Fall of the Humanists—Scholarship permeates Society—A New Ideal of Life and Manners—Latinisation of Names—Classical Periphrases—Latin Epics on Christian Themes—Paganism—The Court of Leo X.—Honours of the Church given to Scholars—Ecclesiastical Men of the World—Mæcenases at Rome—Papal and Imperial Rome—Moral Corruption—Social Refinement—The Roman Academy—Pietro Bembo—His Life at Ferrara—At Urbino—Comes to Rome—Employed by Leo—Retirement to Padua—His Dictatorship of Letters—Jacopo Sadoleto—A Graver Genius than Bembo—Paulus Jovius—Latin Stylist—His Histories—Baldassare Castiglione—Life at Urbino and Rome—The Courtly Scholar—His Diplomatic Missions—Alberto Pio—Gian Francesco Pico della Mirandola—The Vicissitudes of his Life—Jerome Aleander—Oriental Studies—The Library of the Vatican—His Mission to Germany—Inghirami, Beroaldo, and Acciaiuoli—The Roman University—John Lascaris—Study of Antiquities—Origin of the 'Corpus Inscriptionum'—Topographical Studies—Formation of the Vatican Sculpture Gallery—Discovery of the Laocoon—Feeling for Statues in Renaissance Italy—Venetian Envoys in the Belvedere—Raphael's Plan for excavating Ancient Rome—His Letter to Leo—Effect of Antiquarian Researches on the Arts—Intellectual Supremacy of Rome in this Period—The Fall—Adrian VI.—The Sack of Rome—Valeriano's Description of the Sufferings of Scholars.
Fall of the Humanists—Scholarship permeates Society—A New Ideal of Life and Manners—Latinisation of Names—Classical Periphrases—Latin Epics on Christian Themes—Paganism—The Court of Leo X.—Honours of the Church given to Scholars—Ecclesiastical Men of the World—Mæcenases at Rome—Papal and Imperial Rome—Moral Corruption—Social Refinement—The Roman Academy—Pietro Bembo—His Life at Ferrara—At Urbino—Comes to Rome—Employed by Leo—Retirement to Padua—His Dictatorship of Letters—Jacopo Sadoleto—A Graver Genius than Bembo—Paulus Jovius—Latin Stylist—His Histories—Baldassare Castiglione—Life at Urbino and Rome—The Courtly Scholar—His Diplomatic Missions—Alberto Pio—Gian Francesco Pico della Mirandola—The Vicissitudes of his Life—Jerome Aleander—Oriental Studies—The Library of the Vatican—His Mission to Germany—Inghirami, Beroaldo, and Acciaiuoli—The Roman University—John Lascaris—Study of Antiquities—Origin of the 'Corpus Inscriptionum'—Topographical Studies—Formation of the Vatican Sculpture Gallery—Discovery of the Laocoon—Feeling for Statues in Renaissance Italy—Venetian Envoys in the Belvedere—Raphael's Plan for excavating Ancient Rome—His Letter to Leo—Effect of Antiquarian Researches on the Arts—Intellectual Supremacy of Rome in this Period—The Fall—Adrian VI.—The Sack of Rome—Valeriano's Description of the Sufferings of Scholars.
Whatis known as the Revival of Learning was accomplished before the close of the fifteenth century, and about this time humanism began to lose credit. The professional scholars who had domineered in Italy during the last hundred years, were now regarded with suspicion as pretentious sophists, or as empty-pated pedants. Their place was taken by men of the world, refined courtiers, and polite stylists who piquedthemselves on general culture. This revolution in public opinion was the result of various causes which I shall attempt to set forth in another chapter. It is enough for my present purpose to observe that the learning possessed at first by a few teachers, acquired with effort, and communicated with condescension, had now become the common property of cultivated men. In proportion as a knowledge of the classic authors diffused itself over a wider area, the mere reputation of sound scholarship ceased to form a valid title to celebrity. It was necessary that the man of letters, educated by antiquity, should give proof of his genius by some originality of mind. The age of acquisition had ended; the age of application had begun. To this result the revived interest in Italian literature powerfully contributed. Writers were no longer, like Bruni and Poggio, ashamed of theircose volgari. On the contrary, the most splendid productions of the first half of the sixteenth century, the Histories of Guicciardini and Machiavelli, the Epic of Ariosto, the 'Cortegiano' of Castiglione, and the burlesque poems of Berni were penned in powerful and delicate Italian. To what extent the influence of Lorenzo de' Medici, who was always more partial to vernacular literature than to scholarship, determined the change in question, is a matter for opinion. That Florence led the way by her great writers of Italian poetry and prose admits of no doubt.
At the same time the erudition of the fifteenth century had steeped the whole Italian nation. Humanism penetrated every sphere of intellectual activity, and gave a colour to all social customs. The arts of painting and of sculpture felt its influence. A new style of architecture, formed upon the model of Roman monuments, sprang up. Science took a special bias from the classics, and philosophy was so strongly permeated by antique doctrines that the Revival of Learning may be justly said to have checked the spontaneity of the Italian intellect. There was not enough time for studentsto absorb antiquity and pass beyond it, before the mortmain of the Church and the Spaniard was laid upon the fairest provinces of thought. To trace the course of Italian philosophy, is, however, no part of my scheme in this volume. The Aristotelian and Platonic controversies on the nature of the soul, the materialism of Pietro Pomponazzo, the gradual emergence of powerful thinkers like Bruno and Campanella, the theological rationalism of Aonio Paleario, and the final suppression of free thought by the Church, belong to the history of the Counter-Reformation. To the same sad chapter of Italian history must be relegated the labours of the earliest mathematicians, astronomers, and cosmographers, who, poring over the texts of Ptolemy and Euclid, anticipated Copernicus, impelled Columbus to his enterprise, and led the way for Galileo. The infamy of having rendered science and philosophy abortive in Italy, when its early show of blossom was so promising, falls upon the Popes and princes of the last half of the sixteenth century. The narrative of their emergence from the studies of the humanists must form the prelude to a future work treating of Farnesi and Caraffas, Inquisitors and Jesuits. Only by showing the growth which might have been, can we demonstrate the atrophy that was.
It remains in this chapter to describe the fourth period of humanism, when Italy, still permeated with the spirit of the classical revival, laid down laws of social breeding for the nations of the North. Few things are more difficult than to set forth without exaggeration, and yet with sufficient force, the so-called Paganism of Renaissance Italy. At first sight, and from certain points of view, it seems as though the exclusive study of the classics had wrought a thorough metamorphosis of morality and manners. When, on reflection, this appearance is seen to be illusory, we incline, perhaps, to the contrary conclusion that scholarship only set a kind of fashion without taking deep hold even on theimagination of the people. A more complete acquaintance with the period makes it clear that the imitation of the ancients in thought, sentiment, and language was no mere affectation, and that, however partial its influences may have been, they were not superficial. In the first volume of this work I tried to show to what extent the patriotism of tyrannicides and the profligacy of courtiers were alike related to the prevailing study of the ancient world. It was no small matter that the vices and the virtues, the worldliness and the enthusiasm, of that many-featured age, together with its supreme achievements in art, its ripest productions in literature, should have gradually assumed a classic form. The standards of moral and æsthetic taste were paganised, though the nation at large remained unchanged in Catholicity. It was precisely this discord between the professed religion of the people and the heathenism of its ideal that inspired Savonarola with his prophecy.
