Renaissance in Italy Volume II Part 6

The relations of Petrarch to Rienzi offer matter for curious reflection, while they ill.u.s.trate the part played by the enthusiasm for ancient Rome in the early history of humanism. Petrarch and Rienzi had been friends and correspondents before the emergence of the latter into public notice; and when the Tribune seemed about to satisfy the dearest desire of the poet's heart by re-establishing the Roman commonwealth, Petrarch addressed him with an animated letter of congratulation and encouragement.[109] In his charmed eyes he seemed a hero, _vir magnanimus_, worthy of the ancient world, a new Romulus, a third Brutus, a Camillus. The Roman burghers, that sc.u.m and sediment of countless races, barbarised by the lingering miseries of the Middle Ages, needed nothing, it appeared, but words and wishes to make them once again _cives Romani_, no longer clamorous for bread and games, but ready to reconquer all their ancestors had lost.[110] 'Where,'

cried Petrarch, 'can the empire of the world be found, except in Rome?

Who can dispute the Roman right? What force can stand against the name of Romans?' Neither the patriot nor the scholar discerned that the revival they were destined to inaugurate was intellectual. Though the spirit of the times refused a political Renaissance, refused to Italy the maintenance of even such freedom as she then possessed, far more refused a resuscitation of ancient Rome's imperial sway, yet both Rienzi and Petrarch persisted in believing that, because they glowed with fervour for the past, because they could read inscriptions, because they expressed their desires eloquently, the world's great age was certain to begin anew. It was a capital fault of the Renaissance to imagine that words could work wonders, that a rhetorician's _stylus_ might become the wand of Prospero. Seeming pa.s.sed for being in morals, politics, and all affairs of life. I have already touched on this as a capital defect in Petrarch's character; but it was a weakness inherent not only in him and in the age he inaugurated, but one, moreover, that has influenced the whole history of the Italians for evil. Sounding phrases like the _barbaros expellere_ of Julius II., like the _va fuori d'Italia_ of Garibaldian hymns, from time to time have roused the nation to feverish enthusiasm, too soon succeeded by dejected apathy. When the inefficiency of Rienzi was proved, all that remained for Petrarch was to warn and scold.

[Footnote 109: _De Capessenda Libertate_, _Hortatoria_, p. 535.]

[Footnote 110: See Petrarch's _Epistle to the Roman People_, p. 712.]

The interest excited in Petrarch by the sight of Rome's ruins was important for his humanistic ideal. They stirred him as a moralist, an antiquarian, and a man who owed his mental vigour to the past. He tells how often he used to climb above the huge vaults of the Baths of Diocletian in company with his friend Giovanni Colonna.[111] Seated there among the flowering shrubs and scented herbs that clothed decay with loveliness, they held discourse concerning the great men of old, and deplored the mutability of all things human. Whatever the poet had read of Roman grandeur was brought back to his mind with vivid meaning during his long solitary walks. He never doubted that he knew for certain where Evander's palace stood, and where the cave of Cacus opened on the Tiber. The difficulties of modern antiquarian research had not been yet suggested, and his fancy was free to map out the topography of the seven hills as pleased him best. Yet he complained that nowhere was less known about Rome than in Rome itself.[112] This ignorance he judged the most fatal obstacle to the resurrection of the city.[113] The palaces where dwelt those heroes of the past, had fallen into ruins; the temples of the G.o.ds were desecrated; the triumphal arches were crumbling; the very walls had yielded to decay.

None of the Romans cared to arrest destruction; they even robbed the marble columns and entablatures in order to deck Naples with the spoils.[114] The last remnants of the city would soon, he exclaimed, be levelled with the ground. Time has been unable to destroy them; but man was ruining what Time had spared.[115]

[Footnote 111: _Epist. Fam._ lib. ii. 14, p. 605; lib. vi. 2, p. 657.]

[Footnote 112: 'Qui enim hodie magis ignari rerum Romanarum sunt, quam Romani Cives? Invitus dico, nusquam minus Roma cognoscitur quam Romae.'

