Chapter 6

AFTERGLOW, THE GRAND CANAL

All those things might be seen from the windows of Alvise Pisani’s house; and there dwelt Titian, no longer the thoughtless gallant of his earlier days, but grave now, stately and magnificent. Violante is forgotten, he lives honourably with his wife Cecilia, but he

EUGANEAN HILLS FROM THE LAGOON, LOW TIDE

still keeps his love of conversation, his luxurious tastes, his lordly manner; and now he feels himself the equal of the great of the earth, and it amuses him to exchange letters with princes. For secretaries he has poets, historians, and even a cardinal; he is the Titian who will allow an emperor to stoop for the brush that has fallen from his hand. But few men ever had suchgrace and winning charm, and his house is ever open to his countless friends, a place of gathering, of wit and of good talk, where ladies are received, some of whom a later age will call blue-stockings, ladies who are members of learned academies, and ladies that play the lute.

Such was Titian, and such the house in which he was rarely alone. He had among many friends two at least with whom he was really intimate, the sculptor Sansovino, and Pietro Aretino the man of letters. The former was the friend of his heart and of his artistic intelligence; the latter he himself regarded as a sort of wild beast whom he had tamed and whom he kept to frighten his rivals and his enemies. He could not let a day go by without seeing both, and the three were generally together. If one of them was asked to dinner, he invariably begged his host to invite the other two.

They certainly did not resemble one another. Aretino was an adventurer who had tried most things: in his boyhood he had forged and stolen; in his young prime he had been a renegade monk, and then a courtier; in his maturity, to use one of his own expressions, he earned his living by the sweat of his ink. The Grand Duke of Tuscany had hired a house for

Tassini, under Carbon.

him at the Riva del Carbon, for sixty soldi yearly, on the Grand Canal, and it was there that he followed an occupation which procured him all the necessaries and some of the luxuries of life. He made it his business to address the most abjectlyflattering panegyrics to eminent persons, and even to sovereigns like Francis I. and the Emperor Charles V., and they rewarded him with presents of money or old wine. Or if some unlucky aspirant to office was in need of popularity or favour, Aretino quietly explained to him that a little article from his own pen could make or mar success; and there was nothing to be done but to pay, and to pay handsomely. Between the composition of one libel and the next, the amiable Tuscan lived riotously on his latest earnings with his two daughters Adria and Austria; in plain language he was a blackmailer, a voluptuary, a man of the highest taste, and of the lowest tastes.

No one loved him, but he was generally feared, and was therefore much sought after. His house was

Mutinelli, Annali.

always full, and it was said that it was impossible to go there without meeting a scholar, a soldier, and a monk. He himself said pleasantly that the steps of his house were as much worn by the feet of visitors as the pavement before the Capitol was by the cars of triumphing Roman generals. Nor was it only those that could pay blackmail who mounted the stairs. The man was full of contradictions; the poor crept up to his door and did not return empty-handed. Aretino was charitable.

He could not bear to see a child crying for cold or hunger, nor to see men or women sleeping shelterless in the streets, and often he took in under his roof pilgrims and poor wandering gentlemen. On Easter day he never failed to feed eighteen little beggar childrenat his table. But when he was tired of his visitors, rich or poor, he took refuge with Titian at San Cassian, for Titian was the only human being whom he loved sincerely, and all the resources of his venomous wit and cruel pen were at the disposal of this one friend. As for Titian’s other friends, Aretino spared them, but the artist’s enemies he harassed without mercy.

He was a physical coward, of course, as all such men are. He hated Jacopo Tintoretto for two reasons, first, because his growing reputation was beginning to be a source of anxiety to Titian, and secondly, because he was too poor to be blackmailed and too proud to show himself in Titian’s house with the threadbare clothes which his wife, good soul, made him wear for economy’s sake. Aretino accordingly abused him, and Tintoretto heard of it and determined to put an end to it in his own way.

