Some again are discovered compiling books of spells:
The elder witches keep a school for the younger, and instruct them in the secrets of their craft. Among these Baldus recognizes his own wife, together with the principal ladies of his native land.
It is clear that under the allegory of witchcraft, in which at the same time he seems to have believed firmly, Folengo meant to satirize the secret corruption of society. When Gulfora herself appears, she holds her court like an Italian duchess:
The terrible friar then breaks into a tirade against the courtiers of his day, comparing them with Arthur's knights:
Baldus exterminates the whole vile multitude, while Fracassus pulls Gulfora's palace about her ears. After this, the Barons pursue their way to Acheron, and call upon Charon to ferry them across. He refuses to take so burdensome a party into his boat; but by the strength of Fracassus and the craft of Cingar they effect a passage. Their entry into hell furnishes Folengo with opportunities for new tirades against thevices of Italy. Tisiphone boasts how Rome, through her machinations, has kept Christendom in discord. Alecto exults in her offspring, the Guelph and Ghibelline factions:
After passing the Furies, and entering the very jaws of Hades, Baldus encounters the fantasies of grammarians and humanists, the idle nonsense of the schoolmen, all the lumber of medieval philosophy mixed with the trifles of the Renaissance.[443]He fights his way through the thick-crowding swarm of follies, and reaches the hell of lovers, where a mountebank starts forward and offers to be his guide. Led by this zany, the hero and his comrades enter an enormous gourd, the bulk of which is compared to the mountains of Val Camonica. Within its spacious caverns dwell the sages of antiquity, with astrologers, physicians, wizards, and false poets. But, having brought his Barons to this place Merlinus Cocajus can advanceno further. He is destined to inhabit the great gourd himself. Beyond it he has no knowledge; and here, therefore, he leaves the figments of his fancy without a word of farewell:
With this grotesque invention of the infernal pumpkin, where lying bards are punished by the extraction of teeth which never cease to grow again, Folengo breaks abruptly off. His epic ends with a Rabelaisian peal of laughter, in which we can detect a growl of discontent and anger.
Laying the book down, we ask ourselves whether the author had a serious object, or whether he meant merely to indulge a vein of wayward drollery. The virulent invectives which abound in theMaccaronea, seem to warrant the former conclusion; nor might it be wholly impossible to regard the poem as an allegory, in which Baldus should play the part of the reason, unconscious at first of its noble origin, consorting with the passions and the senses, but finally arriving at the knowledge of its high destiny and defeating the powers of evil.[444]Yet when we attempt to press this theory and to explain the allegory in detail, the thread snaps in our hands. Like the romances of chivalry whichit parodies, theMaccaroneais a bizarre mixture of heterogeneous elements, loosely put together to amuse an idle public and excite curiosity. If its author has used it also as the vehicle for satire which embraces all the popular superstitions, vices and hypocrisies of his century; if, as he approaches the conclusion, he assumes a tone of sarcasm more sinister than befits the broad burlesque of the commencement; we must rest contented with the assumption that his choleric humor led him from the path of comedy, while the fury of a soul divided against itself inspired his muses of the cook-shop with loftier strains than they had promised at the outset.[445]Should students in the future devote the same minute attention to Folengo that has been paid to Rabelais, it is not improbable that the question here raised may receive solution. The poet is not unworthy of such pains. Regarded merely as the precursor of Rabelais, Folengo deserves careful perusal. He was the creator of a style, which, when we read his epic, forces us to think of the seventeenth century; so strongly did it influence the form of humorous burlesque in Europe for at least two hundred years. On this account, the historian of modern literature cannot afford to neglect him. For the student of Italian manners in Lombardy during theheight of the Renaissance, the huge amorphous undigested mass of theMaccaroneais one of the most valuable and instructive documents that we possess. I do not hesitate, from this point of view, to rank it with the masterpieces of the age, with theOrlandoof Ariosto, with Machiavelli's comedies, and with the novels of Bandello.
