Renaissance in Italy Volume II Part 13

1459. Oration to Pius II. on his Crusade.

1460. Oration on the Election of the Bishop of Como.

1464. Funeral oration for the Senator Filippo Borromeo.

1466. Ditto for Francesco Sforza.

It is probable that all of these were not recited; but all were conceived in the lumbering and pedantic style that pa.s.sed for eloquence at that period. With regard to rewards received on these occasions, note the gift of a silver basin from Jacopo Antonio Marcello in return for a consolatory epistle. Rosmini, vol. ii. p.

127. Cf. p. 197.]

[Footnote 270: The Satires, collected into ten decades, each satire consisting of 100 lines, were dedicated to Alfonso of Naples in 1451.

Printed at Milan, 1446. The Odes, ent.i.tled _De Seriis et Jocis_, were finished in 1465, and dedicated partly to Malatesta Novello of Cesena, partly to Alessandro Sforza. There were ten books, each book containing 1,000 lines. Never printed. Rosmini, who inspected the MSS., reports that their obscenity exceeds description, and is only equalled by the vulgarity of the author's fancy and the coa.r.s.eness of his style. In addition to these unpublished Latin poems, Filelfo collected three books of Greek elegies and epigrams, amounting to 2,400 verses. It is significant that he measured his poetry by lines, and trained his jog-trot muse to paces of 100 verses.]

[Footnote 271: The Epistle to Ladislaus of Hungary on his victories over the Turks, for instance.]

During the second year of his Milanese residence Filelfo lost his wife Theodora. He speedily married again, choosing for his bride a beautiful young lady of good family in Milan. Her name was Orsina Osnaga. Since I have touched upon this matter of Filelfo's private life, it may be well to add that when he lost his second wife, he took in wedlock for the third time Laura Magiolini. By each of his marriages he acquired no inconsiderable property, and all his brides belonged to highly distinguished families. The best thing that can be said about Filelfo as a man is, that he was undoubtedly attached to his wives and to the numerous children they bore him.[272] This feeling did not, however, protect him from numerous infidelities, or save his fortune from the burden of illegitimate children.[273] It is even doubtful whether credence should not be accorded to suggestions of worse debauchery, repeated with every appearance of belief by his enemies, and on his side but imperfectly refuted. Filelfo was, in truth, a man of great physical vigour, whose energies the mere labour of the student was insufficient to exhaust. Loves and hatreds, domestic sympathies and turbulent pa.s.sions, absorbed a portion of his superfluous force; nor was he at any time restrained by scruples of religion or morality. What was good for Greeks and Romans was good for him. It is also to be noted that the innate sense of delicacy which sometimes forms the safeguard of excessive temperaments was altogether alien to his nature.

[Footnote 272: He had twelve sons and twelve daughters. They did not all live.]

[Footnote 273: A curious sign of current feeling is that Filelfo frequently boasted of being [Greek: triorches]. See Rosmini, i. p. 15, and the verse quoted, _ib._ p. 113. He mentioned two natural children in his will and had many more. Rosmini, vol. iii. p. 78.]

During the disasters that befell the State of Milan on the death of Filippo Maria, Filelfo at first espoused the cause of the burghers. A letter to the Florentines is extant, in which he exhorts them to aid their sister commonwealth at the extreme hour of her peril. It was not natural, however, that a humanist, who had no zeal for freedom, and whose personal interests led him to desire a settled government at any price, should continue staunch to a republic so unnerved as that of Milan. When Carlo Gonzaga played the Milanese false by admitting the troops of Francesco Sforza, Filelfo was the first to welcome the new monarch with a set oration. He professed great admiration for the general who, by careful management and double-dealing, had placed himself at the head of the third state in the peninsula. Yet his correspondence at this period proves that his mind was uneasy, and that he desired a change. In an impudent letter addressed to Nicholas V., he solicited ecclesiastical preferment, suggesting that the promise of a bishop's mitre would secure his splendid talents for the service of the Papacy.[274] However desirous the Pope might be to engage Filelfo for his translation factory at Rome, the price demanded was too great. He could not recognise a vocation so clearly inspired by mercenary motives; and to receive into the high places of the Church, at his own request, a man accused of many vices, who had twice been married, would have established a dangerous precedent. Filelfo, receiving neither substantial encouragement nor a flat refusal, turned his thoughts to matrimony for the third time, and addressed a prayer on this occasion to Dame Venus, in which he besought the mother of Priapus to befriend her votary. The intelligent student of the Renaissance will not fail to notice the state of mind implied by the juxtaposition of this letter to the Holy Father and this ode to Venus.