One day he met Aretino in the street, stopped him, and proposed to paint his portrait. The blackmailer was delighted, as the picture would cost him nothing and would certainly be valuable, and he at once made an appointment to go to Jacopo’s studio. On the appointed day he appeared punctually, and seeing an empty canvas ready for the portrait, sat down in a becoming attitude. But the painter’s turn had come. ‘Stand up!’ he said, and Aretino obeyed. Then Tintoretto pulled out a long horse-pistol. ‘What is this?’ asked Aretino, alarmed. ‘I am going to measure you,’ replied the artist, and he proceeded tomeasure his adversary by the length of the pistol. ‘You are two pistols and a half high,’ he observed; ‘now go!’ and he pointed to the door. Aretino was badly frightened, and lost no time in getting out of the house; and from that day he neither wrote nor spoke any word that was not flattering to Jacopo Tintoretto.

Aretino received another lesson one day from the famous Andrea Calmo. The latter was an extremely original personage, half man of letters, half actor, whose improvised speeches in the character of Pantaloon were so remarkable as to give rise to the mistaken belief that he had invented that mask. He also wrote open letters to prominent men, as Aretino did, and published them, and as his were quite as libellous as the Tuscan’s, and sometimes even more witty, they had

Love’s Labour’s Lost, Act iv. sc. 2 (Cambridge edition, 1863).

an immense success. In fifty years they went through fifty editions, and there is positive proof that Shakespeare was acquainted with them, for he quotes a line and a half from one of Calmo’s works:—

Venetia, Venetia,Chi non ti vede non ti pretia.

Calmo’s chief virtue was neither patience nor forbearance, and it appears that Aretino irritated him exceedingly. One day his nerves could

Molmenti, Studi, and Nuovi Studi.

bear no longer with the Tuscan, and he gave vent to his feelings in an ironical open letter addressed to the object of his dislike. Here is a fragment of it:—

‘You are not a rational, natural human being, but aërial, celestial, deified, a devout man and a calm one, esteemed by all, adorned with every treasure and with all the virtues that no one being possesses, from the East to the West. You are the temple of poetry, the theatre of invention, a very sea of comparisons—and you behave in such a manner as to scare even the dead!’

Titian’s other friend, Jacopo Sansovino, the celebrated architect, was also a Tuscan by birth, but was of quite another stamp. His youth had been wild, but he had then married a woman of great beauty and refinement whose name was Paola, and who completely dominated him. The couple were often seen at the house at San Cassian, as Titian and Cecilia his wife often visited them in their dwelling in Saint Mark’s Square close by the clock tower.

Sansovino was handsome still, and rather a fashionable person, but excitable withal and a brilliant talker; his life had been saddened for some length of time by the wild doings of his son, but to his great relief the young man at last took to literature and the art of printing. The Sansovino couple also made their house the general meeting-place of many friends, as Titian did.

Though Jacopo was a Tuscan, Venice made every effort to monopolise his time and industry after he had become famous throughout Italy, and he was appointed the official architect of Saint Mark’s. He was charged with the erection of the Mint and the Library, and of

VENICE FROM THE GARDEN

a new Loggia to replace the very simple one in which the patricians had been accustomed to gather before the meetings of the Great Council, ever since the thirteenth century. How well he succeeded in that, the beautiful construction which fell with the Campanile amply showed.

While he was at work on the Library, Titian was called to Rome to execute an important commission, and set out in the certainty that on his return he should find the building finished and his friend covered with glory. The construction grew indeed, and was soon finished, with its two stories, of Doric and Ionic architecture, and the balustrade that crowns the edifice, and the really royal staircase, and all the rest.

But unhappily, on the night of the eighteenth of December 1545, the vault of the main hall fell in, with no apparent reason. Instantly all Sansovino’s rivals raised a terrific outcry, accusing him of having neglected the most elementary rules of his art, and asserting that the accident was altogether due to his negligence and incapacity. The zealous magistrate whose duty it was to oversee the construction of public buildings did not even wait for a proper warrant, but seized Sansovino instantly and sent him to prison.

Paola was in despair, and when the news was generally known, early on the following morning, the indignation of the architect’s friends knew

Mutinelli, Annali.

no bounds. In a few hours Aretino wrote a consoling letter to Paola, another to Titian, explaining to him what had happened, and a series of libellousarticles against every architect in Venice except Sansovino himself. No one escaped who could be supposed to have uttered a single word against the reputation of the artist in trouble. There was a certain architect called Sanmichele, a man of great piety—greater perhaps than his talent—a frequenter of Titian’s house, a rich man, too, such as Aretino delighted to fleece. Possibly also the good old artist’s character was irritating to the evil Tuscan, who could not see why a man should be both distinguished and virtuous, nor why Sanmichele should have a special mass said when he was about to begin an important work. One of Aretino’s favourite tricks was to use the most frightful language before the mild old man, till the latter, having exhausted entreaty and finding reproach useless, was driven to buy the blasphemer’s silence with a handsome present of rare old wine.

