the pseudo-Pagan
travesty of Vida. God the Father in the 'Christiad' is spoken of as
_Superum Pater nimbipotens_ and _Regnator Olympi_--titles which had
their real significance in Latin mythology, being transferred with
frigid formalism to a Deity whose essence is spiritual, and whose cult
has no admixture of nature worship. Jesus is invariably described as
_Heros_; this absurdity reaches its climax in the following phrase
about the bad thief on the cross:--
Ipse etiam verbis morientem heroa superbis
Stringebat.
The machinery whereby the Jews are brought to will the death of Christ
is no less ridiculous. Instead of attempting to set religious or
ethical motives into play, Vida introduces a gang of Gorgons, Harpies,
Centaurs, Hydras, and the like. The bread of the Last Supper appears
under the disguise of _sinceram Cererem_. The wine mingled with gall,
offered to our Lord upon the cross, is _corrupti pocula Bacchi_. The
only excuse for these grotesque compromises between the Biblical
subject-matter and its mythological expression is, that in any other
way it would have been impossible to give the form of pure Latinity to
the verse. The poet failed to comprehend that he was producing a
masterpiece of _barocco_ mannerism, spoiling at once the style he
sought to use and the theme he undertook to illustrate. It was enough
for him to fit the Roman toga to his saints and Pharisees, and to
tickle the taste of a learned audience by allusions that reminded them
of Virgil. The same bathos was reached by Bembo when he invented the
paraphrase of 'heavenly zephyr' for the Holy Ghost, and described the
Venetian Council bidding a Pope _uti fidat diis immortalibus, quorum
vices in terrâ gerit_. It is not the profanity of these phrases so
much as their æsthetic emptiness, the discord between the meaning
intended to be conveyed and the literary form, that strikes a modern
critic.
When the same poets break out into honest Paganism, in the frank
verses written by Bembo for Priapus, in Beccadelli's epigrams, or in
the elegies of Acon and Iolas, we feel that they are more artistically
justified. The following lines, for instance, from Vida's 'Poetics,'
have a true ring and beauty of their own. He is addressing Virgil as a
saint:--
Te colimus, tibi serta damus, tibi thura, tibi aras,
Et tibi rite sacrum semper dicemus honorem.
Or again--
Nos aspice præsens,
Pectoribusque tuos castis infunde calores
Adveniens pater, atque animis te te insere nostris.
There is no confusion here between the feeling and the language chosen
to express it. The sentiment, if somewhat artificial and unreal, is at
least adequate to the form.
I have entered at some length into the illustration of puristic
Latinisms, because they seem to represent the culminating point of
classic studies, in so far as these affected taste in general, and
also because they are specially characteristic of the period of which
I have now to treat. It was at Rome, among the great ecclesiastics,
that these Pagan fashions principally flourished. Eminence of all
kinds found a home with Leo X., assuming the purple of the prelate and
the scarlet of the cardinal at his indulgent hands. The genius of the
Renaissance seemed to have followed this first Medicean Pope from
Florence. Though Leo was a man of merely pleasure-loving and receptive
temperament, who left no lasting impress on his age, he knew at least
how to appreciate ability, and found the height of his enjoyment in
the arts and letters he enthusiastically patronised. This sybarite of
intellectual and sensual luxury gave his name to what is called the
golden age of Italian literature, chiefly because he attracted the
best wits to Rome and received the flatteries of men whose work
survived them.
History presents few spectacles more striking than that of Rome in the
pontificate of Leo. While the Papacy has become a secular sovereignty,
learning and arts have assumed the sacerdotal habit, and the boldest
immoralities of a society comparable to that of the ancient Empire
flourish in the petty Courts of ecclesiastical princes. The capital of
Christendom is full of priests; but the priests are men of pleasure
and the world--elegant Latinists and florid rhetoricians, raised to
posts of eminence by reason of their brilliant gifts. We have seen
already how the humanists made their way into the Roman Curia as
writers and abbreviators, and how liberally Nicholas V. rewarded
learning. Yet, however indispensable the scholars of the fifteenth
century became, they rarely rose above the rank of Apostolic
secretaries; while few of the professional humanists cared to take
orders in the Church. They were satisfied with official emoluments and
semi-secular benefices. All this was now altered. The most
distinguished men of letters made the Church their profession.
Sadoleto, Bembo, and Aleander, who began their career under Leo,
received the hats of cardinals from Paul III. Paulus Jovius was
consecrated Bishop of Nocera by Clement VII., and retired to Como in
disgust because he failed to get the scarlet in 1549. Marcus Musurus,
created Bishop of Malvasia, is said to have died of disappointment
when he saw the same dignity beyond his reach. Vida, the Latin poet,
obtained the see of Alba in Piedmont, and Giberti, the accomplished
stylist, that of Verona, from Clement VII. All these men had made
their mark at Leo's Court, who set the example, followed by his
Medicean successor, of rewarding mundane talents and accomplishments
with ecclesiastical distinctions. The question, seriously entertained,
of admitting Raphael to the Sacred College proves to what extent the
highest honours of the Church had come to be esteemed as prizes, and
justifies to some extent Pietro Aretino's arrogant offer to sell his
services to the Papacy in exchange for a cardinal's hat.
The biographies of these favourites of fortune offer strong points of
similarity. Whether born of noble families, like Bembo, or raised from
comparative obscurity, like Bibbiena, they early in life attached
themselves to some distinguished prince,[374] or entered the service
of a great ecclesiastic. Their literary talents, social
accomplishments, successes with women, and diplomatic service at the
centres of Italian politics brought them still further into notice.
Thus Sadoleto's Latin poem on the Laocoon, Bibbiena's 'Calandra,'
Inghirami's acting of the part of Phædra in Seneca's 'Hippolytus,' and
Bembo's friendship with Lucrezia Borgia might be cited as
turning-points in the early history of these illustrious prelates.
Having thus acquired position by their personal gifts, they travelled
to Rome in the suite of their respective patrons, and obtained office
at the hands of Leo. Sadoleto and Bembo became his secretaries.
Inghirami superintended the Vatican Library.[375] Bibbiena's versatile
abilities were divided between the duties of State minister and master
of the revels. As they had built their fortunes by the help of eminent
protectors, they now in their turn took the rank of patrons. In
addition to the Vatican, Rome displayed a multitude of petty Courts
and minor circles. Each cardinal and each ambassador held a
jurisdiction independent of the Pope, and not unfrequently in
opposition to the ruling power. To found academies, to gather clever
men around them, and to play the part of Mæcenas was the ambition of
these subordinate princes. During the pontificate of Leo the Cardinals
Riario, Giulio de' Medici, Bibbiena, Petrucci, Farnese, Alidosi, and
Gonzaga, not to mention others, entertained their own following of
flatterers and poets, who danced attendance at their levees,
accompanied them in public, and earned a meagre pittance by
compliments and dedications. Some of these priestly patrons affected
the arts, others the sciences; others again, and these the majority,
bestowed their favours upon literature. Ippolito de' Medici is said to
have maintained a retinue of three hundred poets, among whom are
mentioned the elegant Molza and the learned Valeriano. The fashion
thus set by Leo and the Sacred College was followed by all the eminent
men in Rome. The banker Agostino Chigi made himself a name not only by
his patronage of painters, but also by the private Greek press founded
in his house.[376] Baldassare Turini devoted himself to the arts of
building and of decoration. Baldassare Castiglione, as ambassador from
Mantua and Ferrara, and Alberto Pio, as prince of Carpi and ambassador
from France, dispensed the hospitality of their palaces to scholars,
among whom they held no inconsiderable rank on their own merits.
[Footnote 374: See Vol. I., _Age of the Despots_, p. 145.]
[Footnote 375: He held this post under Julius II.]
