Count Guidantonio a patron of learned men--Duke
Federigo--The _Assorditi_ Academy--Dedications to
him--Prose writers of Urbino--Gentile Becci, Bishop of
Arezzo--Francesco Venturini--Berni of Gubbio--Polydoro di
Vergilio--Vespasiano Filippi--Castiglione--Bembo--Learned
ladies.
The reputation long enjoyed by the house of Montefeltro as patrons of
letters and arts can scarcely be traced further back than Federigo,
second Duke of Urbino. Yet the few memorials that remain of his
father, Count Guidantonio, throw some scattered lights upon congenial
tastes, and from these we select three letters to the magistracy of
Siena, which are preserved in the Archivio Diplomatico of that city.
The first of them is written in Latin, the others in Italian.
"To the mighty and potent Lords the well beloved Fathers,
the Lords Priors, Governors, and Captain of the people of
the city of Siena.
"Mighty and potent Lords, my especial Fathers,
"After the expression of my sincere affection: I
understand that your Magnificences are about to agree
upon a commendable work, that of endeavouring to amend
the course of legal and other educational studies in your
city: what is really laudable needs no verbose exposition,
the fact being of itself clear and manifest. I have here
my compeer the excellent Doctor Benedetto di Bresis of
Perugia, a man of great integrity, who, without gainsaying
any one, sets forth the law in that city more amply than
any of the other judges who expound it there, and whom
his sacred Majesty lately invited to undertake the office
of captain of Aquila, on the recommendation of his own
merits, a charge which he has hitherto declined only from
an unwillingness to interrupt those studies to which he
is primarily devoted. I, however, hesitate not to propose
him as well qualified for your Magnificences, induced by a
twofold motive; first, that he may be able to continue his
studies; secondly, that he may escape from the contagion
of a home now struck by the pestilence; thirdly, that
through me you may have the honour of securing for your
course of study so able a doctor. I therefore heartily
entreat your Magnificences, and again pray and beseech
you, to appoint him to your lectureship of civil law with
an adequate salary, as a singular pleasure to myself, and
as a compliment to him, whose ample qualifications must
be satisfactory to the free wishes of your community and
the judges. And should he now or in future fall short of
these recommendations, which I cannot suppose (for I am not
so stupid), I shall consider your Magnificences to have
received at my hands a disgrace and injury, entitling you
in reason and justice to complain of me, after having so
received him into your service; and I shall always continue
beyond measure obnoxious to you and your city. Ever ready
to do you all service; from Urbino, 1st of August, 1412.
"COUNT GUIDANTONIO OF MONTEFELTRO AND URBINO."
"Mighty and potent Lords, dearest Fathers:
"The worthy and skilful Messer Piero di Pergolotti of
Verona is repairing to your magnificent Lordships, who
for a good while has been at Pesaro, where he practised
surgery, conducting himself with propriety and diligence,
so that the lords of that place and myself feel much
obliged to him, and consider ourselves bound to promote
his knowledge by providing him with the means of study.
He earnestly desires to enter into your establishment
of the Sapienza, where he hopes to do credit to this
recommendation, as well as to advance his own honour and
advantage. And knowing how much I am devoted to your
Magnificences, he has had recourse to me, hoping through
me to effect his wish. I, therefore, in consideration of
his capacity, science, and worth, pray that on my account
you will consider him fully recommended, and will grant him
admission into the Sapienza, whereby your Magnificences
will greatly gratify me, to whom I ever commend myself.
From Durante, the 2nd of May, 1440.
"GUIDANTONIO, COUNT OF MONTEFELTRO, URBINO, AND
DURANTE."
"Mighty and potent Lords, most honoured Fathers,
"There is in your Sapienza one Messer Zucha da Cagli, my
intimate friend, who, as I am informed, is very able in
civil rights, and who, for his advancement in reputation
and skill, wishes to have a lectureship, either the one
read after the first doctors come forth in the morning, or
that in the afternoon an hour before the ordinary doctors
enter. I hereby pray your magnificent Lordships, that the
said Messer Zucha be at my sight recommended to you, and
whatever honour or benefit your Lordships grant him I shall
consider as bestowed on myself, and shall remain constantly
grateful. From Cagli, the 24th of December, 1441.
"GUIDANTONIO, COUNT OF MONTEFELTRO, URBINO, AND
DURANTE."