The occasion of Sansovino’s imprisonment seemed to Aretino an excellent opportunity for venting his spleen against the devout artist, and at the same time for obtaining a lucrative return for his industry. He therefore accused Sanmichele of being the direct cause of his friend’s arrest, and the abuse heaped upon him was so virulent and so persistent that its victim was obliged to have recourse to the usual bribe, which this time consisted of a fine basket of fish.

Sansovino’s friends soon triumphed, for they were many and powerful. I do not know whether a vaulted ceiling only just constructed can suddenly collapse and fall in of itself without some fault on the part of thearchitect, but Sansovino was unanimously declared to be entirely innocent, and the unlucky magistrate who, with some show of reason, had ordered his arrest was thrown into prison in his place.

His brilliantly successful career continued until he was eighty years of age, when, being too old for work, he was succeeded in the post of architect to the Republic by the celebrated Palladio. After that he lived eleven years longer in the society and friendship of Titian, who was two years older then he. On the register in the church of San Basso is to be found the following entry: ‘On November the seventh 1570 died Jacopo Sansovino, architect of the Church of Saint Mark; he was ninety-one years old and he died of old age.’

Aretino’s life had come to an abrupt close fourteen years earlier. I find in Tassini under the name ‘Carbon,’ Aretino’s place of residence, a statement of the singular fact that Aretino’s death was predicted a few months before it took place, though he was at that time perfectly well. The author of theTerremoto, addressing the Tuscan man of letters, says: ‘In this year LVI thou shalt

1556.

die; for the appearance of the star to the Wise Men at the birth of Our Lord was held to be a great sign, and I now hold the comet of this year to be a little sign which comes on thy account, because thou art against Christ.’ In that year Aretino actually died. It is said that his death was caused by his falling off his chair when convulsed with laughter at an abominable story, and though there may be some exaggeration about the tale, the physiognomy of theman might justify it. No one regretted him. In the State Archives of Florence a letter from a Venetian has been found which says: ‘The mortal Pietro Aretino was taken to another life on Wednesday evening at the third hour of the night by a (literally) cannonade of apoplexy, without leaving any regret or grief in any decent person. May God have pardoned him.’

Titian died six years after Sansovino, surviving to be the last of the triad of inseparable friends. He was then ninety-nine years of age, and was carried off by the plague when, judging from the picture he was painting at the time of his death, he was still in full possession of his amazing powers. Of all the victims of the terrible epidemic, amongst tens of thousands of dead, he was the only one to whom the Republic granted a public funeral.

If we ask what was the ‘social standing’ of Titian and of some of the most famous Venetians, we shall find that they were simple members of a Guild, and were reckoned with the working men. The Golden Book was the register of the nobles, the Silver Book was reserved for the class of the secretaries, that is, of the burghers or original citizens; but he who exercised an art such as painting, sculpture, or architecture, belonged to the people. Like the commonest housepainter, or the painter of gondolas and house furniture, Titian and Tintoretto were subject to the ‘Mariegola,’ or charter of their Guild, and had to pass through the degrees of apprentice and fellow-craftsman before becoming masters.

The law was that ‘no painter, either Venetian or foreign, should be allowed to sell his paintings unless he was inscribed on the register of painters and had sworn to conform to the rules of that art,’ in other words, to the charter of the Guild. Furthermore, if

HOUSE OF TINTORETTO

he sold his work anywhere except in his shop, he was liable to a fine of ten lire.

We know that neither Titian nor any of the great artists of his time rebelled against these regulations. They were all their lives ‘brethren’ of their Guild, and every one of them was obliged to obey the chief of the corporation in all matters concerning that fraternity,though he might be a mere painter of doors and windows. It was not until the eighteenth century that the artist painters organised themselves in a separate body called the College of Painters. The examination of Paolo Veronese, which I have translated in speaking of the Holy Office, shows clearly enough what a poor opinion the authorities had of artistic inspiration.