[Footnote 274: Rosmini, vol. ii. p. 54. It may be remembered that Pietro Aretino hinted he should like to be a cardinal.]

Filelfo was now fain to content himself with the patronage of Francesco Sforza, a prince who had no natural turn for literature, but who was wise enough to know that a _parvenu_ could least of all afford to neglect the ruling fashions of his age. The letters he wrote at this period abound in impudent demands for money, querulous outcries over the poverty to which the first scholar of the century was condemned, and violent menaces of retaliation if his salary remained in arrears.[275] Not only Francesco Sforza, but all the patrons upon whom Filelfo thought he had a claim, were a.s.sailed with reptile lamentations and more reptile menaces. Alessandro Sforza, Lodovico Gonzaga, and three Popes in succession may be mentioned among the more distinguished princes who suffered from this literary brigandage.[276]

Not without strict justice did a contemporary describe him in the following severe terms:--'He is calumnious, envious, vain, and so greedy of gold that he metes out praise or blame according to the gifts he gets, both despicable as proceeding from a tainted source.'[277] Filelfo's rapacity is truly disgusting when we remember that he received far more than any equally distinguished student of his age. Not the illiberality of patrons, but his own luxurious habits, reduced him to beggary. All the while that he was screaming in bad Latin verse, he lived expensively, indulging ostentatious tastes, and finding money for unclean indulgences. In order to confirm his claim on the Duke of Milan's generosity, he began a gigantic Latin epic upon the life of Sforza. Without plan, a mere versified chronicle, enc.u.mbered with foolish mythological machinery, and loaded with fulsome flatteries, this leaden Sforziad crawled on until 12,800 lines had been written. Only the first eight books of it were published in MS., nor were these ever printed.[278]

[Footnote 275: As a specimen of Filelfo's Grub Street style of begging, I transcribe the following elegy (Rosmini, vol. ii. p.

285):--

'Haec autem altisone dum carmina celsius effert Defecisse suo sent.i.t ab ore tubam, Nam quia magnifici data non est copia nummi Cogitur huic uti carmine raucidulo.

Quod neque mireris; vocem pretiosa canoram Esca dat, et potus excitat ingenium.

Ingenium spurco suevit languescere vino, Humida mugitum reddere rapa solet.'

Francesco Sforza's anxiety to retain Filelfo in his service is expressed in a letter to his treasurer (_ib._ p. 295):--'Noi per niuno modo el vogliamo perdere, la qual cosa seguirebbe quando gli paresse essere deluso, e non potesse seguitare per manchamento delli dicti 250 fiorini la n.o.bilissima opera per lui in nostra gloria comenzata ne suplire agli altri suoi bisogni.' The _tuba_ and the _n.o.bilissima opera_ both refer to Filelfo's Sforziad.]

[Footnote 276: I may call particular attention to Filelfo's behaviour with regard to Pius II.--the free pension of 200 florins granted (Rosmini, vol. ii. p. 106), the menaces because it is not paid (_ib._ p. 115), the scurrilous epigrams on the Pope's death (_ib._ p. 321), the abusive letter addressed to Paul II. (_ib._ p. 136), the sentence of imprisonment for calumny issued against him and his son Mario (_ib._ p. 140), the final palinode in which he basely praises the Pope whom he had basely abused (_ib._ p. 146). The whole series of transactions is disgraceful.]

[Footnote 277: Letter of Gregorio Lollio to the Cardinal of Pavia, reported by Rosmini (vol. ii. p. 147).]

[Footnote 278: The whole poem ran to sixteen books. Therefore, according to Filelfo's art of poetry, the first eight contained 6,400 verses.]

