THE FURTHERERS OF HUMANISM.
We have here first to speak of those citizens, mostly Florentines, who
made antiquarian interests one of the chief objects of their lives, and
who were themselves either distinguished scholars, or else distinguished
_dilettanti_ who maintained the scholars. (Comp. pp. 193 sqq.) They were
of peculiar significance during the period of transition at the
beginning of the fifteenth century, since it was in them that humanism
first showed itself practically as an indispensable element in daily
life. It was not till after this time that the popes and princes began
seriously to occupy themselves with it.
Niccolò Niccoli and Giannozzo Manetti have been already spoken of more
than once. Niccoli is described to us by Vespasiano[496] as a man who
would tolerate nothing around him out of harmony with his own classical
spirit. His handsome long-robed figure, his kindly speech, his house
adorned with the noblest remains of antiquity, made a singular
impression. He was scrupulously cleanly in everything, most of all at
table, where ancient vases and crystal goblets stood before him on the
whitest linen.[497] The way in which he won over a pleasure-loving young
Florentine to intellectual interests is too charming not to be here
described.[498] Piero de’ Pazzi, son of a distinguished merchant, and
himself destined to the same calling, fair to behold, and much given to
the pleasures of the world, thought about anything rather than
literature. One day, as he was passing the Palazzo del Podestà,[499]
Niccolò called the young man to him, and although they had never before
exchanged a word, the youth obeyed the call of one so respected. Niccolò
asked him who his father was. He answered, ‘Messer Andrea de’ Pazzi.’
When he was further asked what his pursuit was, Piero replied, as young
people are wont to do, ‘I enjoy myself’ (‘attendo a darmi buon tempo’).
Niccolò said to him, ‘As son of such a father, and so fair to look upon,
it is a shame that thou knowest nothing of the Latin language, which
would be so great an ornament to thee. If thou learnest it not, thou
wilt be good for nothing, and as soon as the flower of youth is over,
wilt be a man of no consequence’ (_virtù_). When Piero heard this, he
straightway perceived that it was true, and said that he would gladly
take pains to learn, if only he had a teacher. Whereupon Niccolò
answered that he would see to that. And he found him a learned man for
Latin and Greek, named Pontano, whom Piero treated as one of his own
house, and to whom he paid 100 gold florins a year. Quitting all the
pleasures in which he had hitherto lived, he studied day and night, and
became a friend of all learned men and a noble-minded statesman. He
learned by heart the whole ‘Æneid’ and many speeches of Livy, chiefly on
the way between Florence and his country house at Trebbio.[500]
Antiquity was represented in another and higher sense by Giannozzo
Manetti (1393-1459).[501] Precocious from his first years, he was
hardly more than a child when he had finished his apprenticeship in
commerce, and became book-keeper in a bank. But soon the life he led
seemed to him empty and perishable, and he began to yearn after science,
through which alone man can secure immortality. He then busied himself
with books as few laymen had done before him, and became, as has been
said (p. 209), one of the most profound scholars of his time. When
appointed by the government as its representative magistrate and
tax-collector at Pescia and Pistoja, he fulfilled his duties in
accordance with the lofty ideal with which his religious feeling and
humanistic studies combined to inspire him. He succeeded in collecting
the most unpopular taxes which the Florentine state imposed, and
declined payment for his services. As provincial governor he refused all
presents, abhorred all bribes, checked gambling, kept the country well
supplied with corn, required from his subordinates strict obedience and
thorough disinterestedness, was indefatigable in settling law-suits
amicably, and did wonders in calming inflamed passions by his goodness.
The Pistojese loved and reverenced him as a saint, and were never able
to discover to which of the two political parties he leaned; when his
term of office was over, both sent ambassadors to Florence to beg that
it might be prolonged. As if to symbolise the common rights and
interests of all, he spent his leisure hours in writing the history of
the city, which was preserved, bound in a purple cover, as a sacred
relic in the town-hall.[502] When he took his leave the city presented
him with a banner bearing the municipal arms and a splendid silver
helmet. On diplomatic missions to Venice, Rome, and King Alfonso,
Manetti represented, as at Pistoja, the interests of his native city,
watching vigilantly over its honour, but declining the distinctions
which were offered to him, obtained great glory by his speeches and
negotiations, and acquired by his prudence and foresight the name of a
prophet.