Many writers, amongst whom Monsieur Yriarte is an exception, have told us that literature and the sciences were not cultivated with any success in Venice during the sixteenth century. It is at least true that the few who occupied themselves with those matters displayed qualities not far removed from genius.

It was very common for the great Venetian nobles to play patron to poets, painters, and architects, and almost every name that became famous in the arts and sciences recalls that of some patrician or secretary who protected the artist, the writer, or the student. The Republic was often the refuge of gifted men whom political or personal reasons had exiled from their homes. Roman, Tuscan, and Lombard celebrities spent their lives in Venice and added their glory to hers. Who remembers that Aldus Manutius was a Roman? Or that Gaspara Stampa, who is always counted as one of the best of Venetian poets, was born in Milan? The Venetians, too, showed a wonderful tact in the degree of the hospitality they accorded. One need only compare the reception Petrarch met with in the fourteenth century, which was nothing less than royal, with the good-natured toleration shown to PietroAretino two hundred years later. The Republic’s treatment of the two men is the measure of the distance that separates the immortal poet from the brilliant and vicious pamphleteer. If the latter spent some agreeable years in Venice, that was due much more to the protection of a few friends than to any privileges granted him by the government.

HOUSE OF ALDUS

There were certainly a great many intellectual centres in Venice at that time, and one might fill many pages with the names of the so-called academies that were founded and that flourished for a time. Almost every special tendency of human thought was represented by one of them, from the Aldine, devoted enthusiasticallyto classic Greek, to those academies which adorned their emptiness with such titles as ‘The Seraphic,’ ‘The Uranian,’ and the like, and which gave themselves up to the most unbridled extravagance of taste. Of such follies I shall only quote one instance, which I find in Tassini under the name ‘Bernardo.’

In the year 1538 the will of that academician was opened. He therein directed his heirs to have his body washed by three famous physicians with as much aromatic vinegar as would cost forty ducats, and each physician was to receive as his fee three golden sequins absolutely fresh from the mint. The body was then to be wrapped in linen clothes soaked in essence of aloes, before being ‘comfortably’ laid to rest in a lead coffin and enclosed in one of cypress wood. The coffin was then to be placed in a marble monument to cost six hundred ducats. The inscription was to enumerate the actions and virtues of the deceased in eight Latin hexameters, of which the letters were to look tall to a spectator placed at a distance of twenty-five feet. The poet who composed the verses was to receive one sequin for each. Moreover, the history of the dead man’s family was to be written out in eight hundred verses, and seven psalms were to be composed after the manner of the Psalms of David, and twenty monks were to sing them before the tomb on the first Sunday of every month.

We read without surprise that this will was not executed to the letter, and the tolerably reasonable monument erected to Pietro Bernardo by his descendants,

ENTRANCE TO THE SACRISTY, FRARI

twenty years after his death, may still be seen in the church of the Frari.

There were also academies which bore names, devices, and emblems of a nature that might well shock and surprise us, were they not the natural evidences of that coming decadence, moral and artistic, whereof all Italy, and Venice in particular, already bore the germs.

Amongst the great names that belong to the end of the fifteenth century, as well as to the sixteenth, hardly any has more interesting associations for scholars than that of Aldus Manutius.

The founder of the great family of scholars and printers was born at Sermoneta in the Pontifical States in 1449, and was over forty years old when he finally established himself in Venice.

Firmin-Didot, Alde Manuce.

He had been tutor in the princely family of Pio, where he had educated the eldest son, and he himself added the name to his own, though he did not transmit it to his descendants.

One of the legends about the origin of printing tells that it was invented in the Venetian city of Feltre, by a certain Castaldi, who was robbed of his invention by Germans, presumably Faust and Guttenberg. There is probably no foundation for this tale, but it is certain that the Venetians brought the art of printing to something near perfection within a few years of its creation, and that the government protected it by laws of singular wisdom and great severity, in an age when the idea of copyright was in its infancy.