[Footnote 376: The first Greek book printed in Rome, an edition of
Pindar by Cornelius Benignius, 1515, issued from Chigi's press under
the superintendence of Zacharias Kalliergos of Crete. Concerning this
printer see Didot, _Alde Manuce_, pp. 544-578.]
Libraries, collections of statues and of pictures, frescoes painted
from mythological subjects, garden-houses planned upon the antique
model, Latin inscriptions, busts of the emperors, baths and banquet
chambers decorated in the manner of the Roman ruins--on such objects
the wealth of the Church was being prodigally spent. Posterity has
reason to deplore the non-appearance of a satirist in this Papal
society, so curiously similar to that of Imperial Rome. Horace would,
indeed, have found ample materials for humorous delineation, whether
he had chosen to deride the needy clients leaving their lodgings
before daybreak to crowd a prelate's antechamber, or the parasites on
whom coarse practical jokes were played in the Pope's presence, or the
flatterers who praised their master's mock virtues in hour-long
declamations. Fouler vices than vanity, hypocrisy, and servility
supplied fit subjects for invectives no less fiery than the second and
the sixth of Juvenal. At Rome virtuous women had no place; but Phryne
lived again in the person of Imperia, and dignitaries of the Church
thought it no shame to parade their preference for Giton.[377] In the
absence of a Horace or a Juvenal, we have to content ourselves with
Bandello and other novelists, and with one precious epistle of Ariosto
describing the difficulty of conducting business at the Papal Court
except by way of backstairs influence and antechamber intrigue.
[Footnote 377: The epitaph of Bella Imperia proves that the title of
Hetæra was thought honourable: 'Imperia, Cortisana Romana, quæ digna
tanto nomine, raræ inter homines formæ specimen dedit. Vixit a. xxvi.
d. xii. Obiit MDXI., die XV. Aug.' Berni's _Capitolo sopra un Garzone_
may be referred to for the second half of the sentence.]
To over-estimate the moral corruption of Rome at the beginning of the
sixteenth century is almost impossible. To over-rate the real value of
a literature that culminated in the subtleties of rhetoric and style
is easy. Nor is it difficult to mistake, as many critics have done,
the sunset of the fine arts for their meridian splendour. Yet, while
we recognise the enervation of society in worse than heathen vices,
and justly regard Rome as the hostelry of alien arts and letters
rather than the mother city of great men, we cannot blind our eyes to
the varied lights and colours of that Court, unique in modern history.
The culture toward which Italian society had long been tending, was
here completed. The stamp of universality had been given to the fine
arts and to literature by the only potentate who at that moment
claimed allegiance from united Christendom. As the eloquent historian
of the town of Rome observes, 'the richest intellectual life here
blossomed in a swamp of vices.' It was not the life of great poetry:
that had perished long ago with Dante. It was not the life of genuine
science: that was destined to be born with Galileo. It was not the
life of comprehensive scholarship: that slept in the grave of
Poliziano. It was not even the life of progressive art; for Raphael
died in this age, and though Michael Angelo survived it, his genius
had no successors. But it was the life of culture, rendering the
rudest and most vicious sensitive to softening influences, and
preparing for more powerful nations the possibilities of great
achievements.
Amid political debility and moral corruption an ideal of refinement,
adopted from antiquity, and assimilated to modern modes of living, had
been formed. This was the most perfect bloom of the Renaissance,
destined to survive the decay of humanism, and to be for subsequent
civilisation what chivalry was for the Middle Ages. Through the
continued effort of patricians and of scholars to acquire the tone of
classic culture, something like antique urbanity had reappeared at
Florence and in Rome; while several general tions [Transcriber's Note:
likely 'generations'] devoted to polite studies had produced a race
distinguished above all things for its intellectual delicacy. The
effect of this æsthetic atmosphere upon visitors from the North was
singularly varied. Luther, who came to see the City of the Saints,
found in Rome the sink of all abominations, the very lair of
Antichrist. The _comitas_ and the _facetiæ_ of the prelates were to
him the object of unmitigated loathing. Erasmus, on the contrary,
wrote from London that nothing but Lethe could efface his memory of
that radiant city--its freedom of discourse, its light, its libraries,
its honeyed converse of most learned scholars, its large style of
life, and all those works of art that made of Rome the theatre of
nations. The Italians themselves, lessoned by the tragedy of 1527,
looked back with no less mingled feelings upon Leo's Rome. La Casa
mentions the _nimia humanitatis suavitas_--the excess of sweetness in
all that makes society humane--as a characteristic of the past age.
That excessive sweetness of civility, the final product of the arts
and scholarship of Italy, when diffused through Europe and tempered to
the taste of sterner nationalities, became the politeness of France
under Louis XIV., the _bel air_ of Queen Anne's courtiers.
The Roman Academy still continued to be active, meeting at the palaces
of more than one great prelate. The gardens of Angelo Colocci, Leo's
secretary, a friend of John Lascaris, and himself no inconsiderable
stylist, formed its headquarters. Sometimes the poet Blosius Palladius
received the associates in his villa by the Tiber; sometimes they
enjoyed the hospitality of Egidius Canisius, General of the Augustine
Order; at one time they sought the house of Sadoleto on the Quirinal;
at another they feasted in the vineyard of John Goritz, the Corycius
Senex. The festivals of this learned society, to judge by the
descriptions of its members, were distinguished by antique simplicity
and good taste, contrasting powerfully with the banquets of mere
mundane prelates.[378] When Agostino Chigi entertained the
Academicians in the Villa Farnesina, he chastened his magnificence to
suit the spirit of their founder, Lætus, and omitted those displays
of vulgar pomp that marked his wedding banquet.[379]
[Footnote 378: See Tiraboschi, vii. 1, lib. i. c. 2.]
[Footnote 379: See Vol. I., _Age of the Despots_, p. 342.]
The muster-roll of the Academy brings the most eminent wits of Rome
before us. First and foremost stands Pietro Bembo, the man of letters,
who, like Petrarch, Poggio, and Poliziano, may be chosen as the
fullest representative of his own age of culture. His father, Bernardo
Bembo, was a Venetian of noble birth and education. To his generous
enthusiasm for Italian literature Ravenna owes the tomb of Dante.
Pietro was born at Florence in 1470, and received his early education
in that city. Therefore the Tuscans claim his much-praised purity of
diction for their gift. He afterwards studied Greek at Messina under
Constantine Lascaris, and learned philosophy from Pomponazzo at Padua.
When his master's treatise on the 'Immortality of the Soul' was
condemned by the Lateran Council, Bembo used his influence
successfully in his behalf. Though he denied the demonstrability of
the doctrine, and maintained that Aristotle gave it no support,
Pomponazzo was only censured, instead of being burned like Bruno. This
good fortune was due, however, less to his pupil's advocacy than to
the nonchalance of Leo. Having completed his academical studies in
1498, Bembo joined his father at the brilliant Court of the Estensi.
When Lucrezia Borgia entered Ferrara in 1502 she was still in the
zenith of her beauty. Her father, Alexander, grew daily more powerful
in Rome; while her brother held the central States of Italy within his
grasp. The greatness of the Borgias reflected honour on the bride of
Alfonso d'Este; and though the princes of Ferrara at first received
her with reluctance, they were soon won over by her grace. Between the
princess and the courtly scholar a friendship speedily sprang up,
which strengthened with years and was maintained by correspondence at
a distance. To Lucrezia Bembo dedicated 'Gli Asolani,' a dialogue in
the Italian tongue upon Platonic love,[380] by far the freest and most
genial of his writings. The collection of his Latin poems contains an
epigram upon a golden serpent clasped above her wrist, and an elegy in
which he praises her singing, dancing, playing, and recitation:--
Quicquid agis, quicquid loqueris, delectat: et omnes
Præcedunt Charites, subsequiturque decor.
