Renaissance in Italy Volume V Part 31

[Footnote 567: For this argument he refers to Plato in cap. xiv.: "Sive animus mortalis sit, sive immortalis, nihilominus contemnenda est mors, neque alio pacto declinandum est a virtute quicquid accidat post mortem."]

[Footnote 568: See especially the exordium to cap. viii.]

[Footnote 569: Ritter, _Geschichte der Christlichen Philosophie_, part v. p. 426, quoted by Fiorentino, _op. cit._]

The treatise _De Incantatione_ presents the same ant.i.thesis between Peripatetic science and Christian faith. Pomponazzi composed it at the instance of a physician, his friend, who begged him to offer an explanation of some apparently supernatural phenomena. It is, in fact, an essay upon demons and miracles. As a philosopher, Pomponazzi stoutly rejects both. The order of nature cannot be interrupted.

Angels and devils only exist in the popular imagination. Miracles are but imperfectly comprehended manifestations of natural forces, which the vulgar ascribe to the intervention of G.o.d or spirits.[570] Each religion has its own miracles and its own saints, to whom the common folk attribute supernatural power.[571] But Moses, Mahomet and Christ stand upon the same level; the thaumaturgists of every creed are equally unable to alter the universal order.[572] Credulity and ignorance ascribe to all of them faculties they cannot possess.

Having, as a philosopher, expressed these revolutionary ideas, as a Christian, he briefly and summarily states his belief in all that he has just denied.[573]

[Footnote 570: _De Incant._ cap. 3.]

[Footnote 571: _Ibid._ cap. 4.]

[Footnote 572: _Ibid._ cap. 12.]

[Footnote 573: Peroration of _De Incant._]

Basing his argument upon the ground of reason, which, for him, was no other than the Aristotelian doctrine of the Cosmos, Pomponazzi recognizes no agency that interrupts the sequence of cause and effect in nature. But the astral intelligences are realities, and their operation has been as clearly ascertained as that of any other natural force. Therefore Pomponazzi refers to the planets many extraordinary exhibitions of apparently abnormal power, conceding upon this point as much as could have been desired by the most superst.i.tious of his contemporaries. Not only are the lives of men subject to planetary influence; but all human inst.i.tutions rise, flourish and decay in obedience to the same superior laws. Even religions have their day of inevitable decline, and Christianity is no exception to the general rule. At the present moment, says Pomponazzi, we may discern signs of approaching dissolution in the fabric of our creed.[574] He is careful to add, as usual, that he holds this doctrine as a philosopher; but that, as a Christian, he believes in the permanence of revealed religion. Faith and reason could not be brought into more glaring antagonism, nor is it possible to affirm contradictory propositions with less attempt at reconciliation. Pomponazzi seems determined to act out by antic.i.p.ation Pascal's axiom, _Il faut etre Pyrrhonniste accompli et Chretien soumis_. What the real state of his mind was, and whether the ant.i.thesis which seems to us so untenable, did not present itself to him as an anomaly, hardly admits of explanation. A similar unresolved discord may be traced in nearly all the thinkers of this epoch.

[Footnote 574: _De Incant._ cap. 12.]

It remains to mention one more treatise of Pomponazzi, the Book on Fate. Here he raises the question of human freedom face to face with G.o.d and the unbroken order of the Universe. The conclusions at which he arrives are vacillating and unsatisfactory; nor is there much in his method of handling this ancient problem to arrest attention. The essay, however, contains one sentence which deserves to be recorded.

"A very Prometheus," he says, "is the philosopher. Seeking to penetrate the secret things of G.o.d, he is consumed with ceaseless cares and cogitations; he forgets to thirst, to hunger, to eat, to sleep, to spit; he is derided of all men, and held for a fool and sacrilegious person; he is persecuted by inquisitors; he becomes a gazing-stock to the common folk. These, then, are the gains of the philosophers; these are their guerdons."[575] Not only were these words spoken from the man's own heart, smarting under the attacks to which his treatise on the soul had exposed him; but they were in a profound sense prophetic. While reading them, we think of Campanella's lifelong imprisonment and sevenfold tortures; of Bruno's death by fire, and Vanini's tongue torn out before his execution; of Galileo's recantation and disgrace; of Carnesecchi, Paleario and Montalcino burned or strangled. A whole procession of Italian martyrs to free thought and bold avowal of opinion pa.s.ses before our eyes.