Aldus was neither a money-maker nor a man givenup to ambition; he was a true artist, and cared only for perfecting his art. When he first invented the italic type he was almost beside himself with delight, and instantly applied to the Council of Ten for letters patent to forbid any imitation of his work during ten years. The petition is curious, for Aldus went as far as to suggest to the Ten the penalties to be incurred by any one who defrauded him of his rights, and they were by no means light.

He dreamed of never allowing any work to leave his press which was less than perfect at all points. When he meditated the printing of a Greek classic, he gathered about him all the most conscientious men of letters in Venice; such men as Sabellico and Sanudo, the highly accomplished Cardinal Bembo, and Andrea Navagero all worked at comparing the best texts, in order to produce one that should be beyond criticism. In the course of such profound study, learned discussions arose and conclusions were reached which were destined to influence all scholarship down to modern times. Little by little, and without any artificial encouragement or intention, the workshop of Aldus became the gravest of classical ‘academies’; a vast amount of work was done there, and a very small number of books were very wonderfully well printed.

In two years five publications appeared, among which was the first Greek edition of Aristotle’s works. That Aldus might have done better is possible, and every reader of ancient Greek must deplore the selection of type he made for printing in that language. It isugly, unpractical, and utterly inartistic, but such was the man’s influence that he imposed it upon scholars, and it is by far the most commonly used type to this day. Aldus might have done better; but, on the other hand, the unquestionable fact stands out that no one, in those days, did half so well, and that if his Greek type is unpleasing, his italic is beautiful and has never been surpassed; finally, good copies of his best publications bring high prices at every modern sale.

He and his friends were busy men, and spent whole days shut up together, thereby rousing much curiosity, and attracting many unwelcome visitors. At last Aldus was wearied by their importunity, and the loss of time they caused became a serious matter. He composed the following notice and put it up outside his press:—

‘Quisquis es, rogat te Aldus etiam atque etiam: ut si quid est quod a se velis perpaucis agas, deinde actutum abeas: nisi tanquam Hercules defesso Atlante, veneris suppositurus humeros. Semper enim erit quod et tu agas, et quotquot huc attulerunt pedes.’

I quote the Latin from Didot. It is hardly worthy of the editor, printer, and publisher of Aristotle, but Aldus himself printed it in the preface, addressed to Andrea Navagero, which precedes the edition of Cicero’sRhetoric, published in 1514. Here is a translation of it:—

‘Whoever you are, Aldus begs you again and again, if you want anything of him, to do your business with few words and then to go away quickly; unless, indeed, you come as Hercules to tired Atlas, to place yourshoulders under the burden. For there will always be something to do even for you, and for as many as bend their steps hither.’

The story even goes so far as to say that Erasmus came one day to Aldus’s door with the manuscript of hisAdagiaunder his arm, but that he was disconcerted by the notice and was going away, when the great printer himself caught sight of him and made him come in.

Aldus, who was not a Venetian, was not a man of business, and did not grow rich by his work. He gave his time lavishly, for no true artist, such as he was, ever said that time was money; and his expenses were very heavy, not the least being that incurred for the fine cotton paper he got from Padua. On the other hand, he hoped to encourage learning and to disseminate a general love of the classics. Some of his prices, however, were very high; for instance, a complete Aristotle sold for eleven silver ducats, which Didot considers equal to over ninety francs in modern French money. But a copy of the Musæus, which would perhaps sell to-day for forty pounds sterling, could be bought for a little more than one ‘marcello.’

Aldus had established himself in Venice about 1490. Eight years later, a visitation of the plague decimated the population, and the great printer himself sickened of it. Believing himself all but lost, he vowed that if he recovered he would abandon his art, which would be by far the greatest thing he could give up, and would enter holy orders. He recovered, but the sacrifice was greater than he could make, though he was a good man, of devout mind. He at once addressed a petition to the Pope, begging to be released from his vow, and M. Didot discovered in the Archives of the Council of Ten the favourable answer returned by Alexander VI., who, it will be remembered, was the Borgia Pope, of evil fame. It was, of course, addressed to the Patriarch, and it reads as follows:—

Venerable Brother:Our beloved son Aldus Manutius, a citizen of Rome, set forth to us some time ago that when the plague was raging he, being in danger of death, took an oath that if he escaped he would enter the holy orders of priesthood. Seeing that since he has recovered his health, he does not persist in his vow, and seeing that in his condition of poverty he cannot subsist otherwise than by the work of his hands, whereby he earned his living, now therefore he desires to remain a layman, and we have granted his petition. We commission you therefore and command your fraternity to absolve in our name the said Aldus from the vow he took, if he humbly requests you to do so, and if things stand as he says, requiring of him a return by such other acts of piety as it shall seem good to your conscience to impose, and this if there be no other obstacle.Given in Rome, August the eleventh, 1498, in the sixth year of our Pontificate.

