Chapter V: Second Period of Humanism (2)

At Naples there was no such thing as native culture. The semi-feudal nobility of the South were addicted to field sports, feats of arms, and idleness. The people of the country were sunk in barbarism. In the cities there was no middle class analogous to that of the more northerly republics. Nevertheless, the kingdom of the Two Sicilies played an important part in the development of Italian literature. While the Mussulmans held sway at Palermo, Sicily was the most refined and enlightened state of Southern Europe. Under the Norman dynasty this Arabic civilisation began to influence North Italy, and during the reign of Frederick II. Naples bade fair to become the city of illumination for the modern world. The failure of Frederick's attempt to restore life to arts and letters in the thirteenth century belongs to the history of his warfare with the Church. What his courtiers effected for the earliest poetry of the Italians is told by Dante in the treatise 'De Vulgari Eloquio.' For our present purpose it is enough to notice that the zeal for knowledge planted by the Arabs, tolerated by the Normans, and fostered by the House of Hohenstauffen in the south of Italy, was an exotic which took no deep root in the people. No national poem was produced in the golden age of Frederick's brief supremacy; no stories are told of Neapolitan carters and boatmen reciting the sonnets of his courtiers. As culture began, so it continued to exist at Naples--flourishing at intervals in close connection with the sovereign's taste, and owing to local influences not life and vigour, but colour and complexion, suavity and softness, caught from the surrounding beauties of the sea and shore.

Each of the dynasties which held the throne of the Two Sicilies could boast a patron of literature. Robert of Anjou was proud to call himself the friend of Petrarch, and Boccaccio found the flame of inspiration at his Court.[231] In the second age of humanism, with which we are now occupied, Alfonso of Aragon deserved the praise bestowed on him by Vespasiano of being, next to Nicholas V., the most munificent promoter of learning.[232] His love of letters was genuine. After making all deductions for the flattery of official historiographers, it is clear that Alfonso found his most enduring satisfaction in the company of students, listening to their debates on points of scholarship, attending their public lectures, employing them in the perusal of ancient poets and historians, insisting on their presence in his camp, and freely supplying them with money for the purchase of books and for their maintenance while engaged in works of erudition. Vespasiano relates that Beccadelli's daily readings to his master were not interrupted during the campaign of 1443, when Alfonso took the field against Francesco Sforza's armies in the March.[233] The Neapolitan captains might be seen gathered round their monarch, listening to the scholar's exposition of Livy, instead of wasting their leisure at games of hazard. Beccadelli himself professes to have cured an illness of Alfonso's in three days by reading aloud to him Curtius's Life of Alexander, while Lorenzo Valla describes the concourse of students to his table during the recitations of Virgil or of Terence.[234] Courtiers with no taste for scholarship were excluded from these literary meetings; but free access was given to poor youths who sought to profit by the learning of the lecturers. The king, meantime, sat at meat, now and then handing fruits or confectionery to refresh the reader when his voice seemed failing. His passion for the antique assumed the romantic character common in that age. When the Venetians sent him one of the recently discovered bones of Livy, he received it like the relic of a saint; nor could the fears of his physicians prevent him from opening and reading the MS. of Livy forwarded from Florence by Cosimo de' Medici, who was then suspected of wishing to poison him. On his military excursions he never neglected the famous sites of antiquity, saluting the _genius loci_ with pious thanks at Ovid's birthplace, and expressly forbidding his engineers to trespass on the site of Cicero's villa at Gaeta.[235] Alfonso was no less assiduous than his contemporaries in the collection of books. The Palace library at Naples was his favourite place of recreation; here Giannozzo Manetti found him among his scholars on the famous occasion when the king sat through a long congratulatory oration like a brazen statue, without so much as brushing away the flies that settled on his face. His MSS. were dispersed when Charles VIII. occupied Naples, and what became of them is doubtful.[236]

[Footnote 231: I may refer to Petrarch's Letters passim, and to the solemn peroration of the _Africa_.]

[Footnote 232: See Vol. I., _Age of the Despots_, pp. 445, 446.]

[Footnote 233: _Vita di Alfonso_, p. 59. _Vita di Manetti_, p. 451.]

[Footnote 234: See Tiraboschi, vol. vi. lib. i. cap. 2, 17.]

[Footnote 235: Pontano, _De Principe_, and Panormita, _De Dictis et Factis Alphonsi Regis_, furnish these anecdotes.]

[Footnote 236: The MS. of Livy referred to above is now in the library at Holkham; see Roscoe's _Lorenzo_, p. 389.]

Among the humanists who stood nearest to the person of this monarch, Antonio Beccadelli, called from his birthplace Il Panormita, deserves the first place. Born at Palermo in 1394, he received his education at Siena, where he was a fellow-student with Æneas Sylvius Piccolomini. The city of Siena, _molles Senæ_, as the poet himself called it, was notorious throughout Italy for luxury of living. Here, therefore, it may be presumed that Beccadelli in his youth enjoyed the experiences which he afterwards celebrated in 'Hermaphroditus.'[237] Nothing is more striking in that amazing collection of elegies than the frankness of their author, the free and liberal delight with which he dwells on shameless sensualities, and the pride with which he publishes his own name to the world. Dedicated to Cosimo de' Medici, welcomed with applause by the grey-headed Guarino da Verona,[238] extolled to the skies by Antonio Losco, eagerly sought after by Bartolommeo, Bishop of Milan--this book, which Strato and Martial might have blushed to own, passed from copyist to copyist, from hand to hand. Among the learned it found no serious adversaries. Poggio, indeed, gently reminded the poet that even the elegance of its Latinity and the heat of its author's youth were hardly sufficient excuses for its wantonness.[239] Yet the almost unanimous verdict of students was favourable. Its open animalism, as free from satire as from concealment, took the world by storm; while the facile elegance of fluent verse with which the sins of Sodom and Gomorrha were described placed it, in the opinion of scholars, on a level with Catullus.[240] When the Emperor Sigismund crowned Beccadelli poet at Siena in 1433, he only added the weight of Imperial approval to the verdict of the lettered public.