Among the traits of literary taste displayed by Duke Federigo, we
learn from his biographer Muzio, that it was his custom to repair
weekly to the Franciscan convent, and to encourage among its learned
society debates and discussions on subjects analogous to their
studies. Upon this somewhat loose foundation, he has been claimed
as founder of the _Assorditi_, and it has been ranked among the
earliest academies in Italy. We need not pause to investigate
their respective titles to honours so questionable, now that such
associations are generally recognised as prolific of two enormous
literary nuisances, pedantry and puerility. From their antipathic
contact genius long has fled, leaving the field open to triumphant
mediocrity. Pretending to no original efforts, it was their narrow
aim to imitate standard productions, or to ring the changes upon them
in prosing and pointless commentaries. To indite two tomes of scholia
on a sonnet of Petrarch was the dreary task that qualified for
admission into the Florentine Academy; to string Platonic nothings
into rhyme was the high ambition which numbered votaries by hundreds.
The _Assorditi_ were no exception from the usual category of
mediocrity; and whether they were first associated under Federigo's
protection, or, as Tiraboschi alleges, sprang into existence under
Guidobaldo II., is of little moment to the literary history of Urbino.
In times when letters flourished chiefly at courts, patronage was
the grand end of authorship, every work being inscribed to at least
one high personage. The character and position of Federigo subjected
him to a large share of such incense; but among the many dedications
laid at his feet none perhaps was more fulsome, and at the same time
more ingenious, than that prefixed by Marsilio Ficino to his Latin
version of Plato's _Essay on Monarchy_. It narrates that Jupiter,
willing to found on earth a model sovereignty, resolved to send down
the beau-ideal of a ruler for its guidance. He, therefore, summoned
the gods in full convocation, and presented to them his new creation,
under the title _Fideregum Orbinatem Ducem_, which may be literally
interpreted "Royal faith, ruler of the world," but which was
corrupted by human idiom into _Federigo Urbinate Duce_. Pallas and
Mercury thereupon, in presence of Truth, endowed the new prince with
crown and sceptre; and the Academy, as a humble handmaid of these
deities, inscribed to him Plato's work upon mundane sovereignty.
Although we have had occasion to notice in our tenth chapter this
Duke's taste for the graver studies of theology, philosophy, history,
and Grecian literature, and to commemorate the fruit it produced in a
variety of other dedications, yet few who distinguished themselves in
these pursuits are sufficiently identified with Urbino to authorise
our dwelling at any length upon their names. Guarino of Verona,
Poggio Bracciolini, Donato Acciaiolo, Poliziano, and others of mark,
may therefore be omitted; and we shall thus have very few prose
authors to bring before our readers.
* * * * *
GENTILE DE' BECCI was probably a native of Urbino, but the
interest attaching to his name is owing rather to the distinction
attained by his pupils than to his own. He was selected by Pietro
de' Medici to train up his son Lorenzo the Magnificent; and to have
educated such a mind is an unexceptionable title to fame. Yet the
Christian philanthropist who sighs over the dross which mingled
with its ore, the impure uses to which its bright metal was in some
respects misdirected, by a master who might have moulded it to
holier purposes, and might have enriched by its talents the treasury
of truth and the triumphs of religion, may well hesitate ere he
grants to the preceptor of Lorenzo a reflected share of his glory,
without also holding him responsible for that pagan epicureanism
which spread like a pestilence from the Medicean court throughout
Italy. Nor do the notices remaining of Becci tend to nullify such
an inference. The favour of his patrons naturally obtaining for him
rapid promotion, he was raised to the see of Arezzo in 1473. But
his life was that of a statesman rather than that of a good pastor.
We read of his tact as a diplomatist, his skill in public affairs,
his dexterous civil administration of his diocese, by directing
towards commercial industry energies which had wasted themselves on
faction; we are assured that his popularity was confirmed by his
encouragement of liberal arts, by his mild and courteous character;
we are told that in political science his pen was ably employed. But
regarding his theological attainments, the purity of his morals, the
zeal of his clerical ministrations, his eulogists are silent. We may
add that to him Guicciardini in some degree imputes the miscarriage
of the proposed league of Italy against the French invasion in
1492, in consequence of his personal ambition, when sent to conduct
the negotiations at Rome on the part of the Medici, whilst his
thoughtless extravagance there wasted resources of the Florentines
which might have been better spent on military preparations.
* * * * *
Of LUDOVICO ODASIO it is unnecessary to add anything to what
we have already had occasion to say.[69] FRANCESCO VENTURINI
of Urbino is reputed the first after the revival who wrote a complete
Latin grammar. It was dedicated to Count Ottaviano Ubaldini, and
was printed at Florence in 1482, and again in his native town by
Henry of Cologne, in 1493-4.[70] Among his pupils he is said to have
numbered both Raffaele and Michael Angelo.[*71] Besides BERNI
DA GUBBIO, whose Diary has been edited in the Scriptores of
Muratori, there were several annotators of events in their native
duchy, whose prose writings remain in the Vatican Library, and have
supplied us with useful information; but they were not historians,
and it is unnecessary to bring them forth from their obscurity. Of
one name, however, we may make an exception.