Venerable Brother:

Our beloved son Aldus Manutius, a citizen of Rome, set forth to us some time ago that when the plague was raging he, being in danger of death, took an oath that if he escaped he would enter the holy orders of priesthood. Seeing that since he has recovered his health, he does not persist in his vow, and seeing that in his condition of poverty he cannot subsist otherwise than by the work of his hands, whereby he earned his living, now therefore he desires to remain a layman, and we have granted his petition. We commission you therefore and command your fraternity to absolve in our name the said Aldus from the vow he took, if he humbly requests you to do so, and if things stand as he says, requiring of him a return by such other acts of piety as it shall seem good to your conscience to impose, and this if there be no other obstacle.

Given in Rome, August the eleventh, 1498, in the sixth year of our Pontificate.

It is characteristic of the far-reaching power of the Council of Ten that this curious document should have been found in their Archives.

One year after having been released from his vow, Aldus married Maria, daughter of Andrea Torresano. I do not knew whether an attachment which perhapsdated from before the plague could have had anything to do with the great printer’s aversion to fulfilling his vow; if so, the world is deeply indebted to his wife. There was, however, a considerable interval in his career after 1498, during which no books were issued by the Aldine press, and those belonging to the first period have a much higher value than the rest.

Possibly children were born to the couple and died between the time of their marriage and the birth of their son Paulus Manutius in 1512, three years before the death of his father Aldus. The dates show the absurdity of the story that Aldus brought up his son to be a scholar and a printer like himself. He died when that son, who was destined to be famous also, was less than four years old. He breathed his last on the sixth of January 1516, being not yet sixty-seven years old, surrounded by his faithful friends and his manuscripts. Owing to his having married so late, and to his son not having been born till thirteen years after his marriage, the lives of the father and son cover the period between 1449 and 1574, no less than one hundred and twenty-five years.

Prince Pio, his former pupil and one of the most distinguished members of the Aldine Academy, claimed the honour of burying him at Carpi, a feudal holding of the Pio family. His body was carried thither with great pomp, and he was laid in state in the church of Saint Patrinian, surrounded by books, and was finally buried in the Prince’s family vault.

Another and very original type of scholar was MarinSanudo, whose name occurs so constantly in all writings that deal with the sixteenth century in Venice. He was of a patrician family, and

Marin Sanudo, Diario; Mutinelli, Annali.

was so early predisposed to observe and note everything of interest that when he was only eight years old he copied the inscriptions which Petrarch had written under the pictures in the hall of the Great Council, and it is thanks to his childish industry that we know the nature of those great works which were destroyed in the fire of 1474.

As the child grew up he cultivated the habit of making notes of all he saw and heard; and, though he strictly adheres to the principle of relating daily events briefly and clearly, he constantly reveals himself to us as a man of broad views and keen sight, cautious, slightly sceptical, and thoroughly independent. As soon as he had attained the required age he was admitted to the Council, and he kept a journal of everything that happened there. It is surprising to find that a government which knew everything should allow any one such full liberty to make notes. Possibly the value of his work was not at first understood, but when it was, the manner in which appreciation showed itself was not flattering to the chronicler.