[Footnote 575: _De Fato_, lib. iii. cap. 7.]

Reviewing Pomponazzi's work, we find that, though he occupied for the most part the modest place of a commentator and expositor, he valiantly a.s.serted the rights of reason face to face with ecclesiastical authority. Under the aegis of the formula _salva fide_, he attacked the popular belief, disputed the fiats of Church Councils, denied miracles, rejected supernatural causes, and proclaimed that science must be based upon the axiom of an unalterable permanence in the order of the universe. The controversy which his treatise on immortality inflamed in Italy, popularized the two conceptions of G.o.d's immanence in nature and of the evolution of the human soul from corporeal organs. In other words it struck a powerful blow at transcendental, extra-mundane speculation, and prepared the way for sounder physical investigations. The positive spirit appeared in Pomponazzi, never thenceforward to be set at rest until the cycle of modern scientific illumination shall be accomplished.

The deep impression produced by this controversy on the mind of the Italians, may be ill.u.s.trated by a little story. Pomponazzi's disciple, Simone Porzio, when invited to lecture at Pisa, opened Aristotle's meteorological treatises at the commencement of his course. The a.s.sembly, composed of students and people of the town, who had a.s.sembled, as was then the custom, to gaze upon the new professor and to judge his manner,[576] cried in a loud voice: "_Quid de anima?_ Speak to us about the soul!" He had to close his book, and take up the _De Anima_. This Porzio frankly professed his belief that the human soul differed in no essential point from the soul of a lion or a plant, and that those who thought otherwise, were prompted by a generous pity for our mean estate.[577] Materialism of the purest water became fashionable and expressed itself in pithy sentences, which, though devoid of historical accuracy, sufficiently paint the temper of the folk who gave them currency. Of this type is the apocryphal epitaph of Cesare Cremonini, one of the latest of the Italian peripateticians. He died in 1631, and on his grave was said to have been written at his own request _Hic jacet Cremoninus totus_. To the same Cremonini is ascribed the Jesuitical motto _Foris ut moris, intus ut libet_, which may be regarded as a cynical version of Pomponazzi's oft-repeated protestation of belief in dogmas he had demonstrated contrary to reason.[578] Had it been possible for the Church to continue her tolerance of Leo's age, or had the Counter-Reformation taken a direction less inimical to free inquiry, the studied hypocrisy of this epigram, so painfully characteristic of the age that gave it birth, might have been avoided. The men who uttered it and acted by it, were the same of whom Milton spoke in _Areopagitica_: "I have sat among their learned men (for that honor I had), and been counted happy to be born in such a place of philosophic freedom as they supposed England was, while themselves did nothing but bemoan the servile condition into which learning amongst them was brought; that this was it which had damped the glory of Italian wits; that nothing had been written now these many years but flattery and fustian."

[Footnote 576: An interesting description of a humanist opening his course at Padua, and of the excitement in the town about it, is furnished by the anonymous Maccaronic poet who sang the burlesque praises of _Vigonca_. See Delepierre, _Macaroneana Andra_, London, 1862. Above, p. 331.]

[Footnote 577: He makes these a.s.sertions in a treatise _De Mente Humana_.]

[Footnote 578: In the peroration of his treatise on Incantation, Pomponazzi says: "Habes itaque, compater charissime, quae, ut mea fert opinio, Peripatetici ad ea quae quaesivisti, dicere verisimiliter haberent. Habes et quae veritati et Christianae religioni consona sunt."]