Classical style being the requirement of the age, it followed that everything was sacrificed to this. In christening their children the great families abandoned the saints of the calendar and chose names from mythology. Ettorre, Achille, Atalanta, Pentesilea, Lucrezia, Porzia, Alessandro, Annibale, Laomedonte, Fedro, Ippolito, and many other antique titles became fashionable. Those who were able to do so turned their baptismal names into Latin or Greek equivalents. Janus or Jovianus passed for Giovanni, Pierius for Pietro, Aonius for Antonio, Lucius Grassus for Luca Grasso; the German prelate John Goritz was known as Corycius,[371]and the Roman professor Gianpaolo Parisio as Janus Parrhasius. Writers who undertook to treat of modern or religious themes, were driven by their zeal for purism to the strangest expedients oflanguage. God, in the Latin of the sixteenth century, isJupiter Optimus Maximus; Providence becomesFatum; the saints areDivi, and their statuessimulacra sancta Deorum. Our Lady of Loreto is changed intoDea Lauretana, Peter and Paul intoDii tutelares Romæ, the souls of the just intoManes pii, and the Pope's excommunication intoDiræ. The Holy Father himself takes the style ofPontifex Maximus; his tiara, by a wild confusion of ideas, is described asinfula Romulea. Nuns are Vestals, and cardinals Augurs. For the festivals of the Church periphrases were found, whereof the following may be cited as a fair specimen:[372]'Verum accidit ut eo ipso die, quo domum ejus accesseram, ipse piæ rei caussâ septem sacrosancta Divûm pulvinaria supplicaturus inviserit; erant enim lustrici dies, quos unoquoque anno quadragenos purificatione consecravit nostra pietas.'
It need hardly be added that, when the obligations of Latinity had reached this point, to read Cicero was of far more importance than to study the Fathers of the Church. Bembo, it is well known, advised Sadoleto to 'avoid the Epistles of S. Paul, lest his barbarous style should spoil your taste:Omitte has nugas, non enim decent gravem virum tales ineptiæ.' The extent, however, to which formal purism in Latinity was carried, may be best observed in the 'Christiad' of Vida, and the poem 'De Partu Virginis' of Sannazzaro.[373]Sannazzaro not only invokes the muses of Helicon to sing the birth of Christ, but he also makes Proteus prophesy his advent to the river-god of Jordan. The archangel discovers Mary—described by the poet asspes fida Deorum—intent onreading nothing less humanistic than the Sibyls; and after she has received his message, the spirits of the patriarchs are said to shout because they will escape from Tartarus and Acheron and the hideous baying of the triple-throated hound.
It might be reasonably urged against Milton that in the 'Paradise Regained' he somewhat impairs the religious grandeur of his subject by investing it with the forms of the classical epic. If he has erred in this direction, it is as nothing compared with the pseudo-Pagan travesty of Vida. God the Father in the 'Christiad' is spoken of asSuperum Pater nimbipotensandRegnator Olympi—titles which had their real significance in Latin mythology, being transferred with frigid formalism to a Deity whose essence is spiritual, and whose cult has no admixture of nature worship. Jesus is invariably described asHeros; this absurdity reaches its climax in the following phrase about the bad thief on the cross:—
The machinery whereby the Jews are brought to will the death of Christ is no less ridiculous. Instead of attempting to set religious or ethical motives into play, Vida introduces a gang of Gorgons, Harpies, Centaurs, Hydras, and the like. The bread of the Last Supper appears under the disguise ofsinceram Cererem. The wine mingled with gall, offered to our Lord upon the cross, iscorrupti pocula Bacchi. The only excuse for these grotesque compromises between the Biblical subject-matter and its mythological expression is, that in any other way it would have been impossible to give the form of pure Latinity to the verse. The poet failed to comprehend that he was producing a masterpiece ofbaroccomannerism, spoiling at once the style he sought to use and the theme he undertook to illustrate. It was enough for him to fit the Roman toga to his saints and Pharisees, and totickle the taste of a learned audience by allusions that reminded them of Virgil. The same bathos was reached by Bembo when he invented the paraphrase of 'heavenly zephyr' for the Holy Ghost, and described the Venetian Council bidding a Popeuti fidat diis immortalibus, quorum vices in terrâ gerit. It is not the profanity of these phrases so much as their æsthetic emptiness, the discord between the meaning intended to be conveyed and the literary form, that strikes a modern critic.
When the same poets break out into honest Paganism, in the frank verses written by Bembo for Priapus, in Beccadelli's epigrams, or in the elegies of Acon and Iolas, we feel that they are more artistically justified. The following lines, for instance, from Vida's 'Poetics,' have a true ring and beauty of their own. He is addressing Virgil as a saint:—
Or again—
There is no confusion here between the feeling and the language chosen to express it. The sentiment, if somewhat artificial and unreal, is at least adequate to the form.
I have entered at some length into the illustration of puristic Latinisms, because they seem to represent the culminating point of classic studies, in so far as these affected taste in general, and also because they are specially characteristic of the period of which I have now to treat. It was at Rome, among the great ecclesiastics, that these Pagan fashions principally flourished. Eminence of all kinds found a home with Leo X., assuming the purple of the prelate and the scarlet of the cardinal at his indulgent hands. The genius of the Renaissance seemed to have followed this firstMedicean Pope from Florence. Though Leo was a man of merely pleasure-loving and receptive temperament, who left no lasting impress on his age, he knew at least how to appreciate ability, and found the height of his enjoyment in the arts and letters he enthusiastically patronised. This sybarite of intellectual and sensual luxury gave his name to what is called the golden age of Italian literature, chiefly because he attracted the best wits to Rome and received the flatteries of men whose work survived them.
History presents few spectacles more striking than that of Rome in the pontificate of Leo. While the Papacy has become a secular sovereignty, learning and arts have assumed the sacerdotal habit, and the boldest immoralities of a society comparable to that of the ancient Empire flourish in the petty Courts of ecclesiastical princes. The capital of Christendom is full of priests; but the priests are men of pleasure and the world—elegant Latinists and florid rhetoricians, raised to posts of eminence by reason of their brilliant gifts. We have seen already how the humanists made their way into the Roman Curia as writers and abbreviators, and how liberally Nicholas V. rewarded learning. Yet, however indispensable the scholars of the fifteenth century became, they rarely rose above the rank of Apostolic secretaries; while few of the professional humanists cared to take orders in the Church. They were satisfied with official emoluments and semi-secular benefices. All this was now altered. The most distinguished men of letters made the Church their profession. Sadoleto, Bembo, and Aleander, who began their career under Leo, received the hats of cardinals from Paul III. Paulus Jovius was consecrated Bishop of Nocera by Clement VII., and retired to Como in disgust because he failed to get the scarlet in 1549. Marcus Musurus, created Bishop of Malvasia, is said to have died of disappointment when he saw the same dignity beyond his reach. Vida, theLatin poet, obtained the see of Alba in Piedmont, and Giberti, the accomplished stylist, that of Verona, from Clement VII. All these men had made their mark at Leo's Court, who set the example, followed by his Medicean successor, of rewarding mundane talents and accomplishments with ecclesiastical distinctions. The question, seriously entertained, of admitting Raphael to the Sacred College proves to what extent the highest honours of the Church had come to be esteemed as prizes, and justifies to some extent Pietro Aretino's arrogant offer to sell his services to the Papacy in exchange for a cardinal's hat.