[Footnote 380: Written 1504. First printed by Aldo, 1505.]
This liaison, famous in the annals of Italian literature, gave Bembo a
distinguished place in the great world. A touching memento of
it--Lucrezia's letters and a tress of her long yellow hair--is still
preserved at Milan in the Ambrosian Library.
From Ferrara Bembo passed to Urbino in 1506, where Guidobaldo da
Montefeltre had gathered round him the brilliant group described in
the 'Cortegiano.' The climax of that treatise, our most precious
source of information on Court life in Italy, makes it clear that
Bembo played the first part in a circle distinguished above all others
at that time for refinement and wit. Many cities might boast of a
larger and more splendid concourse of noble visitors; but none
competed with Urbino for the polish of its manners and the breeding of
its courtiers. In his dialogue in praise of Guidobaldo, Bembo paid a
magnificent tribute to the prince from whose society he learned so
much, and in whose service he remained till the Duke's death.[381]
Giuliano de' Medici, with whom he lived on terms of intimacy at
Urbino, took him to Rome in 1512. The reign of Leo was about to shed
new lustre on the Medicean exiles. His victorious exclamation to his
brother,'_Godiamoci il Papato poichè Dio ce l'ha dato_,' had a ring of
promise in it for their numerous friends and clients. Even without
the recommendation of Giuliano, it is not likely that Leo would have
overlooked a man so wholly after his own heart as Bembo. The qualities
he most admired--smooth manners, a handsome person, wit in
conversation, and thorough mastery of Latin style, without pretension
to deep learning or much earnestness of purpose--were incarnate in the
courtly Venetian. Bembo was precisely the man to make Leo's life
agreeable by flattering his superficial tastes and subordinating the
faculties of a highly cultivated mind to frivolous, if intellectual,
amusements. The churchman who warned Sadoleto against spoiling his
style by study of the Bible, the prosaist who passed his compositions
through sixteen portfolios, revising them at each remove, the
versifier who penned a hymn to S. Stephen and a monologue for Priapus
with equal elegance, was cast in the same mould as the pleasure-loving
Pontiff. For eight years he lived at Rome, honoured by the Medici and
loved by all who knew him. His duties as secretary to Leo, shared by
his old friend and fellow-student Sadoleto, were not onerous; while
the society of the capital afforded opportunity for the display of his
most brilliant gifts. In 1520, wearied by nearly thirty years of
continual Court life, and broken down in health by severe sickness,
Bembo retired to Padua. The collection of a library and museum,
horticulture, correspondence, and the cultivation of his studied
Ciceronian style now occupied his leisure through nineteen most
disastrous years for Italy. The learned courtiers of that age liked
thus to play the Roman in their villas, quoting Horace and Virgil on
the charms of rustic life, and fancying they caught the spirit of
Cincinnatus while they strolled about the farm. Bembo's Paduan retreat
became the rendezvous of all the ablest men in Italy, the centre of a
fluctuating society of highest culture. Paul III. recalled him to
Rome, and made him cardinal in 1539. When he died in 1547 he was
buried not far from Leo in the Church of the Minerva. A fair slab of
marble marks his grave.
[Footnote 381: 'De Guido Ubaldo Feretrio deque Elisabetha Gonzaga
Urbini Ducibus.']
Bembo succeeded Poliziano in the dictatorship of Italian letters. Like
Poliziano, he was both a scholar and a writer of Italian; but he was
far from possessing the comprehensive understanding or the genius of
his predecessor. Of all the 'apes of Cicero' scoffed at by Erasmus, he
stood first and foremost. His exclusive devotion to one favourite
author made his Latin stiff and mannered. Tuscan critics again have
complained that his Italian style lacks nerve and idiom. He wrote like
an alien, not one to the manner born. In his dread of not writing
correctly, he ended by expressing tame thoughts with frigid formality.
Even a foreigner can see that he used Italian, as he used Latin,
without yielding to natural impulse, and with the constant effort to
attain a fixed ideal. The mark of the file may be observed on every
period. Raciness and spontaneity are words that have no meaning when
applied to him. The decadence of Italian prose composition into
laboured mannerism and meticulous propriety should be traced in a
great measure to his influence. Yet Bembo deserves credit for having
braved the opinion of the learned by his cultivation of the vulgar
tongue; and on this point some verses from a Latin poem to Ercole
Strozzi deserve quotation in a note.[382]
[Footnote 382:
Nam pol quâ proavusque avusque linguâ
Sunt olim meus et tuus loquuti,
Nostræ quâque loquuntur et sorores
Et matertera nunc et ipsa mater,
Nos nescire loqui magis pudendum est,
Qui Graiæ damus et damus Latinæ
Studi tempora duplicemque curam,
Quam Graiâ simul et simul Latinâ.
Hac uti ut valeas tibi videndum est,
Ne dum marmoreas remotâ in orâ
Sumtu construis et labore villas,
Domi te calamo tegas palustri.
_Carmina Quinque Illustrium Poetarum_, p. 25.]
Jacopo Sadoleto's career was not dissimilar to that of his friend
Bembo, though the two men offer many points of difference in character
and turn of mind. Born at Modena in 1477, he studied Latin at Ferrara,
and Greek at Rome, where he settled in the reign of Alexander VI. His
copy of hexameters on the newly-discovered statue of Laocoon made him
famous. Frigid and laboured as these verses may appear to us, who read
them like a prize exercise, they had the merit of originality when
first produced. Leo made the poet his secretary and Bishop of
Carpentras. Sadoleto passed a good portion of his life in the duties
of his see, composing moral treatises, annotating the Psalms, and
publishing a 'Commentary on the Epistle to the Romans.'[383] Though
strongly tinctured with Ciceronian purism, his taste was more austere
than Bembo's. Nature had given him an intellect adapted to grave
studies, sincerity of purpose, and true piety. Living in the dawn of
the Reformation, Sadoleto was deeply conscious of the perils of the
Church; nor did he escape the suspicion of sharing the new
heresy.[384] His celebrated letter to Clement VII., after the sack of
Rome in 1527, shows that he viewed this disaster as a punishment
inflicted on the godless capital of Christendom. In 1536 Paul III.
recalled him to Rome, and made him cardinal. He died in 1547, and was
buried in S. Pietro in Vincoli. Sadoleto's correspondence may be
reckoned among the most valuable materials for the literary annals of
this period.
[Footnote 383: His most famous essays bore these titles: _De Liberis
Instituendis_ and _De Laudibus Philosophiæ_.]
[Footnote 384: His _Commentary on the Romans_ was placed upon the
Index.]
Next to Sadoleto a place must be found for the grave and studious
Egidio Canisio. He was born at Viterbo in 1470, and was therefore an
exact contemporary of Bembo. His powers of Latin oratory gained him
the fame of a great speaker, and the address with which he opened the
Lateran Council in 1512 was committed to the press in that year.
Egidius was already General of the Augustine Order. Five years later
he received the red hat of a cardinal, and in 1518 he represented the
Holy See as Legate at the Court of Spain. He died in 1532, leaving a
vast mass of miscellaneous works on theology, philosophy, Biblical
criticism, and universal history. Few of these have been printed. It
is said that, besides Greek and Latin, he was a master of Hebrew and
Chaldee, Turkish, Persian, and Arabic.