Central and Northern Italy performed the first two stages of Renaissance thought. Florence, true to the destiny which made her artful and form-giving, attempted to restore Platonic philosophy in accordance with the conditions determined by the middle ages. Bologna, gifted with a personality no less substantial, adhered to scholastic traditions, but accommodated their rigid subject-matter to the spirit breathed upon them by more liberal scholarship. It remained for the South of Italy to complete the work, and to supply the fulcrum needed for the first true effort of modern science. Hitherto, whether at Florence or Bologna, philosophy had recognized authority. Discarding the yoke of the Church, both Platonists and Aristotelians recognized masters, whose words they were contented to interpret. Reason dared not declare herself, except beneath the mask of some great teacher--Plato or Plotinus, Aristotle or Alexander or Averroes. The school of Cosenza cut itself adrift from authority, ecclesiastical or cla.s.sical. This is the import of the first sonnet in Campanella's series, preserved for us by the fortunate mediation of his disciple, the German with the Italianized patronymic, Tobia Adami:[579]

Born of G.o.d's Wisdom and Philosophy, Keen lover of true beauty and true good, I call the vain self-traitorous mult.i.tude Back to my mother's milk; for it is she, Faithful to G.o.d her spouse, who nourished me, Making me quick and active to intrude Within the inmost veil, where I have viewed And handled all things in eternity.

If the whole world's our home where we may run, Up, friends, forsake those secondary schools Which give grains, units, inches for the whole!

If facts surpa.s.s mere words, melt pride of soul, And pain, and ignorance that hardens fools, Here in the fire I've stolen from the Sun!

[Footnote 579: From my _Sonnets of Michael Angelo and Campanella_, p.

119.]

Campanella calls the students of truth back to Nature from the "secondary schools" of the philosophers, Plato, Aristotle, Thomas of Aquino, or Averroes; who imposed upon their reason by the word "authority." In his fifth sonnet he enforces the same theme:[580]

The world's the book where the eternal sense Wrote his own thoughts; the living temple where, Painting his very self, with figures fair He filled the whole immense circ.u.mference.

Here then should each man read, and gazing find Both how to live and govern, and beware Of G.o.dlessness; and, seeing G.o.d all-where, Be bold to grasp the universal mind.

But we tied down to books and temples dead, Copied with countless errors from the life,-- These n.o.bler than that school sublime we call.

O may our senseless souls at length be led, To truth by pain, grief, anguish, trouble, strife!

Turn we to read the one original!

[Footnote 580: _Ibid._ p. 123.]

Tyrants, hypocrites and sophists--that is to say, the triple band of State and Church oppressors, of interested ecclesiastics, and of subtle logicians--have drawn their threefold veil between the human intelligence and the universe, from which alone, as their proper home and _milieu_, men must derive the knowledge that belongs to them.

Campanella, with the sincerity of one to whom the truth is dearer than his own reputation, yields the _spolia opima_ of this latest victory over the strongholds of authority to his master--the master whom he never knew in life, but over whose bier he wept and prayed in secret, hiding the fire of modern freedom and modern science beneath the black cowl of a Dominican friar:[581]

Telesius, the arrow from thy bow Midmost his band of sophists slays that high Tyrant of souls that think; he cannot fly: While Truth soars free, loosed by the self-same blow.

Proud lyres with thine immortal praises glow, Smitten by bards elate with victory: Lo, thine own Cavalcante, stormfully Lightning, still strikes the fortress of the foe!

Good Gaieta bedecks our saint serene With robes translucent, light-irradiate, Restoring her to all her natural sheen; The while my tocsin at the temple-gate Of the wide universe proclaims her queen, Pythia of first and last ordained by fate.

[Footnote 581: _Ibid._ p. 174.]