Folengo used the maccaronic style in two other considerable compositions. The one entitledMoscheisis an elegant parody of theBatrachomyomachia, relating the wars of ants and flies in elegiac verse. The other, calledZanitonella, celebrates the rustic loves of Zanina and Tonello in a long series of elegies, odes and eclogues. This collection furnishes a complete epitome of parodies modeled on the pastorals in vogue. The hero appears upon the scene in the followingSonolegia, under which title we detect a blending of the Sonnet and the Elegy:[446]
The lament is spun out to the orthodox length of fourteen verses, and concludes with a pretty point. Who thebolzoniger puerwas, is more openly revealed in another Sonolegia:[447]
To follow the poet through all his burlesques of Petrarchistic and elegiac literature, Italian or Latin, would be superfluous. It is enough to say that he leaves none of their accustomed themes untouched with parody. The masterpiece of his art in this style is the sixth Eclogue, consisting of a dialogue between two drunken bumpkins—interloquutores Tonellus et Pedralus, qui ambo inebriantur.[448]
The maccaronic style was a product of North Italy, cultivated by writers of the Lombard towns, who versified comic or satiric subjects in parodies of humanistic poetry. The branch of burlesque literature we have next to examine, belonged to Tuscany, and took its origin from the equivocal carnival and dance songs raised to the dignity of art by Lorenzo de' Medici. Its conventional meter wasterza rima, handled with exquisite sense of rhythm, but degraded to low comedy by the treatment of trivial or vulgar motives. The author of theseCapitoli, as they were called, chose some common object—a paint-brush, salad, a sausage, peaches, figs, eels, radishes—to celebrate; affected to be inspired by the grandeur of his subject; developed the drollest tropes, metaphors and illustrations; and almost invariably conveyed an obscene meaning under the form of innuendoes appropriate to his professed theme. Though some exceptions can be pointed out, theCapitoliin general may be regarded as a species of Priapic literature, fashioned to suit the taste of Florentines, who had been accustomed for many generations to semi-disguised obscenity in their vernacular town poetry.[449]Taken from the streets and squares, adopted by the fashionable rhymsters of academies and courtly coteries, the rude Fescennine verse lost none of its license, while it assumed the polish of urbane art. Were it not for this antiquity and popularity of origin, which suggests a plausible excuse for the learned writers ofCapitoliand warns us to regard their indecency as in some measure conventional, it would be difficult to approach the three volumes which contain a selection of their poems, without horror.[450]So deep, universal, unblushing is the vice revealed in them.
To Francesco Berni belongs the merit, such as it is, of having invented the burlesqueCapitoli. He gave his name to it, and the term Bernesque has passed into the critical phraseology of Europe. The unique place of this rare poet in the history of Italian literature, will justify a somewhat lengthy account of his life and works. Studying him, we study the ecclesiastical and literary society of Rome in the age of Leo X. and Clement VII.
Francesco Berni was born at Lamporecchio, in theVal di Nievole, about the end of the fifteenth century.[451]His parents were poor; but they were connected with the family of the Cardinal Bibbiena, who, after the boy's education at Florence, took him at the age of nineteen to Rome. Upon the death of this patron in 1520, Berni remained in the service of Bibbiena's nephew, Agnolo Dovizio. Receiving no advancement from these kinsmen, he next transferred himself, in the quality of secretary, to the household of Giammatteo Giberti, Bishop of Verona, who was a distinguished Mecænas of literary men. This change involved his taking orders. Berni now resided partly at Rome and partly at Verona, tempering the irksome duties of his office by the writing of humorous poetry, which he recited in the then celebrated Academy of the Vignajuoli. This society, which numbered Molza, Mauro, La Casa, Lelio Capilupi, Firenzuola, and Francesco Bini among its members, gave the tone to polite literature at the Courts of Leo and Clement.