The biographies of these favourites of fortune offer strong points of similarity. Whether born of noble families, like Bembo, or raised from comparative obscurity, like Bibbiena, they early in life attached themselves to some distinguished prince,[374]or entered the service of a great ecclesiastic. Their literary talents, social accomplishments, successes with women, and diplomatic service at the centres of Italian politics brought them still further into notice. Thus Sadoleto's Latin poem on the Laocoon, Bibbiena's 'Calandra,' Inghirami's acting of the part of Phædra in Seneca's 'Hippolytus,' and Bembo's friendship with Lucrezia Borgia might be cited as turning-points in the early history of these illustrious prelates. Having thus acquired position by their personal gifts, they travelled to Rome in the suite of their respective patrons, and obtained office at the hands of Leo. Sadoleto and Bembo became his secretaries. Inghirami superintended the Vatican Library.[375]Bibbiena's versatile abilities were divided between the duties of State minister and master of the revels. As they had built their fortunes by the help of eminent protectors, they now in their turn took the rank of patrons. In addition to the Vatican, Romedisplayed a multitude of petty Courts and minor circles. Each cardinal and each ambassador held a jurisdiction independent of the Pope, and not unfrequently in opposition to the ruling power. To found academies, to gather clever men around them, and to play the part of Mæcenas was the ambition of these subordinate princes. During the pontificate of Leo the Cardinals Riario, Giulio de' Medici, Bibbiena, Petrucci, Farnese, Alidosi, and Gonzaga, not to mention others, entertained their own following of flatterers and poets, who danced attendance at their levees, accompanied them in public, and earned a meagre pittance by compliments and dedications. Some of these priestly patrons affected the arts, others the sciences; others again, and these the majority, bestowed their favours upon literature. Ippolito de' Medici is said to have maintained a retinue of three hundred poets, among whom are mentioned the elegant Molza and the learned Valeriano. The fashion thus set by Leo and the Sacred College was followed by all the eminent men in Rome. The banker Agostino Chigi made himself a name not only by his patronage of painters, but also by the private Greek press founded in his house.[376]Baldassare Turini devoted himself to the arts of building and of decoration. Baldassare Castiglione, as ambassador from Mantua and Ferrara, and Alberto Pio, as prince of Carpi and ambassador from France, dispensed the hospitality of their palaces to scholars, among whom they held no inconsiderable rank on their own merits.
Libraries, collections of statues and of pictures, frescoes painted from mythological subjects, garden-houses planned upon the antique model, Latin inscriptions, busts of theemperors, baths and banquet chambers decorated in the manner of the Roman ruins—on such objects the wealth of the Church was being prodigally spent. Posterity has reason to deplore the non-appearance of a satirist in this Papal society, so curiously similar to that of Imperial Rome. Horace would, indeed, have found ample materials for humorous delineation, whether he had chosen to deride the needy clients leaving their lodgings before daybreak to crowd a prelate's antechamber, or the parasites on whom coarse practical jokes were played in the Pope's presence, or the flatterers who praised their master's mock virtues in hour-long declamations. Fouler vices than vanity, hypocrisy, and servility supplied fit subjects for invectives no less fiery than the second and the sixth of Juvenal. At Rome virtuous women had no place; but Phryne lived again in the person of Imperia, and dignitaries of the Church thought it no shame to parade their preference for Giton.[377]In the absence of a Horace or a Juvenal, we have to content ourselves with Bandello and other novelists, and with one precious epistle of Ariosto describing the difficulty of conducting business at the Papal Court except by way of backstairs influence and antechamber intrigue.
To over-estimate the moral corruption of Rome at the beginning of the sixteenth century is almost impossible. To over-rate the real value of a literature that culminated in the subtleties of rhetoric and style is easy. Nor is it difficult to mistake, as many critics have done, the sunset of the fine arts for their meridian splendour. Yet, while we recognise the enervation of society in worse than heathenvices, and justly regard Rome as the hostelry of alien arts and letters rather than the mother city of great men, we cannot blind our eyes to the varied lights and colours of that Court, unique in modern history. The culture toward which Italian society had long been tending, was here completed. The stamp of universality had been given to the fine arts and to literature by the only potentate who at that moment claimed allegiance from united Christendom. As the eloquent historian of the town of Rome observes, 'the richest intellectual life here blossomed in a swamp of vices.' It was not the life of great poetry: that had perished long ago with Dante. It was not the life of genuine science: that was destined to be born with Galileo. It was not the life of comprehensive scholarship: that slept in the grave of Poliziano. It was not even the life of progressive art; for Raphael died in this age, and though Michael Angelo survived it, his genius had no successors. But it was the life of culture, rendering the rudest and most vicious sensitive to softening influences, and preparing for more powerful nations the possibilities of great achievements.
Amid political debility and moral corruption an ideal of refinement, adopted from antiquity, and assimilated to modern modes of living, had been formed. This was the most perfect bloom of the Renaissance, destined to survive the decay of humanism, and to be for subsequent civilisation what chivalry was for the Middle Ages. Through the continued effort of patricians and of scholars to acquire the tone of classic culture, something like antique urbanity had reappeared at Florence and in Rome; while severalgeneral tionsdevoted to polite studies had produced a race distinguished above all things for its intellectual delicacy. The effect of this æsthetic atmosphere upon visitors from the North was singularly varied. Luther, who came to see the City of the Saints, found in Rome the sink of all abominations,the very lair of Antichrist. Thecomitasand thefacetiæof the prelates were to him the object of unmitigated loathing. Erasmus, on the contrary, wrote from London that nothing but Lethe could efface his memory of that radiant city—its freedom of discourse, its light, its libraries, its honeyed converse of most learned scholars, its large style of life, and all those works of art that made of Rome the theatre of nations. The Italians themselves, lessoned by the tragedy of 1527, looked back with no less mingled feelings upon Leo's Rome. La Casa mentions thenimia humanitatis suavitas—the excess of sweetness in all that makes society humane—as a characteristic of the past age. That excessive sweetness of civility, the final product of the arts and scholarship of Italy, when diffused through Europe and tempered to the taste of sterner nationalities, became the politeness of France under Louis XIV., thebel airof Queen Anne's courtiers.
The Roman Academy still continued to be active, meeting at the palaces of more than one great prelate. The gardens of Angelo Colocci, Leo's secretary, a friend of John Lascaris, and himself no inconsiderable stylist, formed its headquarters. Sometimes the poet Blosius Palladius received the associates in his villa by the Tiber; sometimes they enjoyed the hospitality of Egidius Canisius, General of the Augustine Order; at one time they sought the house of Sadoleto on the Quirinal; at another they feasted in the vineyard of John Goritz, the Corycius Senex. The festivals of this learned society, to judge by the descriptions of its members, were distinguished by antique simplicity and good taste, contrasting powerfully with the banquets of mere mundane prelates.[378]When Agostino Chigi entertained the Academicians in the Villa Farnesina, he chastened his magnificence to suit the spirit of their founder, Lætus, andomitted those displays of vulgar pomp that marked his wedding banquet.[379]
The muster-roll of the Academy brings the most eminent wits of Rome before us. First and foremost stands Pietro Bembo, the man of letters, who, like Petrarch, Poggio, and Poliziano, may be chosen as the fullest representative of his own age of culture. His father, Bernardo Bembo, was a Venetian of noble birth and education. To his generous enthusiasm for Italian literature Ravenna owes the tomb of Dante. Pietro was born at Florence in 1470, and received his early education in that city. Therefore the Tuscans claim his much-praised purity of diction for their gift. He afterwards studied Greek at Messina under Constantine Lascaris, and learned philosophy from Pomponazzo at Padua. When his master's treatise on the 'Immortality of the Soul' was condemned by the Lateran Council, Bembo used his influence successfully in his behalf. Though he denied the demonstrability of the doctrine, and maintained that Aristotle gave it no support, Pomponazzo was only censured, instead of being burned like Bruno. This good fortune was due, however, less to his pupil's advocacy than to the nonchalance of Leo. Having completed his academical studies in 1498, Bembo joined his father at the brilliant Court of the Estensi. When Lucrezia Borgia entered Ferrara in 1502 she was still in the zenith of her beauty. Her father, Alexander, grew daily more powerful in Rome; while her brother held the central States of Italy within his grasp. The greatness of the Borgias reflected honour on the bride of Alfonso d'Este; and though the princes of Ferrara at first received her with reluctance, they were soon won over by her grace. Between the princess and the courtly scholar a friendship speedily sprang up, which strengthened with years and was maintained by correspondence at a distance. To Lucrezia Bembodedicated 'Gli Asolani,' a dialogue in the Italian tongue upon Platonic love,[380]by far the freest and most genial of his writings. The collection of his Latin poems contains an epigram upon a golden serpent clasped above her wrist, and an elegy in which he praises her singing, dancing, playing, and recitation:—
This liaison, famous in the annals of Italian literature, gave Bembo a distinguished place in the great world. A touching memento of it—Lucrezia's letters and a tress of her long yellow hair—is still preserved at Milan in the Ambrosian Library.