By fair means and by foul, Filelfo had managed to secure a splendid reputation throughout Italy. His journey to Naples in 1453 resembled a triumphal progress. Nicholas V. entertained him with distinction, read his infamous satires, presented him with a purse of 500 ducats, and offered him a yearly stipend of 600 if he would dedicate his talents to translation. Alfonso dubbed him knight, and placed the poet's laurel on his brow with his own royal hands. As he pa.s.sed through their capitals, the princes received him like an equal. At Ferrara he enjoyed the hospitalities of Duke Borso, at Mantua the friendship of the Marchese Lodovico Gonzaga; the terrible Gismondo Pandolfo Malatesta welcomed him in Rimini, and the General Jacopo Piccinino in his camp at Fos...o...b..one. Nor was this fame confined to Italy. On the fall of Constantinople he addressed a letter to the Sultan, beseeching him to release his mother-in-law and her two daughters from captivity; the humanist's eloquence obtained this favour from the Turkish conqueror, who refused to accept a ransom for the relatives of so ill.u.s.trious an orator.[279]

[Footnote 279: See Rosmini, vol. ii. p. 90. The Greek epistle which he sent is printed, _ib._ p. 305.]

Until the death of Francesco Sforza Milan continued to be the city of Filelfo's choice. After that event he turned his thoughts to Rome.

Pius II., Paul II., and Sixtus IV., in succession, had testified their regard for him, either by moderate presents, sufficient to excite his cupidity and check his slanderous temper, or by negotiations which came to nothing. At last, in 1474, he received from Rome the offer of a professorial chair, with a stipend of 600 florins, and the promise of the first vacant post in the Apostolic Chancery.

The old man of seventy-seven years once more journeyed across the plains of Lombardy, ascended the Apennines, pa.s.sed through Florence,[280] and began his lectures with the 'Tusculans' of Cicero, on the twelfth day of January, 1475, in Rome. The marks of favour with which Sixtus had received him were highly honourable. Filelfo was permitted to sit in the Pope's presence, and on Christmas Day he stood among the amba.s.sadors while Sixtus celebrated ma.s.s. The vigorous old scholar at first felt that all his previous life had been a tedious prologue to this blissful play. Soon, however, a cloud arose on the horizon. The Pope's treasurer, Milliardo Cicala, was remiss in payments. Filelfo retaliated by describing Cicala's vices in the most lurid colours to Sixtus.[281] Though his style and eloquence were always vulgar, the concentrated fury and impa.s.sioned hatred of these invectives cannot fail to impress the imagination. Such a picture of the dissolute and grasping treasurer, painted by Filelfo and sent to Sixtus, has a sinister humour which might recommend itself to the audience of an infernal comedy. It is only necessary to have some knowledge of the three men in order to perceive its force. Nor did Sixtus himself long continue in Filelfo's graces. Frequent journeys prove how unsettled he became; at last he left Rome in 1476, never to return. When the Pazzi Conjuration failed at Florence, Filelfo wrote to congratulate Lorenzo de' Medici on his escape, and undertook the task of composing a history of the whole intrigue. Two long and violent letters addressed to Sixtus, accusing him of partic.i.p.ation in the conspiracy, and heaping on him charges of vice, were the result of this determination.[282] These epistles were dated from Milan, whither Filelfo had retired in 1476, to find his third wife dead of the plague, and buried on the eve of his arrival. His sorrow on this occasion was genuine; nor is it likely that he derived much comfort from a curious epistle addressed to him by Paolo Morosini, who, himself a husband and father, attempted to console the septuagenarian professor by elaborate abuse of matrimony.[283] To such ridiculous vagaries did the rhetorical spirit of humanism lead its votaries.

[Footnote 280: He had long since made peace with the Medici.]

[Footnote 281: See the original letters in Rosmini, vol. ii. pp.

411-419.]

[Footnote 282: Rosmini, vol. ii. p. 261, note.]

[Footnote 283: _Ib._ p. 248.]

Filelfo's last journey was undertaken in 1481. Ill at ease, and sore of heart, the veteran of scholarship still longed for further triumphs. All his wishes for some time past had been set on ending his days at Florence, near the person of Lorenzo de' Medici; and when an invitation to the Chair of Greek Literature arrived, it found him eager to set forth. He was so poor, however, that the Duke's secretary, Jacopo Antiquari, had to lend him money for the journey.[284] He just managed to reach Florence, where he died of dysentery a fortnight after his arrival, at the age of eighty-three.

The Florentines buried him in the Church of the Annunziata.