For further information as to the learned citizens of Florence at this
period the reader must all the more be referred to Vespasiano, who knew
them all personally, because the tone and atmosphere in which he writes,
and the terms and conditions on which he mixed in their society, are of
even more importance than the facts which he records. Even in a
translation, and still more in the brief indications to which we are
here compelled to limit ourselves, this chief merit of his book is lost.
Without being a great writer, he was thoroughly familiar with the
subject he wrote on, and had a deep sense of its intellectual
significance.
If we seek to analyse the charm which the Medici of the fifteenth
century, especially Cosimo the Elder (d. 1464) and Lorenzo the
Magnificent (d. 1492) exercised over Florence and over all their
contemporaries, we shall find that it lay less in their political
capacity than in their leadership in the culture of the age. A man in
Cosimo’s position--a great merchant and party leader, who also had on
his side all the thinkers, writers, and investigators, a man who was the
first of the Florentines by birth and the first of the Italians by
culture--such a man was to all intents and purposes already a prince. To
Cosimo belongs the special glory of recognising in the Platonic
philosophy the fairest flower of the ancient world of thought,[503] of
inspiring his friends with the same belief, and thus of fostering within
humanistic circles themselves another and a higher resuscitation of
antiquity. The story is known to us minutely.[504] It all hangs on the
calling of the learned Johannes Argyropulos, and on the personal
enthusiasm of Cosimo himself in his last years, which was such, that the
great Marsilio Ficino could style himself, as far as Platonism was
concerned, the spiritual son of Cosimo. Under Pietro Medici, Ficino was
already at the head of a school; to him Pietro’s son and Cosimo’s
grandson, the illustrious Lorenzo, came over from the Peripatetics.
Among his most distinguished fellow-scholars were Bartolommeo Valori,
Donato Acciajuoli, and Pierfilippo Pandolfini. The enthusiastic teacher
declares in several passages of his writings that Lorenzo had sounded
all the depths of the Platonic philosophy, and had uttered his
conviction that without Plato it would be hard to be a good Christian or
a good citizen. The famous band of scholars which surrounded Lorenzo was
united together, and distinguished from all other circles of the kind,
by this passion for a higher and idealistic philosophy. Only in such a
world could a man like Pico della Mirandola feel happy. But perhaps the
best thing of all that can be said about it is, that, with all this
worship of antiquity, Italian poetry found here a sacred refuge, and
that of all the rays of light which streamed from the circle of which
Lorenzo was the centre, none was more powerful than this. As a
statesman, let each man judge him as he pleases; a foreigner will
hesitate to pronounce what was due to human guilt and what to
circumstances in the fate of Florence, but no more unjust charge was
ever made than that in the field of culture Lorenzo was the protector of
Mediocrity, that through his fault Lionardo da Vinci and the
mathematician Fra Luca Pacciolo lived abroad, and that Toscanella,
Vespucci, and others at least remained unsupported. He was not, indeed,
a man of universal mind; but of all the great men who have striven to
favour and promote spiritual interests, few certainly have been so
many-sided, and in none probably was the inward need to do so equally
deep.
The age in which we live is loud enough in proclaiming the worth of
culture, and especially of the culture of antiquity. But the
enthusiastic devotion to it, the recognition that the need of it is the
first and greatest of all needs, is nowhere to be found but among the
Florentines of the fifteenth and the early part of the sixteenth
centuries. On this point we have indirect proof which precludes all
doubt. It would not have been so common to give the daughters of the
house a share in the same studies, had they not been held to be the
noblest of earthly pursuits; exile would not have been turned into a
happy retreat, as was done by Palla Strozzi; nor would men who indulged
in every conceivable excess have retained the strength and the spirit to
write critical treatises on the ‘Natural History’ of Pliny like Filippo
Strozzi.[505] Our business here is not to deal out either praise or
blame, but to understand the spirit of the age in all its vigorous
individuality.