From Ferrara Bembo passed to Urbino in 1506, where Guidobaldo da Montefeltre had gathered round him the brilliant group described in the 'Cortegiano.' The climax of that treatise, our most precious source of information on Court life in Italy, makes it clear that Bembo played the first part in a circle distinguished above all others at that time for refinement and wit. Many cities might boast of a larger and more splendid concourse of noble visitors; but none competed with Urbino for the polish of its manners and the breeding of its courtiers. In his dialogue in praise of Guidobaldo, Bembo paid a magnificent tribute to the prince from whose society he learned so much, and in whose service he remained till the Duke's death.[381]Giuliano de' Medici, with whom he lived on terms of intimacy at Urbino, took him to Rome in 1512. The reign of Leo was about to shed new lustre on the Medicean exiles. His victorious exclamation to his brother,'Godiamoci il Papato poichè Dio ce l'ha dato,' had a ring of promise in it for their numerous friends andclients. Even without the recommendation of Giuliano, it is not likely that Leo would have overlooked a man so wholly after his own heart as Bembo. The qualities he most admired—smooth manners, a handsome person, wit in conversation, and thorough mastery of Latin style, without pretension to deep learning or much earnestness of purpose—were incarnate in the courtly Venetian. Bembo was precisely the man to make Leo's life agreeable by flattering his superficial tastes and subordinating the faculties of a highly cultivated mind to frivolous, if intellectual, amusements. The churchman who warned Sadoleto against spoiling his style by study of the Bible, the prosaist who passed his compositions through sixteen portfolios, revising them at each remove, the versifier who penned a hymn to S. Stephen and a monologue for Priapus with equal elegance, was cast in the same mould as the pleasure-loving Pontiff. For eight years he lived at Rome, honoured by the Medici and loved by all who knew him. His duties as secretary to Leo, shared by his old friend and fellow-student Sadoleto, were not onerous; while the society of the capital afforded opportunity for the display of his most brilliant gifts. In 1520, wearied by nearly thirty years of continual Court life, and broken down in health by severe sickness, Bembo retired to Padua. The collection of a library and museum, horticulture, correspondence, and the cultivation of his studied Ciceronian style now occupied his leisure through nineteen most disastrous years for Italy. The learned courtiers of that age liked thus to play the Roman in their villas, quoting Horace and Virgil on the charms of rustic life, and fancying they caught the spirit of Cincinnatus while they strolled about the farm. Bembo's Paduan retreat became the rendezvous of all the ablest men in Italy, the centre of a fluctuating society of highest culture. Paul III. recalled him to Rome, and made him cardinal in 1539. When he died in 1547 he was buried notfar from Leo in the Church of the Minerva. A fair slab of marble marks his grave.
Bembo succeeded Poliziano in the dictatorship of Italian letters. Like Poliziano, he was both a scholar and a writer of Italian; but he was far from possessing the comprehensive understanding or the genius of his predecessor. Of all the 'apes of Cicero' scoffed at by Erasmus, he stood first and foremost. His exclusive devotion to one favourite author made his Latin stiff and mannered. Tuscan critics again have complained that his Italian style lacks nerve and idiom. He wrote like an alien, not one to the manner born. In his dread of not writing correctly, he ended by expressing tame thoughts with frigid formality. Even a foreigner can see that he used Italian, as he used Latin, without yielding to natural impulse, and with the constant effort to attain a fixed ideal. The mark of the file may be observed on every period. Raciness and spontaneity are words that have no meaning when applied to him. The decadence of Italian prose composition into laboured mannerism and meticulous propriety should be traced in a great measure to his influence. Yet Bembo deserves credit for having braved the opinion of the learned by his cultivation of the vulgar tongue; and on this point some verses from a Latin poem to Ercole Strozzi deserve quotation in a note.[382]
Jacopo Sadoleto's career was not dissimilar to that of his friend Bembo, though the two men offer many points of difference in character and turn of mind. Born at Modena in 1477, he studied Latin at Ferrara, and Greek at Rome, where he settled in the reign of Alexander VI. His copy of hexameters on the newly-discovered statue of Laocoon made him famous. Frigid and laboured as these verses may appear to us, who read them like a prize exercise, they had the merit of originality when first produced. Leo made the poet his secretary and Bishop of Carpentras. Sadoleto passed a good portion of his life in the duties of his see, composing moral treatises, annotating the Psalms, and publishing a 'Commentary on the Epistle to the Romans.'[383]Though strongly tinctured with Ciceronian purism, his taste was more austere than Bembo's. Nature had given him an intellect adapted to grave studies, sincerity of purpose, and true piety. Living in the dawn of the Reformation, Sadoleto was deeply conscious of the perils of the Church; nor did he escape the suspicion of sharing the new heresy.[384]His celebrated letter to Clement VII., after the sack of Rome in 1527, shows that he viewed this disaster as a punishment inflicted on the godless capital of Christendom. In 1536 Paul III. recalled him to Rome, and made him cardinal. He died in 1547, and was buried in S. Pietro in Vincoli. Sadoleto's correspondence may be reckoned among the most valuable materials for the literary annals of this period.
Next to Sadoleto a place must be found for the grave and studious Egidio Canisio. He was born at Viterbo in 1470, and was therefore an exact contemporary of Bembo. His powers of Latin oratory gained him the fame of a great speaker, and the address with which he opened the LateranCouncil in 1512 was committed to the press in that year. Egidius was already General of the Augustine Order. Five years later he received the red hat of a cardinal, and in 1518 he represented the Holy See as Legate at the Court of Spain. He died in 1532, leaving a vast mass of miscellaneous works on theology, philosophy, Biblical criticism, and universal history. Few of these have been printed. It is said that, besides Greek and Latin, he was a master of Hebrew and Chaldee, Turkish, Persian, and Arabic.