[Footnote 237: Published at Paris in 1791 among _Quinque illustrium Poetarum Lusus in Venerem_, and again at Coburg in 1824, with annotations by F.G. Forberg.]

[Footnote 238: A man of about sixty-three, and father of twelve legitimate children.]

[Footnote 239: _Poggii Opera_, pp. 349-354.]

[Footnote 240: Poggio, while professing to condemn the scandals of these poems, writes thus:--'Delectatus sum mehercle varietate rerum et elegantiâ versuum, simulque admiratus sum res adeo impudicas, adeo ineptas, tam venuste, tam composite, a te dici, atque ita multa exprimi turpiuscula ut non enarrari sed agi videantur, nec ficta a te jocandi causâ, ut existimo, sed acta existimari possint.'--_Poggii Opera_, p. 349.]

The Church could not, however, tolerate the scandal. Ever since the days of Petrarch and Boccaccio, monks had regarded the study of antique poetry with suspicion. Now their worst fears were realised. Beccadelli had proved that the vices of renascent Paganism were not only corrupting Italian society in secret, but that a young scholar of genius could openly proclaim his participation in the shame, abjure the first principles of Christian morality, and appeal with confidence to princes and humanists for sympathy. The Minorite Friars denounced the 'Hermaphroditus' from their pulpits, and burned it, together with portraits of the poet, on the public squares of Bologna, Milan, and Ferrara.[241] Eugenius IV. proscribed the reading of it under penalty of excommunication. Dignitaries of the Church, who found it in the hands of their secretaries, did not scruple to tear it to pieces, as a book forbidden by the Pope and contrary to sound morality.[242] Yet all this made but little difference to Beccadelli's reputation.[243] He lectured with honour at Bologna and Pavia, received a stipend of 800 scudi from the Visconti, and in 1435 was summoned to the Court of Naples. Alfonso raised him to the rank of noble, and continually employed him near his person, enjoying his wit, and taking special delight in his readings of classic authors. As official historiographer, Beccadelli committed to writing the memorable deeds and sayings of his royal master.[244] As ambassador and orator, he represented the King at foreign Courts. As tutor to the Crown Prince, Ferdinand, he prepared a sovereign for the State of Naples. This favour lasted till the year 1471, when he died, old, rich, and respected, in his lovely villa by the Bay of Naples. A more signal instance of the value attached in this age to pure scholarship, irrespective of moral considerations, and apart from profound learning--since Beccadelli was, after all, only an elegant Latinist--cannot be adduced. The 'Hermaphroditus,' therefore, deserves a prominent place in the history of Renaissance manners.

[Footnote 241: Especially Bernardino da Siena, Roberto da Lecce, and Alberto da Sarteano. See the note to p. 353 of Vol. I., _Age of the Despots_.]

[Footnote 242: See Vespasiano, _Vita di Giuliano Cesarini_, p. 134.]

[Footnote 243: A curious letter from Guarino to Beccadelli (Rosmini's _Vita di Guarino_, vol. ii. p. 44, and notes, p. 171) describes the enthusiastic reception given in public to an impostor who pretended to be the author of _Hermaphroditus_.]

[Footnote 244: _De Dictis et Factis Alphonsi Regis Memorabilibus._ Æneas Sylvius wrote a commentary on this work, in the preface to which he says, 'Legere potui, quod feci, corrigere vero non potui; nam quid est quod manu tuâ emissum correctione indigeat?'--_Opp. Omnia_, p. 472. This proves Beccadelli's reputation as a stylist.]

Those among us who have had the curiosity to study Beccadelli's 'Hermaphroditus' will find sufficient food for reflection upon his post of confidence and honour at the Court of Alfonso.[245] Yet the position of Lorenzo Valla at the same Court is even more remarkable. While Beccadelli urged the levity of youth in extenuation of his heathenism, and spoke with late regret of his past follies,[246] Valla showed the steady front of a deliberate critic, hostile at all points to the traditions and the morals of the Church. The parents of this remarkable man were natives of Piacenza, though, having probably been born at Rome, he assumed to himself the attribute of Roman.[247] Before he fixed his residence at Naples, he had already won distinction by a 'Dialogue on Pleasure,' in which he contrasted the principles of the Stoics and Epicureans, making it clear, in spite of cautious reservation, that he upheld the rights of the flesh in opposition to the teaching of philosophies and Churches. The virtue of virginity, so strongly prized by Christian saints, was treated by him as a violence to nature's laws, an intolerable torment inflicted upon man as God has made him.[248]

[Footnote 245: What the biographers, especially Vespasiano, relate of Alfonso's ceremonious piety and love of theological reading makes the contrast between him and his Court poet truly astounding.]