[Footnote 69: See vol. I., p. 297. His oration on the death of
Federigo is No. 1233 of the Vat. Urb. MSS.]
[Footnote 70: Maestro Arrigo, of Cologne, _alias_ Heinrich v. Coln,
had then a press at Urbino. The typographic art had been introduced
there about 1481, and at Cagli five years earlier by Roberto da Fano
and Bernardino da Bergamo.]
[Footnote *71: Francesco da Urbino, who was certainly Michelangelo's
schoolmaster, does not seem to be the same as his friend Francesco
Urbino, so touchingly spoken of in the following letter from
Michelangelo to Vasari:--
"Messer Giorgio, Dear Friend,--Although I write but badly,
yet will I say a few words in reply to yours. You know that
Urbino is dead, for which I owe the greatest thanks to God;
at the same time my loss is heavy and sorrow infinite. The
grace is this, that while Urbino living kept me alive, in
dying he has taught me to die not unwillingly but rather
with a desire for death. I had him with me twenty-six
years, and always found him faithful and true. Now that I
had made him rich and thought to keep him on the staff and
rest of my old age he has departed, and the only hope left
me is that of seeing him again in Paradise, and of this God
has given a sign in his most happy death. Even more than
dying, it grieved him to leave me alive in this treacherous
world, with so many troubles; the better part of me went
with him, nothing is left to me but endless sorrow. I
commend myself to you....
"Your MICHAEL ANGELO BUONARROTI, in Rome.
"The 23 day of February, 1556."
See Le Lettere, No. CDLXXV., p. 539, in Brit. Museum, and
HOLROYD, _Michael Angelo_ (Duckworth, 1903), p. 255.
It was this Urbino's brother who was Raphael's well-known pupil, _Il
Fattore_. Cf. also HOLROYD, _op. cit._, pp. 273 and 314.]
* * * * *
POLYDORO DI VERGILIO was born at Urbino about 1470, and
studied at Bologna. His relation, Adrian Castellesi, who, when
Cardinal of Corneto, was well known both in England and at Rome,[72]
had been sent by Innocent VIII. as legate to Scotland, but remained
at London in consequence of the death of James III. at the battle of
Stirling. There he was joined by Polydoro, who, on taking priest's
orders, had, through his influence, obtained from Alexander VI. the
collectorship of an old house-tax in England called _Romescot_, or
Peter's pence, originally imposed in Saxon times for the maintenance
of English pilgrims to Rome. Aliens being there frequently objects
of church preferment, he, in 1503, obtained the rectory of Church
Langton in Leicestershire; and, on his patron's appointment in the
following year to the see of Bath and Wells, the path of further
promotion was opened to him. In 1507 he became prebendary of Lincoln
and of Hereford, and archdeacon of Wells, on which he resigned his
collectorship. In 1515 he shared an imprisonment in the Tower,
brought upon Adrian by the jealousy of Wolsey, whose haughty spirit,
disappointed of the purple, attributed the delayed honours to the
Bishop's influence. Letters were consequently written by Sadoleto
in Leo's name to the English court on behalf of Polydoro, and
Wolsey having received the much coveted scarlet hat, there was no
further pretext for his detention. The date of his return home is
variously stated at 1534 or 1550, and he carried from Henry VIII. a
recommendation which procured him letters of nobility from his own
sovereign. His literary talents being probably somewhat overrated in
Italy, the long residence he made in the hotbed of heresy, without
exercising his pen in defence of his Church, appears to have brought
the purity of his faith under suspicion. That there was no tangible
ground for the imputation may be presumed from his spending the rest
of his life unquestioned at Urbino, where he died in 1555, and was
buried in the Duomo.
[Footnote 72: Many curious unedited particulars regarding him, with
reference to the conspiracy against Leo X. in 1517, of which he was
suspected, are contained in Sanuto's Diaries, but we have not space
to notice them.]
The favour which Vergilio obtained in Adrian's eyes was partly
owing to his success in cultivating the niceties of the Latin
tongue, to restore which in its purity was a favourite project of
the Cardinal. Before quitting Italy he had dedicated to Guidobaldo
I. his _Proverbiorum Libellus_, a volume scarcely meriting the
controversy upon which he entered with Erasmus as to the priority
of suggesting such a collection. In 1499 he finished his treatise
_De Inventoribus Rerum_, which was placed in the index of prohibited
works, in consequence of tracing certain liturgical observances back
to pagan superstitions; Grossi, however, vindicates his orthodoxy
by ascribing the obnoxious passages to heretical interpolation. His
essay _De Prodigiis_ is an attempt to explain upon natural principles
all omens, auguries, and other superstitious observances. As it is
inscribed to Duke Francesco Maria I., he probably returned to Italy
before 1538.