In these verses, the saint and queen proclaimed by Campanella is Nature. During the middle ages truth had seemed to descend as by a sort of inspiration upon man from an extra-mundane G.o.d. During the first and second periods of the Renaissance the human intellect repudiated this transcendentalism, but yielded itself, a willing victim, to the authority of books, Plato or Aristotle, and their commentators. Now the mind of man stands face to face with nature, and knows that there, and there alone, is inspiration. The great Baconian secret, the Interrogation of Nature, has been revealed. It is now acknowledged on all sides that not what Telesio or Campanella, or their famous disciple, Bacon, achieved in actual discovery, was noteworthy. But the spirit communicated from Telesio and Campanella to Bacon, is the spirit of modern science. Meanwhile, another native of South Italy, Giordano Bruno, proclaimed the immanence of G.o.d in the world, the identification of the universe with G.o.d in thought, the impossibility of escaping from G.o.d in nature, because nature, realizing G.o.d for the human soul, is divine. The central conception of the third age of Italian thought, underlying the apparently divergent systems of Campanella and Bruno--the conception, namely, of a real and indestructible correlation between the human spirit and the actual universe, and the consequent reliance of the human consciousness upon its own testimony in the search for truth--contained the germ of all that has, in very various regions, been subsequently achieved by French, Dutch, English, and German speculators. Telesio and Campanella, long before Bacon, founded empirical science. Campanella and Bruno, long before Descartes, established the principle of idealistic philosophy in the self-conscious thinking faculty of man.

The sensualism of Telesio, the spiritualism of Bruno, and Campanella's dualism, foreshadow all possible sects of empiricists, rationalists and eclectics, which have since divided the field of modern speculation. It is easy enough now to look down either from the height of full-blown transcendental metaphysics or from the more modest eminence of solid physical science upon the intellectual abortions generated by this potent conception in its earliest fusion with medieval theology. Yet it is impossible to neglect the negative importance of the work effected by men who declared their independence of ecclesiastical and cla.s.sical authority in an age when the Church and antiquity contended for the empire of the human reason. Still less possible is it to deny the place of Galileo, Descartes, Bacon, Spinoza, among the offspring begotten of the movement which Pomponazzi, Telesio, Campanella and Bruno inaugurated and developed.

Thus, therefore, by the subst.i.tution of human for revealed authority; by the suggestion of new and real topics of inquiry, and finally by the repudiation of all authority except that of nature's ascertained laws; by the rending of all veils between the human reason and the universe, the Italian philosophers of the Renaissance effected for Europe the transition from the middle ages to the modern era.

What is the link of connection between Machiavelli and Pomponazzi, the two leaders of Italian thought at the height of the Renaissance? It may be expressed in one formula--a vivid sense of man and the world as they are; or, in other words, positivism. Machiavelli dispenses with Providence, smiles incredulously at Fortune, explains all social and historical problems by reference to the will and thought of men in action. He studies human nature as he finds it, not as it ought to be according to some ideal standard. Pomponazzi shatters transcendentalism at a blow. He proves that there is no convincing argument for immortality. He demonstrates that the end of man is to be found in conduct. He treats religions without exception as transitory inst.i.tutions, subject to the universal laws of birth and corruption, useful to society in their day of vigor, but destined to succeed each other with the waxing and the waning of the influences that control our globe and all that it contains. On this point Machiavelli and Pomponazzi are in complete accord. Both of them interpret the spirit of their century.

As Machiavellism existed in Italian politics before Machiavelli theorized it, so materialism leavened society before Pomponazzi gave it the consistency of demonstration. The middle ages with their political and theological idealism were at an end. Machiavelli and Pomponazzi contemporaneously philosophized the realism on which science was destined to be founded. They were the deicides of elder faiths; the hierophants of a new revelation, as yet but dimly apprehended; the Columbus and Vespucci of an intellectual hemisphere which it remained for their posterity to colonize. The conditions of public and private life in the Italian cities--the decline of religious feeling, the corruption of morality, the paganizing tendencies of humanism, the extinction of political activity, the decay of freedom, the survival of the Church and Commune when their work was ended--rendered any such movement as that of the German Reformation wholly impossible. The people lacked the spiritual stuff for it. We have seen that it was chiefly men like Berni and Folengo who gave open utterance to Lutheran opinions; and from sources like those no pure or vivifying waters could be drawn. Italy's work lay in another direction. Those very conditions which unfitted her for a religious revival, enabled her to perform her true mission. It was no slight achievement to have set up the pillars of Hercules for transcendentalism, and at the same time to have discovered the continent of positive science. For the fruits and recognition of her labors she has had to wait. Her history since the date of Machiavelli's death has been obscure until the middle of this century, and in the race of the nations she has been left behind.[582] But the perturbation of the intellectual current caused by the Reformation is now nearly over, and the spirit of modern science still finds itself in harmony with that of the Italian thinkers who gave it earliest expression.

