GENERAL LATINISATION OF CULTURE.
We cannot attempt to trace the influence of humanism in the special
sciences. Each has its own history, in which the Italian investigators
of this period, chiefly through their rediscovery of the results
attained by antiquity,[577] mark a new epoch, with which the modern
period of the science in question begins with more or less distinctness.
With regard to philosophy, too, we must refer the reader to the special
historical works on the subject. The influence of the old philosophers
on Italian culture will appear at times immense, at times
inconsiderable; the former, when we consider how the doctrines of
Aristotle, chiefly drawn from the Ethics[578] and Politics--both widely
diffused at an early period--became the common property of educated
Italians, and how the whole method of abstract thought was governed by
him;[579] the latter, when we remember how slight was the dogmatic
influence of the old philosophies, and even of the enthusiastic
Florentine Platonists, on the spirit of the people at large. What looks
like such an influence is generally no more than a consequence of the
new culture in general, and of the special growth and development of the
Italian mind. When we come to speak of religion, we shall have more to
say on this head. But in by far the greater number of cases, we have to
do, not with the general culture of the people, but with the utterances
of individuals or of learned circles; and here, too, a distinction must
be drawn between the true assimilation of ancient doctrines and
fashionable make-believe. For with many antiquity was only a fashion,
even among very learned people.
Nevertheless, all that looks like affectation to our age, need not then
have been actually so. The giving of Greek and Latin names to children,
for example, is better and more respectable than the present practice of
taking them, especially the female names, from novels. When the
enthusiasm for the ancient world was greater than for the saints, it was
simple and natural enough that noble families called their sons
Agamemnon, Tydeus, and Achilles,[580] and that a painter named his son
Apelles and his daughter Minerva.[581] Nor will it appear unreasonable
that, instead of a family name, which people were often glad to get rid
of, a well-sounding ancient name was chosen. A local name, shared by all
residents in the place, and not yet transformed into a family name, was
willingly given up, especially when its religious associations made it
inconvenient; Filippo da San Gemignano called himself Callimachus. The
man, misunderstood and insulted by his family, who made his fortune as a
scholar in foreign cities, could afford, even if he were a Sanseverino,
to change his name to Julius Pomponius Laetus. Even the simple
translation of a name into Latin or Greek, as was almost uniformly the
custom in Germany, may be excused to a generation which spoke and wrote
Latin, and which needed names that could be not only declined, but used
with facility in verse and prose. What was blameworthy and ridiculous
was, the change of half a name, baptismal or family, to give it a
classical sound and a new sense. Thus Giovanni was turned into Jovianus
or Janus, Pietro to Petreius or Pierius, Antonio to Aonius, Sannazzaro
to Syncerus, Luca Grasso to Lucius Crassus. Ariosto, who speaks with
such derision of all this,[582] lived to see children called after his
own heroes and heroines.[583]
Nor must we judge too severely the Latinisation of many usages of social
life, such as the titles of officials, of ceremonies, and the like, in
the writers of the period. As long as people were satisfied with a
simple, fluent Latin style, as was the case with most writers from
Petrarch to Æneas Sylvius, this practice was not so frequent and
striking; it became inevitable when a faultless, Ciceronian Latin was
demanded. Modern names and things no longer harmonised with the style,
unless they were first artificially changed. Pedants found a pleasure in
addressing municipal counsellors as ‘Patres Conscripti,’ nuns as
‘Virgines Vestales,’ and entitling every saint ‘Divus’ or ‘Deus;’ but
men of better taste, such as Paolo Giovio, only did so when and because
they could not help it. But as Giovio does it naturally, and lays no
special stress upon it, we are not offended if, in his melodious
language, the cardinals appear as ‘Senatores,’ their dean as ‘Princeps
Senatus,’ excommunication as ‘Dirae,’[584] and the carnival as
‘Lupercalia.’ This example of this author alone is enough to warn us
against drawing a hasty inference from these peculiarities of style as
to the writer’s whole mode of thinking.
The history of Latin composition cannot here be traced in detail. For
fully two centuries the humanists acted as if Latin were, and must
remain, the only language worthy to be written. Poggio[585] deplores
that Dante wrote his great poem in Italian; and Dante, as is well known,
actually made the attempt in Latin, and wrote the beginning of the
‘Inferno’ first in hexameters. The whole future of Italian poetry hung
on his not continuing in the same style,[586] but even Petrarch relied
more on his Latin poetry than on the Sonnets and ‘Canzoni,’ and Ariosto
himself was desired by some to write his poem in Latin. A stronger
coercion never existed in literature;[587] but poetry shook it off for
the most part, and it may be said, without the risk of too great
optimism, that it was well for Italian poetry to have had both means of
expressing itself. In both something great and characteristic was
achieved, and in each we can see the reason why Latin or Italian was
chosen. Perhaps the same may be said of prose. The position and
influence of Italian culture throughout the world depended on the fact
that certain subjects were treated in Latin[588]--‘urbi et orbi’--while
Italian prose was written best of all by those to whom it cost an inward
struggle not to write in Latin.