[Footnote 246:

'Hic fæces varias Veneris moresque profanos,
Quos natura fugit, me docuisse pudet.']

[Footnote 247: 'Romam, in quâ natus sum ... ego sum ortus Romæ oriundus a Placentiâ.']

[Footnote 248: The naïve surprise with which Vespasiano records the fact of virginity (see especially the Lives of Ambrogio Traversari and the Cardinal Portogallo) shows how rare the virtue was, and what mysterious honour it conferred upon men who were reputed to be chaste.]

The attack opened by Valla upon the hypocrisies and false doctrines of monasticism was both powerful and novel. Humanistic freedom of thought, after assuming the form of witty persiflage in Poggio's anecdotes and appearing as pure Paganism in Beccadelli's poems, now put on the sterner mask of common sense and criticism in Lorenzo Valla. The arms which he assumed in his first encounter with Church doctrine, he never laid aside. To the end of his life Valla remained the steady champion of unbiassed criticism, the living incarnation of that 'verneinender Geist' to which the reason of the modern world has owed its motive force.

Before leaving Rome at the age of twenty-four, Valla tried to get the post of Apostolic Secretary, but without success. It is probable that his youth told less against him than his reputation for plain speech and fearlessness. In 1431 we hear of him at Pavia, where, according to the slanders of his enemies,[249] he forged a will and underwent public penance at the order of the Bishop. This, however, is just one of those stories on which the general character of the invectives that contain it, throws uncertainty. Far more to our purpose is the fact that at this period he became the supreme authority on points of Latin style in Italy by the publication of his 'Elegantiæ.' True to his own genius, Valla displayed in this masterly treatise the qualities that gave him a place unique among the scholars of his day. The forms of correct Latinity which other men had picked out as they best could by close adherence to antique models, he subjected to critical analysis, establishing the art of style on scientific principles.

[Footnote 249: Poggio and Fazio are the authorities for this incident.]

When Alfonso invited Valla to Naples in 1437, giving him the post of private secretary, together with the poet's crown, he must have known the nature of the man who was to play so prominent a part in the history of free thought. It is not improbable that the feud between the House of Aragon and the Papal See, which arose from Alfonso's imperfect title to the throne of Naples, and was embittered by the intrigues of the Church, disposed the King to look with favour on the uncompromising antagonist of Papacy. At all events, Valla's treatise on 'Constantine's Donation,' which appeared in 1440, assumed the character of a political pamphlet.[250] The exordium contained fierce personal abuse of Eugenius IV. and Cardinal Vitelleschi. The body of the tract destroyed the fabric of lies which had imposed upon the Christian world for centuries. The peroration ended with a menace. Worse chastisement was in store for a worldly and simoniacal priesthood, if the Popes refused to forego their usurped temporalities, and to confess the sham that criticism had unmasked. War to the death was thus declared between Valla and Rome. The storm his treatise excited, raged at first so wildly that Valla thought it prudent to take flight. He crossed the sea to Barcelona, and remained there a short while, until, being assured of Alfonso's protection, he once more returned to Naples. From beneath the shield of his royal patron, he now continued to shoot arrow after arrow at his enemies, affirming that the letter of Christ to Abgarus, reported by Eusebius, was a palpable forgery, exposing the bad Latin style of the Vulgate, accusing S. Augustine of heresy on the subject of predestination, and denying the authenticity of the Apostles' Creed. That a simple humanist, trusting only to his learning, should have dared to attack the strong places of orthodoxy--its temporalities, its favourite code of ethics, its creed, and its patristic authorities--may well excite our admiration. With the stones of criticism and the sling of rhetoric, this David went up against the Goliath of the Church; and though he could not slay the Philistine, he planted in his forehead the first of those many missiles with which the battery of the reason has assailed tyrannical tradition in the modern world.

[Footnote 250: _De falso Creditâ et Ementitâ Constantini Donatione._]

The friars, whom Valla attacked with frigid scorn, and whose empire over the minds of men he was engaged in undermining, could not be expected to leave him quiet. Sermons from all the pulpits of Italy were launched at the heretic and heathen; the people were taught to loathe him as a monster of iniquity; and finally a Court of Inquisition was opened, at the bar of which he was summoned to attend. To the interrogatories of the inquisitors Valla replied that 'he believed as Mother Church believed: it was quite true that she _knew_ nothing: yet he believed as she believed.' That was all they could extract from the disdainful scholar, who, after openly defying them, walked away to the king and besought him to suspend the sitting of the Court. Alfonso told the monks that they must leave his secretary alone, and the process was dropped.

On the death of Eugenius, Nicholas V. summoned Valla to Rome, not to answer for his heresies and insults at the Papal bar, but to receive the post of Apostolic Writer, with magnificent appointments. The entry of Valla into the Roman Curia, though marked by no external ceremony, was the triumph of humanism over orthodoxy and tradition. We need not suppose that Nicholas was seeking to bribe a dangerous antagonist to silence. He simply wanted to attach an illustrious scholar to his Court, and to engage him in the labour of translation from the Greek. To heresy and scepticism he showed the indifference of a tolerant and enlightened spirit; with the friars who hated Valla the Pope in Rome had nothing whatsoever in common. The attitude assumed by Nicholas on this occasion illustrates the benefit which learning in the Renaissance derived from the worldliness of the Papacy. It was not until the schism of the Teutonic Churches, and the intrusion of the Spaniards into Italy, that the Court of Rome consistently adopted a policy of persecution and repression.