A more brilliant figure is presented by the witty but unscrupulous historian Paulus Jovius. He was born at Como in 1483, and came at the age of thirty-three to Rome, with the beginning of his comprehensive History already written.[385]Leo, who delighted in listening to recitations of new literary works, declared that nothing had been penned more perfect since the days of Livy. This high praise induced Jovius to fix his residence at Rome, where Clement VII. made him Bishop of Nocera in 1528. After spending twenty-one years in the expectation, continually frustrated, of being received in the Sacred College, he retired to Como, and died at Florence in 1552. Jovius was the cleverest of all the Latinists produced by the Italians. His style is fluent, sparkling with anecdote, highly picturesque in its descriptive passages, and adorned by characteristic details. In addition to the histories, he produced a series of biographies of great and varied value, some of which are libels, others panegyrics, while all are marked by acute observation and mastery of the matter in hand. He was wont to say that he could use a golden or a silver pen at will: the golden was exercised upon the Life of Leo; the silver, dipped in ironic gall, upon the Life ofHadrian. The sketches of eminent men, known by the name of 'Elogia,' were composed in illustration of a picture gallery of portraits collected in his villa. They include not only Italians, but Greeks, Germans, French and English worthies, dead and living notabilities of every kind.[386]If Brantôme had chosen Latin instead of French, he would have made a book not altogether unlike this of Jovius. The versatility of the author was further illustrated by a Latin treatise on Roman fishes, and by an Italian essay on mottoes and devices.[387]
Among the celebrities of the Roman Academy a place apart must be reserved for Baldassare Castiglione; for though his biography belongs to the political even more than to the literary annals of the period, few men represent the age of Leo in its culture with more dignity and grace combined. He was born in 1478 at Casatico, in the Duchy of Mantua; his father's family held the county of Castiglione, and his mother was a Gonzaga. In his youth he received an education framed upon the system set in vogue by Vittorino and Guarino, and became the living illustration of those varied accomplishments which he described in the 'Cortegiano.' His scholarship was sound and elegant; as a writer of Latin verse he distinguished himself among the best men of his generation. Sensitive to the beauty of the arts, he proved an excellent critic of modern painting and of antique sculpture, and assisted Raphael in the composition of his famous letter to Leo on the exploration of old Rome. At the same time he did not neglect the athletic exercises which formed an indispensable branch of an Italian nobleman's training. Cultivated at all points, he early devoted his abilities to the service ofprinces; for at this period in Italy there was no sphere for such a character outside the Courts. After spending some time at Milan and Naples, Castiglione removed to Rome, where Julius II. discerned the use that might be made of him in furthering the interests of his nephew Francesco Maria della Rovere. Federigo da Montefeltre, Duke of Urbino, had died in 1482, leaving his son Guidobaldo in possession of his fiefs and titles; but it was known that this prince could have no heirs. In him the male line of the Montefeltri ended. His sister Giovanna had been married to Giovanni della Rovere, a brother of the Pope, and Julius hoped that their son Francesco Maria might be declared successor to the Duchy of Urbino. Castiglione therefore attached himself to the person of Guidobaldo, with the special purpose of making himself necessary to the princes of Urbino and furthering the claims of Francesco, then a boy of about fifteen. Of his residence at Urbino, and of the polished splendour of Guidobaldo's Court, he has left an ever-memorable record in his 'Cortegiano,' that mirror of gentle breeding for the sixteenth century in Europe. Guidobaldo received the Count of Castiglione with marked favour, made him captain of fifty men at arms, and employed him in several offices of trust. Not the least important of these was the mission to England, undertaken in 1506 by Castiglione as Guidobaldo's proxy for receiving from Henry VII. the investiture of the Garter. After the death of Guidobaldo, Francesco Maria della Rovere was proclaimed Duke of Urbino, and Castiglione continued to enjoy his confidence until the year 1517, when Leo succeeded in placing his nephew Lorenzo de' Medici upon the Ducal throne.
Castiglione was now deprived of what had become the necessity of his life, a post of honour in the Court of a reigning sovereign. He therefore transferred his allegiance to his natural lord, the Marquis of Mantua, who appointed himambassador at Rome. The first and most brilliant period of the courtier's life was passed at Urbino; the second, less fruitful in literary achievements, embraced his residence among the wits of Leo's circle. At Rome Castiglione adapted himself to the customs of the papal society, penning Latin elegiacs, consorting with artists, and exercising the pleasant patronage of a refined Mæcenas. His friendship with Raphael is not the least interesting episode in this chapter of his biography. Substantial records of it still remain in the epitaph composed by the courtly scholar on the painter, and in Castiglione's portrait now preserved in the Louvre collection. That picture represents the very model of an Italian nobleman as culture and Court life had made him—tranquil, with grave open eyes, and a mouth as well suited for urbane discourse as gentle merriment. The owner of this face was not born to lead armies or to control unruly multitudes, but to pass his time in theloggieof princes—self-contained and qualified to win favour without the sacrifice of personal dignity. It forms a strong contrast to earlier and later portraits—to that of Sigismondo Pandolfo Malatesta, for example, and to the Spanish grandees of the next century. Castiglione was still in Rome during the pontificate of Clement VII., who, recognizing his great ability as a diplomatist, sent him to Charles V. At Madrid the Pope's nuncio was unable to avert the disaster of 1527, and Castiglione had the bitter mortification of hearing at a distance how the Rome he knew and loved so well, had been ravaged by the brigands of Germany and Spain. It is clear, however, from the diplomatic correspondence of that memorable moment, and from the letter addressed by Clement to Castiglione's mother in 1529, that he never lost the confidence of his master; in spite of his failure to negotiate between them, he was respected alike by the Pope and the Emperor. He died at Toledo two years after the sack of Rome, worn out, it is said, by disappointment and regret.Not only in his book of the 'Courtier,' but also in his life, Castiglione illustrated the best qualities of an Italian gentleman, moulded by the political and social conditions of the sixteenth century into a refined scholar and a courtly diplomatist.
Of Alberto Pio, whose life in some respects may be compared with Castiglione's, I have had occasion to speak in thelast chapter. His first cousin, Gian Francesco Pico della Mirandola, demands more than passing notice. By no prince of that troubled period were the cruel vicissitudes of Italian politics more painfully experienced. Few of the scholars could boast of wider learning and a nobler spirit. He was born in 1470, and succeeded his father, Galeotto, in the lordship of Mirandola. In 1502 his brother Lodovico expelled him from his capital. Julius II. restored him. After being dispossessed a second time by Trivulzi, general of the French forces, he was once more reinstated, but only for a brief period. His nephew, Galeazzo, murdered him in 1533 before the crucifix, together with his heir, Alberto. In the intervals of his unquiet and unhappy life, Gian Francesco Pico devoted himself to studies not unlike those of his more famous uncle.[388]Early in his youth he had conceived the strongest admiration for Savonarola; and the work by which he is best known to posterity is a Life of his great master. Savonarola's principles continued to rule his thought and conduct through life. During the pontificate of Leo he composed a long address to the Lateran Council upon the reformation of the Church,[389]and dared to entertain the friendship of Reuchlin and Willibad Pirkheimer. His residence in Rome, and the dedication ofhis treatise on 'Divine Love' to Leo, justify our ranking him with the Roman scholars.
If Gian Francesco Pico and Sadoleto bring us close upon the threshold of the German Reformation, we cross it in the company of Aleander. Jerome Aleander was born at Motta, in the Marches of Treviso, in the year 1480. His studies, more comprehensive than those of the stylists, included theology, philosophy, and science, together with the Oriental languages, in addition to the indispensable Greek and Latin culture. Before he reached the age of thirty he travelled to Paris, and professed Hebrew and the humanities at the University. French scholarship may be said to date from the impulse given to these subjects by Aleander, who rose to such fame that he was made Rector of the University. After leaving Paris, he spent some time in Germany, and came first to Rome in 1516 in the train of Erard van der Mark, Bishop of Lüttich. Here Leo appointed him librarian of the Vatican. The rest of Aleander's life was spent in the service of the Church. Despatched asnuntiusto Germany by Leo in 1520, he vainly attempted, as all students of the Reformation know, to quench the fire of Luther's kindling. When he returned to Italy, Clement VII. gave him the archbishopric of Brindisi, and Paul III. raised him to the scarlet in 1538. He died in 1542, leaving in France the memory of his unrivalled learning, in Germany the fame of an intolerant persecutor, in Italy the reputation of a stanch though unsuccessful champion of the Church.