[Footnote 284: I cannot allow this mention of Antiquari's name to pa.s.s without a note upon his life and services to letters. He was born and educated at Perugia, entered the service of the Papal Legate Battista Savelli as secretary at Bologna, and afterwards received the post of secretary and diplomatic writer to the Sforza family at Milan. The Duke Galeazzo Maria was his first master. At Milan he played the part of an amiable and refined Maecenas, while he carried on a correspondence in Latin--still delightful to read--with Poliziano and all the greatest scholars of his age. His biography, written at some length, with valuable miscellaneous appendices by Vermiglioli, was published at Perugia in 1819.]

The sketch which I have given of Filelfo's life, abounds in details beyond the just proportions of the present chapter. This is due partly to the copiousness and the excellence of the authorities collected by Rosmini in his exhaustive biography, but more to the undoubted fact that Filelfo ranks as the typical humanist of his age. The universality of his acquirements and the impression they made upon contemporaries, his enormous physical vigour and incessant mental activity, the vehemence with which he prosecuted his literary warfares and the restlessness that drove him from capital to capital in Italy, are themselves enough to mark him out as the representative hero of the second period of humanism. Not less characteristic were the quality and the form of his literary work--ridiculously over-valued then, and now perhaps too readily depreciated. There is something pathetic in the certainty of everlasting fame that sustained the student through so many years of unremitting labour. It makes us wonder whether the achievements of the human intellect, in science and discovery, acceptable as these may be to their own time, are not, equally with Filelfo's triumph of scholarship, foredoomed to speedy obscuration. Nothing is imperishable but high thought, to which art has communicated the indestructible form of beauty.

The 'Age of the Despots'[285] contains a promise of further details concerning Vittorino da Feltre, to redeem which the time has now come.

His father's name was Bruto de' Rambaldoni; but having been born at Feltre in the year 1378, he took from his birthplace the surname by which he is best known.

[Footnote 285: Pp. 138, 139.]

Like the majority of his contemporaries, Vittorino studied Latin under John of Ravenna and rhetoric under Gasparino da Barzizza. His poverty compelled him at the same time to support himself by taking pupils; this drudgery, however, was so unremunerative that, when he wanted to attend the mathematical lectures of Biagio Pelacane, he had to pay that avaricious and eccentric teacher by personal service. As Haydn got his much-desired instruction from Porpora by playing the part of valet,[286] so Vittorino became the scullery boy of Pelacane,[287] in order that he might acquire geometry. These early studies were carried on at Padua, from which town he appears to have moved about the year 1417 to Venice. Here he entered into friendship with Guarino da Verona, and having learned Greek, returned to his old university as professor of rhetoric.[288] The bias of Vittorino's genius inclined toward private teaching, and it is this by which he is distinguished among contemporary humanists. Accordingly we find that, as soon as he was settled in Padua, he opened a school for a fixed number of young men, selected without regard to rank or wealth. From the richer pupils he required fees proportioned to their means; from the poor he exacted nothing: thus the wealthy were made to support the needy, while the teacher obtained for himself the n.o.ble satisfaction of relieving aspirants after knowledge from the pressure of want and privation.

Other gain than this he never thought of. Only genuine students were allowed to remain in Vittorino's school; the moral rule was strict, and high thinking and plain living were expected from all his pupils.

This generous devotion to the cause of learning for its own sake contrasts strongly with the self-seeking and vainglory of other humanists. When Filelfo was urged on one occasion to open a school for promising young men, of n.o.ble birth, he asked disdainfully whether his friends expected him to take rank as a licensed victualler.[289] He was unable to comprehend the possibility of doing anything that would not reflect l.u.s.tre on himself or place him in the light of popular applause.

[Footnote 286: Grove's _Dictionary of Music and Musicians_, vol. i. p.

704 b.]

[Footnote 287: 'Usque ad mundandam supellectilem quae sumpto cibo lavare consuerit.'--Rosmini, _Vita di Vittorino_, p. 38, note.]

[Footnote 288: In 1422 apparently.]

[Footnote 289: _Locandiere._ Rosmini, vol. i. p. 67.]