But what chiefly interests us is a Latin _History of England_,
which he is said to have undertaken at the suggestion of Henry
VII., or more probably of Richard Fox, Bishop of Winchester, who
procured him access to certain archives. This work, from being the
first general compilation of the sort given to the public, obtained
more consideration than its superficial and inaccurate matter
deserved; and Mr. Roscoe well observes that it has not gained the
suffrages of posterity, either by ability or freedom from bias.
Among the impugners of its veracity are Whear, Humphrey Lloyd,
Henry Savile, and Bishop Bale. Some of these excuse his blunders
on the questionable plea of his ignorance of English government,
dialects, and manners, while Leland regrets that a writer so little
trustworthy should have cast over his deceptions the graces of style.
Anticipating perhaps such an aspersion, he, in his dedication of
the work to Henry VIII., dated from London in 1530, compared the
chronicles of Bede and Gildas, crude in form and phraseology, to
meat served without the salt which it was his object to supply. Yet
while the English blame him for misrepresentations,--avenged in the
stinging Latin epigram,
"Maro and Polydore bore Virgil's name;
One reaps a poet's, one a liar's fame,"--
Giovio cites the testimony of French and Scotch authors to his
partiality for the land of his adoption. More serious, but
unestablished, is a charge greatly resented by his countrymen, that,
after garbling records and ancient muniments thrown open to his
examination, he consummated the outrage by destroying the evidence of
his villainy. It may, however, be well to keep in view that, although
Bale claims him as a willing reformer of certain Romish abuses, his
adherence to that Church brought on him distrust of the Protestants,
in an age when theological disputes were matter affecting life and
limb.
In the Vatican is preserved a MS. of this history in two volumes
folio, of 1210 pages, in twenty-five books, ending with the death
of James IV. of Scotland in 1512. The narrative is preceded by a
dedication in Latin to Francesco Maria II., from Antonio Vergilio
Battiferri, grand-nephew of the author, which is dated in 1613, and
mentions the MS. as autograph. Yet on the last leaf is this colophon,
apparently in the same hand: "Rogo ut bene conserventur, simul cum
aliis in cenobio venerand. monalium Sce. Clare de Urbino, quousque
bella, Deo favente, cessabunt. Ego Federicus Ludovici Veterani
Urbinus scripsi totum opus." But though not the original, that
transcriber's name guarantees the accuracy of this copy. An extract
from it in II. of the Appendix proves that the Leyden edition of 1651
is in fact a loose paraphrase of the work.[73]
[Footnote 73: The MS. is No. 497-8 of the Vat. Urb. MSS. An edition
in folio was published at Bâle in 1546.]
* * * * *
VESPASIANO FILIPPI[*74] was a Florentine bibliopole, in an
age when that commerce was carried on by persons of learning, whose
business it was to transcribe, collate, and critically master the
MSS. which formed its staple. He was thus in familiar intercourse
not only with the literary men of the age, but with such princes
and prelates as turned their attention to the promotion of reviving
letters by multiplication and preservation of books. Of many such
he has left us biographical notices, recently given to the world
by Cardinal Mai from three MSS. in the Vatican library,[75] and in
the Riccardiana of Florence. His collection of lives of illustrious
ladies remains unedited. In the former work no memoir is so fully
extended as that of Duke Federigo of Urbino, upon which we have in
part drawn in our Second Book. It was inscribed to Duke Guidobaldo
I., in a dedication which not only testifies to his father's martial
skill, and a prowess that never knew defeat, but also to the prudence
of his sway, and assures us that the great powers of Italy had
frequent recourse to his judicious counsels. Unlike the pedantic
writers among whom he lived, Vespasiano composed these memoirs in
the language of the people for whose information he intended them;
but the long interval that elapsed before they saw the light has
necessarily prevented them from becoming in any degree popular.
Muratori, though unable to give an account of their author, has
printed his lives of Eugene IV. and Nicholas V., and characterises
his style as possessing a simplicity more precious than eloquence.