Besides Florence, there were many cities of Italy where individuals and
social circles devoted all their energies to the support of humanism and
the protection of the scholars who lived among them. The correspondence
of that period is full of references to personal relations of this
kind.[506] The feeling of the instructed classes set strongly and almost
exclusively in this direction.
But it is now time to speak of humanism at the Italian courts. The
natural alliance between the despot and the scholar, each relying solely
on his personal talent, has already been touched upon (p. 9); that the
latter should avowedly prefer the princely courts to the free cities,
was only to be expected from the higher pay which they there received.
At a time when the great Alfonso of Aragon seemed likely to become
master of all Italy, Æneas Sylvius wrote to another citizen of
Siena:[507] ‘I had rather that Italy attained peace under his rule than
under that of the free cities, for kingly generosity rewards excellence
of every kind.[508] Too much stress has latterly been laid on the
unworthy side of this relation, and the mercenary flattery to which it
gave rise, just as formerly the eulogies of the humanists led to a too
favourable judgment on their patrons. Taking all things together, it is
greatly to the honour of the latter that they felt bound to place
themselves at the head of the culture of their age and country,
one-sided though this culture was. In some of the popes,[509] the
fearlessness of the consequences to which the new learning might lead
strikes us as something truly, but unconsciously, imposing. Nicholas V.
was confident of the future of the Church, since thousands of learned
men supported her. Pius II. was far from making such splendid sacrifices
for humanism as were made by Nicholas, and the poets who frequented his
court were few in number; but he himself was much more the personal head
of the republic of letters than his predecessor, and enjoyed his
position without the least misgiving. Paul II. was the first to dread
and mistrust the culture of his secretaries, and his three successors,
Sixtus, Innocent, and Alexander, accepted dedications and allowed
themselves to be sung to the hearts’ content of the poets--there even
existed a ‘Borgiad,’ probably in hexameters[510]--but were too busy
elsewhere, and too occupied in seeking other foundations for their
power, to trouble themselves much about the poet-scholars. Julius II.
found poets to eulogise him, because he himself was no mean subject for
poetry (p. 117), but he does not seem to have troubled himself much
about them. He was followed by Leo X., ‘as Romulus by Numa’--in other
words after the warlike turmoil of the first pontificate, a new one was
hoped for wholly given to the muses. The enjoyment of elegant Latin
prose and melodious verse was part of the programme of Leo’s life, and
his patronage certainly had the result that his Latin poets have left us
a living picture of that joyous and brilliant spirit of the Leonine
days, with which the biography of Jovius is filled, in countless
epigrams, elegies, odes, and orations.[511] Probably in all European
history there is no prince who, in proportion to the few striking events
of his life, has received such manifold homage. The poets had access to
him chiefly about noon, when the musicians had ceased playing;[512] but
one of the best among them[513] tells us how they also pursued him when
he walked in his garden or withdrew to the privacy of his chamber, and
if they failed to catch him there, would try to win him with a mendicant
ode or elegy, filled, as usual, with the whole population of
Olympus.[514] For Leo, prodigal of his money, and disliking to be
surrounded by any but cheerful faces, displayed a generosity in his
gifts which was fabulously exaggerated in the hard times that
followed.[515] His reorganisation of the Sapienza (p. 212) has been
already spoken of. In order not to underrate Leo’s influence on humanism
we must guard against being misled by the toy-work that was mixed up
with it, and must not allow ourselves to be deceived by the apparent
irony with which he himself sometimes treated these matters (p. 157).