The Republic always employed a regular official historian whose business it was to narrate the deeds and misdeeds of the government in a manner uniformly pleasant to Venetian vanity. One of the most successful writers in this manner was the untrustworthy Sabellico, and when he died Marin Sanudo aspired to succeedhim, being in poor circumstances, and having on several occasions rendered services to the Republic. But to his infinite mortification Cardinal Bembo was appointed to the post, and, as if to add insult to injury, Sanudo was requested to place his valuable diaries at the disposal of the new public historian. Sanudo was deeply hurt, as may be imagined, but he was poor and in debt, and the paternal government of his business-like country easily drove him to the wall. For the use of his diary, and for his promise to bequeath it to the State at his death, he accepted a pension of one hundred and fifty ducats (£112) yearly. This small stipend was not enough to lift him out of poverty. The expense of the paper which he used for his notes was a serious item in his little budget, and the binder’s bill was a constant source of anxiety. He was often obliged to borrow money, and once he was imprisoned for debt. On the latter occasion he made the following entry in his journal:—

‘December eighteenth, 1516.—On this day in the morning a dreadful thing happened to me. I was going to Saint Mark’s to hear mass as usual when I was recognised by that traitor Giovanni Soranzo, to whom I have owed a hundred ducats for ten years, and forty-seven for a debt before that. Now I had solemnly promised that I would pay him the money, but in order to shame me he had me imprisoned till next day in San Cassian. I vow to be avenged upon him with my own hands.’

Having vented his wrath on paper, Sanudo promptlyforgot his sombre vows of vengeance. For many years afterwards he went backwards and forwards

S. GIACOMO IN ORIO

between the ducal palace and his own house at San Giacomo in Orio, where he had collected books and prints to a very great value. He was almost forgottenuntil very recent times, when he was rediscovered in his diary, and treated with the honour he deserves by his own countrymen.

There was no university in Venice, but the government encouraged those teachers who established themselves in the city and gave instruction in their own homes. In this way they formed little schools which quarrelled with each other over definitions, syllogisms, and etymologies in the most approved fashion. There is a good instance of one of these miniature civil wars in connection with the historian Sabellico. He was

Cicogna, Iscrizioni, i. 341.

ferociously jealous of a certain learned priest called Ignatius, who taught literature, as he did, and had many more scholars. In his lectures Sabellico attacked Ignatius furiously, and did his best to destroy his reputation. The priest on his side held his tongue, and waited for a chance of giving his hot-headed adversary a lesson. At last Sabellico published a very indifferent work, of which the priest wrote such a keen criticism that the book was a dead failure. The State historian’s rage broke out in the most violent invectives, and from that time Ignatius was his nightmare, and the mere mention of his name drove him into uncontrollable fury, until, dying at last, Sabellico realised that his hatred of the priest had been the mortal sin of his life, and on his deathbed he sent for him and asked for a reconciliation. Ignatius freely pardoned him, and even delivered a very flattering funeral oration over his body a few days later.

A distinguished man of this period who deservesmention was Federigo Badoer, who may almost be said

DOORWAY OF THE SACRISTY, S. GIACOMO IN ORIO

to have been educated in the printing press of Aldus,and afterwards became the friend of Paulus Manutius. Like all Venetian nobles, he learned from his boyhood how he was to serve the State, and became acquainted with the working of its administration, and he was soon struck by the condition of the Code. The laws had multiplied too much, and were often obscure, and the whole system was in great need of revision. Badoer conceived the idea of founding an academy for the purpose of editing and printing the whole body of

Mutinelli, Annali.

Venetian Law; the Council of Ten gave him their approval, and he founded the Academy of ‘La Fama’—of Fame—with the singularly inappropriate motto, ‘I fly to heaven and rest in God.’ The printing of the new Code was entrusted to Paulus Manutius.

My perspicuous reader, having recovered from his astonishment at the unexpected liberality of the Council of Ten, has already divined that such a fit could not last long, and that Badoer and his noble academy were doomed to failure. Badoer was not rich enough to bear the expense of such an undertaking alone, and the Ten had no intention of helping him. Moreover, he and the scholars of his academy kept up a continual correspondence with doctors of law in other countries. It would have seemed narrow-minded, however, to suppress the academy by a decree; it was more in accordance with the methods of the Council to accuse Badoer of some imaginary misdeed for which he could be brought to trial. Accordingly, though he had sacrificed his own fortune in the attempt, he wasaccused of having embezzled the academy’s funds, and in three years from the time of his setting to work the

FONDAMENTA SANUDO

academy was crushed out of existence, and he was a ruined man.