Aleander's three predecessors in the Vatican Library—Tommaso Inghirami of Siena, Filippo Beroaldo of Bologna, and Zanobio Acciaiuoli of Florence—made their mark in Roman society by erudition rather than by authorship.[390]Inghirami's eloquence won the admiration of contemporaries, who called him the second Cicero; as a writer he had no celebrity.[391]A fortunate find of MSS. at Bobbio earned for him the post of Vatican librarian. Leo, like all the members of the Medicean family, was bent upon the rediscovery of buried classics. But the world had been already ransacked, and, though he employed agents for this purpose in the East as well as Europe, only one great treasure came to light. Gian Angelo Arcimboldi disinterred the first five books of Tacitus's 'Annals' at Corvey, and sold them to the Pope for 500 golden florins. Filippo Beroaldo, who was entrusted with the task of editing this precious codex, received the librarianship as his reward. Leo's privilege granted to the printers of Beroaldo's edition expresses in truly noble language the highest ideal of humanism, and reflects real credit on his patronage of letters.[392]Of Acciaiuoli there is not much to say. His knowledge of Hebrew and the classic languages gained for him a reputation for singular learning. In his capacity as librarian he began to catalogue the documents of the 'Secreta Bibliotheca,' founded by Sixtus IV. It is worthy of notice that Acciaiuoli is the only Florentine whom we have had occasion to mention among the learned courtiers of Leo. Florence, always foremost in the van of culture, had shaken off at this period the traditions of strict humanism. Her greatest writers, Guicciardini, Machiavelli, Varchi, Segni, and Giannotti, exchanged the Latin language for their mother speech, and sought for honour in fields removed from verbal scholarship or Ciceronian niceties of phrase.
The Roman Sapienza never held the same rank as the Universities of Padua or Bologna; nor could it compete asan academy of culture with the High Schools of Florence and Ferrara. The Popes of the Renaissance, occupied with nepotism and political aggrandisement, had but small care for the interests of education. Nor did Rome, always overcrowded by foreigners, require the students who brought custom and prestige to minor cities.[393]Leo X. resolved, as far as he was able, to raise the studies of his capital from the decadence into which they had fallen. In 1513 he reformed the statutes of the University, increased the appointments of the professors, and founded several new chairs. Yet, though scholars no less respectable than Janus Parrhasius of Cosenza, Tommaso Inghirami, and Filippo Beroaldo were numbered among the teachers, the Sapienza failed to take firm root in Rome:—the most flourishing school of humanism at this period was Ferrara, governed by Leoniceno, Celio Calcagnini, and Lilius Gyraldus. To Hellenistic studies, just now upon the point of decadence in Italy, Leo gave encouragement by the establishment of a Greek press, and by the foundation of the Gymnasium Caballini Montis, where Joannes Lascaris and Marcus Musurus lectured. Musurus we have already learned to know as the inmate of Alberto Pio's palace at Carpi, and as Aldo's most efficient helper. Soon after his elevation to the Papacy, Leo invited the venerable Lascaris to Rome; but he did not long retain the services of so illustrious a Hellenist. Lascaris, who had taught Greek in Paris during the reign of Charles VIII., and who had long served Louis XII. as ambassador at Venice, was induced by Francis I. to superintend the library at Fontainebleau in 1518. He once more visited Rome during the pontificate of Clement, and died there at the age of ninety—the last of the Greek exiles who transplanted Hellas into Latium. Between the visit of Manuel Chrysoloras in 1398 and the death of John Lascaris in 1535 more than a century had elapsed, in the course of whichItaly,[394]after acquiring Greek literature and committing its chief treasures to the press, had seen her learning pass beyond the Alps and flourish with new vigour on a northern soil. The epitaph composed by Lascaris for his own tomb in Santa Agata touchingly expresses the grief of an exile for his country's servitude, together with the gratitude of one who found a new home in an alien land:—
Any account of erudite society in Rome would be incomplete without some notice of its antiquaries. While the Pope and his cardinals were bent on collecting statues, coins, vases, and inscriptions, it was natural that the scholars should devote themselves to their illustration. Much of this industry was carried on by the academicians, who discussed difficult readings and exchanged opinions at their meetings. Treatises on Roman antiquities, topographical essays, and commentaries on Vitruvius and Frontinus abounded. Amid a multitude of minor works it will be enough to mention the cyclopædias of Andrea Fulvio and Bartolommeo Marliano, the comprehensive collection of inscriptions by Mazochi, and Valeriano's dissertation on the hieroglyphics of the Roman obelisks.[395]The greater number of these compositions were published by Jacopo Mazochi, bookseller to the Roman Academy, and himself no mean scholar. Together with his coadjutor, Francesco Albertini, he undertook what he describes as 'the Herculean labour' of saving inscribed tablets from the lime-kilnand the mason's hammer. Built into the walls of houses, embedded in church pavements, mingled with the rubbish of the Forum, unearthed by the mattock or the plough in vineyard and cornfield, these records of old history encumbered Rome. To decipher them as best he could, arrange them by the regions where they had been found, and incorporate his own readings with the previous collections of Ciriaco and Fra Giocondo,[396]was the object of Mazochi. His work formed the nucleus of the ponderous collection known as theCorpus Inscriptionum.
This is the proper occasion for resuming what has to be said about the Roman ruins, and the feeling for them shown in the Renaissance period. We have already listened to Poggio's lamentations over their gradual decay through wanton injury and lapse of time.[397]Pius II., who had a strong taste for topographical studies, endeavoured to protect the Roman monuments from depredation by a Bull in 1462. But his successors were less scrupulous. Even the scholarly Nicholas V. had shown more zeal for building modern Rome afresh than true regard for the imperial city. He levelled large portions of the wall of Servius Tullius, and quarried the Temple of Peace for his own edifices. In his days Blondus wrote that his life was embittered by the wholesale waste of ancient reliques. That Paul II. should have used the stone wall of the Coliseum for the Palace of S. Marco; that Sixtus IV. should have pulled down the circular Temple of Hercules, and destroyed the oldest bridge across the Tiber to make cannon balls; that Innocent VIII. should have empowered his architects to take what antique masonry they pleased—excites in us no wonder; these Popes were acting according to the spirit that was in them. Nor can it bedenied that for some of their acts of Vandalism the excuse of utility or even of necessity might have been pleaded. It is, however, singular that no steps were taken to preserve in Rome the bas-reliefs and sculptures of the monuments thus overthrown. Everyone who chose laid hands upon them. Poggio scraped together what he could; Pomponius Lætus formed a museum; Lorenzo de' Medici and the Rucellai employed agents to select and ship to Florence choicer fragments. At last the impulse to collect possessed the Popes themselves. The Capitol Museum dates from 1471. The pretty statue of the boy pulling a thorn from his foot, the group of the lion clinging to a horse, the urn of Agrippina, and the bronze Hercules from the Forum Boarium formed the nucleus of this collection. Soon afterwards the equestrian statue of Marcus Aurelius was unearthed and placed where it now stands. The Vatican Museum was founded in 1523, when Julius II. erected the Apollo on a marble basis near the entrance to the gardens of the Belvedere. It had been discovered some years earlier at Porto d'Anzo, and was bought by Giuliano della Rovere before he was made Pope. The Laocoon came to light in 1506 among the ruins of the Baths of Titus in the vineyard of Felix de Fredis. How Giuliano di San Gallo and Michael Angelo heard of it, and walked abroad to see it disinterred, may still be read in the letter of Francesco, nephew of the former. Julius bought this group for six hundred golden crowns, and placed it in the Vatican. He also purchased the statue of the sleeping Ariadne, which then passed for Cleopatra,[398]together with the torso of Hercules, found near the Palazzo Pio, and the statue of Commodus dug up in the Campo Fiore. Leo X. further enriched the collection by the reclining statues of the Nile and Tiber, found among the ruins of the Iseum near S. Stefano in Caco, and the so-called Antinous discovered in the Baths of Trajan.