Berni survived the sack of 1527, which proved so disastrous to Italian scholars; but he lost everything he possessed.[452]Monsignor Giberti employed him on various missions of minor importance, involving journeys to Venice, Padua, Nice, Florence, and the Abruzzi. After sixteen years of Court-life, Berni grew weary of the petty duties, which must have been peculiarly odious to a man of his lazy temperament, if it is true, as he informs us, that the Archbishop kept him dancingattendance till daylight, while he played primiera with his friends. Accordingly, he retired to Florence, where he held a canonry in the cathedral. There, after a quiet life of literary ease, he died suddenly in 1535. It was rumored that he had been poisoned: and the most recent investigations into the circumstances of his death tend rather to confirm this report. All that is known, however, for certain, is that he spent the evening of May 25 with his friends the Marchionesse di Massa in the Palazzo Pazzi, and that next morning he breathed his last. His mysterious and unexplained decease was ascribed to one of the two Medicean princes then resident in Florence. A sonnet in Berni's best style, containing a vehement invective against Alessandro de' Medici, is extant. The hatred expressed in this poem may have occasioned the rumor (which certainly acquired a certain degree of currency) that Cardinal Ippolito de' Medici attempted to use the poet for the secret poisoning of his cousin, and on his refusal had him murdered. Other accounts of the supposed assassination ascribe a like intention to the Duke, who is said to have suggested the poisoning of the Cardinal to Berni. Both stories agree in representing his tragic end as the price paid for refusal to play the part of an assassin. The matter remains obscure; but enough suspicion rests upon the manner of his death to render this characteristic double legend plausible; especially when we remember what the customs of Florence with respect to poisoning were, and how the Cardinal de' Medici ended his own life.[453]
Such is the uneventful record of Berni's career. He was distinguished among all the poets of the century for his genial vein of humor and amiable personal qualities. That he was known to be stained with vices which it is not easy to describe, but which he frankly acknowledged in his poetical epistles, did not injure his reputation in that age of mutual indulgence.[454]Willing to live and let live, with a never-failing fund of drollery, and with a sincere dislike for work of any sort, he lounged through existence, an agreeable, genial and witty member of society. If this were all we should not need to write about him now. But with this easy-going temperament he combined a genius for poetry so peculiar and delicate, that his few works mark an epoch in Italian literature.
The best description of Berni is contained in the burlesque portrait of himself, which forms part of hisBoiardo Innamorato.[455]This has been so well translated by an English scholar, the late W.S. Rose, that I cannot do better than refer the student to his stanzas. They convey as accurate a notion of the Bernesque manner as can be derived from any version in a foreignlanguage.[456]The character he there has given to himself for laziness is corroborated by his extant epistles in prose. Berni represents himself as an incurably bad correspondent, pleased to get letters, but overcome with mortal terror when he is obliged to answer them.[457]He confides to his friend Francesco Bini that the great affair in life is to be gay and to write as little as possible:[458]"A vivere avemo sino alla morte a dispetto di chi non vuole, e il vantaggio è vivere allegramente, come conforto a far vio, attendando a frequentar quelli banchetti che si fanno per Roma, e scrivendo sopra tutto manco che potete.Quia hæc est victoria, quæ vincit mundum." The curse has been laid upon him of having to drive his quill without ceasing:[459]"O ego lævus, che scrivo d'ogni tempo, e scrivo ora che ho una gamba al collo, che ieri tornando dalla Certosa mi ruppe la mia cavalla, cascandomivi sopra. Sono pure un gran coglione!" So his pen runs on. The man writes just as he spoke, without affectation, mixing his phrases of Latin with the idiom of common life. The whole presents an agreeable contrast to the stilted style of Bembo, La Casa's studied periods, and the ambitious epistolary efforts of Aretino. Sometimes he breaks into doggrel:[460]"S'io avessi l'ingenio del Burchiello, Io vi farei volentier un sonetto, Che non ebbi giammai tema e subietto, Più dolce, più piacevol, nè più bello." When his friends insist upon his writingto them, rhyme comes to his aid, and he affects a comic fit of rage:[461]
Importuned to publish the poems he recited with so much effect in private circles, he at last consents because he cannot help it:[462]"Compare, io non ho potuto tanto schermirmi che pure m'è bisognato dar fuori questo benedetto Capitolo e Comento della Primiera; e siate certo che l'ho fatto, non perchè mi consumassi d'andare in stampa, nè per immortalarmi come il cavalier Casio, ma per fuggire la fatica mia, e la malevolenza di molti che domandandomelo e non lo avendo mi volevano mal di morte." Nor were these the ordinary excuses of an author eager to conceal his vanity. TheCapitoloupon the game of primiera was the only poem which appeared with his consent.[463]He intended his burlesque verses for recitation, and is even said to have preserved no copies of them, so that many of his compositions, piratically published in his lifetime, were with difficulty restored to a right text by Il Lasca in 1548. This indifference to public fame did not imply any carelessness of style. Mazzuchelli, who had seen some of his rough copies, asserts that they bore signs of the minutest pains bestowed upon them. The melody of versification, richness of allusion, refinement of phrase, equality and flowing smoothness,which distinguish Berni's work from that of his imitators confirm the belief that hisCapitoliand sonnets, in spite of their apparent ease, were produced with the conscientious industry of a real artist.