_Epist. Fam._ lib. ii. 14, p. 658.]

[Footnote 113: 'Quis enim dubitare potest, quin illico surrectura sit si coeperit se Roma cognoscere?' _Ibid._]

[Footnote 114: 'Vi vel senio collapsa palatia, quae quondam ingentes tenuere viri, diruptos arcus triumphales ... indignum de vestris marmoreis columnis, de liminibus templorum, ad quae nuper ex toto orbe concursus devotissimus fiebat, de imaginibus sepulchrorum, sub quibus patrum vestrorum venerabilis cinis erat, ut reliquas sileam, desidiosa Neapolis adornatur.' _Ibid._ p. 536.]

[Footnote 115:

'Quanta quod integrae fuit olim gloria Romae, Reliquiae testantur adhuc, quas longior aetas Frangere non valuit, non vis, aut ira cruenti Hostis, ab egregiis franguntur civibus heu, heu.'

Petr. _Epist. Metr._ lib. ii. p. 98.]

There is no doubt that, shortly before the date of Petrarch's visits to Rome, the city had suffered grievously in its monuments. We know, for instance, that the best preserved of the theatres, baths, and tombs formed the residences and fortresses of n.o.bles in the Middle Ages; and when we read that in 1258 the senator Brancaleone found it necessary to destroy one hundred and forty of these fortified dwellings, we obtain a standard for measuring the injury that must have ensued to precious works of cla.s.sic architecture. The ruins, moreover, as Petrarch hinted, had been used as quarries. What was worse, the burghers burned the marbles, rich, perhaps, with inscriptions and carved bas-reliefs, for lime. We shall shortly see what Poggio relates upon this topic. For the present it will suffice to quote an epigram of Pius II., written some time after the revival of enthusiasm for antiquity:--

Oblectat me, Roma, tuas spectare ruinas, Ex cujus lapsu gloria prisca patet.

Sed tuus hic populus muris defossa vetustis Calcis in obsequium marmora dura coquit.

Impia ter centum si sic gens egerit annos, Nullum hic indicium n.o.bilitatis erit.[116]

[Footnote 116: It delights me to contemplate thy ruins, Rome, the witness amid desolation to thy pristine grandeur. But thy people burn thy marbles for lime, and three centuries of this sacrilege will destroy all sign of thy n.o.bleness.' Compare a letter from Alberto degli Alberti to Giovanni de' Medici, quoted by Fabroni, _Cosmi Vita_, Adnot. 86. The real pride of Rome was still her ruins. Nicolo and Ugo da Este journeyed in 1396 to Rome, 'per vedere quelle magnificenze antiche che al presente si possono vedere in Roma.' Murat. xxiv.

845.]

Poggio Bracciolini opens a new epoch in Roman topography. The ruins that had moved the superst.i.tious wonder of the Middle Ages, that had excited Rienzi to patriotic enthusiasm, and Petrarch to reflections on the instability of human things, were now for the first time studied in a truly antiquarian spirit. Poggio read them like a book, comparing the testimony they rendered with that of Livy, Vitruvius, and Frontinus, and seeking to compile a catalogue of the existing fragments of old Rome. The first section of his treatise 'De Varietate Fortunae,' forms by far the most important source of information we possess relating to the state of Rome in the fifteenth century.[117]

It appears that the Baths of Caracalla and Diocletian could still boast of columns and marble incrustations, but that within Poggio's own recollection the marbles had been stripped from Caecilia Metella's tomb, and the so-called Temple of Concord had been pillaged.[118]

Among the ruins ascribed to the period of the Republic are mentioned a bridge, an arch, a tomb, a temple, a building on the Capitol, and the pyramid of Cestius.[119] Besides these, Poggio enumerates, as referable chiefly to the Imperial age, eleven temples, seven _thermae_, the Arches of t.i.tus, Severus, and Constantine, parts of the Arches of Trajan, Faustina, and Gallienus, the Coliseum, the Theatres of Pompey and Marcellus, the Circus Agonalis and Circus Maximus, the Columns of Trajan and Antonine, the two horses ascribed to Pheidias and Praxiteles, together with other marble statues, one bronze equestrian statue, and the mausoleums of Augustus and Hadrian.