A large portion of Valla's biography is absorbed by the history of his quarrels with Poggio, Georgios Trapezuntios, and other men of mark. Enough has already been said about these literary feuds; nor need I allude to them again, except for the purpose of bringing a third Court-scholar of Alfonso's into notice. Bartolommeo Fazio, a native of La Spezzia, occupied the position of historiographer at Naples. In addition to his annals of the life of Alfonso, he compiled a book on celebrated men, and won the reputation of being the neatest Latinist in prose of his age. Fazio ventured to criticise the style of Valla, in whose works he professed to have detected five hundred faults of language. Eight books of invectives and recriminations were exchanged between them; and when both died in 1457, this epigram was composed in celebration of their animosity:--

Ne vel in Elysiis sine vindice Valla susurret,
Facius haud multos post obit ipse dies.

The amusement afforded to Roman emperors by fights in the arena, and to feudal nobles by the squabbles of their fools, seems to have been extracted by Italian patrons from the duels of well-matched humanists. What personal jealousies, what anxious competition for the princely favour, such warfare concealed may be readily imagined; nor is it improbable that Fazio's attack on Valli was prompted by the covert spite of Beccadelli. Scarcely less close to the person of Alfonso than the students with whom we have been occupied, stood Giannantonio Porcello, a native of Naples. He was distinguished by his command of versification: the fluency with which he poured fourth Latin elegiacs and hexameters approached that of an improvisatore of the Molo. Alfonso sent him to the camp of the Venetians during the war waged by their general Piccinino in 1452-3 with Sforza. Porcello, who shared the tent of Piccinino on this occasion, wrote a Latin history of the campaign in the style of Livy, with moral reflections, speeches, and all the apparatus of Roman rhetoric. Piccinino figured as Scipio Æmilianus; Sforza as Hannibal. The work was dedicated to Alfonso.[251]

[Footnote 251: It is printed in Muratori, vol. xx.]

With the exception of Lorenzo Valla,[252] the scholars of the Court of Naples were stylists and poets rather than men of erudition. Freedom both of speculation and of morals marked society in Southern Italy, where the protection of a powerful monarch at war with the Church, and the license of a luxurious capital, released the humanists from such slight restraints as public opinion and conventional decorum placed on them in Rome and Florence.

[Footnote 252: The protection extended to Manetti and to Filelfo ought, however, to be here mentioned. Nearly all the contemporary scholars of Italy dedicated works to Alfonso.]

Owing to the marked diversity exhibited by the different states of Italy, the forms assumed by art and literature are never exactly the same in any two cities. If the natives of the Two Sicilies were not themselves addicted to severe scholarship, the lighter kinds of writing flourished there abundantly, and Naples gave her own peculiar character to literature. This was not the case with Milan. Yet Milan, during the reigns of the last Visconti and the first Sforza, claims attention, owing to the accident of Filelfo's residence at the Ducal Court. Filippo Maria Visconti was one of the most repulsive tyrants who have ever disgraced a civilised country. Shut up within his palace walls among astrologers, minions, and monks, carefully protected from the public eye, and watched by double sets of mutually suspicious bodyguards, it was impossible that he should extend the free encouragement to learned men which we admire at Naples. Around despots of the stamp of the Visconti there must of necessity reign the solitude and silence of a desert, where arts and letters cannot flourish, though Pactolus be poured forth to feed their roots. The history of humanism at Milan has, therefore, less to do with the city or the Ducal circle than with the private labours of students allured to Lombardy by promise of high pay.

Piero Candido Decembrio began life as Filippo Maria's secretary. To his vigorous pen the student of Italian history owes the minutest and most vivid sketch now extant of the habits and the vices of a tyrant. This remains the best title of Decembrio to recollection, though his works, original and translated, if we may trust his epitaph in S. Ambrogio, amounted to 127 books when he died in 1447. Contemporary with Decembrio, Gasparino da Barzizza, of whom mention has already been made,[253] occupied the place of Court orator and letter-writer. This office he transmitted to his son, Guiniforte, who was also employed in the education of Francesco Sforza's children. None of these men, however, shed much splendour upon Milan; they were simply the instruments of ducal luxury, part of a prince's parade, at an epoch when even warlike sovereigns sought to crowd their Courts with pedagogues and rhetoricians.

[Footnote 253: Above, p. 78.]

With Filelfo the case was different. His singular abilities rendered him independent of local patronage, and drew universal attention to any place where he might choose to fix his residence. Of all the humanists he was the most restless in his humour and erratic in his movements. Still Milan, during a long period of his life, formed his headquarters; to Milan he returned when fortune frowned on him elsewhere; and with Milan his name will always be connected.