Berni's theory of poetry revealed a common-sense and insight which were no less rare than commendable in that age of artificial literature. He refused to write at command, pleading that spontaneity of inspiration is essential to art, and quoting Vida's dictum:
Notwithstanding his avoidance of publication and parsimony of production, Berni won an almost unique reputation during his lifetime, and after his death was worshiped as a saint by the lovers of burlesque.[464]In one of his drollest sonnets he complains that poets were wont to steal their neighbors' verses, but that he is compelled to take the credit of more than he ever wrote:[465]
A piece of comic prose or verse cannot appear but that it is at once ascribed to him:
One of the glosses referred to in thiscoda, lies before me as I write. It was composed by Gianmaria Cecchi on Berni's sonnet which begins "Cancheri e beccafichi." The sonnet is an amusing imprecation upon matrimony, written in one paragraph, and containing the sting of the epigram in its shortcodaof three lines.[466]But it did not need a commentary, and Cecchi's voluminous annotations justify the poet's comic anger.
Berni'sCapitolimay be broadly divided into three classes. The first includes his poetical epistles, addressed to Fracastoro, Sebastian del Piombo, Ippolito de' Medici, Marco Veneziano, and other friends. Except for the peculiar humor, which elevates the trivial accidents of life to comedy, except for the consummate style, which dignifies the details of familiar correspondence and renders fugitive effusions classical, these letters in verse would scarcely detach themselves from a mass of similar compositions. As it is, Berni's personality renders them worthy companions of Ariosto'smasterpieces in a similar but nicely differentiated branch of literature. It remains for the amateurs of autobiographical poetry to choose between the self-revelation of the philosophizing Ferrarese poet and the brilliant trifling of the Florentine. The second class embraces a number of occasional poems—the Complaint against Love, the Deluge in Mugello, the Satire upon Adrian VI., the Lamentation of Nardino—descriptive or sarcastic pieces, where the poet chooses a theme and develops it with rhetorical abundance. The third class may be regarded as the special source and fountain of the Bernesque manner, as afterwards adopted and elaborated by Berni's imitators. Omitting personal or occasional motives, he sings the praises of the Plague, of Primiera, of Aristotle, of Peaches, of Debt, of Eels, of the Urinal, of Thistles, and of other trifling subjects. Here his burlesque genius takes the most fantastic flight, soaring to the ether of absurdity and sinking to the nadir of obscenity, combining heterogeneous elements of fun and farce, yet never transgressing the limits of refined taste. TheseCapitolirevealed a new vehicle of artistic expression to his contemporaries. Penetrated with their author's individuality, they caught the spirit of the age and met its sense of humor. Consequently they became the touchstones of burlesque inspiration, the models which tempted men of feebler force and more uncertain tact to hopeless tasks of emulation. We still possess La Casa'sCapitoloon the Oven; Molza's on Salad and the Fig; Firenzuola's on the Sausage and the Legno Santo; Bronzino's on the Paint-brush and the Radish; Aretino's on the Quartan Fever; Franzesi's on Carrotsand Chestnuts; Varchi's on Hard Eggs and Fennel; Mauro's on Beans and Priapus; Dolce's on Spittle and Noses; Bini's on theMal Franzese; Lori's on Apples; Ruscelli's on the Spindle—not to speak of many authors, the obscurity of whose names and the obscenity of the themes they celebrated, condemn them to condign oblivion. Not without reason did Gregorovius stigmatize these poems as a moral syphilis, invading Italian literature and penetrating to the remotest fibers of its organism. After their publication in academical circles and their further diffusion through the press, simple terms which had been used to cloak their improprieties, became the bywords of pornographic pamphleteers and poets. Figs, beans, peaches, apples, chestnuts acquired a new and scandalous significance. Sins secluded from the light of day by a modest instinct of humanity, flaunted their loathsomeness without shame beneath the ensigns of these literary allegories. The corruption of society, hypocritically veiled or cynically half-revealed in coteries, expressed itself too plainly through the phraseology invented by a set of sensual poets. The most distinguished members of society, Cardinals like Bembo, prelates like La Casa, painters like Bronzino, critics like Varchi, scholars like Molza, lent the prestige of their position and their talents to the diffusion of this leprosy, which still remains the final most convincing testimony to the demoralization of Italy in the Renaissance.[467]
