THE CLASSICAL REVIVAL (1350)
We are now well started on the fourteenth century, and it will be well
to glance at the chief Italian states in order to get our bearings.
Sicily was in a state of hopeless despondency. The island was nominally
subject to the House of Aragon, but its kings were not men of sufficient
character to impose their authority, and the unfortunate kingdom was
beginning to go down hill. The Kingdom of Naples was, for the time
being, much better off, for its king, Robert, grandson of Charles of
Anjou, was a man of unusual gifts and capacity, but he was succeeded by
a foolish, frivolous, light-minded, light-mannered granddaughter, Joan
(1343-81), who brought forty years of trouble to her kingdom, and under
her Naples started rolling down that same incline on which Sicily was
rolling somewhat ahead of her. The failure of Sicily and Naples to take
part in the great career in matters intellectual now opening before
Northern Italy is partly due to the race that populated them, a
miscellaneous mixture of bloods (at least it is customary to explain
unknown causes of success and failure by saying good blood and bad
blood), and partly to the autocratic will of the brilliant Frederick II,
who crushed out independence in his kingdom, and so deprived it of that
communal life which is the only obvious factor, except "good blood," in
the intellectual success of Northern Italy.
The whole pontifical state, from the fortresses of the Colonna on the
Tiber to the strongholds of the Malatesta in Rimini, was in the vortex
of confusion.
Florence was well off, for though the foreigners whom she had invited to
be protectors against Castruccio Castracane and others were rather
detrimental than useful, and though there were signs of a new struggle
between the _Grandi_ and the Burghers, her commerce prospered, her
dominion spread over the towns round about, and her luxury grew so fast
that the troubled elders passed all sorts of sumptuary laws to prescribe
what should be worn and what not, by both fashionable and simple.
In the northwest, now Piedmont, there were, besides the Counts of Savoy,
several struggling claimants who severally asserted titles to their own
and other strips of territory. In the northeast, Venice, which had
acquired a footing on the mainland destined to grow into the province of
Venetia, was prosperous. And between Piedmont and Venice the successful
Visconti of Milan, soon to receive the keys of Genoa, were likewise well
satisfied. The political situation may now be dismissed, and we may turn
to the distinguishing mark of the century, the classical revival.
The distinction which Italy enjoys as the most famous country in Europe
is due to three ages,--first, the ancient epoch of Augustus Caesar and
Trajan, when the Roman Empire imposed the _pax romana_ on a grateful
world; second, the mediaeval epoch of Hildebrand and Innocent III, when
the Papacy, following its great prototype with unequal steps, imposed
its _pax romana_ on both troubled souls and angry hands; and third, the
epoch of the Renaissance, when Italy took the lead in the intellectual
development of modern Europe. It would be as absurd to subordinate
intellectual life to politics in the period of the Renaissance as it
would be to subordinate the religion of the era of Hildebrand to its
art, or the politics of the Augustan age to its religion. The highest
life of Italy, the life which gives importance to the history of this
coming period, is its intellectual life, and, though we must not forget
politics entirely, we should lay the chief stress on intellectual rather
than on political matters.
Since the date of the Pisan pulpit, prosperity had increased fast, and
curiosity, the desire to investigate, the wish to know, had grown
lustily. There were still the same two stores of knowledge,--nature and
the classics,--but the first, for many reasons, seemed vague,
intangible, when compared to the second, in which the demi-gods (so they
appeared then) of the ancient world had garnered the rich harvest of
their thoughts. The classical heritage, the record of a higher
civilization, seemed a lay Bible, the revelation of truth, the means of
salvation; and the young generation emerging in the dawn of intellectual
light turned thirstily to this newly found inheritance. The leader of
this pilgrimage to the land flowing with intellectual milk and honey was
Francis Petrarch (1304-74).
Petrarch was a Florentine, but he lived in exile. His father had been
banished at the same time with Dante, and after a few wandering years
had settled at Avignon. Petrarch studied law at the University of
Bologna and became a confirmed Ghibelline. This item of biography is
important, because it reminds us that Petrarch's passion for the classic
world, though it had its roots in the traditional admiration for Rome,
received strength and justification not only from Latin literature, but
also from the Civil law. Men who grasped the complexity and richness of
the Roman law necessarily admired Roman civilization, and inferred that
all other manifestations of that civilization must be as admirable as
the law, and perhaps less dry. Petrarch found the law dry, but he left
Bologna with a passion for the classic world; and when he went back to
Avignon he met all the most cultivated men of Europe. Learning still
attended the papal court, and Avignon served to make this charming young
scholar of genius known to the world. He flung up the law and devoted
himself to literature. Cicero was his hero. Petrarch was the first of
the humanists, the herald of the Renaissance, and, if we look farther
forward still, the harbinger of the Reformation. Petrarch's importance
was very great because he was not too far ahead of his generation. He
shouted aloud the glory of Rome, of Roman literature and Roman thought,
and the echo resounded throughout Europe. In the year 1341, in Rome,
upon the Capitoline Hill, Petrarch received the crown of laurel, as
scholar and poet, from the Senate and People of Rome. The King of
Naples was his sponsor, and the tyrants of the North applauded. This
ceremony was the conspicuous recognition that a new period was opening
before Italy; and Petrarch's laurel crown may be put beside the Imperial
wreath of Augustus and the tiara of Hildebrand, as the starting-point of
Italy's third great period of triumph.