[Footnote *74: For Vespasiano da Bisticci, consult (1) his own
charming and exquisite work, _Vite degli uomini Illustri_ (Firenze,
1859), with an excellent preface by Bartoli; FRATI, _Lettere_ (Bologna,
1892-93). ROSSI writes of these in _Giornale Stor. d. Lett. Ital._
(1892), vol. XX., p. 258, and vol. XXIV., p. 276. (2) FRIZZI, _Di
Vespasiano da Bisticci e delle sue biografie_ (Pisa, 1887).]
[Footnote 75: _Spicilegium Romanum_, tom. I. (Romæ, 1839). Vat. Urb.
MSS. 941.]
* * * * *
Two members only of the brilliant and lettered court of
Guidobaldo have gained enduring celebrity from their
writings--CASTIGLIONE and BEMBO.[*76] The former
may be considered a pattern of gentlemanly writing, the latter of
scholarlike composition. We have already said what is necessary
of both, and have introduced into our narrative an idea of Count
Baldassare's _Cortegiano_, its objects and style. It is said to
have been suggested by Louis XII., and written about 1516, but
the author's preface seems to point at an earlier date. Two of
his published letters to Bembo show how anxiously he awaited the
suffrage of his friends, among whom it was handed about; but it was
sent to press in 1528, only in consequence of the alarm of a pirated
edition being in preparation, from a MS. which had been submitted
to the famed Vittoria Colonna, Marchioness of Pescara. The number
of reprints which issued during the next fifty years was at least
forty-two. A variety of circumstances conduced to this extensive and
continued popularity. Books professing to initiate the many into
habits and mysteries of refined society ever have claims on public
curiosity, but the attraction was here increased by the dazzling
reputation of the palace-circle at Urbino, as well as by the charms
of erudition, wit, elegance, and worldly wisdom which sparkle in
every page. It has, however, been remarked that most translations of
the _Cortegiano_ have failed to obtain the applause bestowed upon the
original. The observation may be taken as a compliment to the polish
of its diction, and to those delicacies of expression that bear no
transplanting into another idiom. It also proves that the celebrity
of this work rests much upon its style. The subject could scarcely
be treated at such length without falling into that diffuseness and
repetition, which, though clothed in beauty by the rich fluency of
the Italian language, must always degenerate into monotony when
rendered by the bold expletives of a less copious tongue.
[Footnote *76: For Castiglione, see works mentioned in note *2,
p. 51 _supra_. I understand Mrs. Ady has written a biography of
Castiglione, which is shortly to appear. For Bembo, I cite here
a few works more especially relating to Urbino or to his general
life: MORSOLIN, _Pietro Bembo e Lucrezia Borgia_, in _Nuova
Autologia_, August, 1885. Cf. CIAN, in _Giornale Stor. d. Lett.
Ital._, XXIX., p. 425. CIAN, _Un decennio della vita di P. Bembo_
(1521-31) (Torino, 1885), and LUZIO, in _Giornale St. d. Lett. Ital._,
VI., p. 270, and D'ANCONA, _Studi sulla Letteratura de' primi secoli_
(Ancona, 1884), p. 151 _et seq._]
[Illustration: CASTIGLIONE
_After the picture by Raphael in the Louvre_]
In a period when princes and courts little resembled what they have
since become, we possess from the pens of Machiavelli and Castiglione
generalised portraits of both; and they may be relied on as genuine,
although the Tuscan, like the _tenebristi_ painters, overloaded his
darker shadows, whilst the Mantuan Count employed the roseate tinting
of licensed flattery. Roscoe considers the _Cortegiano_ an ethical
treatise, yet it belongs as much to belles-lettres as to moral
philosophy. Its author has been called the Chesterfield of Italy,
and the parallel is singularly apt. The Count and the Earl have each
supplied "a glass of fashion and a mould of form" for the guidance of
their courtly contemporaries, and the posthumous reputation of both
with the world at large rests more upon their dicta as arbiters of
politeness, than upon their rare diplomatic address and statesmanlike
attainments. With all its interest as a picture of manners and a test
of civilisation in that proverbially refined age, with every charm
which elegance of style can impart, it is impossible to dwell on the
_Cortegiano_ without feeling that its influence was then fraught with
evil. In the pages of that essay were first systematically embodied
precepts of tact, lessons of adulation, all repugnant to the stern
manners and wholesome independence of antecedent generations. The
homely bearing of honest burghers, the rough and ready speech of men
who lived in harness, were there put out of fashion by studied phrase
and cringing flattery, too easy preparations for the effeminate
euphuism and fulsome servility which Spanish thraldom soon after
imposed upon Italy.