Francesco Filelfo was born in 1398 at Tolentino, in the March of Ancona. He studied grammar, rhetoric, and Latin literature at Padua, where he was appointed professor at the early age of eighteen. In 1417 he received an invitation to teach eloquence and moral philosophy at Venice. Here he remained two years, deriving much advantage from the society of Guarino da Verona and Vittorino da Feltre, and forming useful connections with the Venetian nobility. Young as he was, Filelfo had already made his mark, and won the consideration which attaches to men of decided character and extraordinary powers. The proof of this is that, after being admitted citizen of Venice by public decree, he was appointed Secretary to the Baily (_Bailo_, or Consul-General) of Constantinople through the interest of his friend Lionardo Giustiniani. Giustiniani having also provided him with money for his voyage, Filelfo set off in 1419 for the capital of Greek learning. Of the three Italian teachers--Guarino, Aurispa, and Filelfo--who made this journey for the express purpose of acquiring the Greek language and collecting Greek books, Filelfo was by far the most distinguished. The history, therefore, of his adventures may be taken as a specimen of what befell them all. The time spent at sea between Venice and Byzantium was five months; Filelfo did not arrive till the year 1420 was already well advanced. He put himself at once under the tuition of John Chrysoloras, the brother of Manuel, whose influence at the Imperial Court brought Filelfo into favour with John Palæologus. The young Italian student, having speedily acquired familiarity with the Greek tongue, received the titles of Secretary and Counsellor, and executed some important diplomatic missions for his Imperial master. We hear, for instance, of his being sent to Sigismund, the German Emperor, at Buda, and of his reciting an Epithalamial Oration at Cracow on the marriage of King Ladislaus. The Venetian Baily, again, despatched him to the Court of Amurath II., in order to negotiate terms of treaty between the Republic and the Turk.

The confidence extended alike by his Venetian and Greek patrons to Filelfo may well have inclined Chrysoloras to look with favour on the affection which now sprang up between the Italian stranger and his daughter Theodora. Theodora was but fourteen years of age; yet her youth probably suggested no impediment to marriage in the semi-Oriental society of the Greek capital. That she was connected by blood with the Imperial family made the alliance honourable to Filelfo; still there is no sufficient reason to conclude for certain that the match was so unequal as to justify the malignant suggestions thrown out at a later date by Poggio.[254] Of ancient blood there was enough and to spare at Constantinople; but wealth was wanting, while the talent which rendered Filelfo serviceable to great states and empires was itself sufficient guarantee for Theodora's maintenance in a becoming station.

[Footnote 254: 'Itaque Chrysoloras, moerore confectus, compulsus precibus, malo coactus, filiam tibi nuptui dedit a te corruptam, quæ si extitisset integra, ne pilum quidem tibi abrasum ab illius natibus ostendisset. An tu illam unquam duxisses uxorem si virginitatem per te servare potuisset? Tibi pater illam dedisset profugo, ignobili, impuro? Primariis suæ civitatis viris servabatur virgo, non tibi, insulsæ pecudi et asello bipedali, quem ille domi alebat tanquam canem aliquem solent senio et ætate confectum.'--_Poggii Opp._ p. 167. This is just one of the tales with which the invectives of that day abound, and with which it is almost impossible to deal. It may be true; for certainly Filelfo, by his immorality and grossness in after-life, justified the worst calumnies that his enemies could invent. Yet there is little but Poggio's word to prove it, while Rosmini has shown that Filelfo's position at Byzantium was very different from what his foe suggests. Tiraboschi accepts the charge as 'not proven;' but he clearly leans in private against Filelfo, moved by the following passage from a letter of Ambrogio Traversari:--'Nuper a Guarino accepi litteras, quibus vehementer in fortunam invehitur quod filiam Joannis Chrysoloræ clarissimi viri is acceperit, exterus, qui quantum libet homo bono ingenio, longe tamen illis nuptiis impar esset, queriturque substomachans uxorem Chrysoloræ venalem habuisse pudicitiam, moechumque ante habuisse quam socerum.' Vol. vi. lib. iii. cap. v. 21. All that can be said now is that Filelfo's own morality and the corruption of Byzantine society render a story believed by Guarino and Traversari, and openly told by Poggio, not improbable.]

Not long after their marriage Filelfo received an offer of the Chair of Eloquence at Venice, with a stipend of 500 sequins. In 1427, tempted by the prospect of good pay and growing fame, he landed with his wife, their infant son, four female slaves, and two men servants on the quay before S. Mark's.[255] The object of his journey to Constantinople had been amply attained. After an absence of seven and a half years, he returned to his native country with Greek learning, increased reputation, and a large supply of Greek books.[256] His proud boast, frequently repeated in after-life, that no man living but himself had mastered the whole literature of the ancients in both languages, that no one else could wield the prose of Cicero, the verse of Horace and of Virgil, and the Greek of Homer and of Xenophon with equal versatility, was not altogether an empty vaunt.[257] We may indeed smile at his pretension to have surpassed Virgil because he was an orator, and Cicero because he was a poet, and both of them together because he could write Greek as well as Latin.[258] We know that his Latin hexameters are such as not only Virgil but Cicero would have scorned to own, that his Latin orations would have been hissed before the Roman rostra, and that his Greek style is at the same time tame and tumid. Neither he nor his contemporaries were sufficiently critical to comprehend the force of these objections. They only saw that he possessed the keys to all the learning of the ancient world, and that, besides unlocking those treasures for modern students, he was also competent to give to current thoughts a form that aped the classic masterpieces each in its own kind. Taken at their lowest valuation, the claims of Filelfo, well founded in fact, mark him out as the most universal scholar of his age. A genius he was not: for while his perceptions were coarse, his intellect was receptive rather than originative. Of deep thought, true taste, penetrative criticism, or delicate fancy he knew nothing. The unimaginable bloom of style is nowhere to be found upon his work. Yet a man of his stamp was needed at that epoch to act as a focus for the streams of light which flooded Italy from divers sources, to collect them in himself, and to bequeath to students of a happier age the ideal of comprehensive scholarship which Poliziano and Erasmus realised.