A more brilliant figure is presented by the witty but unscrupulous
historian Paulus Jovius. He was born at Como in 1483, and came at the
age of thirty-three to Rome, with the beginning of his comprehensive
History already written.[385] Leo, who delighted in listening to
recitations of new literary works, declared that nothing had been
penned more perfect since the days of Livy. This high praise induced
Jovius to fix his residence at Rome, where Clement VII. made him
Bishop of Nocera in 1528. After spending twenty-one years in the
expectation, continually frustrated, of being received in the Sacred
College, he retired to Como, and died at Florence in 1552. Jovius was
the cleverest of all the Latinists produced by the Italians. His style
is fluent, sparkling with anecdote, highly picturesque in its
descriptive passages, and adorned by characteristic details. In
addition to the histories, he produced a series of biographies of
great and varied value, some of which are libels, others panegyrics,
while all are marked by acute observation and mastery of the matter in
hand. He was wont to say that he could use a golden or a silver pen at
will: the golden was exercised upon the Life of Leo; the silver,
dipped in ironic gall, upon the Life of Hadrian. The sketches of
eminent men, known by the name of 'Elogia,' were composed in
illustration of a picture gallery of portraits collected in his villa.
They include not only Italians, but Greeks, Germans, French and
English worthies, dead and living notabilities of every kind.[386] If
Brantôme had chosen Latin instead of French, he would have made a book
not altogether unlike this of Jovius. The versatility of the author
was further illustrated by a Latin treatise on Roman fishes, and by an
Italian essay on mottoes and devices.[387]
[Footnote 385: Like the History of Guicciardini, it opens with the
year 1494. It is carried down to 1547. A portion of the first decade
was lost in the sack of Rome, and never rewritten by the author.
Printed at Florence, 1550.]
[Footnote 386: _Elogia Virorum literis illustrium, quotquot vel
nostrâ, vel avorum memoriâ vixere_, and _Elogia Virorum bellicâ
virtute illustrium_, Basel, 1557.]
[Footnote 387: _De Piscibus Romanis_, Rome, 1524. _Ragionamento sopra
i Motti e Disegni d'Arme e d'Amore._]
Among the celebrities of the Roman Academy a place apart must be
reserved for Baldassare Castiglione; for though his biography belongs
to the political even more than to the literary annals of the period,
few men represent the age of Leo in its culture with more dignity and
grace combined. He was born in 1478 at Casatico, in the Duchy of
Mantua; his father's family held the county of Castiglione, and his
mother was a Gonzaga. In his youth he received an education framed
upon the system set in vogue by Vittorino and Guarino, and became the
living illustration of those varied accomplishments which he described
in the 'Cortegiano.' His scholarship was sound and elegant; as a
writer of Latin verse he distinguished himself among the best men of
his generation. Sensitive to the beauty of the arts, he proved an
excellent critic of modern painting and of antique sculpture, and
assisted Raphael in the composition of his famous letter to Leo on the
exploration of old Rome. At the same time he did not neglect the
athletic exercises which formed an indispensable branch of an Italian
nobleman's training. Cultivated at all points, he early devoted his
abilities to the service of princes; for at this period in Italy
there was no sphere for such a character outside the Courts. After
spending some time at Milan and Naples, Castiglione removed to Rome,
where Julius II. discerned the use that might be made of him in
furthering the interests of his nephew Francesco Maria della Rovere.
Federigo da Montefeltre, Duke of Urbino, had died in 1482, leaving his
son Guidobaldo in possession of his fiefs and titles; but it was known
that this prince could have no heirs. In him the male line of the
Montefeltri ended. His sister Giovanna had been married to Giovanni
della Rovere, a brother of the Pope, and Julius hoped that their son
Francesco Maria might be declared successor to the Duchy of Urbino.
Castiglione therefore attached himself to the person of Guidobaldo,
with the special purpose of making himself necessary to the princes of
Urbino and furthering the claims of Francesco, then a boy of about
fifteen. Of his residence at Urbino, and of the polished splendour of
Guidobaldo's Court, he has left an ever-memorable record in his
'Cortegiano,' that mirror of gentle breeding for the sixteenth century
in Europe. Guidobaldo received the Count of Castiglione with marked
favour, made him captain of fifty men at arms, and employed him in
several offices of trust. Not the least important of these was the
mission to England, undertaken in 1506 by Castiglione as Guidobaldo's
proxy for receiving from Henry VII. the investiture of the Garter.
After the death of Guidobaldo, Francesco Maria della Rovere was
proclaimed Duke of Urbino, and Castiglione continued to enjoy his
confidence until the year 1517, when Leo succeeded in placing his
nephew Lorenzo de' Medici upon the Ducal throne.
Castiglione was now deprived of what had become the necessity of his
life, a post of honour in the Court of a reigning sovereign. He
therefore transferred his allegiance to his natural lord, the Marquis
of Mantua, who appointed him ambassador at Rome. The first and most
brilliant period of the courtier's life was passed at Urbino; the
second, less fruitful in literary achievements, embraced his residence
among the wits of Leo's circle. At Rome Castiglione adapted himself to
the customs of the papal society, penning Latin elegiacs, consorting
with artists, and exercising the pleasant patronage of a refined
Mæcenas. His friendship with Raphael is not the least interesting
episode in this chapter of his biography. Substantial records of it
still remain in the epitaph composed by the courtly scholar on the
painter, and in Castiglione's portrait now preserved in the Louvre
collection. That picture represents the very model of an Italian
nobleman as culture and Court life had made him--tranquil, with grave
open eyes, and a mouth as well suited for urbane discourse as gentle
merriment. The owner of this face was not born to lead armies or to
control unruly multitudes, but to pass his time in the _loggie_ of
princes--self-contained and qualified to win favour without the
sacrifice of personal dignity. It forms a strong contrast to earlier
and later portraits--to that of Sigismondo Pandolfo Malatesta, for
example, and to the Spanish grandees of the next century. Castiglione
was still in Rome during the pontificate of Clement VII., who,
recognizing his great ability as a diplomatist, sent him to Charles V.
At Madrid the Pope's nuncio was unable to avert the disaster of 1527,
and Castiglione had the bitter mortification of hearing at a distance
how the Rome he knew and loved so well, had been ravaged by the
brigands of Germany and Spain. It is clear, however, from the
diplomatic correspondence of that memorable moment, and from the
letter addressed by Clement to Castiglione's mother in 1529, that he
never lost the confidence of his master; in spite of his failure to
negotiate between them, he was respected alike by the Pope and the
Emperor. He died at Toledo two years after the sack of Rome, worn out,
it is said, by disappointment and regret. Not only in his book of the
'Courtier,' but also in his life, Castiglione illustrated the best
qualities of an Italian gentleman, moulded by the political and social
conditions of the sixteenth century into a refined scholar and a
courtly diplomatist.
Of Alberto Pio, whose life in some respects may be compared with
Castiglione's, I have had occasion to speak in the last chapter. His
first cousin, Gian Francesco Pico della Mirandola, demands more than
passing notice. By no prince of that troubled period were the cruel
vicissitudes of Italian politics more painfully experienced. Few of
the scholars could boast of wider learning and a nobler spirit. He was
born in 1470, and succeeded his father, Galeotto, in the lordship of
Mirandola. In 1502 his brother Lodovico expelled him from his capital.
Julius II. restored him. After being dispossessed a second time by
Trivulzi, general of the French forces, he was once more reinstated,
but only for a brief period. His nephew, Galeazzo, murdered him in
1533 before the crucifix, together with his heir, Alberto. In the
intervals of his unquiet and unhappy life, Gian Francesco Pico devoted
himself to studies not unlike those of his more famous uncle.[388]
Early in his youth he had conceived the strongest admiration for
Savonarola; and the work by which he is best known to posterity is a
Life of his great master. Savonarola's principles continued to rule
his thought and conduct through life. During the pontificate of Leo he
composed a long address to the Lateran Council upon the reformation of
the Church,[389] and dared to entertain the friendship of Reuchlin and
Willibad Pirkheimer. His residence in Rome, and the dedication of his
treatise on 'Divine Love' to Leo, justify our ranking him with the
Roman scholars.
