Chapter VII: Fourth Period of Humanism (1)

Fall of the Humanists -- Scholarship permeates Society -- A
New Ideal of Life and Manners -- Latinisation of Names --
Classical Periphrases -- Latin Epics on Christian Themes --
Paganism -- The Court of Leo X. -- Honours of the Church
given to Scholars -- Ecclesiastical Men of the World --
Mæcenases at Rome -- Papal and Imperial Rome -- Moral
Corruption -- Social Refinement -- The Roman Academy --
Pietro Bembo -- His Life at Ferrara -- At Urbino -- Comes to
Rome -- Employed by Leo -- Retirement to Padua -- His
Dictatorship of Letters -- Jacopo Sadoleto -- A Graver
Genius than Bembo -- Paulus Jovius -- Latin Stylist -- His
Histories -- Baldassare Castiglione -- Life at Urbino and
Rome -- The Courtly Scholar -- His Diplomatic Missions --
Alberto Pio -- Gian Francesco Pico della Mirandola -- The
Vicissitudes of his Life -- Jerome Aleander -- Oriental
Studies -- The Library of the Vatican -- His Mission to
Germany -- Inghirami, Beroaldo, and Acciaiuoli -- The Roman
University -- John Lascaris -- Study of Antiquities --
Origin of the 'Corpus Inscriptionum' -- Topographical
Studies -- Formation of the Vatican Sculpture Gallery --
Discovery of the Laocoon -- Feeling for Statues in
Renaissance Italy -- Venetian Envoys in the Belvedere --
Raphael's Plan for excavating Ancient Rome -- His Letter to
Leo -- Effect of Antiquarian Researches on the Arts --
Intellectual Supremacy of Rome in this Period -- The Fall --
Adrian VI. -- The Sack of Rome -- Valeriano's Description of
the Sufferings of Scholars.

What is known as the Revival of Learning was accomplished before the close of the fifteenth century, and about this time humanism began to lose credit. The professional scholars who had domineered in Italy during the last hundred years, were now regarded with suspicion as pretentious sophists, or as empty-pated pedants. Their place was taken by men of the world, refined courtiers, and polite stylists who piqued themselves on general culture. This revolution in public opinion was the result of various causes which I shall attempt to set forth in another chapter. It is enough for my present purpose to observe that the learning possessed at first by a few teachers, acquired with effort, and communicated with condescension, had now become the common property of cultivated men. In proportion as a knowledge of the classic authors diffused itself over a wider area, the mere reputation of sound scholarship ceased to form a valid title to celebrity. It was necessary that the man of letters, educated by antiquity, should give proof of his genius by some originality of mind. The age of acquisition had ended; the age of application had begun. To this result the revived interest in Italian literature powerfully contributed. Writers were no longer, like Bruni and Poggio, ashamed of their _cose volgari_. On the contrary, the most splendid productions of the first half of the sixteenth century, the Histories of Guicciardini and Machiavelli, the Epic of Ariosto, the 'Cortegiano' of Castiglione, and the burlesque poems of Berni were penned in powerful and delicate Italian. To what extent the influence of Lorenzo de' Medici, who was always more partial to vernacular literature than to scholarship, determined the change in question, is a matter for opinion. That Florence led the way by her great writers of Italian poetry and prose admits of no doubt.

At the same time the erudition of the fifteenth century had steeped the whole Italian nation. Humanism penetrated every sphere of intellectual activity, and gave a colour to all social customs. The arts of painting and of sculpture felt its influence. A new style of architecture, formed upon the model of Roman monuments, sprang up. Science took a special bias from the classics, and philosophy was so strongly permeated by antique doctrines that the Revival of Learning may be justly said to have checked the spontaneity of the Italian intellect. There was not enough time for students to absorb antiquity and pass beyond it, before the mortmain of the Church and the Spaniard was laid upon the fairest provinces of thought. To trace the course of Italian philosophy, is, however, no part of my scheme in this volume. The Aristotelian and Platonic controversies on the nature of the soul, the materialism of Pietro Pomponazzo, the gradual emergence of powerful thinkers like Bruno and Campanella, the theological rationalism of Aonio Paleario, and the final suppression of free thought by the Church, belong to the history of the Counter-Reformation. To the same sad chapter of Italian history must be relegated the labours of the earliest mathematicians, astronomers, and cosmographers, who, poring over the texts of Ptolemy and Euclid, anticipated Copernicus, impelled Columbus to his enterprise, and led the way for Galileo. The infamy of having rendered science and philosophy abortive in Italy, when its early show of blossom was so promising, falls upon the Popes and princes of the last half of the sixteenth century. The narrative of their emergence from the studies of the humanists must form the prelude to a future work treating of Farnesi and Caraffas, Inquisitors and Jesuits. Only by showing the growth which might have been, can we demonstrate the atrophy that was.