[Footnote 582: It may be worth reminding the reader that Pomponazzi died in 1525, and Machiavelli in 1527--the year of Rome's disaster.

Their births also were nearly synchronous. Pomponazzi was born in 1462, Machiavelli in 1469.]

CHAPTER XVII.

CONCLUSION.

Retrospect--Meaning of the Renaissance--Modern Science and Democracy--The Preparation of an Intellectual Medium for Europe--The Precocity of Italy--Servitude and Corruption--Antiquity and Art--The Italian Provinces--Florence--Lombardy and Venice--The March of Ancona, Urbino, Umbria--Perugia--Rome--Sicily and Naples--Italian Ethnology--Italian Independence on the Empire and the Church--Persistence of the Old Italic Stocks--The New Nation--Its Relation to the Old--The Revival of Learning was a National Movement--Its Effect on Art--On Literature--Resumption of the Latin Language--Affinities between the Latin and Italian Genius--Renascence of Italian Literature combined with Humanism--Greek Studies comparatively Uninfluential--The Modern Italians inherited Roman Qualities--Roman Defects--Elimination of Roman Satire--Decay of Roman Vigor--Italian Realism--Positivism--Sensuousness--Want of Mystery, Suggestion, Romance--The Intellectual Atmosphere--A Literature of Form and Diversion--Absence of Commanding Genius--Lack of Earnestness--Lack of Piety--Materialism and Negation--Idyllic Beauty--The Men of the Golden Age--The Cult of Form--Italy's Gifts to Europe--The Renaissance is not to be Imitated--Its Importance in Human Development--Feudalism, Renaissance, Reformation, Revolution.

At the end of a long journey it is natural to review the stages of the way that has been traversed. We resume the impressions made upon our mind, and extract that element of generality from recollection, which the rapid succession of scenes, incidents and interests denied to the experience of travel. In like manner, those who have been engaged in some historical inquiry, after examining each province of the subject separately, seek a vantage-ground of contemplation, whence the conclusions they have reached can be surveyed in their relation to each other.

What we call, for want of a better name, the Renaissance, was a period of transition from the middle ages to the first phase of modern life.

It was a step which had to be made, at unequal distances of time and under varying influences, by all the peoples of the European community. Its accomplishment brought the several members of that community into international relationship, and formed a confederation of reciprocally balanced powers out of the Occidental races who shared the inheritance of imperial Rome. At the commencement of this period, the modern nations acquired consistency and fixity of type. Mutually repelled by the principle of nationality, which made of each a separate organism, obeying its own laws of growth according to peculiarities of climate, blood and social inst.i.tutions, they were at the same time drawn and knit together by a common bond of intellectual activities and interests. The creation of this international consciousness or spirit, which, after the lapse of four centuries, justifies us in regarding the past history of Europe as the history of a single family, and encourages us to expect from the future a still closer interaction of the Western nations, can be ascribed in a great measure to the Renaissance. One distinctive feature of that epoch was, reaction against the main forces of the middle ages. And since reaction implies a vivid principle of vitality, we find, in the further progress of this movement, the new ideas of democracy and science counterposed to feudalism and the Church. So vast a revolution as the reconstruction of society upon new bases, could not be effected by any simple or continuously progressive process. The nations educated by the Church and disciplined by feudalism, could not pa.s.s into a new phase of being without checks, hesitations, retrogressions, hindrances innumerable. Nor was it to be expected that the advance of each member in the European community should proceed upon an exactly similar method, or with equally felicitous results. It was inevitable that both feudalism and the Church should long remain in liquidation, resisting the impact of skepticism inherent in the Reformation; opposing stubborn resistance to republican energy liberated by the Revolution; crystallizing the counter-movement of the modern spirit at one point in monarchical absolutism, at another in Protestant establishments; receding from this rebellious province to fortify and garrison that loyal stronghold; tolerating no compromise here, and there achieving a temporary triumph by transaction with the steadily-advancing forces ranged against them. The battle even now is being waged with varying success over the wide field of Europe; and whatever may be our conviction as to the ultimate issue of the struggle, it is impossible to foresee a definite end, or to a.s.sign even probable limits to the extent and the duration of the conflict.