Another work of Castiglione, to which we have already had occasion to
refer, is his letter, written in Latin, to Henry VIII., containing
an account of Guidobaldo's death, with a somewhat meagre sketch of
his character. But there is in its composition an air of effort, a
straining at rhetorical effect, which leave upon us the inevitable
conclusion that he thought more of his style than his hero. These
faults and deficiencies belong, however, in a still greater degree
to that more ambitious disquisition, wherein Bembo has sought to
honour the memory of the Duke and Duchess, whose favour he had amply
enjoyed. His few fugitive poems well merit the preference accorded to
them by Tiraboschi over most contemporary effusions, from force of
sentiment not less than felicitous expression. It would be difficult
to rival in the literature of any age the pathos of that ode wherein
his beloved wife is supposed to sigh over his prolonged absence, and
send him the sympathetic yearnings of her long-suppressed affection.
Of this, however, and his Tirsis, we have already said enough.[77]
[Footnote 77: See above, pp. 49-50, 53-4, 58.]
The courtly qualities of Count Baldassare are acknowledged wherever
his native literature is known; that they were not inconsistent with
his observance of parental feelings is proved by an interesting
Latin letter addressed to his children the year before his death,
which has been preserved by Negrini in his _Elogii Historici_ of the
Castiglione family.
"To my beloved children, Camillo, Anna, and Ippolita.
"It is my belief, dearest son Camillo, that you, above
all things, desire my return home, for nature and the
laws equally inculcate veneration for our parents next to
God; and in your case there may be a special duty, since
I, content with but one boy, would not have another to
share with you my property and parental affection. That I
may not have to repent of such a resolution, I shall own
myself free of doubt as to yourself; yet would I have you
aware that I look for such duty at your hands rather as a
debt, than with the indifference of most parents. It will
be easily paid, if you regard in the light of a father
that excellent preceptor obtained by your friends, and
implicitly follow his advice. From my prolonged absence,
I have nothing to inculcate upon you beyond this line of
Virgil, which I may without ostentation quote:
"From me, my son, learn worth and honest toil;
Fortune from others take."[78]
"And do you, Anna, who first endeared to me a daughter's
name, so perfect yourself in moral graces, that whatever
beauty your person may develop, shall be the handmaid of
your virtues, and shall figure last in the compliments
paid you. And you, Ippolita, reflect on my love for her
whose name you bear; and how charming it would be for your
merits to surpass your sister's as much as her years do
yours. Go on both, as you are doing, and, having lost the
mother who bore you before you could know her to be so, do
you imitate her qualities, that all may remark how greatly
you resemble her. Adieu.
"From Monzoni, the 13th July, 1528.
"Your father,
"BALTHASSAR CASTILION."
[Footnote 78:
"Disce, puer, virtutem ex me, verumque laborem;
Fortunam ex aliis."
_Æneid_ XII., 345.
Dryden has missed the point of this passage.]
* * * * *
The position which BEMBO holds in the literature of Italy's
golden age is not less singular than prominent. As an historian and
poet, a philologist and rhetorician, and as a voluminous writer of
official and private letters, he challenges criticism and has gained
applause. It is, however, as a reformer of style that his claims
have been most freely accorded, and his example held up to general
imitation. Following the fashion of his day, he regarded classical,
and especially Latin, attainments, as the attribute most needful for
an accomplished man. But he went further; and, aware of the coarse
and rugged manner into which literature had fallen, sought to correct
Latin composition, and to perfect his own tongue, after the purest
ancient standards. On this object he spared no pains, till by long
and laborious practice he wrote in both with equal precision. He is
said to have subjected each of his works to forty separate critical
revisions, and no one can read a page without feeling that, as with
too many of his countrymen, the manner has occupied quite as much
thought as the matter. This naturally tended to an opposite extreme,
for the studied structure of his sentences, and the fatiguing
recurrence of mythological allusion, are blemishes greatly detracting
from the pleasure afforded by his works.[79] Scaliger, accordingly,
has scourged his pagan misnomers of divine things, while his
"childish heresy" of abject Ciceronian imitation is ridiculed by
Lansius and Lipsius. Yet there is justice in the test applied to
them by Tiraboschi; for great and wide-spread evils require extreme
remedies, and the prevailing laxity of style having been once
brought into discredit by his example, those who followed were able
to avail themselves of his guidance and taste, without falling into
the rigidity and constraint which blemish his compositions. Indeed,
notwithstanding these obvious blots, which hero-worship has mistaken
for beauties, his History of Venice, his Essay on Imitation, his
diplomatic and familiar correspondence, and even his poetry, must,
when tried by then-received standards, be allowed a merit entitling
them to the general suffrage of contemporaries. It is to his Latin
prose that our strictures are most applicable. Forgetting, in his
zealous imitation of Cicero, the allowance due to modern themes,
principles, and feelings, he so slavishly followed that heathen
philosopher's idioms, as to clothe what he meant for Christianity
in the words of paganism. Even his letters, running in name of the
successor of St. Peter, transmuted the Almighty into a pantheistic
generality, our Saviour into a hero, and the Madonna into a goddess
of Loreto. It may be feared that this latitudinarianism was not
limited to manner, for an anecdote alleges him to have seriously
recommended a young divine to avoid reading St. Paul's Epistles, lest
they might mar his style.