The feeling of professed scholars for these masterpieces of classic art appears in Sadoleto's and Castiglione's poems, while a passage of Ghiberti's Commentary expresses the enthusiasm of technical sculptors. After describing an Hermaphrodite he saw in Rome, the Florentine sculptor adds: 'To express the perfection of learning, mastery, and art displayed in it is beyond the power of language. Its more exquisite beauties could not be discovered by the sight, but only by the touch of the hand passed over it.' Of another classic marble at Padua he says: 'This statue, when the Christian faith triumphed, was hidden in that place by some gentle soul, who, seeing it so perfect, fashioned with art so wonderful, and with such power of genius, and being moved to reverent pity, caused a sepulchre of bricks to be built, and there within buried the statue, and covered it with a broad slab of stone, that it might not in any way be injured. It has very many sweet beauties, which the eyes alone can comprehend not, either by strong or tempered light; only the hand by touching finds them out.'[399]Meanwhile a genuine sentiment for the truth and beauty of antique art passed downwards from the educated classes to the people. Like all powerful emotions that affect the popular imagination at epochs of imperfect knowledge and high sensibility, it took the form of fable. The beautiful myth of Julia's Corpse is our most precious witness to this moment in the history of the Revival.[400]At the same time the real intention of classic statuary was better understood. Donatello had not worked in vain for a public, finely tempered to receive æsthetic influences, and cultivated by two centuries of native art. The horsemen of Monte Cavallo ceased to be philosophers. Menander and Poseidippus were no longer reckoned amongthe saints. In the age of Leo, Carlo Malatesta could not have thrown Virgil's statue into the Mincio;[401]nor would the republic of Siena have buried their antique Venus by stealth in the Florentine territory, hoping thereby to transfer to their foes the curse of heathenism.[402]The effect produced on less impressionable natures by the Belvedere statues transpires in a curious document penned by a Venetian ambassador to Rome in 1523.[403]It is so valuable for illustrating the average culture of the Italians at that epoch, that I may allow myself the pleasure of rendering a full account of it.
Adrian VI., soon after his accession, had walled up eleven of the twelve doors, leading to the Belvedere. The Venetian envoys, however, received permission to visit this portion of the Vatican palace, and the single entrance was unlocked for them. After describing the beauty of the gardens, their cypresses and orangeries, the greenness of their lawns and the stately order of their paved avenues, the writer of the report arrives at the statues. 'In the midst of the garden are two very large men of marble, facing one another, twice the size of life, who lie in the attitude of sleep. One of these is the Tiber, the other the Nile, figures of vast antiquity; and from beneath them issue two fair fountains. On the first entrance into the garden, on the left hand, there is a kind of little chapel let into the wall, where, on a pedestal of marble, stands the Apollo, famous throughout the world, a statue of incomparable beauty and dignity, of life size and of finest marble. Somewhat farther on, in a similar alcove and raised on a like pedestal to the height of an altar from the ground, opposite a well of most perfect fashion, is the Laocoon, celebrated throughout the world, a statue of the highest excellence, of size like a natural man, with hairybeard, all naked. The sinews, veins, and proper muscles in each part are seen as well as in a living body; breath alone is wanting. He is in a posture between sitting and standing, with his two sons, one on either hand, both, together with himself, twined by the serpents, as Virgil says. And herein is seen so great merit of the artist, that better could not be; the languishing and dying are manifest to sight, and one of the boys on the right side is most tightly clipped by the snake twice girdled round him; one of the coils crossing his breasts and squeezing his heart, so that he is on the point of dying. The other boy on the left side is also girdled round by another serpent. While he seeks to drag the raging worm from his leg with his little arm, and cannot help himself at all, he raises his face, all tearful, crying to his father, and holding him with his other hand by the left arm. And seeing his unhappy father more deadly struck than he is, the double grief of this child is clear to view, the one for his own coming death, the other for his father's helplessness; and he so faints withal, that nothing remains for him but to breathe his last. It is impossible that human art can arrive at producing so great and so natural a masterpiece. Every part is perfect, except that Laocoon's right arm is wanting. He seems about forty years of age, and resembles Messer Girolamo Marcello of S. Tommaso; the two boys look eight and nine respectively. Not far distant, and similarly placed, is a very beautiful Venus of natural size, naked, with a little drapery on her shoulder, that covers a portion of the waist; as very fair a figure as can be imagined by the mind; but the excellence of the Laocoon makes one forget this and the Apollo, who before was so famous.'
A systematic plan for exploring the monuments of old Rome, excavating its ruins, and bringing its buried treasures of statuary to light was furnished by Raphael in 1518. Leo had made him master of the works at S. Peter's and generalsuperintendent of antiquities.[404]For some time previously he had been studying Vitruvius in the Italian translation prepared for his use by Fabio Calvi of Ravenna. How enthusiastically he followed in the traces of the ancients, the arabesques of the Loggie, imitated from the frescoes of the Baths of Titus, amply prove. He now, not long before his death, laid down a ground-plan of the city, divided into fourteen regions, and set forth his project in a memorable letter to the Pope. This epistle, written in choice old Italian, has more than once been printed: it will be found in Passavant's Life of the painter. Raphael begins by describing the abandonment and desolation of the city, and by characterising its several styles of architecture—classical, Lombard, Gothic, and modern.[405]Some phrases that occur in this exordium deserve to be cited for the light they cast upon the passion which inspired those early excavators. 'Considerando la divinitate di quelli animi antichi ... vedendo quasi il cadavere di quest'alma nobile cittate, che è stata regia del mondo, così miseramente lacerato ... quanti pontefici hanno permesso le ruine et disfacimenti delli templi antichi, delle statue, delli archi et altri edificii, gloria delli lor fondatori! Quanti hanno comportato che solamente per pigliare terra pozzolana si siano scavati i fondamenti! Onde in poco tempo li edificii sono venuti a terra. Quanta calcina si è fatta di statue e d'altri ornamenti antichi! che ardirei dire che tutta questa nova Roma, che hor si vede, quanto grande ch'ella vi sia, quanto bella, quanto ornata di pallazzi, di chiese et di altri edificii, sia fabricata di calcina fatta di marmi antichi.'[406]He then observes that during his twelve years' residence in Rome the Meta in the Via Alexandrina, the arches at the entrance to the Baths of Diocletian and the Temple of Ceres in the Via Sacra, part of the Foro Transitorio, and the larger portion of the Basilica del Foro have been destroyed. Therefore he prays Leo to arrest this work of the new Vandals, and, by pursuing a well-considered scheme of operations, to lay bare and to protect what still remains of antique monuments in the Eternal City.