Although we may hold the opinion that science and democracy const.i.tute the fundamental points in modern as distinguished from medieval history, it would be paradoxical to a.s.sert that they emerged into prominence during the initial stage of the Renaissance. A common intellectual atmosphere had first to be prepared for Europe. The sense of human freedom had to be acquired by studies and discoveries which made man master of himself and of the world around him. His attention had to be diverted from the life beyond the grave to his life upon this planet. The culture, which formed the great achievement of the Italian Renaissance and which was diffused through Europe, uniting men of all races and all creeds in speculative and literary activity, evoking sympathies and stimulating antagonisms upon vital questions of universal import, was necessary for the evolution of the modern world as we now know it. In many senses we have already transcended the original conditions of that culture. But we owe to it our spiritual solidarity, our feeling of intellectual ident.i.ty, our habit of pouring convergent contributions from divers quarters into the stock of indestructible experience.

Quickened to livelier consciousness by contact with the masterpieces of antiquity, in the dawn of that new age, the reason rapidly engaged in exploratory expeditions. Both human nature and the material universe presented themselves with altered aspect to thought and senses, which had lain dormant during centuries of incubation. At first, like the blind man of the miracle, the awakening intelligence saw confusedly. It is easy with our clearer vision to despise the hybrid fancies of a time when things old and new were so romantically blent--"the men as trees, walking," of that inexperienced intuition, the childish science and the scarce-fledged criticism of discoverers, who, while they reached forth to the future, still retained the hold of custom and long reverence on the past. A note of imperfection, vacillation, tentative endeavor, can be traced in all the productions of the Renaissance--everywhere, in fact, but in the fine arts, where a simpler insight and more unimpeded faculties were exercised at that period than the last three centuries have boasted. In another important department the men of that age proved themselves more than merely precocious and immature. The humanistic system of mental training has survived with little alteration to the present day, and still forms the basis of what is called a liberal education.

This transition from the middle ages to the modern era, which we designate by the metaphor of Renascence or new birth, made itself first powerfully felt in Italy. Of all the European nations, the Italians alone can boast of a great and uninterrupted history, extending over the twenty-five centuries which are known to us by tolerably trustworthy records. They first gave the civilization of republican and imperial Rome to the Western world. They formed the Latin Church, and extended the organization of ecclesiastical Rome to European Christendom. This was their double work in what we call the ancient and medieval periods. At the close of the latter, they inaugurated the age of culture, science and a.s.sociated intellectual endeavor, in which we are now living. In Italy the people preserved unbroken memories of their cla.s.sical past; and, as we have seen throughout these volumes, the point of departure for modern reconstruction was a renewed and vital interest in antiquity. Here, too, the characteristic inst.i.tutions of feudalism had taken but slight hold, while the secularization of the Papacy had undermined the spiritual prestige of the Church. Thus the forces to be overcome were feebler in Italy than elsewhere, while the current of fresh energy was stronger.

The conditions under which the Italians performed their task in the Renaissance were such as seem at first sight unfavorable to any great achievement. Yet it is probable that, the end in view being the stimulation of mental activity, no better circ.u.mstances than they enjoyed could have been provided. Owing to a series of adverse accidents, and owing also to their own instinctive preference for local inst.i.tutions, they failed to attain the coherence and the centralized organization which are necessary to a nation as we understand that word. Their dismemberment among rival communities proved a fatal source of political and military weakness, but it developed all their intellectual energies by compet.i.tion to the utmost.