It remains in this chapter to describe the fourth period of humanism, when Italy, still permeated with the spirit of the classical revival, laid down laws of social breeding for the nations of the North. Few things are more difficult than to set forth without exaggeration, and yet with sufficient force, the so-called Paganism of Renaissance Italy. At first sight, and from certain points of view, it seems as though the exclusive study of the classics had wrought a thorough metamorphosis of morality and manners. When, on reflection, this appearance is seen to be illusory, we incline, perhaps, to the contrary conclusion that scholarship only set a kind of fashion without taking deep hold even on the imagination of the people. A more complete acquaintance with the period makes it clear that the imitation of the ancients in thought, sentiment, and language was no mere affectation, and that, however partial its influences may have been, they were not superficial. In the first volume of this work I tried to show to what extent the patriotism of tyrannicides and the profligacy of courtiers were alike related to the prevailing study of the ancient world. It was no small matter that the vices and the virtues, the worldliness and the enthusiasm, of that many-featured age, together with its supreme achievements in art, its ripest productions in literature, should have gradually assumed a classic form. The standards of moral and æsthetic taste were paganised, though the nation at large remained unchanged in Catholicity. It was precisely this discord between the professed religion of the people and the heathenism of its ideal that inspired Savonarola with his prophecy.

Classical style being the requirement of the age, it followed that everything was sacrificed to this. In christening their children the great families abandoned the saints of the calendar and chose names from mythology. Ettorre, Achille, Atalanta, Pentesilea, Lucrezia, Porzia, Alessandro, Annibale, Laomedonte, Fedro, Ippolito, and many other antique titles became fashionable. Those who were able to do so turned their baptismal names into Latin or Greek equivalents. Janus or Jovianus passed for Giovanni, Pierius for Pietro, Aonius for Antonio, Lucius Grassus for Luca Grasso; the German prelate John Goritz was known as Corycius,[371] and the Roman professor Gianpaolo Parisio as Janus Parrhasius. Writers who undertook to treat of modern or religious themes, were driven by their zeal for purism to the strangest expedients of language. God, in the Latin of the sixteenth century, is _Jupiter Optimus Maximus_; Providence becomes _Fatum_; the saints are _Divi_, and their statues _simulacra sancta Deorum_. Our Lady of Loreto is changed into _Dea Lauretana_, Peter and Paul into _Dii tutelares Romæ_, the souls of the just into _Manes pii_, and the Pope's excommunication into _Diræ_. The Holy Father himself takes the style of _Pontifex Maximus_; his tiara, by a wild confusion of ideas, is described as _infula Romulea_. Nuns are Vestals, and cardinals Augurs. For the festivals of the Church periphrases were found, whereof the following may be cited as a fair specimen:[372] '_Verum accidit ut eo ipso die, quo domum ejus accesseram, ipse piæ rei caussâ septem sacrosancta Divûm pulvinaria supplicaturus inviserit; erant enim lustrici dies, quos unoquoque anno quadragenos purificatione consecravit nostra pietas._'

[Footnote 371:

Namque sub Oebaliæ memini me turribus altis
Qua niger humectat flaventia culta Galesus
_Corycium_ vidisse _senem_.--Virg. _Georg._ lib. iv. 125.]

[Footnote 372: From the exordium to Valeriano's treatise _De Infelicitate Literatorum_.]

It need hardly be added that, when the obligations of Latinity had reached this point, to read Cicero was of far more importance than to study the Fathers of the Church. Bembo, it is well known, advised Sadoleto to 'avoid the Epistles of S. Paul, lest his barbarous style should spoil your taste: _Omitte has nugas, non enim decent gravem virum tales ineptiæ_.' The extent, however, to which formal purism in Latinity was carried, may be best observed in the 'Christiad' of Vida, and the poem 'De Partu Virginis' of Sannazzaro.[373] Sannazzaro not only invokes the muses of Helicon to sing the birth of Christ, but he also makes Proteus prophesy his advent to the river-god of Jordan. The archangel discovers Mary--described by the poet as _spes fida Deorum_--intent on reading nothing less humanistic than the Sibyls; and after she has received his message, the spirits of the patriarchs are said to shout because they will escape from Tartarus and Acheron and the hideous baying of the triple-throated hound.

[Footnote 373: Lilius Gyraldus, in his dialogue 'De Poetis Nostri Temporis,' _Opp._ vol. ii. p. 384, mentions a critic who was so stupid as to _desiderare in Pontano et si deis placet in Sanazario Christianam elocutionem, hoc est barbaram_!]