To what extent, it may be asked, was Berni responsible for these consequences? He brought the indecencies of the piazza, where they were the comparatively innocuous expression of coarse instincts, into the close atmosphere of the study and the academical circle, refined their vulgarisms, and made their viciousness attractive by the charm of his incomparable style. This transition from theCanto Carnascialescoto theCapitolomay be observed in Berni'sCaccia di Amore, a very licentious poem dedicated to "noble and gentle ladies." It is a Carnival Song orCanzone a Ballorewritten in octave stanzas of roseate fluency and seductive softness. A band of youthful huntsmen pay their court in it to women, and thedouble entendreexactly reproduces the style of innuendo rendered fashionable by Lorenzo de' Medici. Yet, though Berni is unquestionably answerable for the obsceneCapitoliof the sixteenth century, it must not be forgotten that he only gave form to material already sufficiently appropriated by the literary classes. With him, the grossness which formed the staple of Mauro's, Molza's, Bini's, La Casa's and Bronzino's poems, the depravities of appetite which poisoned the very substance of their compositions, were but accidental. The poet stood above them and in some measure aloof from them, employing these ingredients in the concoction of his burlesque, but never losing the main object of his art in their development. A bizarre literary effect, rather than the indulgence of a sensual imagination, was the aim hehad in view. Therefore, while we regret that his example gave occasion to coarser debaucheries of talent, we are bound to acknowledge that the jests to which he condescended, do not represent his most essential self. This, however, is but a feeble apology. That without the excuse of passion, without satirical motive or overmastering personal proclivity, he should have penned theCapitolo a M. Antonio da Bibbiena, and have joked about giving and taking his metaphorical peaches, remains an ineradicable blot upon his nature.[468]
The BernesqueCapitoliwere invariably written interza rima, which at this epoch became the recognized meter of epistolary, satirical, and dissertational poetry throughout Italy.[469]Thus the rhythm of the Divine Comedy received final development by lending itself to the expression of whims, fancies, personal invectives and scurrilities. To quote from Berni's masterpieces in this style would be impossible. Each poem of about one hundred lines is a perfect and connected unity, which admits of no mutilation by the detachment of separate passages. Still readers may be referred to theCapitolo a Fracastoroand the twoCapitoli della Pesteas representative of the poet's humor in its purest form, without the moral deformities of the still more celebratedPescheor the uncleanliness of theOrinale.
At the close of theCapitolowritten on the occasion of Adrian VI.'s election to the Papacy, Berni declared that it had never been his custom to speak ill of people:
We have reason to believe this declaration. Genial good humor is a characteristic note of his literary temperament. At the same time he was no mean master of caricature and epigram. TheCapitoloin question is a sustained tirade against the Fleming, who had come to break the peace of polished Rome—a shriek of angry lamentation over altered times, intolerable insults, odious innovations. The amazement and discomfiture of the poet, contrasted with his burlesque utterance, render this composition comic in a double sense. Its satire cuts both ways, against the author and the object of his rage. Yet when Adrian gave place to Giulio de' Medici, and Berni discovered what kind of a man the new Pope was, he vented nobler scorn in verse of far more pungent criticism. His sonnet on Clement is remarkable for exactly expressing the verdict posterity has formed after cool and mature inquiry into this Pope's actions. Clement's weakness and irresolution must end, the poet says, by making even Adrian seem a saint:[470]
The insight into Clement's character displayed in this sonnet, the invective against Adrian, and the acerbity of another sonnet against Alessandro de' Medici:
would gain in cogency, could we attach more value to the manliness of Berni's utterances. But when we know that, while he was showering curses on the Duke of Cività di Penna, he frequented the Medicean Court and wrote a humorousCapitoloupon Gradasso,a dwarf of Cardinal Ippolito, we feel forced to place these epigrammatic effusions among the ebullitions of personal rather than political animosity. There was nothing of the patriot in Berni, not even so much as in Machiavelli, who himself avowed his readiness to roll stones for the Signori Medici.