Another shortlived but celebrated literary societywas that of the ‘Pellegrini,’ the ‘Pilgrims,’ whose pilgrimage led them only from their solemn palaces in Venice to the pleasant groves of Murano, and was performed by moonlight when possible. The pilgrims were Titian, Sansovino, Navagero, Gaspara Stampa, the old Trifone, Collaltino di Collalto, and some others, and it is very unlikely that their evening meetings had any object except pleasant converse and intellectual relaxation. We know something about the lovely Gaspara and Collalto, at all events, and it can be safely said that they were more pleasantly occupied than in conspiracy, and that what they said to each other concerned neither the Doge nor the Council of Ten.

Though there was no university in Venice, the Republic possessed one of the most renowned in Europe by right of having conquered and annexed Padua; and it is interesting to note that because that great institution of learning was not situated in Venice itself, it was allowed a degree of liberty altogether beyond Venetian traditions.

Padua was temporarily obliged to submit to Louis XII. of France at the beginning of the sixteenth century, but the Republic took it again in 1509, and from that date until 1797 there was never the least interruption in the academic courses. The only influence exercised upon the university by the Venetian government was intended to give it a more patriotically Venetian character. In earlier times the Bishop of Padua had beenex officiothe Rector of the university; he was now deprived of this dignity, which wasconferred jointly on three Venetian nobles, who were elected for two years, and were required to reside in Venice and not in Padua, lest they should be exposed to influences foreign to the spirit of the Republic. Their title was ‘Riformatori dell’ Università,’ and great care was exercised in choosing them. They were also the official inspectors of the Venetian schools and of the national libraries, and it was their business to examine candidates for the position of teachers in any authorised institution.

They were no doubt terrible pedants, inwardly much dignified by a sense of their great responsibilities, and to this day, in northern Italy, it is said of a man who wearies his family and his acquaintances with perpetual ‘nagging’—there is no dictionary word for it—that he is like a ‘Riformatore’ of the University of Padua, though the good people who use the phrase have no clear idea of what it means.

These three patricians had an official dress of their own, which was a long robe, sometimes black and

Yriarte, Vie; Rom. iv. 449.

sometimes of a violet colour, changing according to some regulation which is not known, but always made with sleeves of the ‘ducal’ pattern; and they put on a black stole over it. If one of them was a Knight of the Golden Stole, as often happened, his robe was of velvet and his stole was of cloth of gold.

The Holy See was not much pleased by the way in which the Republic treated the Bishop of Padua, and constantly complained that the students of theUniversity were allowed too much license to express opinions that ill accorded with Catholic dogma. Like all commercial countries, Venice was Protestant in so far as any direct interference of the Vatican was concerned. Mr. Brooks Adams was, I think, the first to point out the inseparable connection between Protestantism and commercial enterprise, in his extraordinary study,The Law of Civilization and Decay. The peculiarity of Venice’s religious position was that it combined an excessive, if not superstitious, devotion to the rites of the Church with something approaching to contempt of the Pope’s power.

The University of Padua was resorted to by students of all nations, including many English gentlemen. In the Archives of the Ten a petition has been found signed by a number of foreign students in Padua to be allowed to wear arms, and we find that the

Rom. iv. 449, note 5.

necessary permission for this was granted in 1548 to Sir Thomas Wyatt, ‘a Knight of the English Court,’ Sir—— Cotton, Sir John Arundel, Christopher Mayne, Henry Williams, and John Schyer (?).

It is amusing to find that the French students in Padua excelled in fencing, riding, dancing, and music, but apparently not in subjects more generally considered academic.

I cannot close this chapter without saying a few words about Galileo Galilei, who was for some time in the employ of the Republic. I quote from his life, written by his pupil Viviani, but not published till 1826.

After lecturing in Pisa for three years Galileo was appointed by the Venetian government to be professor of mathematics in Padua for a term of six years, during which he invented several

1592.

machines for the service of the Republic. Copies of his writings and lectures of this time were scattered by his pupils throughout Italy, Germany, France, and England, often without his name, for he thought them of such little importance that he did not even protest when impostors claimed to be the authors of them. During this period, says Viviani, he invented ‘the thermometers (sic) ... which wonderful invention was perfected in modern times by the sublime genius of our great Ferdinand II., our most serene reigning sovereign ...,’ the Cardinal Grand Duke who poisoned his brother and Bianca Cappello.

At the end of his term Galileo was re-appointed for six years more, and during this time he observed a comet in the Dragon, and made experiments

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