Raphael's own death followed close upon the execution of the first part of a Roman map designed by him. Great interest had been excited in the world of letters by his undertaking; and its failure through his untimely end aroused the keenest disappointment. The epigrams quoted below in a footnote express these feelings with more depth of emotion than scholarly elegance.[407]How Raphael's design would havebeen carried out it is impossible to guess. Archæological zeal is impotent to stay the march of time, except by sacrifice of much that neglect alone makes venerable; and it may fairly be questioned whether it is wise to lay the hand of the restorer on these relics of the past. We at least, who during the last few years have seen the Coliseum and the Baths of Caracalla stripped of their romantic vegetation, the Palatine ruins fortified with modern masonry, and the dubious guesses of antiquaries placarded upon sign-posts for the instruction of Sunday visitors, may feel, perhaps, that a worse fate than slow decay or ruthless mutilation was still in store for the majestic corpse of ancient Rome. Nothing, in truth, is less sublime or more pitiful than a dismantled brick wall, robbed of its marbles and mosaics, naked of the covering of herbs that nature gave it, patched with plaster, propped with stonework, bound by girders, and smeared over with the trail of worse than snails or blindworms—pedants bent on restoration.
The immediate and most important consequence of these antiquarian pursuits was the adoption of classic forms by architects and artists. Fresco-painters imitated the newly-discoveredgrotteschiin their arabesques.[408]Sculptors abandoned Christian subjects for antique mythology, or gave the attributes of heroes to the saints of the Catholic Church. The principles of Vitruvius were applied as strictly as possible to modern buildings, and the free decoration of the earlier Renaissance yielded to what passed for purely classic ornaments. It would be incorrect to maintain that this reproduction of antiquity in art only dated from the age ofLeo. Alberti and Brunelleschi, Bramante and Michellozzo, had, each in his own way, striven to assimilate to modern use the style of Roman architecture. Donatello and Michael Angelo at Florence had carved statues in the classic manner; nor are the arabesques of Signorelli at Orvieto, of Perugino at Perugia, less fanciful than those of Raphael in the Loggie. What really happened was that the imitation of the ancients grew more puristic and precise through the formation of a common taste that imposed itself with the weight of authority on artists. Giulio Romano's Palazzo del Te at Mantua may be cited as the most perfect production of this epoch, combining, as it does, all forms of antique decoration and construction with the vivid individuality of genius. Giulio Romano comprehended the antique, and followed it with the enthusiasm of a neophyte. But his very defects prevented him from falling into the frigid formalism of Palladio.
The causes of Roman pre-eminence in this last age of humanism are not far to seek. By the policy of Alexander and Julius the Papal See had become the chief power in Italy. Venice never publicly encouraged literature, nor was the ambition of her nobles fixed on anything so much as the aggrandisement of the Republic. In the beginning of the sixteenth century their energy was needed no longer for the extension of Venetian rule, but for its preservation under the attack of Europe leagued against the city of the sea. Florence, divided between the parties of the Piagnoni and the Ottimati, reserved her failing vigour for the great struggle of 1529. The Medici, after absorbing what remained of mental force into their own circle, had transferred the Florentine traditions of culture with Giovanni and Giulio to Rome. At Naples the Aragonese dynasty had been already shaken to its foundation by the conspiracy of the Barons and by the conquest of Charles VIII. Ferdinand the Catholic and Louis XII. were now intent upon dividing thesouthern provinces of Italy between them. Little opportunity was left, if inclination had remained, for patronising men of letters at a Court suspicious of its aristocracy and terrified by foreign interference. Milan, first among the towns of Lombardy, was doomed to bear the brunt of French, and Swiss, and German armies. To maintain the semblance of their dukedom taxed the weakness of the Sforzas to the utmost, while the people groaned beneath the fiendish cruelty of Spanish governors. The smaller principalities had been destroyed by Cesare Borgia and Julius. Ferrara, Mantua and Urbino, at the beginning of the century, alone continued the traditions of the previous age. Rome, meanwhile, however insecure the Papal rule might be, still ranked among the Powers of Europe, pursuing a policy on equal terms with France and Spain. In Rome money abounded; nor had the sacred city of Christendom felt as yet the scourge of war, that broke the spirit of the Northern capitals. It was but natural, therefore, that the political and intellectual energies of the Italians should find their centre here.
Sad times, however, were in store for Rome. When Leo's successor read the Latin letters of the Apostolic secretaries, he cried, 'Sunt litteræ unius poetæ;' and after walking through the Belvedere Gallery, he gave vent to his feelings in the famous exclamation, 'Sunt idola antiquorum.' The humanists had nothing to expect from such a master. The election of Giulio de' Medici restored the hope that Rome might once more be as it had been beneath the sway of Leo. Yet for Clement VII. was reserved the final bitterness of utter ruin. In the fourth year of his papacy happened the catastrophe that closed one period of Italian history, and opened a new era for Rome and for the nation. The tale of the sack has been already told.[409]A fitting conclusion for this chapter may be found in Valeriano's discourse upon its consequences to the literary society assembled by the Medici at the Papal Court.
Valeriano's dialogue 'De Literatorum Infelicitate' opens with a description of Rome in the pontificate of Leo.[410]Never since the downfall of the Empire, he says, had letters flourished so freely or had men of learning found more generous patronage. Of that brilliant company Valeriano was himself an ornament. The friend of Egidius and the favourite of Leo, he spent his time in the composition of Latin poems, panegyrical and satiric, and in the exploration of antiquities. Afterwards he became the protonotary of Clement, and supervised the education of the Medicean bastards Alessandro and Ippolito. His good fortune carried him to Piacenza in the fatal year of 1527. On his return to Rome after the siege, he looked in vain for his old comrades and associates. 'Good God!' he exclaims in the dialogue before us, 'when first I began to inquire for the philosophers, orators, poets, and professors of Greek and Latin literature, whose names were written on my tablets, how great, how horrible a tragedy was offered to me! Of all those lettered men whom I had hoped to see, how many had perished miserably, carried off by the most cruel of all fates, overwhelmed by undeserved calamities: some dead of plague, some brought to a slow end by penury in exile, others slaughtered by a foeman's sword, others worn out by daily tortures; some, again, and these of all the most unhappy, driven by anguish to self-murder.' John Goritz, captured by his countrymen, had ransomed himself with the sacrifice of all his wealth, and now was dying of despair at Verona. Colocci had seen his house, with its museums and MSS., burned before his eyes. Angelo Cesi, maltreated by the Spanish soldiers on a sick bed, died of his injuries before the year was out. Marone, the brilliant improvisatore,stripped of everything and deprived of his poems, the accumulated compositions of years spent in Leo's service, breathed his last in a miserable tavern. Marco Fabio Calvi, Raphael's friend and teacher, succumbed to sickness in a hospital. Julianus Camers, maddened by the sight of the torments inflicted on his servants, had thrown himself from a window in his house, and was killed. Baldus, the professor, after watching his commentary upon Pliny used to light the camp fires of the soldiery, had died himself of hunger. Casanova, the poet, fell a victim to the plague. Paolo Bombasi, another poet, was murdered in the streets of Rome. Cristoforo Marcello had been tortured by the Spaniards. Exposed naked on a tree, his nails were daily drawn from his fingers by these human fiends; he only escaped their clutches to die of his injuries at Gaeta. Laomedon Tardolus and John Bonifacius Victor suffered similar indignities and torments. Francesco Fortunio and John Valdes slew themselves. To enumerate all the scholars who succumbed to fear, plague, famine, torture, and imprisonment in this fatal year; to relate how numbers left Rome, robbed of everything, to wander over Italy, and die of hunger by the wayside, or of fever in low hovels; to describe the losses of their MSS., their madness, beggary, mysterious disappearances, and deaths by hands of servants or of brigands on the high roads, would occupy more space than I have left at my command. The ghastly muster roll is told with terrible concision by Valeriano, who adds divers examples, unconnected with the sack, of early deaths by over-study, lingering illnesses, murders by poison or the knife, and accidents of every kind, attributable more or less directly to the shifting career of students at that time in Italy.