[Footnote 388: The titles of his philosophical works--_De Studio
divinæ et humanæ philosophiæ_, _De amore Divino_, _Examen vanitatis
doctrinæ gentium et veritatis Christianæ disciplinæ_, _De rerum
prænotione_--show how closely he followed in the footsteps of Giovanni
Pico.]
[Footnote 389: _Joannis Francisci Pici Mirandolæ et Concordiæ Comitis
Oratio ad Leon X. et Concilium Lateranense de reformandis Ecclesiæ
moribus._]
If Gian Francesco Pico and Sadoleto bring us close upon the threshold
of the German Reformation, we cross it in the company of Aleander.
Jerome Aleander was born at Motta, in the Marches of Treviso, in the
year 1480. His studies, more comprehensive than those of the stylists,
included theology, philosophy, and science, together with the Oriental
languages, in addition to the indispensable Greek and Latin culture.
Before he reached the age of thirty he travelled to Paris, and
professed Hebrew and the humanities at the University. French
scholarship may be said to date from the impulse given to these
subjects by Aleander, who rose to such fame that he was made Rector of
the University. After leaving Paris, he spent some time in Germany,
and came first to Rome in 1516 in the train of Erard van der Mark,
Bishop of Lüttich. Here Leo appointed him librarian of the Vatican.
The rest of Aleander's life was spent in the service of the Church.
Despatched as _nuntius_ to Germany by Leo in 1520, he vainly
attempted, as all students of the Reformation know, to quench the fire
of Luther's kindling. When he returned to Italy, Clement VII. gave him
the archbishopric of Brindisi, and Paul III. raised him to the scarlet
in 1538. He died in 1542, leaving in France the memory of his
unrivalled learning, in Germany the fame of an intolerant persecutor,
in Italy the reputation of a stanch though unsuccessful champion of
the Church.
Aleander's three predecessors in the Vatican Library--Tommaso
Inghirami of Siena, Filippo Beroaldo of Bologna, and Zanobio
Acciaiuoli of Florence--made their mark in Roman society by erudition
rather than by authorship.[390] Inghirami's eloquence won the
admiration of contemporaries, who called him the second Cicero; as a
writer he had no celebrity.[391] A fortunate find of MSS. at Bobbio
earned for him the post of Vatican librarian. Leo, like all the
members of the Medicean family, was bent upon the rediscovery of
buried classics. But the world had been already ransacked, and, though
he employed agents for this purpose in the East as well as Europe,
only one great treasure came to light. Gian Angelo Arcimboldi
disinterred the first five books of Tacitus's 'Annals' at Corvey, and
sold them to the Pope for 500 golden florins. Filippo Beroaldo, who
was entrusted with the task of editing this precious codex, received
the librarianship as his reward. Leo's privilege granted to the
printers of Beroaldo's edition expresses in truly noble language the
highest ideal of humanism, and reflects real credit on his patronage
of letters.[392] Of Acciaiuoli there is not much to say. His knowledge
of Hebrew and the classic languages gained for him a reputation for
singular learning. In his capacity as librarian he began to catalogue
the documents of the 'Secreta Bibliotheca,' founded by Sixtus IV. It
is worthy of notice that Acciaiuoli is the only Florentine whom we
have had occasion to mention among the learned courtiers of Leo.
Florence, always foremost in the van of culture, had shaken off at
this period the traditions of strict humanism. Her greatest writers,
Guicciardini, Machiavelli, Varchi, Segni, and Giannotti, exchanged the
Latin language for their mother speech, and sought for honour in
fields removed from verbal scholarship or Ciceronian niceties of
phrase.
[Footnote 390: Inghirami, made librarian 1510, died 1516. Beroaldo
held the office two years, and died 1518. Acciaiuoli held it only for
a few months. Aleander succeeded him in 1519.]
[Footnote 391: '_Linguâ verius quam calamo celebrem ... dictus sui
seculi Cicero_,' says Erasmus. '_Affluentissimum eloquentiæ flumen_'
is Valeriano's phrase.]
[Footnote 392: See Burckhardt, p. 174. Roscoe's _Life of Leo X._ vol.
i. p. 357.]
The Roman Sapienza never held the same rank as the Universities of
Padua or Bologna; nor could it compete as an academy of culture with
the High Schools of Florence and Ferrara. The Popes of the
Renaissance, occupied with nepotism and political aggrandisement, had
but small care for the interests of education. Nor did Rome, always
overcrowded by foreigners, require the students who brought custom and
prestige to minor cities.[393] Leo X. resolved, as far as he was able,
to raise the studies of his capital from the decadence into which they
had fallen. In 1513 he reformed the statutes of the University,
increased the appointments of the professors, and founded several new
chairs. Yet, though scholars no less respectable than Janus Parrhasius
of Cosenza, Tommaso Inghirami, and Filippo Beroaldo were numbered
among the teachers, the Sapienza failed to take firm root in
Rome:--the most flourishing school of humanism at this period was
Ferrara, governed by Leoniceno, Celio Calcagnini, and Lilius Gyraldus.
To Hellenistic studies, just now upon the point of decadence in Italy,
Leo gave encouragement by the establishment of a Greek press, and by
the foundation of the Gymnasium Caballini Montis, where Joannes
Lascaris and Marcus Musurus lectured. Musurus we have already learned
to know as the inmate of Alberto Pio's palace at Carpi, and as Aldo's
most efficient helper. Soon after his elevation to the Papacy, Leo
invited the venerable Lascaris to Rome; but he did not long retain the
services of so illustrious a Hellenist. Lascaris, who had taught Greek
in Paris during the reign of Charles VIII., and who had long served
Louis XII. as ambassador at Venice, was induced by Francis I. to
superintend the library at Fontainebleau in 1518. He once more visited
Rome during the pontificate of Clement, and died there at the age of
ninety--the last of the Greek exiles who transplanted Hellas into
Latium. Between the visit of Manuel Chrysoloras in 1398 and the death
of John Lascaris in 1535 more than a century had elapsed, in the
course of which Italy,[394] after acquiring Greek literature and
committing its chief treasures to the press, had seen her learning
pass beyond the Alps and flourish with new vigour on a northern soil.
The epitaph composed by Lascaris for his own tomb in Santa Agata
touchingly expresses the grief of an exile for his country's
servitude, together with the gratitude of one who found a new home in
an alien land:--
[Greek: Laskaris allodapê gaiê enikattheto, gaiên
outi liên xeinên ô xene memphomenos.
eureto meilichiên, all' achthetai eiper Achaiois
oud' eti choun cheuei patris eleutherion].
[Footnote 393: See above, p. 86.]
[Footnote 394: Cf. Giovio, close of the _Elogia_.]
Any account of erudite society in Rome would be incomplete without
some notice of its antiquaries. While the Pope and his cardinals were
bent on collecting statues, coins, vases, and inscriptions, it was
natural that the scholars should devote themselves to their
illustration. Much of this industry was carried on by the
academicians, who discussed difficult readings and exchanged opinions
at their meetings. Treatises on Roman antiquities, topographical
essays, and commentaries on Vitruvius and Frontinus abounded. Amid a
multitude of minor works it will be enough to mention the cyclopædias
of Andrea Fulvio and Bartolommeo Marliano, the comprehensive
collection of inscriptions by Mazochi, and Valeriano's dissertation on
the hieroglyphics of the Roman obelisks.[395] The greater number of
these compositions were published by Jacopo Mazochi, bookseller to the
Roman Academy, and himself no mean scholar. Together with his
coadjutor, Francesco Albertini, he undertook what he describes as 'the
Herculean labour' of saving inscribed tablets from the lime-kiln and
the mason's hammer. Built into the walls of houses, embedded in church
pavements, mingled with the rubbish of the Forum, unearthed by the
mattock or the plough in vineyard and cornfield, these records of old
history encumbered Rome. To decipher them as best he could, arrange
them by the regions where they had been found, and incorporate his own
readings with the previous collections of Ciriaco and Fra
Giocondo,[396] was the object of Mazochi. His work formed the nucleus
of the ponderous collection known as the _Corpus Inscriptionum_.