[Footnote 117: My references are made to the Paris edition of 1723.

The first book is sometimes cited under the t.i.tle of _Urbis Romae Descriptio_.]

[Footnote 118: 'Juxta viam Appiam, ad secundum lapidem, integrum vidi sepulchrum L. Caeciliae Metellae, opus egregium, et id ipsum tot saeculis intactum, ad calcem postea majori ex parte exterminatum' (p. 19).

'Capitolio contigua forum versus superest porticus aedis Concordiae, quam, c.u.m primum ad urbem accessi, vidi fere integram, opere marmoreo admodum specioso; Romani postmodum, ad calcem aedem totam et portics partem, disjectis columnis, sunt demoliti.' _Ibid._]

[Footnote 119: Pp. 8, 9.]

We have to regret that Poggio's description was subservient and introductory to a rhetorical dissertation. Had he applied himself to the task of tabulating more minutely what he had observed, his work would have been infinitely precious to the archaeologist. No one knew more about the Roman buildings than he did. No one felt the impression of their majesty in desolation more profoundly. The mighty city appeared to him, he said, like the corpse of a giant, like a queen in slavery. The sight of her magnificence, despoiled and shorn of ornaments as she had been, moved him daily to deeper admiration. It was his custom to lead strangers from point to point among the ruins, in order to enjoy the effect produced upon fresh minds by their stupendous evidence of strength and greatness in decay.

The pathos of this former empress of the world exposed to insult and indignity had not been first felt by Poggio. Petrarch described her as an aged matron with grey hair and pale cheeks, whose torn and sordid raiment ill accorded with the n.o.bleness of her demeanour.[120] Fazio degli Uberti personified her as a majestic woman, wrapped around with rags, who pointed out to him the ruins of her city, 'to the end that he might understand how fair she was in years of old.'[121]

[Footnote 120: _De Pacificanda Italia, Ad Carolum Quartum_, p. 531.]

[Footnote 121: In the _Dittamondo_, about 1360.]

In this way a sentimental feeling for the relics of the past grew up and flourished side by side with the archaeological interest they excited. The literature of the Renaissance abounds in matter that might be used in ill.u.s.tration of this remark,[122] while nothing was commoner in art than to paint for backgrounds broken arches and decayed buildings, 'whose ruins are even pitied.' The double impulse of romantic sentiment and antiquarian curiosity, set going in this age of the Revival, contributed no little to the development of architecture, sculpture, and painting. In the section of my work which deals with the fine arts in Italy will be found the proper sequel to this subject. Meanwhile the history of antiquarian research in Rome itself will be resumed in another chapter of this volume.

[Footnote 122: Such, for example, as Boccaccio's description of the ruins of Baiae in the _Fiammetta_, Sannazzaro's lines on the ruins of c.u.mae, aeneas Sylvius Piccolomini's notes on ancient sites in Italy.]

Among the representative men of the first period of the Revival must be mentioned an enthusiast who devoted his whole life to topographical studies and to the copying of cla.s.sical inscriptions. Ciriaco de'

Pizzicolli was born about 1404 at Ancona, and from this town he took the name he bears among the learned. Like many other pioneers of erudition, he was educated for commerce, and had slender opportunities for acquiring the dead languages in his youth. His manhood was spent in restless journeying, at first undertaken for the purposes of trade, but afterwards for the sole object of discovery. Smitten with the zeal for cla.s.sical antiquity, he made himself a tolerable Latin scholar, and gained a fair knowledge of Greek. In the course of his long wanderings he ransacked every part of Italy, Greece, and the Greek islands, collecting medals, gems, and fragments of sculpture, buying ma.n.u.scripts, transcribing records, and ama.s.sing a miscellaneous store of archaeological information. The enthusiasm that possessed him was so untempered by sobriety that it excited the suspicion of contemporaries. Some regarded him as a man of genuine learning; others spoke of him as a flighty, boastful, and untrustworthy fanatic.[123]

The mistakes he made in copying inscriptions depreciated the general value of his labours, while he was even accused of having pa.s.sed off fabrications on the credulity of the public. The question of his alleged forgeries has been discussed at length by Tiraboschi.[124] To settle it at this distance of time is both unimportant and impossible.