[Footnote 255: This retinue shows that Filelfo was at least able to support a large household.]

[Footnote 256: The catalogue of his library, communicated by him in a letter to Ambrogio Traversari, shows so clearly what the most indefatigable student and omnivorous reader of the age, to whom all the museums and bookshops of Byzantium must have been open, could then collect, that I will transcribe it:--'Qui mihi nostri in Italiam libri gesti sunt, horum nomina ad te scribo: alios autem nonnullos per primas ex Byzantio Venetorum naves opperior. Hi autem sunt Plotinus, Ælianus, Aristides, Dionysius Halicarnasseus, Strabo Geographus, Hermogenes, Aristotelis Rhetorice, Dionysius Halicarnasseus de Numeris et Characteribus, Herodotus, Dio Chrysostomus, Appollonius Pergæus, Thucydides, Plutarchi Moralia, Proclus in Platonem, Philo Judæus, Ethica Aristotelis, Ejus magna Moralia et Eudemia, et Oeconomica et Politica, quædam Theophrasti Opuscula, Homeri Ilias, Odyssea, Philostrati de Vitâ Appollonii, Orationes Libanii, et aliqui Sermones Luciani, Pindarus, Aratus, Euripidis Tragoediæ Septem, Theocritus, Hesiodus, Suidas, Phalaridis, Hippocratis, Platonis et multorum ex veteribus Philosophis Epistolæ, Demosthenes, Æschinis Orationes et Epistolæ, Pleraque Xenophontis Opera, Una Lysiæ Oratio, Orphei Argonautica et Hymni, Callimachus, Aristoteles de Historiis Animalium, Physica, et Metaphysica, et de Animâ, de Partibus Animalium, et alia quædam, Polybius, Nonnulli Sermones Chrysostomi, Dionysiaca, et alii Poetæ plurimi. Habes qui mihi sint, et his utere æque ac tuis.']

[Footnote 257: 'Unum Philelphus audet affirmare, vel insaniente Candido, neminem esse hâc tempestate, nec fuisse unquam apud Latinos, quantum constat ex omni hominum memoriâ, qui præter se unum idem unus tenuerit exercuitque et Græcam pariter et Latinam orationem in omni dicendi genere et prosâ et versu. Tu si quidem habeas alterum, memora. Quid taces, homo miserrime?' Letter to Piero Candido Decembrio. Cf. what P.C. Decembrio wrote to Poggio in 1453:--'Dixit (_i.e._ Philelphus) enim neminem litteras scire præter ipsum, alios semilatinos et semigræcos esse, se autem principatum inter stultos obtinere.' Rosmini, vol. iii. p. 150.]

[Footnote 258:

'Quod si Virgilius superat me carminis ullis
Laudibus, orator ille ego sum melior.
Sin Tulli eloquio præstat facundia nostro,
Versibus ille meis cedit ubique minor.
Adde quod et linguâ possum hæc præstare Pelasgâ
Et Latiâ. Talem quem mihi des alium?'

Lib. ix., _De Jocis et Seriis_. _Elegy to Alessandro Sforza._ Reported by Rosmini, vol. iii. p. 149. One specimen of these boasts may stand for thousands.]

Filelfo's reception at Venice by no means corresponded to the promises by which he had been tempted, or to the value which he set on his own services. The plague was in the city; the nobles had taken flight to their country houses; and there was no one to attend his lectures. He therefore very readily accepted an offer sent him from Bologna, and early in the year 1428 we find him settled in that city as professor of eloquence and moral philosophy, with a stipend of 450 sequins. He was not destined to remain there long, however, for the disturbed state of the town rendered teaching impossible; and when flattering proposals arrived from the Florentines, he set off in haste and transferred his whole family across the Apennines from Imola.[259] The delight which he experienced in viewing the architectural monuments of Florence, and the enthusiasm he aroused by his stupendous learning in an audience of unprecedented variety and multitude, are expressed with almost childish emphasis in his correspondence. 'The whole State,' he writes,[260] 'is turned to look at me. All men love and honour me, and praise me to the skies. My name is on every lip. Not only the leaders of the city, but women also of the noblest birth make way for me, paying me so much respect that I am ashamed of their worship. My audience numbers every day four hundred persons, mostly men advanced in years and of the dignity of senators.' These were the halcyon days of Filelfo's residence at Florence,[261] when he was still enjoying the friendship of learned men, receiving new engagements from the University with augmentations of pay,[262] and when as yet he had not won the hatred of the Medicean faction. His industry at this epoch was amazing. He began the day by reading and explaining the 'Tusculans' and rhetorical treatises of Cicero; then he proceeded to Livy or Homer; after a brief rest at midday he resumed his labours with Terence and a Greek author, Thucydides or Xenophon. On holidays he read Dante to an audience assembled in the Duomo, bestowing these lectures as a free gift on the people of Florence. Amid these public labours, the weight of which may be estimated by remembering what was required of professors in the fifteenth century,[263] Filelfo still found leisure for private work. He translated two speeches of Lysias, the 'Rhetoric' of Aristotle, two Lives of Plutarch, and Xenophon's panegyrics of Agesilaus and the Spartan institutions.

[Footnote 259: The invitation came from Niccoli, Lionardo Bruni, Ambrogio Traversari, and Palla Strozzi.]

[Footnote 260: Quoted by Cantù, p. 128.]

[Footnote 261: He stayed there from 1429 till the autumn of 1434.]