Our judgment must rather dwell on the countless spiritual possibilities
which are included in the word ‘stimulus,’ and which, though they cannot
be measured as a whole, can still, on closer study, be actually followed
out in particular cases. Whatever influence in Europe the Italian
humanists have had since 1520 depends in some way or other on the
impulse which was given by Leo. He was the Pope who in granting
permission to print the newly found Tacitus,[516] could say that the
great writers were a rule of life and a consolation in misfortune; that
helping learned men and obtaining excellent books had ever been one of
his highest aims; and that he now thanked heaven that he could benefit
the human race by furthering the publication of this book.
The sack of Rome in the year 1527 scattered the scholars no less than
the artists in every direction, and spread the fame of the great
departed Mæcenas to the furthest boundaries of Italy.
Among the secular princes of the fifteenth century, none displayed such
enthusiasm for antiquity as Alfonso the Great of Aragon, King of Naples
(see p. 35). It appears that his zeal was thoroughly unaffected, and
that the monuments and writings of the ancient world made upon him, from
the time of his arrival in Italy, an impression deep and powerful enough
to reshape his life. Possibly he was influenced by the example of his
ancestor Robert, Petrarch’s great patron, whom he may have wished to
rival or surpass. With strange readiness he surrendered the stubborn
Aragon to his brother, and devoted himself wholly to his new
possessions. He had in his service,[517] either successively or
together, George of Trebizond, the younger Chrysoloras, Lorenzo Valla,
Bartolommeo Facio and Antonio Panormita, of whom the two latter were his
historians; Panormita daily instructed the King and his court in Livy,
even during military expeditions. These men cost him yearly 20,000 gold
florins. He gave Panormita 1,000 for his work: Facio received for the
‘Historia Alfonsi,’ besides a yearly income of 500 ducats, a present of
1,500 more when it was finished, with the words, ‘It is not given to pay
you, for your work would not be paid for if I gave you the fairest of my
cities; but in time I hope to satisfy you.’[518] When he took Giannozzo
Manetti as his secretary on the most brilliant conditions, he said to
him, ‘My last crust I will share with you.’ When Giannozzo first came to
bring the congratulations of the Florentine government on the marriage
of Prince Ferrante, the impression he made was so great, that the King
sat motionless on the throne, ‘like a brazen statue, and did not even
brush away a fly, which had settled on his nose at the beginning of the
oration.’ In restoring the castle, he took Vitruvius as his guide;
wherever he went, he had the ancient classics with him; he looked on a
day as lost in which he had read nothing; when he was reading, he
suffered no disturbance, not even the sound of music; and he despised
all contemporary princes who were not either scholars or the patrons of
learning. His favourite haunt seems to have been the library of the
castle at Naples, which he opened himself if the librarian was absent,
and where he would sit at a window overlooking the bay, and listen to
learned debates on the Trinity. For he was profoundly religious, and had
the Bible, as well as Livy and Seneca, read to him, till after fourteen
perusals he knew it almost by heart. He gave to those who wished to be
nuns the money for their entrance to the monastery, was a zealous
churchgoer, and listened with great attention to the sermon. Who can
fully understand the feeling with which he regarded the supposititious
remains (p. 143) of Livy at Padua? When, by dint of great entreaties, he
obtained an arm-bone of the skeleton from the Venetians, and received it
with solemn pomp at Naples, how strangely Christian and pagan sentiment
must have been blended in his heart! During a campaign in the Abruzzi,
when the distant Sulmona, the birthplace of Ovid, was pointed out to
him, he saluted the spot and returned thanks to its tutelary genius. It
gladdened him to make good the prophecy of the great poet as to his
future fame.[519] Once indeed, at his famous entry into the conquered
city of Naples (1443), he himself chose to appear before the world in
ancient style. Not far from the market a breach forty ells wide was made
in the wall, and through this he drove in a gilded chariot like a Roman
Triumphator.[520] The memory of the scene is preserved by a noble
triumphal arch of marble in the Castello Nuovo. His Neapolitan
successors (p. 37) inherited as little of this passion for antiquity as
of his other good qualities.