[Footnote 79: "Quid autem ineptius quam, toto seculo renovato,
religione, imperiis, magistratibus, locorum vocabulis, ædificiis,
cultu, moribus, non aliter audire, loqui, quam locutus est
Cicero? Si revivisceret ipse Cicero, rideret hoc Ciceronianorum
genus."--ERASMUS.]
Compositions conceived and executed in so eclectic a spirit could
scarcely avoid falling into coldness and pedantry; and such are
prominent faults in his Venetian history, and his tribute to Duke
Guidobaldo,--two works especially connected with the subject of
these pages. The former is the most important production of his pen,
and was begun in 1529, by desire of the Signory, in continuation of
Sabellico's narrative, It is comprised in twelve books, extending
from 1487 to 1513, where it remained unfinished at his death, but
was continued by Paruta. From a contemporary possessing talent,
industry, leisure, and high literary reputation, as well as many
opportunities of personal observation, very large expectations might
be legitimately entertained. But as a churchman, he is said to have
been jealously excluded from the Venetian archives, a condition
which, in the judgment of Tiraboschi, ought to have disqualified
him from the task, and which may account for, if it cannot excuse,
the superficial character of the narrative, the poverty of graphic
details, and the teasing absence of dates. On the composition, too,
his classic mania has left its withering traces. It was his ambition
here to rival the Commentaries of Cæsar; and, in perfecting the
idiom of a dead language, he has constrained freedom of thought, and
polished away the life and spirit of his theme. We have examined his
pages, as an indispensable authority upon events which occupy several
chapters of our work; but those who read Italian history for pleasure
will generally prefer to do so either in the Italian tongue or their
own. Conscious probably of this, the author himself translated the
work into his vernacular language, and both versions were published
soon after his death.
His dissertation on the characters of the Duke and Duchess of
Urbino is written in Latin, and exhibits all those blemishes of
style to which we have just referred, and which so strangely jar
upon the fulsome flattery and elaborate verbiage which he labours
to reduce into Ciceronian terseness. Though entitled a "Book," the
whole occupies but a hundred pages in the octavo edition of his
works (1567), whereof scarcely one third is original matter. It is
addressed to Nicolò Tiepolo, a literary gentleman of Venice, and
professes to have been committed to writing for the satisfaction
of some Venetians who, feeling an interest in Guidobaldo as their
former guest, had applied to the father of Bembo for some account of
his death. It is thrown into a dialogue between himself, Sadoleto,
Filippo Beroaldo the younger, and Sigismondo [Conti?] of Foligno.
The last-named personage supplies to their inquiries a narrative
of the Duke's closing hours, addressed to Julius II., by Federigo
Fregoso, along with the funeral oration pronounced at his obsequies
by his preceptor Odasio. The former of these is written in a strain
beseeming a heathen philosopher, rather than a Christian dignitary;
the latter, which Tiraboschi has detected as very different from the
printed oration, is to the full as turgid and tiresome as are most
such efforts of Italian adulation; neither of them tell anything of
importance that Castiglione has not better given us.
The whole discourse is, as I have had occasion to mention,[80] of
but trifling value to the biographer of these personages. Facts
are generalised until no substance remains; incidents and traits
of character are lost in the multiplicity of epithets; and thus we
have, instead of a speaking likeness, a vague and showy picture,
overladen with ornaments until individuality is gone. The warmer
emotions of the heart could scarcely, perhaps, be happily clothed in
the abstractions of a dead tongue, unadapted to the times, and to
circumstances which required the outpourings of unaffected grief;
at all events, these measured periods and studied phrases give no
real pleasure. Bembo was an elegant Latinist, but in such a work the
language of nature could alone afford satisfaction. When we seek
to know the true characters of his distinguished patrons, we are
dismissed with an inflated rhetorical exercise; we are offered bread,
and find it a stone. These strictures apply to the long funeral
oration, but still more to the dull didactic discourse of the four
friends, which wants the fire and feeling of the eulogy, and is
soiled by gross details gratuitously introduced on a point at which
good taste would have barely glanced. In all respects, the most
interesting portion of the work is Fregoso's letter, upon which we
have drawn in describing the death-bed of Guidobaldo. On the whole,
this production may be dismissed with a doubt whether its prosiness
or its pruriency is most offensive. Nor will the perusal of those
papal brieves, extended by the same writer, which despoiled of his
inheritance the Duke's adopted child, blasphemously ejecting him from
the pale of Christendom, give a higher opinion of the sincerity of
this ungrateful sycophant.