While we may well believe that Ciriac was a conceited enthusiast, accepting as genuine what he ought to have rejected, and interpreting according to his fancy rather than the letter of his text, his life retains real value for the student of the Revival. In him the curiosity of the new age reached its acme of expansiveness. The pa.s.sion for discovery pursued him from sh.o.r.e to sh.o.r.e, and the vision of the past, to be reconquered by the energy of the present, haunted his imagination till the moment of his death. When asked what object he had set his heart upon in those perpetual journeyings, he answered, 'I go to awake the dead.' That word, the motto for the first age of the Revival, explains the fanaticism of Ciriac, and is a sufficient t.i.tle to fame.

[Footnote 123: Filippo Maria Visconti is said to have denounced him as an impostor. Ambrogio Traversari mentions his coins and gems with mistrust. Poggio describes him as a conceited fellow with no claim to erudition. On the other hand, he gained the confidence of Eugenius IV., and received the panegyrics of Filelfo, Barbaro, Bruni, and others. See Tiraboschi, vol. vi. lib. i. cap. 5.]

[Footnote 124: In the place just cited. The temptation, at this epoch of discovery, when criticism was at a low ebb, and curiosity was frantic, to pa.s.s off forgeries upon the learned world must have been very great. The most curious example of this literary deception is afforded by Annius of Viterbo, who, in 1498, published seventeen books of spurious histories, pretending to be the lost works of Manetho, Berosus, Fabius Pictor, Archilochus, Cato, &c. Whether he was himself an impostor or a dupe is doubtful. A few of his contemporaries denounced the histories as patent fabrications. The majority accepted them as genuine. Their worthlessness has long been undisputed. See Tiraboschi, vol. vi. lib. iii. cap. 1.]

CHAPTER IV

SECOND PERIOD OF HUMANISM

Intricacy of the Subject -- Division into Four Periods -- Place of Florence -- Social Conditions favourable to Culture -- Palla degli Strozzi -- His Encouragement of Greek Studies -- Plan of a Public Library -- His Exile -- Cosimo de'

Medici -- His Patronage of Learning -- Political Character -- Love of Building -- Generosity to Students -- Foundation of Libraries -- Vespasiano and Thomas of Sarzana -- Niccolo de' Niccoli -- His Collection of Codices -- Description of his Mode of Life -- His Fame as a Latinist -- Lionardo Bruni -- His Biography -- Translations from the Greek -- Latin Treatises and Histories -- His Burial in Santa Croce -- Carlo Aretino -- Fame as a Lecturer -- The Florentine Chancery -- Matteo Palmieri -- Giannozzo Manetti -- His Hebrew Studies -- His Public Career -- His Eloquence -- Manetti ruined by the Medici -- His Life in Exile at Naples -- Estimate of his Talents -- Ambrogio Traversari -- Study of Greek Fathers -- General of the Camaldolese Order -- Humanism and Monasticism -- The Council of Florence -- Florentine Opinion about the Greeks -- Gemistus Pletho -- His Life -- His Philosophy -- His Influence at Florence -- Cosimo de' Medici and the Florentine Academy -- Study of Plato -- Pletho's Writings -- Platonists and Aristotelians in Italy and Greece -- Bessarion -- His Patronage of Greek Refugees in Rome -- Humanism in the Smaller Republics -- In Venice.