[Footnote 395: _Andreas Fulvius Sabinus Antiquarius, Antiquitates
Urbis Romæ_, 1527. _Bartholomæus Marlianus, Eques D. Petri, Urbis Romæ
Topographia_, 1534. _Jacobus Mazochius, Epigrammata antiquæ urbis
Romæ_, 1521. _Johannis Pierii Valeriani Hieroglyphica seu de Sacris
Ægyptiorum_, &c., in his collected works, Ven. 1604.]
[Footnote 396: The architect of Verona who first edited Vitruvius, and
was employed by Lorenzo de' Medici in collecting inscriptions for him
at Rome.]
This is the proper occasion for resuming what has to be said about the
Roman ruins, and the feeling for them shown in the Renaissance period.
We have already listened to Poggio's lamentations over their gradual
decay through wanton injury and lapse of time.[397] Pius II., who had
a strong taste for topographical studies, endeavoured to protect the
Roman monuments from depredation by a Bull in 1462. But his successors
were less scrupulous. Even the scholarly Nicholas V. had shown more
zeal for building modern Rome afresh than true regard for the imperial
city. He levelled large portions of the wall of Servius Tullius, and
quarried the Temple of Peace for his own edifices. In his days Blondus
wrote that his life was embittered by the wholesale waste of ancient
reliques. That Paul II. should have used the stone wall of the
Coliseum for the Palace of S. Marco; that Sixtus IV. should have
pulled down the circular Temple of Hercules, and destroyed the oldest
bridge across the Tiber to make cannon balls; that Innocent VIII.
should have empowered his architects to take what antique masonry they
pleased--excites in us no wonder; these Popes were acting according to
the spirit that was in them. Nor can it be denied that for some of
their acts of Vandalism the excuse of utility or even of necessity
might have been pleaded. It is, however, singular that no steps were
taken to preserve in Rome the bas-reliefs and sculptures of the
monuments thus overthrown. Everyone who chose laid hands upon them.
Poggio scraped together what he could; Pomponius Lætus formed a
museum; Lorenzo de' Medici and the Rucellai employed agents to select
and ship to Florence choicer fragments. At last the impulse to collect
possessed the Popes themselves. The Capitol Museum dates from 1471.
The pretty statue of the boy pulling a thorn from his foot, the group
of the lion clinging to a horse, the urn of Agrippina, and the bronze
Hercules from the Forum Boarium formed the nucleus of this collection.
Soon afterwards the equestrian statue of Marcus Aurelius was unearthed
and placed where it now stands. The Vatican Museum was founded in
1523, when Julius II. erected the Apollo on a marble basis near the
entrance to the gardens of the Belvedere. It had been discovered some
years earlier at Porto d'Anzo, and was bought by Giuliano della Rovere
before he was made Pope. The Laocoon came to light in 1506 among the
ruins of the Baths of Titus in the vineyard of Felix de Fredis. How
Giuliano di San Gallo and Michael Angelo heard of it, and walked
abroad to see it disinterred, may still be read in the letter of
Francesco, nephew of the former. Julius bought this group for six
hundred golden crowns, and placed it in the Vatican. He also purchased
the statue of the sleeping Ariadne, which then passed for
Cleopatra,[398] together with the torso of Hercules, found near the
Palazzo Pio, and the statue of Commodus dug up in the Campo Fiore. Leo
X. further enriched the collection by the reclining statues of the
Nile and Tiber, found among the ruins of the Iseum near S. Stefano in
Caco, and the so-called Antinous discovered in the Baths of Trajan.
[Footnote 397: See above, p. 111.]
[Footnote 398: See Castiglione's verses.]
The feeling of professed scholars for these masterpieces of classic
art appears in Sadoleto's and Castiglione's poems, while a passage of
Ghiberti's Commentary expresses the enthusiasm of technical sculptors.
After describing an Hermaphrodite he saw in Rome, the Florentine
sculptor adds: 'To express the perfection of learning, mastery, and
art displayed in it is beyond the power of language. Its more
exquisite beauties could not be discovered by the sight, but only by
the touch of the hand passed over it.' Of another classic marble at
Padua he says: 'This statue, when the Christian faith triumphed, was
hidden in that place by some gentle soul, who, seeing it so perfect,
fashioned with art so wonderful, and with such power of genius, and
being moved to reverent pity, caused a sepulchre of bricks to be
built, and there within buried the statue, and covered it with a broad
slab of stone, that it might not in any way be injured. It has very
many sweet beauties, which the eyes alone can comprehend not, either
by strong or tempered light; only the hand by touching finds them
out.'[399] Meanwhile a genuine sentiment for the truth and beauty of
antique art passed downwards from the educated classes to the people.
Like all powerful emotions that affect the popular imagination at
epochs of imperfect knowledge and high sensibility, it took the form
of fable. The beautiful myth of Julia's Corpse is our most precious
witness to this moment in the history of the Revival.[400] At the same
time the real intention of classic statuary was better understood.
Donatello had not worked in vain for a public, finely tempered to
receive æsthetic influences, and cultivated by two centuries of native
art. The horsemen of Monte Cavallo ceased to be philosophers. Menander
and Poseidippus were no longer reckoned among the saints. In the age
of Leo, Carlo Malatesta could not have thrown Virgil's statue into the
Mincio;[401] nor would the republic of Siena have buried their antique
Venus by stealth in the Florentine territory, hoping thereby to
transfer to their foes the curse of heathenism.[402] The effect
produced on less impressionable natures by the Belvedere statues
transpires in a curious document penned by a Venetian ambassador to
Rome in 1523.[403] It is so valuable for illustrating the average
culture of the Italians at that epoch, that I may allow myself the
pleasure of rendering a full account of it.
[Footnote 399: _Terzo Commentario del Ghiberti, Frammenti Inediti_, in
Le Monnier's Vasari, vol. i. pp. xi.-xiii. I have paraphrased rather
than translated the original, which is touching by reason of its
naïveté.]
[Footnote 400: See Vol. I., _Age of the Despots_, p. 17.]
[Footnote 401: See Rosmini's _Vittorino da Feltre_, p. 63, note.]
[Footnote 402: See Ghiberti's _Commentario_, in Le Monnier's Vasari,
vol. i. p. xiv.]
[Footnote 403: Alberi, _Relazioni Venete_, serie ii. vol. iii. p. 114,
&c.]
Adrian VI., soon after his accession, had walled up eleven of the
twelve doors, leading to the Belvedere. The Venetian envoys, however,
received permission to visit this portion of the Vatican palace, and
the single entrance was unlocked for them. After describing the beauty
of the gardens, their cypresses and orangeries, the greenness of their
lawns and the stately order of their paved avenues, the writer of the
report arrives at the statues. 'In the midst of the garden are two
very large men of marble, facing one another, twice the size of life,
who lie in the attitude of sleep. One of these is the Tiber, the other
the Nile, figures of vast antiquity; and from beneath them issue two
fair fountains. On the first entrance into the garden, on the left
hand, there is a kind of little chapel let into the wall, where, on a
pedestal of marble, stands the Apollo, famous throughout the world, a
statue of incomparable beauty and dignity, of life size and of finest
marble. Somewhat farther on, in a similar alcove and raised on a like
pedestal to the height of an altar from the ground, opposite a well of
most perfect fashion, is the Laocoon, celebrated throughout the world,
a statue of the highest excellence, of size like a natural man, with
hairy beard, all naked. The sinews, veins, and proper muscles in each
part are seen as well as in a living body; breath alone is wanting. He
is in a posture between sitting and standing, with his two sons, one
on either hand, both, together with himself, twined by the serpents,
as Virgil says. And herein is seen so great merit of the artist, that
better could not be; the languishing and dying are manifest to sight,
and one of the boys on the right side is most tightly clipped by the
snake twice girdled round him; one of the coils crossing his breasts
and squeezing his heart, so that he is on the point of dying. The
other boy on the left side is also girdled round by another serpent.