As a satirist, Berni appears to better advantage in his caricatures of private or domestic personages. The portrait of his housekeeper, who combined in her single person all the antiquities of all the viragos of romance:
Alcionio upon his mule:
Ser Cecco who could never be severed from the Court, nor the Court from Ser Cecco:
Perch'ambedue son la Corte e ser Cecco:
the pompous doctor:
Domenico d'Ancona, the memory of whose beard, shorn by some Vandal of a barber, draws tears from every sympathetic soul:
these form a gallery of comic likenesses, drawn from the life and communicated with the force of reality tothe reader. Each is perfect in style, clearly cut like some antique chalcedony, bringing the object of the poet's mirth before us with the exact measure of ridicule he sought to inflict.[471]
This satiric power culminates in the sonnet on Pietro Aretino.[472]The tartness of Berni's more good-humored pasquinades is concentrated to vitriol by unadulterated loathing. He flings this biting acid in the face of one whom he has found a scoundrel. The sonnet starts at the white heat of fury:
It proceeds with execration; and when the required fourteen lines have been terminated, it foams over into rage more voluble and still more voluble, unwinding the folds of an interminableCodawith ever-increasingcrescendoof vituperation, as though the passion of the writer could not be appeased. The whole has to be read at one breath. No quotation can render a conception of its rhetorical art. Every word strikes home because every word contains a truth expressed in language of malignant undiluted heartfelt hate. That most difficult of literary triumphs, to render abuse sublime, to sustain a single note of fierce invective without relaxing or weakening the several grades that lead to the catastrophe, has been accomplished. This achievement is no doubt due in some measure to the exact correspondence between what we know of Pietro Aretino and what Berni has written of him. Yet its blunt fidelity to fact does not detract from the skill displayed in the handling of those triple series of rhymes, each one of which descends like a lash upon the writhing back beneath:
From this conclusion the rest may be divined. Berni paid dearly for the satisfaction of thus venting his spleen. Aretino had found more than his match. Though himself a master in the art of throwing dirt, he could not, like Berni, sling his missiles with the certainty of gaining for himself by the same act an immortality of glory. This privilege is reserved for the genius of style, and style alone. Therefore he had to shrink in silence under Berni's scourge. But Aretino was not the man to forego revenge if onlyan opportunity for inflicting injury upon his antagonist, full and effectual, and without peril to himself, was offered. The occasion came after Berni's death; and how he availed himself of it, will appear in the next paragraphs.
Though theCapitoliand sonnets won for their author the high place he occupies among Italian poets, Berni is also famous for hisrifacimentoor remodeling of theOrlando Innamorato. He undertook this task after the publication of theFurioso; and though part was written at Verona, we know from references to contemporary events contained in therifacimento, that Berni was at work upon it in the last years of his life at Florence. It was not published until some time after his death. Berni subjected the whole of Boiardo's poem to minute revision, eliminating obsolete words and Lombard phrases, polishing the verse, and softening the roughness of the elder poet's style. He omitted a few passages, introduced digressions, connected the episodes by links and references, and opened each canto with a dissertation in the manner of Ariosto. Opinions may vary as to the value of the changes wrought by Berni. But there can be no doubt that his work was executed with artistic accuracy, and that his purpose was a right one. He aimed at nothing less than rendering a noble poem adequate to the measure of literary excellence attained by the Italians since Boiardo's death. TheInnamoratowas to be made worthy of theFurioso. The nation was to possess a continuous epic of Orlando, complete in all its parts and uniformly pure in style. Had Berni lived to see his own work through the press, it is probable that this result would have been attained. As it happened, the malignity of fortune or the malice of a concealed enemy defeated his intention. We only possess a deformed version of hisrifacimento. The history, or rather the tragedy, of its publication involves some complicated questions of conjecture. Yet the side-lights thrown upon the conditions of literature at that time in Italy, as well as on the mystery of Berni's death, are sufficiently interesting to justify the requisite expenditure of space and time.