The great difficulty with which a critic desirous of rendering a succinct account of this phase of Italian culture has to deal, is the variety and complexity of the subject. It is easy to perceive the unity of the humanistic movement, and to regard the scholars of the fifteenth century as a literary community with well-defined relations to each other. Yet when we attempt to trace the growth of scholarship in all its branches, the peculiar conditions of political and social life in Italy present almost insuperable obstacles to any continuity of treatment. The republics, the princ.i.p.alities, and the Church have each their separate existence. Venice, Florence, Naples, Milan, Rome, Ferrara, form distinct and independent centres, imposing their own specialities upon the intellectual activity of citizens and aliens.

The humanists, meanwhile, to some extent efface these local differences, spreading a network of common culture over cities and societies divided by all else but interest in learning. To these combinations and permutations, arising from the contact of the scholars with their patrons in the several States of Italy, is due the intricacy of the history of the Revival. The same men of eminence appear by turns in each of the chief Courts and commonwealths, pa.s.sing with bewildering rapidity from north to south and back again, in one place demanding attention under one head of the subject, in another presenting new yet not less important topics for investigation. What Filippo Maria Visconti, for instance, required from Filelfo had but little in common with the claims made on him by Nicholas V., while his activity as a satirist and partisan at Florence differed from his labour as a lecturer at Siena. Again, the biography of each humanist to some extent involves that of all his contemporaries. The coteries of Rome are influenced by the cliques of Naples; the quarrels of Lorenzo Valla ramify into the squabbles of Guarino; political animosity combines with literary jealousy in the disputes of Poggio with Filelfo. While some of the most eminent professors remain stationary in their native or adopted towns, others move to and fro with the speed of comets. From time to time, at Rome or elsewhere, a patron rises, who a.s.sembles all the wandering stars around himself.

His death disperses the group; or accidents rouse jealousy among them, and cause secessions from the circle. Then fresh combinations have to be considered. In no one city can we trace firm chronological progression, or discover the fixed local character which justifies our dividing the history of Italian painting by its schools. To avoid repet.i.tion, and to preserve an even current of narration amid so much that is shifting, is almost impossible.

Some method may be introduced by sketching briefly at the outset the princ.i.p.al periods through which the humanistic movement pa.s.sed. Though to a certain extent arbitrary, these periods mark distinct moments in an evolution uniform in spite of its complexity.

The first, starting with Petrarch, and including the lives and labours of those men he personally influenced, has been traced in a preceding chapter. This was the age of inspiration and discovery, when the enthusiasm for antiquity was generated and the remnants of the cla.s.sics were acc.u.mulated. The second may be described as the age of arrangement and translation. The first great libraries were founded in this period; the study of Greek was pursued in earnest, and the Greek authors were rendered into Latin. Round Cosimo de' Medici at Florence, Alfonso the Magnanimous at Naples, and Nicholas V. in Rome the leaders of the Renaissance at this time converge. The third is the age of academies. The literary republic, formed during the first and second periods, now gathers into coteries, whereof the Platonic Academy at Florence, that of Ponta.n.u.s at Naples, that of Pomponius Laetus in Rome, and that of Aldus Manutius at Venice are the most important.

Scholarship begins to exhibit a marked improvement in all that concerns style and taste. At the same time Italian erudition reaches its maximum in Poliziano. Externally this third period is distinguished by the rapid spread of printing and the consequent downfall of the humanists as a cla.s.s. In the fourth period we notice a gradual decline of learning; aesthetic and stylistic scholarship begins to claim exclusive attention. This is the age of the purists, over whom Bembo exercises the sway of a dictator, while the Court of Leo X.

furnishes the most brilliant a.s.semblage of literati in Europe.

Erudition, properly so called, is now upon the point of being transplanted beyond the Alps, and the Revival of Learning closes for the historian of Italy.

Although the essential feature of this subject is variety, and though each city of Italy contributed its quota to the sum of culture, attention has now to be directed in a special sense on Florence.