While he seeks to drag the raging worm from his leg with his little
arm, and cannot help himself at all, he raises his face, all tearful,
crying to his father, and holding him with his other hand by the left
arm. And seeing his unhappy father more deadly struck than he is, the
double grief of this child is clear to view, the one for his own
coming death, the other for his father's helplessness; and he so
faints withal, that nothing remains for him but to breathe his last.
It is impossible that human art can arrive at producing so great and
so natural a masterpiece. Every part is perfect, except that Laocoon's
right arm is wanting. He seems about forty years of age, and resembles
Messer Girolamo Marcello of S. Tommaso; the two boys look eight and
nine respectively. Not far distant, and similarly placed, is a very
beautiful Venus of natural size, naked, with a little drapery on her
shoulder, that covers a portion of the waist; as very fair a figure as
can be imagined by the mind; but the excellence of the Laocoon makes
one forget this and the Apollo, who before was so famous.'
A systematic plan for exploring the monuments of old Rome, excavating
its ruins, and bringing its buried treasures of statuary to light was
furnished by Raphael in 1518. Leo had made him master of the works at
S. Peter's and general superintendent of antiquities.[404] For some
time previously he had been studying Vitruvius in the Italian
translation prepared for his use by Fabio Calvi of Ravenna. How
enthusiastically he followed in the traces of the ancients, the
arabesques of the Loggie, imitated from the frescoes of the Baths of
Titus, amply prove. He now, not long before his death, laid down a
ground-plan of the city, divided into fourteen regions, and set forth
his project in a memorable letter to the Pope. This epistle, written
in choice old Italian, has more than once been printed: it will be
found in Passavant's Life of the painter. Raphael begins by describing
the abandonment and desolation of the city, and by characterising its
several styles of architecture--classical, Lombard, Gothic, and
modern.[405] Some phrases that occur in this exordium deserve to be
cited for the light they cast upon the passion which inspired those
early excavators. 'Considerando la divinitate di quelli animi antichi
... vedendo quasi il cadavere di quest'alma nobile cittate, che è
stata regia del mondo, così miseramente lacerato ... quanti pontefici
hanno permesso le ruine et disfacimenti delli templi antichi, delle
statue, delli archi et altri edificii, gloria delli lor fondatori!
Quanti hanno comportato che solamente per pigliare terra pozzolana si
siano scavati i fondamenti! Onde in poco tempo li edificii sono venuti
a terra. Quanta calcina si è fatta di statue e d'altri ornamenti
antichi! che ardirei dire che tutta questa nova Roma, che hor si vede,
quanto grande ch'ella vi sia, quanto bella, quanto ornata di pallazzi,
di chiese et di altri edificii, sia fabricata di calcina fatta di
marmi antichi.'[406] He then observes that during his twelve years'
residence in Rome the Meta in the Via Alexandrina, the arches at the
entrance to the Baths of Diocletian and the Temple of Ceres in the Via
Sacra, part of the Foro Transitorio, and the larger portion of the
Basilica del Foro have been destroyed. Therefore he prays Leo to
arrest this work of the new Vandals, and, by pursuing a
well-considered scheme of operations, to lay bare and to protect what
still remains of antique monuments in the Eternal City.
[Footnote 404: By a brief dated Aug. 27, 1515.]
[Footnote 405: It may be observed that he calls the round-arched
buildings of the Middle Ages Gothic; the pointed style German.]
[Footnote 406: 'When we reflect upon the divinity of those intellects
of the old world ... when we see the corpse of this noble city, mother
and queen of the world, so piteously mangled ... how many Pontiffs
have allowed the ruin and defacement of ancient temples, statues,
arches, and other buildings, the glory of their founders! How many
have suffered their foundations to be undermined for the mere sake of
quarrying _pozzolana_, whereby in a short time the buildings
themselves have fallen to earth! How much lime has been made of
statues and other antique decorations! I should not hesitate to say
that the whole of this new Rome which now meets the eye, great as it
is, and fair, and beautified with palaces and churches and other
buildings, has been cemented with lime made from antique marbles.']
Raphael's own death followed close upon the execution of the first
part of a Roman map designed by him. Great interest had been excited
in the world of letters by his undertaking; and its failure through
his untimely end aroused the keenest disappointment. The epigrams
quoted below in a footnote express these feelings with more depth of
emotion than scholarly elegance.[407] How Raphael's design would have
been carried out it is impossible to guess. Archæological zeal is
impotent to stay the march of time, except by sacrifice of much that
neglect alone makes venerable; and it may fairly be questioned whether
it is wise to lay the hand of the restorer on these relics of the
past. We at least, who during the last few years have seen the
Coliseum and the Baths of Caracalla stripped of their romantic
vegetation, the Palatine ruins fortified with modern masonry, and the
dubious guesses of antiquaries placarded upon sign-posts for the
instruction of Sunday visitors, may feel, perhaps, that a worse fate
than slow decay or ruthless mutilation was still in store for the
majestic corpse of ancient Rome. Nothing, in truth, is less sublime or
more pitiful than a dismantled brick wall, robbed of its marbles and
mosaics, naked of the covering of herbs that nature gave it, patched
with plaster, propped with stonework, bound by girders, and smeared
over with the trail of worse than snails or blindworms--pedants bent
on restoration.
[Footnote 407:
Tot proceres Romam, tam longa struxerat ætas,
Totque hostes et tot sæcula diruerant;
Nunc Romam in Româ quærit reperitque Raphael;
Quærere magni hominis, sed reperire Dei est.
Celio Calcagnini.
Quod lacerum corpus medicâ sanaverit arte,
Hippolytum Stygiis et revocarit aquis,
Ad Stygias ipse est raptus Epidaurius undas;
Sic pretium vitæ mors fuit artifici.
Tu quoque dum toto laniatam corpore Romam
Componis miro, Raphael, ingenio,
Atque urbis lacerum ferro, igne, armisque cadaver
Ad vitam antiquum jam revocasque decus,
Movisti Superum invidiam; indignataque mors est
Te dudum extinctis reddere posse animam,
Et quod longa dies paullatim aboleverat, hoc te
Mortali spretâ lege parare iterum.
Sic miser heu primâ cadis intercepte juventâ:
Debere et morti nostraque nosque mones.
Baldassare Castiglione.]
The immediate and most important consequence of these antiquarian
pursuits was the adoption of classic forms by architects and artists.
Fresco-painters imitated the newly-discovered _grotteschi_ in their
arabesques.[408] Sculptors abandoned Christian subjects for antique
mythology, or gave the attributes of heroes to the saints of the
Catholic Church. The principles of Vitruvius were applied as strictly
as possible to modern buildings, and the free decoration of the
earlier Renaissance yielded to what passed for purely classic
ornaments. It would be incorrect to maintain that this reproduction of
antiquity in art only dated from the age of Leo. Alberti and
Brunelleschi, Bramante and Michellozzo, had, each in his own way,
striven to assimilate to modern use the style of Roman architecture.
Donatello and Michael Angelo at Florence had carved statues in the
classic manner; nor are the arabesques of Signorelli at Orvieto, of
Perugino at Perugia, less fanciful than those of Raphael in the
Loggie. What really happened was that the imitation of the ancients
grew more puristic and precise through the formation of a common taste
that imposed itself with the weight of authority on artists. Giulio
Romano's Palazzo del Te at Mantua may be cited as the most perfect
production of this epoch, combining, as it does, all forms of antique
decoration and construction with the vivid individuality of genius.