[Footnote 262: Engagement renewed October 17, 1431, for two years, with stipend of 350 sequins; again, in 1433, with stipend of 450 sequins.]

[Footnote 263: See above, pp. 90, 91.]

At the same time he had abundant energy for the prosecution of the feuds in which he soon found himself engaged with the Florentine scholars. So great was the arrogance displayed by Filelfo, his meanness in private life, and his imprudence in public,[264] that even the men who had invited him became his bitter foes. Niccolo de' Niccoli, always jealous of superiority, and apt to take offence, was the first with whom he quarrelled; then followed Carlo Marsuppini and Ambrogio Traversari, until at last the whole of the Medicean party were inflamed against him. Filelfo on his side spared neither satires nor slanders; and when the political crisis, which for a time depressed the Medicean faction, was impending, he declared himself the public opponent of Cosimo. Already in the spring of 1433 he had been stabbed in the face while walking to the University one morning by Filippo, a cut-throat from Casale; nor does there seem any reason to doubt that, as Filelfo himself firmly believed, the man was paid to kill him by the Medici. When the same bravo afterwards followed him to Siena,[265] Filelfo hired a Greek, by name Antonio Maria, to retaliate upon his foes in Florence. It is not probable that a merely literary quarrel would have run to these extremities. Even the foulness of Poggio's invectives and the fury of Filelfo's satires fail to account for the intervention of assassins. We know, however, that Filelfo had not confined himself to calumnies and criticisms of his literary rivals. During Cosimo's imprisonment he urged the Signory in open terms to take his life; when he was living in exile at Venice, he pursued him with abominable slanders; and now, on Cosimo's return, though himself expelled from the city as a rebel and a proscript, he kept stirring up the burghers of Florence and the Courts of Italy against the tyrant.[266]

[Footnote 264: See Rosmini, vol. i. pp. 43, 48.]

[Footnote 265: _Ibid._ vol. i. p. 83, for the trial, torture, and confession of this bravo.]

[Footnote 266: The original source of information concerning Filelfo's quarrels with the Florentines is his Satires, divided into ten books or decades, each consisting of ten satires or hecatostichæ of one hundred verses each. In the copy of this book, printed at Paris, 1508, by Robert and John Gourmont, these virulent libels are called 'Divinum Francisci Philelphi Poetæ Christiani Satyrarum Opus.' As their motto the publishers give these sentences:--'Finis laus Deo, Spes mea Jesus.' For the abuse of the Medicean circle see Dec. i. Hec. 5; Dec. i. Hec. 6; Dec. ii. Hec. 1, 3, 7; Dec. iii. Hec. 10; Dec. vi. 10; Dec. viii. 5. For Filelfo's attack on Cosimo during his imprisonment, see Dec. iv. Hec. 1. For his invective against Cosimo on his return from exile, see Dec. iv. Hec. 9. For an appeal to Filippo Maria Visconti against Cosimo, see Dec. v. Hec. 1. For a similar appeal to Eugenius IV., see Dec. v. Hec. 2. For the episode of the assassin Filippo, see Dec. v. Hec. 6. A political attack on Cosimo addressed to Rinaldo Albizzi is contained in Dec. v. Hec. 8. A furious denunciation of Cosimo's tyranny, in Dec. v. Hec. 9. Palla degli Strozzi, as an opponent of Cosimo, is praised in Dec. iii. 1; Dec. vi. 4. In Dec. vii. 8, Filelfo promises to moderate his fury. In addition to these sources see the MS. invectives mentioned in Rosmini, vol. i. p. 47.]

The occasion of Filelfo's removal to Siena was this:--When his position at Florence had become untenable, he received an invitation from Antonio Petrucci to lecture for two years, with a stipend of 350 florins. Filelfo replied that he preferred small pay and quiet to a larger income among the swords and poisons of his envious rivals. Accordingly he took up his abode at Siena for four years in the Piccolomini Palace. Like many greater and more admirable men, he had a restless disposition, always pleased with what is new, yet always grumbling when the taste of bitter mounted to his lips. The most honourable invitations now began to shower upon him. The Council of Basle, the Venetian Senate, the Emperor of the East, Eugenius IV., the Universities of Perugia and Bologna, and the Duke of Milan applied for his services. It was not, however, until the year 1439 that his love of change, combined with the allurements of higher pay, induced him to close with the offers of the Senate of Bologna. Once more, then, he crossed the Apennines, and once more, after a brief sojourn of a few months, he again quitted Bologna, and transferred himself to Milan. His reception by Filippo Maria Visconti was most flattering. Placing a diamond ring upon his finger, the Duke welcomed him among the nobles of his Court on New Year's Day in 1440. Thus began Filelfo's connection with the Lombard capital, which, though often interrupted, was never wholly broken till his death.