Nothing is more obvious to the student who has mastered the first difficulties caused by the intricacy of Italian history, than the fact that all the mental force of the nation was generated in Tuscany, and radiated thence, as from a centre of vital heat and light, over the rest of the peninsula. This is true of the fine arts no less than of Italian poetry, of the revival of learning as well as of the origin of science. From the republics of Tuscany, and from Florence in particular, proceeded the impulse and the energy which led to fruitful results in all of these departments. In proportion as Florence continued to absorb the neighbouring free States into herself, her intellectual pre-eminence became the more unquestionable. Arezzo, Volterra, Cortona, Montepulciano, Prato, and Pistoja were but rivulets feeding the stream of Florentine industry.

What caused this superiority of the Tuscans is a problem as difficult to solve as the similar problem with respect to Athens among the states of Greece. Something may no doubt be attributed to ethnology, and something to climate. Much, again, was due to the purity of a dialect which retained more of native energy and literary capacity, and which had suffered less from barbarian admixtures than the dialects of northern or of southern Italy. The conquest of the Lombards pa.s.sed the Tuscans by, nor did feudal inst.i.tutions take the same root in the valley of the Arno which they struck in the kingdom of Naples. The cities of Tuscany were therefore less exposed to foreign influences than the rest of Italy. While they pursued their course of internal growth in comparative tranquillity, they were better fitted for reviving the past glories of Latin civilisation upon its native soil. The free inst.i.tutions of the Florentine commonwealth must also be taken into account.

In Florence, if anywhere in Italy, existed the conditions under which a republic of letters and of culture could be formed. The aristocracy of Naples indulged the semi-savage tastes of territorial _seigneurs_; the n.o.bles of Rome delighted in feats of arms and shared their wealth with retinues of _bravi_; the great families of Umbria, Romagna, and the March followed the profession of _condottieri_; the Lombards were downtrodden by their Despots and deprived of individual freedom; the Genoese developed into little better than traders and sea-robbers; the Sienese, divided by the factions of their _Monti_, had small leisure or common public feeling left for study. Florence meanwhile could boast a population of burghers n.o.ble by taste and culture, owing less to ancestry than to personal eminence, devoting their energies to civic ambition worthy of the Romans, and to mental activity which reminds us of the ancient Greeks. Between the people and this aristocracy of wealth and intellect there was at Florence no division like that which separated the Venetian _gentiluomini_ from the _cittadini_. The so-called _n.o.bili_ and _popolani_ did not, as in Venice, form a caste apart, bound to the service of a tyrannous state-system. The very mobility which proved the ultimate source of disruption and of ruin to the commonwealth, aided the intellectual development of Florence. Stagnation and oppression were alike unknown.

Here, therefore, and here alone, was created a public capable instinctively of comprehending what is beautiful in art and humane in letters, a race of craftsmen and of scholars who knew that their labours could not fail to be appreciated, and a cla.s.s of patrons who sought no better bestowal of their wealth than on those arts and sciences which dignify the life of man. The Florentines, moreover, as a nation, were animated with the strongest sense of the greatness and the splendour of Florence. Like the Athenians of old, they had no warmer pa.s.sion than their love for their city. However much we may deplore the rancorous dissensions which from time to time split up the commonwealth into parties, the remorseless foreign policy which destroyed Pisa, the political meanness of the Medici, and the base egotism of the _ottimati_, the fact remains that, aesthetically and intellectually, Florence was 'a city glorious,' a realised ideal of culture and humanity for all the rest of Italy, and, through Italian influence in general, for modern Europe and for us.

What makes the part played by Florence in the history of learning the more remarkable is, that the chiefs of the political factions were at the same time the leaders of intellectual progress. Rinaldo degli Albizzi and Cosimo de' Medici, while opposed as antagonists in a duel to the death upon the stage of the republic, vied with each other in the patronage they extended to men of letters. Rinaldo was himself no mean scholar; and he chose one of the greatest men of the age, Tommaso da Sarzana, to be tutor to his children. Of Palla degli Strozzi's services in the cause of Greek learning I have already spoken in the second chapter of this volume. Beside the invitation which he caused to be sent to Manuel Chrysoloras, he employed his wealth and influence in providing books necessary for the prosecution of h.e.l.lenic studies.