Therifacimentoappeared in a mutilated form at Venice in 1541, from the press of the Giunti, and again in 1542 at Milan from that of Francesco Calvo. These two issues are identical, except in the title and tail pages. The same batch of sheets was in fact divided by the two publishers. In 1545 another issue, calledEdizione Seconda, saw the light at Venice, in which Giunta introduced a very significant note, pointing out that certain stanzas were not the work of "M. Francesco Berni, but of one who presumptuously willed to do him so great an injury."[473]This edition, differing in many respects from those of 1541 and 1542, was on the whole an improvement. It would seem that the publishers, in the interval between 1541 and 1545, regretted that Berni's copy had been tampered with, and did their best, in the absence of the original, to restore a correct text. Still, as Giunta acknowledged, therifacimentohad been irretrievably damaged by some private foe.[474]The introductorydedication to Isabella Gonzaga, where we might have expected an allusion to Boiardo, is certainly not Berni's; and the two lines,
must be understood to refer to Berni's and not to Boiardo's death. Comparison of the two editions makes it, moreover, clear that Berni's MS. had been garbled, and the autograph probably put out of the way before the publication of the poem.
Who is to be held responsible for this fraud? Who was the presumptuous enemy who did such injury to Berni? Panizzi, so far back as 1830, pointed out that Giovanni Alberto Albicante took some part in preparing the edition of 1541-2. This man prefixed sonnets written by himself to therifacimento; "whence we might conclude that he was the editor."[475]Signor Virgili, to whose researches attention has already been directed, proved further by references to Pietro Aretino's correspondence that this old enemy of Berni had a hand in the same work. Writing to Francesco Calvofrom Venice on February 16, 1540, Aretino approaches the subject of therifacimentoin these words:[476]"Our friend Albicante informs me, with reference to the printing ofOrlandodefamed by Berni, that you are good enough to meet my wishes, for which I thank you.... You will see that, for the sake of your own modesty, you are bound either not to issue the book at all, or else to purge it of all evil-speaking." He then states that it had been his own intention "to emend the Count of Scandiano'sInnamoramento, a thing in its kind of heroic beauty, but executed in a trivial style, and expressed with phrases at once plebeian and obsolete." This task he renounced upon reflection that it would bring him no fame to assume the mask of a dead man's labors. In another letter to the same Calvo, dated February 17, 1542, Aretino resumes the subject. Sbernia (so he chooses to call Berni) has been "overwhelmed beneath the ruins he pulled down upon himself by his undoing of theInnamoramento."[477]Now, it is certain that the ruin proclaimed by Aretino did really fall on Berni's labors. In 1545 Lodovico Domenichi published a secondrifacimento, far inferior in style to that of Berni, and executed with the slovenliness of a literary hack. But this was several times reprinted, whereas Berni's remained neglected on the shelves of the librarians until the year 1725, when itwas republished and welcomed with a storm of exaggerated enthusiasm.
We have therefore reached this conclusion, that Aretino, aided by Albicante, both of them notable literary brigands, contrived to send a mutilated version of therifacimentoto press, with a view of doing irreparable mischief to Berni's reputation.[478]We have also seen that there was something dangerous in Berni's work, described by Aretino asmaldicentia, which he held as a threat over the Milanese publisher. Lastly, Giunta recognized too late that he had made himself the party to some act of malice by issuing a garbled copy. Aretino had, we know, a private grudge to satisfy. He could not forget the castigation he received at Berni's hands, in the sonnet which has been already described. The hatred subsisting between the two men had been further exasperated by the different parts they took in a literary duel. Antonio Broccardo, a young Venetian scholar, attacked Pietro Bembo's fame at Padua in 1530, and attempted to raise allies against the great dictator. Aretino took up the cudgels for Bembo, and assailed Broccardo with vehement abuse and calumny. Berni ranged himself upon Broccardo's side. The quarrel ended in Broccardo's death under suspicious circumstances in 1531 at Padua. He was, indeed, said to have been killed by Aretino.[479]Berni died mysteriously at Florencefour years later, and Aretino caused hisrifacimento, "purged of evil-speaking," to be simultaneously published at Venice and Milan.