After his coronation, Petrarch went about Italy spreading the seeds of
the new enthusiasm. He lived or made visits at Parma, Bologna, Verona,
Florence, Arezzo, Naples, Rome, Milan, Padua, and Venice. He became
tremendously fashionable. The Pope invited him to be papal secretary,
the King of France extended the hospitality of Paris to him, the Emperor
bade him to Prague, the Visconti wanted him at Milan, the Scaligers at
Verona, the Cararresi at Padua, the lord high Seneschal at Naples; the
Florentines asked him to accept a chair in their new university, the
Venetians offered him a house. All this honour ostensibly shown to
Petrarch was really the salutation to the new dawn.
The strength of this classic revival, though most effective in
literature and the arts, is perhaps still more noticeable in the
political career of another young man of genius who had as passionate a
love of classic Rome as Petrarch himself. Cola di Rienzo (1314-54) was
an imaginative, poetical dreamer, who fed his youth on Livy, Cicero,
Seneca, and delighted to muse on the glories of Julius Caesar and to
study the antique monuments of Rome. His public career began as envoy on
one of the unsuccessful embassies which used to entreat the Popes to
return to the deserted city. Cola was handsome, eloquent, ardent, a sort
of Don Quixote, and roused the Roman populace to share his dreams and to
believe in the possible restoration of the Senate and People of Rome to
their ancient grandeur. He led the people against the nobility, forced
the riotous barons to submit to his rule as tribune of the people, and
established a government of law in the city; but his ambition flew far
beyond the city walls. He dreamed of the confederation of all Italy
under the lead of Rome. He would have smiled at limiting imitation of
the great days of old to the arts or to literature; he intended to
restore the Roman Republic as it had been in its high and palmy days.
His wild aspirations throw a backward light over the history of the city
of Rome throughout the Middle Ages, and over that republicanism which
played so important a part in the struggle between Empire and Papacy,
and light up the old theories under which the Roman people claimed the
right to elect both Emperor and Pope; just as Boniface's bulls portray
the outworn papal theories, and Dante's "De Monarchia" the dead Imperial
beliefs.
Cola's first step was to invite all the princes and communes of Italy to
attend a general meeting in Rome; and as all Italy had responded to
Petrarch's appeal in behalf of the classic past, so did she, for the
moment, respond to Cola's appeal. Milan, Genoa, Lucca, Florence, Siena,
and the smaller cities nearer by, answered with apparent sympathy.
Petrarch was mad with delight, and hailed Cola as Camillus, Brutus,
Romulus. For the moment, such was the strength of classical illusion,
the dream seemed to be real. Cola wrote to the Florentines (September,
1347), "We have made all citizens of the states of Holy Italy Roman
citizens, and we admit them to the right of election. The affairs of
Empire have naturally devolved upon the Holy Roman People. We desire to
renew and strengthen the old union with all the principalities and
states of Holy Italy, and to deliver Holy Italy itself from its
condition of abject subjection and to restore it to its old state and to
its ancient glory. We mean to exalt to the position of Emperor some
Italian whom zeal for the union of his race shall stir to high efforts
for Italy."[15]
Cola's great idea was destined to wait five hundred years for
fulfilment. The time was not ripe, and he himself not a suitable
instrument. His career was brief. He became not only vainglorious but
also very cruel. He grew fat, and lost the charm of youth and novelty.
The nobles and the upper classes of Rome hated him; and when, in need of
money, he increased the taxes, the Roman populace turned upon him,
stormed the Capitol, captured him as he tried to slink away in disguise,
and murdered him on the steps leading down from the palace. His head was
cut off, his body was dragged through the streets and burned, and the
ashes scattered to the winds.
The mad dream had been, in its nature, evanescent. The classical
heritage was too purely intellectual, too remote from existing needs, to
be able to shape politics. But that fourteen hundred years after the
death of Julius Caesar, Cola should have been able to establish himself
as Roman tribune on the Capitoline Hill, and to act as if the Republic
of the days of the Gracchi had been but temporarily superseded, shows
the immense influence of Rome over the mediaeval imagination, and helps
us to understand the autocratic power of the classical heritage in
shaping and directing the intellectual revolution in Italy.
FOOTNOTES:
[15] _Rome in the Middle Ages_, Gregorovius, vol. vi, p. 295, note 1
(translated).