Giulio Romano comprehended the antique, and followed it with the
enthusiasm of a neophyte. But his very defects prevented him from
falling into the frigid formalism of Palladio.
[Footnote 408: See Benvenuto Cellini, i. 31.]
The causes of Roman pre-eminence in this last age of humanism are not
far to seek. By the policy of Alexander and Julius the Papal See had
become the chief power in Italy. Venice never publicly encouraged
literature, nor was the ambition of her nobles fixed on anything so
much as the aggrandisement of the Republic. In the beginning of the
sixteenth century their energy was needed no longer for the extension
of Venetian rule, but for its preservation under the attack of Europe
leagued against the city of the sea. Florence, divided between the
parties of the Piagnoni and the Ottimati, reserved her failing vigour
for the great struggle of 1529. The Medici, after absorbing what
remained of mental force into their own circle, had transferred the
Florentine traditions of culture with Giovanni and Giulio to Rome. At
Naples the Aragonese dynasty had been already shaken to its foundation
by the conspiracy of the Barons and by the conquest of Charles VIII.
Ferdinand the Catholic and Louis XII. were now intent upon dividing
the southern provinces of Italy between them. Little opportunity was
left, if inclination had remained, for patronising men of letters at a
Court suspicious of its aristocracy and terrified by foreign
interference. Milan, first among the towns of Lombardy, was doomed to
bear the brunt of French, and Swiss, and German armies. To maintain
the semblance of their dukedom taxed the weakness of the Sforzas to
the utmost, while the people groaned beneath the fiendish cruelty of
Spanish governors. The smaller principalities had been destroyed by
Cesare Borgia and Julius. Ferrara, Mantua and Urbino, at the beginning
of the century, alone continued the traditions of the previous age.
Rome, meanwhile, however insecure the Papal rule might be, still
ranked among the Powers of Europe, pursuing a policy on equal terms
with France and Spain. In Rome money abounded; nor had the sacred city
of Christendom felt as yet the scourge of war, that broke the spirit
of the Northern capitals. It was but natural, therefore, that the
political and intellectual energies of the Italians should find their
centre here.
Sad times, however, were in store for Rome. When Leo's successor read
the Latin letters of the Apostolic secretaries, he cried, '_Sunt
litteræ unius poetæ_;' and after walking through the Belvedere
Gallery, he gave vent to his feelings in the famous exclamation,
'_Sunt idola antiquorum_.' The humanists had nothing to expect from
such a master. The election of Giulio de' Medici restored the hope
that Rome might once more be as it had been beneath the sway of Leo.
Yet for Clement VII. was reserved the final bitterness of utter ruin.
In the fourth year of his papacy happened the catastrophe that closed
one period of Italian history, and opened a new era for Rome and for
the nation. The tale of the sack has been already told.[409] A fitting
conclusion for this chapter may be found in Valeriano's discourse upon
its consequences to the literary society assembled by the Medici at
the Papal Court.
[Footnote 409: Vol. I., _Age of Despots_, App. V.]
Valeriano's dialogue 'De Literatorum Infelicitate' opens with a
description of Rome in the pontificate of Leo.[410] Never since the
downfall of the Empire, he says, had letters flourished so freely or
had men of learning found more generous patronage. Of that brilliant
company Valeriano was himself an ornament. The friend of Egidius and
the favourite of Leo, he spent his time in the composition of Latin
poems, panegyrical and satiric, and in the exploration of antiquities.
Afterwards he became the protonotary of Clement, and supervised the
education of the Medicean bastards Alessandro and Ippolito. His good
fortune carried him to Piacenza in the fatal year of 1527. On his
return to Rome after the siege, he looked in vain for his old comrades
and associates. 'Good God!' he exclaims in the dialogue before us,
'when first I began to inquire for the philosophers, orators, poets,
and professors of Greek and Latin literature, whose names were written
on my tablets, how great, how horrible a tragedy was offered to me! Of
all those lettered men whom I had hoped to see, how many had perished
miserably, carried off by the most cruel of all fates, overwhelmed by
undeserved calamities: some dead of plague, some brought to a slow end
by penury in exile, others slaughtered by a foeman's sword, others
worn out by daily tortures; some, again, and these of all the most
unhappy, driven by anguish to self-murder.' John Goritz, captured by
his countrymen, had ransomed himself with the sacrifice of all his
wealth, and now was dying of despair at Verona. Colocci had seen his
house, with its museums and MSS., burned before his eyes. Angelo Cesi,
maltreated by the Spanish soldiers on a sick bed, died of his injuries
before the year was out. Marone, the brilliant improvisatore,
stripped of everything and deprived of his poems, the accumulated
compositions of years spent in Leo's service, breathed his last in a
miserable tavern. Marco Fabio Calvi, Raphael's friend and teacher,
succumbed to sickness in a hospital. Julianus Camers, maddened by the
sight of the torments inflicted on his servants, had thrown himself
from a window in his house, and was killed. Baldus, the professor,
after watching his commentary upon Pliny used to light the camp fires
of the soldiery, had died himself of hunger. Casanova, the poet, fell
a victim to the plague. Paolo Bombasi, another poet, was murdered in
the streets of Rome. Cristoforo Marcello had been tortured by the
Spaniards. Exposed naked on a tree, his nails were daily drawn from
his fingers by these human fiends; he only escaped their clutches to
die of his injuries at Gaeta. Laomedon Tardolus and John Bonifacius
Victor suffered similar indignities and torments. Francesco Fortunio
and John Valdes slew themselves. To enumerate all the scholars who
succumbed to fear, plague, famine, torture, and imprisonment in this
fatal year; to relate how numbers left Rome, robbed of everything, to
wander over Italy, and die of hunger by the wayside, or of fever in
low hovels; to describe the losses of their MSS., their madness,
beggary, mysterious disappearances, and deaths by hands of servants or
of brigands on the high roads, would occupy more space than I have
left at my command. The ghastly muster roll is told with terrible
concision by Valeriano, who adds divers examples, unconnected with the
sack, of early deaths by over-study, lingering illnesses, murders by
poison or the knife, and accidents of every kind, attributable more or
less directly to the shifting career of students at that time in
Italy.
[Footnote 410: Printed at Venice, 1620.]
Though the wars in Lombardy proved scarcely less fatal to men of
letters than the siege of Rome, those disasters fell singly and at
intervals. The ever-memorable stage of the Eternal City was reserved
for the crowning tragedy of arts and letters. Whatever vicious seeds
had been sown in Italy by the humanists had blossomed and borne fruit
in Rome; and there the Nemesis of pride and insolence, and godlessness
of evil living, fell upon them like a bolt from heaven. In essays,
epistles, and funeral orations they amply recognised the justice of
their punishment. A phrase of Hieronymus Niger's in a letter to
Sadoleto--'Rome, that is the sink of all things shameful and
abominable'--might serve as the epitome of their conscience-stricken
Jeremiads.[411] All Italy re-echoed with these lamentations; and
though Clement VII. and Paul III. did their best to repiece the ruins
of Leo's golden house of fame, the note of despair and anguish uttered
by the scholars in 1527 was never destined to be drowned by chorus
hymeneal or triumphal chant again. What remained of humanism among the
Italians assumed a different form, adapted to the new rule of the
Spaniards and the new attitude of the Church. To the age of the
Humanists succeeded the age of the Inquisitors and Jesuits.
[Footnote 411: 'Quod Romæ, hoc est in sentinâ omnium rerum atrocium et
pudendarum deprehensi fuerimus.' Quoted by Gregorovius, _Stadt Rom_,
vol. viii. p. 598, note 3.]