Vittorino found it difficult to govern his school at Padua as strictly as he wished. The public Gymnasium was ill-ordered, and great license of life was permitted to its students. He therefore removed to Venice in 1423, where he continued his work as private tutor. By this time, however, he had acquired considerable reputation as an educator, to whose care the youth of both s.e.xes might be entrusted with implicit confidence--no small testimony to his goodness in that age of ungoverned pa.s.sions and indescribable vices. The Marchese Gian Francesco Gonzaga was looking out for a master for his children, and his choice fell on Vittorino. The admiration of antiquity was no mere matter of fashion with this prince. He loved history for its own sake, and professed a special reverence for the Roman Camillus. His practical good sense made him understand that, if he wished his sons and daughters to become thoroughly educated, not only in the humanities and mathematics, but also in the republican virtues of the ancients, which then formed the ideal of life in Italy, he must be willing to commit them wholly to the charge of their appointed governor. Vittorino, who would have undertaken the duty on no other condition, obtained full control of the young princes and their servants. An appointment of twenty sequins per month was a.s.signed to him, together with a general order on the treasury of Mantua. A villa, called Casa Zojosa, which we may translate Joyous Gard, was allotted to the new household, and there Vittorino established himself as master in 1425. He had much to do before this dwelling could be converted from the pleasure house of a mediaeval sovereign into the semi-monastic resort of earnest students. Through its open galleries and painted banquet chambers the young Gonzaghi lounged with favourite friends selected from the Mantuan n.o.bility. The tables groaned under gold and silver plate, while perfumed lacqueys handed round rich wines and highly seasoned dishes, and the garden alleys echoed to the sound of lute and viol. Without making any brusque or sudden reformation, Vittorino managed, by degrees, and on various pretexts, to dismiss the more dangerous friends and servants of his pupils. A strict house-porter was engaged, with orders to exclude suspicious visitors.

Plain clothes, simple habits, and frugal meals became the rule of the household, Vittorino contriving to render these changes no less agreeable than salutary to his pupils. When complaints arose from the former companions of the princes and their parents, he laid his plan of training clearly before the Marquis, who had the good sense to approve of all that he had done.

The eldest of Gian Francesco's children, Lodovico, was a youth of lazy habits, inclined to gluttony, and already too fat for his age. The next, Carlo, had outgrown his strength, and needed more substantial food. Vittorino devised systems of diet and physical training suited to their several temperaments, making it his one object to increase their vigour, and by multiplying sources of rational enjoyment to dispose them to the energetic exercise of their faculties. He by no means neglected what we call athletics. Indeed, it was a fundamental axiom of his method that a robust body could alone harbour a healthy mind. Boys who sat poring over books, or haunted solitary places, lost in dreaming, found no favour in his eyes. To exercises in the gymnasium or the riding-school he preferred games in the open air; hunting and fishing, wrestling and fencing, running and jumping, were practised by his pupils in the park outside their palace. To harden them against severities of heat and cold, to render them temperate in food and drink, to train their voices, and to improve their carriage was his first care. Since he could not himself superintend their education in all its branches, he engaged a subordinate staff of tutors; grammarians, logicians, mathematicians, painters, and masters of riding, dancing, singing, swimming, fencing, began to crowd the halls of Joyous Gard. Each had his own allotted task to perform, while Vittorino surveyed the whole scheme. 'Perhaps,' says Rosmini,[290]

'the only sciences that were not taught in this academy were civil and canon law and natural physics.'

[Footnote 290: P. 111.]

It must not be imagined that so extensive an apparatus existed solely for the young Gonzaghi. n.o.ble youths from all the Courts of Italy, and students from remote parts of Europe, sought admittance to Vittorino's school. The more promising of these pupils, who were fitted by their rank and disposition to a.s.sociate with his princely charges, the master housed under his own roof; while for the rest he provided suitable lodgings near at hand. Many were the poor students who thus owed to his generosity partic.i.p.ation in the most refined and scientific culture their century afforded.[291] While paying this tribute to Vittorino da Feltre, we must remember the honour that is also due to Gian Francesco Gonzaga. Had this prince not been endowed with true liberality of soul and freedom from petty prejudice, Vittorino could never have developed a system based upon pure democratic principles, which even now may rank as an unrivalled educational ideal. If the master, again, was able to provide for sixty poor scholars at a time--teaching, feeding, clothing, and furnishing them with costly books, his friend the Marquis must, we feel sure, have supplied his purse with extra funds for charitable purposes.[292]

[Footnote 291: Sixty poor scholars were taught, fed, clothed, and provided with implements of study at his cost. He also subsidised their families in distress. Rosmini, _Vita di Vittorino_, pp. 165, 166.]

[Footnote 292: Rosmini, _Vita di Vittorino_, p. 165. Vespasiano, p.