[Footnote 80: Vol. I., p. 298, 392; II., 114.]
His other works, having no immediate reference to our subject,
may be dismissed with few words. _The Prose_, a treatise upon
rhetoric, intended to fix the standard of pure Italian composition,
is a dialogue, to which Giuliano de' Medici and Federigo Fregoso
are parties. _Gli Asolani_, a more juvenile production, was named
from the castle of Asolo, at which some youths are represented as
discussing the tender passion in all its moods and modifications.
This theme, notwithstanding the tedious manner in which it is
treated, gave it great popularity over western Europe in the
sixteenth century, but the style and substance alike render it
unpalatable to modern amateurs of light reading. His Latin treatise
_De Imitatione_ is a dull defence of his Ciceronian mannerisms;
his essay in the same language upon Virgil and Terence a laboured
philological critique; his _De Ætna Liber_ a report of physical
observations during an early residence near that volcano. His poetry,
both Latin and Italian, enjoyed high reputation at a period when
imitations of Petrarch had degenerated into common-place; for he
succeeded in brushing away the rust of ages, and restoring much
of the bright polish peculiar to the bard of Arqua. Lastly, his
very numerous private and official letters have preserved to us a
valuable store of facts, and much curious illustration of coeval
manners and individual character.
* * * * *
The share of laborious learning voluntarily borne by ladies of
the highest birth in the fifteenth century is a singular problem.
There was scarcely a sovereign family that could not boast among
its daughters some votary of intellectual pursuits, in an age when
mental cultivation was of a sort more calculated to overburden
genius, than to give wings to fancy in her flight after knowledge.
A familiar acquaintance with Latin was then requisite, being the
key to modern as well as classic and biblical literature, and also
the current language of diplomacy or courtly intercourse.[*81] The
abstruse distinctions of ancient philosophy, the complex tenets of
dogmatic theology, the fatiguing jargon of scholastic disputation,
were all included in the circle of female accomplishments. Such were
the graces for which Bianca d'Este, Isotta Nogarolo, and Veronica
Gambara were famed; while another Isotta, paramour of the truculent
Lord of Rimini, divided contemporary adulation between the beauties
of her person and her mind. The vagueness of such eulogies might
well justify scepticism as to the profundity of that lore they
were intended to vaunt; but in the case of Ippolita Maria Sforza,
daughter of Francesco Duke of Milan, and wife of Alfonso King of
Naples, chance has afforded us a standard of the knowledge mastered
by these learned ladies. It was for this princess that Constantine
Lascaris composed the earliest Greek Grammar; and in the convent
library of Sta. Croce at Rome there is a transcript by her of
Cicero De Senectute, followed by a juvenile collection of Latin
apophthegms curiously indicative of her character and studies. The
house of Montefeltro could boast a full share of such distinction,
in Princess Battista, wife of the wretched Galeazzo Lord of Pesaro,
to whose literary celebrity we have elsewhere paid our tribute,
and whose progeny we have seen maintaining the prestige of her
accomplishments to the third generation. Her great-granddaughter
Battista Sforza rivalled her accomplishments, and those of her cousin
Ippolita Maria, and, when placed by her marriage at the head of the
court at Urbino, contributed much to the literary reputation which
it then first obtained. Its two succeeding duchesses of the Gonzaga
race, although women of remarkable talent, did not carry so far the
cultivation of their natural powers; but we have found, in their
relative and associate Emilia Pia, one whose learning was scarcely
less notable than her wit.
[Footnote *81: On the whole subject of women, see note *1, p.
72. Their education was the same as that of their brothers. Cf.
SYMONDS, _The Renaissance in Italy_ (1904), vol. V., p.
250, note 1, and BURCKHARDT, _The Civilisation of the
Renaissance_ (1878), vol. II., p. 161.]
Such were the examples of female genius which emanated from the
courts of Italy, and, spreading to her universities, installed
feminine erudition in professorial chairs. Nor was this questionable
practice limited within the Italian peninsula. Many Spanish dames
were conspicuous in scholarship, and, at the close of the century,
Salamanca and Alcala saw their professorships held with applause by
ladies equally distinguished for birth and accomplishments.