Alfonso was far surpassed in learning by Frederick of Urbino[521]--the
great pupil of the great teacher Vittorino da Feltre--who had but few
courtiers around him, squandered nothing, and in his appropriation of
antiquity, as in all other things, went to work considerately. It was
for him and for Nicholas V. that most of the translations from the
Greek, and a number of the best commentaries and other such works, were
written. He spent much on the scholars whose services he used, but spent
it to good purpose. There were no traces of the official poet at Urbino,
where the Duke himself was the most learned in the whole court.
Classical antiquity, indeed, only formed a part of his culture. An
accomplished ruler, captain, and gentleman, he had mastered the greater
part of the science of the day, and this with a view to its practical
application. As a theologian, he was able to compare Scotus with
Aquinas, and was familiar with the writings of the old fathers of the
Eastern and Western Churches, the former in Latin translations. In
philosophy, he seems to have left Plato altogether to his contemporary
Cosimo, but he knew thoroughly not only the ‘Ethics’ and ‘Politics’ of
Aristotle but the ‘Physics’ and some other works. The rest of his
reading lay chiefly among the ancient historians, all of whom he
possessed; these, and not the poets, ‘he was always reading and having
read to him.’
The Sforza,[522] too, were all of them men of more or less learning and
patrons of literature; they have been already referred to in passing
(pp. 38 sqq.). Duke Francesco probably looked on humanistic culture as a
matter of course in the education of his children, if only for
political reasons. It was felt universally to be an advantage if the
Prince could mix with the most instructed men of his time on an equal
footing. Ludovico Moro, himself an excellent Latin scholar, showed an
interest in intellectual matters which extended far beyond classical
antiquity (p. 41 sqq.).
Even the petty despots strove after similar distinctions, and we do them
injustice by thinking that they only supported the scholars at their
courts as a means of diffusing their own fame. A ruler like Borso of
Ferrara (p. 49), with all his vanity, seems by no means to have looked
for immortality from the poets, eager as they were to propitiate him
with a ‘Borseid’ and the like. He had far too proud a sense of his own
position as a ruler for that. But intercourse with learned men, interest
in antiquarian matters, and the passion for elegant Latin correspondence
were a necessity for the princes of that age. What bitter complaints are
those of Duke Alfonso, competent as he was in practical matters, that
his weakliness in youth had forced him to seek recreation in manual
pursuits only![523] or was this merely an excuse to keep the humanists
at a distance? A nature like his was not intelligible even to
contemporaries.
Even the most insignificant despots of Romagna found it hard to do
without one or two men of letters about them. The tutor and secretary
were often one and the same person, who sometimes, indeed, acted as a
kind of court factotum.[524] We are apt to treat the small scale of
these courts as a reason for dismissing them with a too ready contempt,
forgetting that the highest spiritual things are not precisely matters
of measurement.
Life and manners at the court of Rimini must have been a singular
spectacle under the bold pagan Condottiere Sigismondo Malatesta. He had
a number of scholars around him, some of whom he provided for liberally,
even giving them landed estates, while others earned at least a
livelihood as officers in his army.[525] In his citadel--‘arx
Sismundea’--they used to hold discussions, often of a very venomous
kind, in the presence of the ‘rex,’ as they termed him. In their Latin
poems they sing his praises and celebrate his amour with the fair
Isotta, in whose honour and as whose monument the famous rebuilding of
San Francesco at Rimini took place--‘Divæ Isottæ Sacrum.’ When the
humanists themselves came to die, they were laid in or under the
sarcophagi with which the niches of the outside walls of the church were
adorned, with an inscription testifying that they were laid here at the
time when Sigismundus, the son of Pandulfus, ruled.[526] It is hard for
us nowadays to believe that a monster like this prince felt learning and
the friendship of cultivated people to be a necessity of life; and yet
the man who excommunicated him, made war upon him, and burnt him in
effigy, Pope Pius II., says: ‘Sigismund knew history and had a great
store of philosophy; he seemed born to all that he undertook.[527]