From the fourteenth century Cicero was recognised universally as the
purest model of prose. This was by no means due solely to a
dispassionate opinion in favour of his choice of language, of the
structure of his sentences, and of his style of composition, but rather
to the fact that the Italian spirit responded fully and instinctively to
the amiability of the letter-writer, to the brilliancy of the orator,
and to the lucid exposition of the philosophical thinker. Even Petrarch
recognised clearly the weakness of Cicero as a man and a statesman,[589]
though he respected him too much to rejoice over them. After Petrarch’s
time, the epistolary style was formed entirely on the pattern of Cicero;
and the rest, with the exception of the narrative style, followed the
same influence. Yet the true Ciceronianism, which rejected every phrase
which could not be justified out of the great authority, did not appear
till the end of the fifteenth century, when the grammatical writings of
Lorenzo Valla had begun to tell on all Italy, and when the opinions of
the Roman historians of literature had been sifted and compared.[590]
Then every shade of difference in the style of the ancients was studied
with closer and closer attention, till the consoling conclusion was at
last reached, that in Cicero alone was the perfect model to be found,
or, if all forms of literature were to be embraced, in ‘that immortal
and almost heavenly age of Cicero.’[591] Men like Pietro Bembo and
Pierio Valeriano now turned all their energies to this one object. Even
those who had long resisted the tendency, and had formed for themselves
an archaic style from the earlier authors,[592] yielded at last, and
joined in the worship of Cicero. Longolius, at Bembo’s advice,
determined to read nothing but Cicero for five years long, and finally
took an oath to use no word which did not occur in this author. It was
this temper which broke out at last in the great war among the scholars,
in which Erasmus and the elder Scaliger led the battle.
For all the admirers of Cicero were by no means so one-sided as to
consider him the only source of language. In the fifteenth century,
Politian and Ermolao Barbaro made a conscious and deliberate effort to
form a style of their own,[593] naturally on the basis of their
‘overflowing’ learning, though they failed to inspire their pupils with
a similar desire for independence; and our informant of this fact, Paolo
Giovio, pursued the same end. He first attempted, not always
successfully, but often with remarkable power and elegance, and at no
small cost of effort, to reproduce in Latin a number of modern,
particularly of æsthetic, ideas. His Latin characteristics of the great
painters and sculptors of his time contain a mixture of the most
intelligent and of the most blundering interpretation.[594] Even Leo X.,
who placed his glory in the fact, ‘ut lingua latina nostra pontificatu
dicatur factu auctior,’[595] was inclined to a liberal and not too
exclusive Latinity, which, indeed, was in harmony with his
pleasure-loving nature. He was satisfied when the Latin which he had to
read and hear was lively, elegant, and idiomatic. Then, too, Cicero
offered no model for Latin conversation, so that here other gods had to
be worshipped beside him. The want was supplied by representations of
the comedies of Plautus and Terence, frequent both in and out of Rome,
which for the actors were an incomparable exercise in Latin as the
language of daily life. The impulse to the study of the old Latin
comedies and to modern imitations of them was given by the discovery of
plays by Plautus in the ‘Cod. Ursinianus,’ which was brought to Rome in
1428 or 1429. A few years later, in the pontificate of Paul II., the
learned Cardinal of Teano[596] (probably Niccolò Forteguerra of Pistoja)
became famous for his critical labours in this branch of scholarship. He
set to work upon the most defective plays of Plautus, which were
destitute even of the list of the characters, and went carefully through
the whole remains of this author, chiefly with an eye to the language.
Possibly it was he who gave the first impulse for the public
representations of these plays. Afterwards Pomponius Laetus took up the
same subject, and acted as manager when Plautus was put on the stage in
the houses of great churchmen.[597] That these representations became
less common after 1520, is mentioned by Giovio, as we have seen (p.
242), among the causes of the decline of eloquence.
We may mention, in conclusion, the analogy between Ciceronianism in
literature and the revival of Vitruvius by the architects in the sphere
of art.[598] And here, too, the law holds good which prevails elsewhere
in the history of the Renaissance, that each artistic movement is
preceded by a corresponding movement in the general culture of the age.
In this case, the interval is not more than about twenty years, if we
reckon from Cardinal Hadrian of Corneto (1505?) to the first avowed
Vitruvians.