The munificence of the Visconti exceeded that of any of Filelfo's patrons,[267] while the mode of life at Milan exactly suited his vainglorious temperament. He loved to throw his money about among lords, to appear at high Court festivals, and to take the lead on ceremonial occasions in his rank of orator. There was, moreover, no rival strong enough to threaten the blasting of his popularity.[268] We find him, during his residence at Milan, continually engaged in the exercise of rhetoric. Public and private incidents of the most various character employed his skill, nor is there any doubt that his large professorial income was considerably increased by presents received from patrons and employers.[269] In addition to the labours of his chair, he engaged in various literary works. His Satires and Odes were gradually growing into ponderous volumes.[270] Other fugitive pieces in prose he put together under the title of 'Convivia Mediolanensia.' Meanwhile he carried on an active correspondence, both familiar and hortatory, with the scholars and the princes of his day.[271] There was no branch of letters with which, sustained by sublime self-approval, he was not willing and eager to meddle. As he had professed Dante at Florence, so here at Milan, by ducal command, he undertook to comment upon Petrarch, and actually composed a poem on S. John the Baptist in _terza rima_. There is something ludicrous in the thought of this Visconti, would-be Herod as in truth he was, commissioning Filelfo, the outrageous Pagan, to versify the life of Christ's forerunner. If Filelfo despised anything more than sacred history, it was the Italian language; and if there was a task for which he was unfitted, it was the composition of poetry.

[Footnote 267: His professorial stipend was soon raised from 500 to 700 golden florins.]

[Footnote 268: Vespasiano says that the concourse of people to Carlo Aretino's lectures was the first cause of Filelfo's feuds at Florence.]

[Footnote 269: Here are the dates of some of these displays:--

1440. Funeral oration on Stefano Federigo Todeschini.

1441. Epithalamial on the Marriage of Giovanni Marliani.

1442. Discourse on Duties of a Magistrate.

1446. Panegyric of Filippo Maria Visconti, and oration on the Election of Jacopo Borromeo to the See of Pavia.

1450. Oration of Welcome to Francesco Sforza.

1455. Epithalamial on the Marriage of Tristano Sforza to Beatrice d'Este.

1458. Epithalamials for Antonio Crivelli and Teodoro Piatti.

1459. Oration to Pius II. on his Crusade.

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

1464. Funeral oration for the Senator Filippo Borromeo.

1466. Ditto for Francesco Sforza.

It is probable that all of these were not recited; but all were conceived in the lumbering and pedantic style that passed for eloquence at that period. With regard to rewards received on these occasions, note the gift of a silver basin from Jacopo Antonio Marcello in return for a consolatory epistle. Rosmini, vol. ii. p. 127. Cf. p. 197.]

[Footnote 270: The Satires, collected into ten decades, each satire consisting of 100 lines, were dedicated to Alfonso of Naples in 1451. Printed at Milan, 1446. The Odes, entitled _De Seriis et Jocis_, were finished in 1465, and dedicated partly to Malatesta Novello of Cesena, partly to Alessandro Sforza. There were ten books, each book containing 1,000 lines. Never printed. Rosmini, who inspected the MSS., reports that their obscenity exceeds description, and is only equalled by the vulgarity of the author's fancy and the coarseness of his style. In addition to these unpublished Latin poems, Filelfo collected three books of Greek elegies and epigrams, amounting to 2,400 verses. It is significant that he measured his poetry by lines, and trained his jog-trot muse to paces of 100 verses.]

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

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

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

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

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

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

Filelfo was now fain to content himself with the patronage of Francesco Sforza, a prince who had no natural turn for literature, but who was wise enough to know that a _parvenu_ could least of all afford to neglect the ruling fashions of his age. The letters he wrote at this period abound in impudent demands for money, querulous outcries over the poverty to which the first scholar of the century was condemned, and violent menaces of retaliation if his salary remained in arrears.[275] Not only Francesco Sforza, but all the patrons upon whom Filelfo thought he had a claim, were assailed with reptile lamentations and more reptile menaces. Alessandro Sforza, Lodovico Gonzaga, and three Popes in succession may be mentioned among the more distinguished princes who suffered from this literary brigandage.[276] Not without strict justice did a contemporary describe him in the following severe terms:--'He is calumnious, envious, vain, and so greedy of gold that he metes out praise or blame according to the gifts he gets, both despicable as proceeding from a tainted source.'[277] Filelfo's rapacity is truly disgusting when we remember that he received far more than any equally distinguished student of his age. Not the illiberality of patrons, but his own luxurious habits, reduced him to beggary. All the while that he was screaming in bad Latin verse, he lived expensively, indulging ostentatious tastes, and finding money for unclean indulgences. In order to confirm his claim on the Duke of Milan's generosity, he began a gigantic Latin epic upon the life of Sforza. Without plan, a mere versified chronicle, encumbered with foolish mythological machinery, and loaded with fulsome flatteries, this leaden Sforziad crawled on until 12,800 lines had been written. Only the first eight books of it were published in MS., nor were these ever printed.[278]

[Footnote 275: As a specimen of Filelfo's Grub Street style of begging, I transcribe the following elegy (Rosmini, vol. ii. p. 285):--

'Hæc autem altisone dum carmina celsius effert
Defecisse suo sentit ab ore tubam,
Nam quia magnifici data non est copia nummi
Cogitur huic uti carmine raucidulo.
Quod neque mireris; vocem pretiosa canoram
Esca dat, et potus excitat ingenium.
Ingenium spurco suevit languescere vino,
Humida mugitum reddere rapa solet.'

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

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

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

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

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

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

Until the death of Francesco Sforza Milan continued to be the city of Filelfo's choice. After that event he turned his thoughts to Rome. Pius II., Paul II., and Sixtus IV., in succession, had testified their regard for him, either by moderate presents, sufficient to excite his cupidity and check his slanderous temper, or by negotiations which came to nothing. At last, in 1474, he received from Rome the offer of a professorial chair, with a stipend of 600 florins, and the promise of the first vacant post in the Apostolic Chancery.