The question still remains to be asked how Aretino, Berni's avowed enemy, obtained possession of the MS. Berni had many literary friends. Yet none of them came forward to avert the catastrophe. None of them undertook the publication of his remains. His last work was produced, not at Florence, where he lived and died, but at Venice; and Albicante, Aretino's tool, was editor. In the present state of our knowledge it is impossible to answer this question authoritatively. Considerable light, however, is thrown upon the mystery by a pamphlet published in 1554 by the heretic Vergerio. He states that Berni undertook hisrifacimentowith the view of diffusing Protestant doctrines in a popular and unobtrusive form; but that the craft of the devil, or in other words the policy of the Church, effected its suppression at the very moment when it was finished and all but printed.[480]Here, then, we seem to find some missing links in the dark chain of intrigue. Aretino's phrasemaldicentiais explained; his menaceto Francesco Calvo becomes intelligible; the silence of Berni's friends can be accounted for; and the agency by which the MS. was placed in Albicante's hands, can be at least conjectured. As a specimen of Berni's Lutheran propaganda, Vergerio subjoins eighteen stanzas, written in the poet's purest style, which were addressed to Battista Sanga, and which formed the induction to the twentieth Canto. This induction, as it stands in Berni'sInnamorato, is reduced to seven stanzas, grossly garbled and deformed in diction. Very few of the original lines have been retained, and those substituted are full of vulgarisms.[481]From a comparison of the original supplied by Vergerio with the mutilated version, the full measure of the mischief practiced upon Berni's posthumous work can be gauged. Furthermore, it must be noticed that these compromising eighteen stanzas contained the names of several men alive in Italy, all of whom were therefore interested in their suppression, or precluded from exposing the fraud.
The inference I am inclined to draw from Signor Virgili's researches, combined with Vergerio's pamphlet, is that the Church interfered to prevent the publication of Berni's heretical additions to Boiardo's poem. Berni's sudden death, throwing his affairs into confusion at the moment when he was upon the point of finishing the business, afforded an excellent occasion to his ecclesiastical and personal opponents, who seem to have put some pressure on his kinsmen to obtainthe MS. or the sheets they meant to mutilate.[482]The obnoxious passages may have been denounced by Aretino; for we know that he was intimate with Vergerio, and it is more than probable that the verses to Sanga were already in circulation.[483]Aretino, strange to say, was regarded in clerical quarters as a pillar of the Church. He therefore found it in his power to wreak his vengeance on an enemy at the same time that he posed as a defender of the faith. That he was allowed to control the publication, appears from his letters to Calvo; and he confided the literary part of the business to Albicante. His threats to Calvo have reference to Berni's heresy, and themaldicentiamay possibly have been the eighteen stanzas addressed to Sanga. The terror of the Inquisition reduced Berni's friends to silence. Aretino, even if he had not denounced Berni to the Church, had now identified himself with the crusade against his poem, and he was capable of ruining opponents in this unequal contest by charges they would have found it impossible to refute. The eighteen stanzas were addressed to a secretary of Clement VII.; and men of note like Molza, Flamminio, Navagero, Fondulo, Fregoso, were distinctly named in them. If, then, there is anycogency in the conclusions I have drawn from various sources, Berni's poem, and perhaps his life, was sacrificed to theological hatred in combination with Aretino's personal malice. The unaccountable inactivity of his friends is explained by their dread of being entangled in a charge of heresy.[484]
Enough has been already said about Berni's imitators in the burlesque style. Of satire in the strict sense of the term, the poets of the sixteenth century produced nothing that is worth consideration. The epistolary form introduced by Ariosto, and the comic caprices rendered fashionable by Berni, determined the compositions of Pietro Aretino, of Ercole Bentivoglio, of Luigi Alamanni, of Antonio Vinciguerra, of Giovanni Andrea dell'Anguillara, of Cesare Caporali, and of the minor versifiers whose occasional poems interza rima, seasoned with more or less satirical intention, are usually reckoned among the satires of the golden age.[485]Personal vituperation poured forth in the heat of literary quarrels, scarcely deserves the name of satire. Else it might be necessary in this place to mention Niccolò Franco's sonnets on Pietro Aretino, or the far more elegant compositions of Annibale Caro directed against hisenemy Castelvetro.[486]Models for this species of poetical abuse had been already furnished by the sonnets exchanged between Luigi Pulci and Matteo Franco in a more masculine age of Italian literature.[487]It is not, however, incumbent upon the historian to resuscitate the memory of those forgotten and now unimportant duels. The present allusion to them may suffice to corroborate the opinion already stated that, while the Italians of the Renaissance were ingenious in burlesque, and virulent in personal invective, they lacked the earnestness of moral conviction, the indignation, and the philosophic force that generate real satire.