It might be reasonably urged against Milton that in the 'Paradise Regained' he somewhat impairs the religious grandeur of his subject by investing it with the forms of the classical epic. If he has erred in this direction, it is as nothing compared with the pseudo-Pagan travesty of Vida. God the Father in the 'Christiad' is spoken of as _Superum Pater nimbipotens_ and _Regnator Olympi_--titles which had their real significance in Latin mythology, being transferred with frigid formalism to a Deity whose essence is spiritual, and whose cult has no admixture of nature worship. Jesus is invariably described as _Heros_; this absurdity reaches its climax in the following phrase about the bad thief on the cross:--

Ipse etiam verbis morientem heroa superbis
Stringebat.

The machinery whereby the Jews are brought to will the death of Christ is no less ridiculous. Instead of attempting to set religious or ethical motives into play, Vida introduces a gang of Gorgons, Harpies, Centaurs, Hydras, and the like. The bread of the Last Supper appears under the disguise of _sinceram Cererem_. The wine mingled with gall, offered to our Lord upon the cross, is _corrupti pocula Bacchi_. The only excuse for these grotesque compromises between the Biblical subject-matter and its mythological expression is, that in any other way it would have been impossible to give the form of pure Latinity to the verse. The poet failed to comprehend that he was producing a masterpiece of _barocco_ mannerism, spoiling at once the style he sought to use and the theme he undertook to illustrate. It was enough for him to fit the Roman toga to his saints and Pharisees, and to tickle the taste of a learned audience by allusions that reminded them of Virgil. The same bathos was reached by Bembo when he invented the paraphrase of 'heavenly zephyr' for the Holy Ghost, and described the Venetian Council bidding a Pope _uti fidat diis immortalibus, quorum vices in terrâ gerit_. It is not the profanity of these phrases so much as their æsthetic emptiness, the discord between the meaning intended to be conveyed and the literary form, that strikes a modern critic.

When the same poets break out into honest Paganism, in the frank verses written by Bembo for Priapus, in Beccadelli's epigrams, or in the elegies of Acon and Iolas, we feel that they are more artistically justified. The following lines, for instance, from Vida's 'Poetics,' have a true ring and beauty of their own. He is addressing Virgil as a saint:--

Te colimus, tibi serta damus, tibi thura, tibi aras,
Et tibi rite sacrum semper dicemus honorem.

Or again--

Nos aspice præsens,
Pectoribusque tuos castis infunde calores
Adveniens pater, atque animis te te insere nostris.

There is no confusion here between the feeling and the language chosen to express it. The sentiment, if somewhat artificial and unreal, is at least adequate to the form.

I have entered at some length into the illustration of puristic Latinisms, because they seem to represent the culminating point of classic studies, in so far as these affected taste in general, and also because they are specially characteristic of the period of which I have now to treat. It was at Rome, among the great ecclesiastics, that these Pagan fashions principally flourished. Eminence of all kinds found a home with Leo X., assuming the purple of the prelate and the scarlet of the cardinal at his indulgent hands. The genius of the Renaissance seemed to have followed this first Medicean Pope from Florence. Though Leo was a man of merely pleasure-loving and receptive temperament, who left no lasting impress on his age, he knew at least how to appreciate ability, and found the height of his enjoyment in the arts and letters he enthusiastically patronised. This sybarite of intellectual and sensual luxury gave his name to what is called the golden age of Italian literature, chiefly because he attracted the best wits to Rome and received the flatteries of men whose work survived them.

History presents few spectacles more striking than that of Rome in the pontificate of Leo. While the Papacy has become a secular sovereignty, learning and arts have assumed the sacerdotal habit, and the boldest immoralities of a society comparable to that of the ancient Empire flourish in the petty Courts of ecclesiastical princes. The capital of Christendom is full of priests; but the priests are men of pleasure and the world--elegant Latinists and florid rhetoricians, raised to posts of eminence by reason of their brilliant gifts. We have seen already how the humanists made their way into the Roman Curia as writers and abbreviators, and how liberally Nicholas V. rewarded learning. Yet, however indispensable the scholars of the fifteenth century became, they rarely rose above the rank of Apostolic secretaries; while few of the professional humanists cared to take orders in the Church. They were satisfied with official emoluments and semi-secular benefices. All this was now altered. The most distinguished men of letters made the Church their profession. Sadoleto, Bembo, and Aleander, who began their career under Leo, received the hats of cardinals from Paul III. Paulus Jovius was consecrated Bishop of Nocera by Clement VII., and retired to Como in disgust because he failed to get the scarlet in 1549. Marcus Musurus, created Bishop of Malvasia, is said to have died of disappointment when he saw the same dignity beyond his reach. Vida, the Latin poet, obtained the see of Alba in Piedmont, and Giberti, the accomplished stylist, that of Verona, from Clement VII. All these men had made their mark at Leo's Court, who set the example, followed by his Medicean successor, of rewarding mundane talents and accomplishments with ecclesiastical distinctions. The question, seriously entertained, of admitting Raphael to the Sacred College proves to what extent the highest honours of the Church had come to be esteemed as prizes, and justifies to some extent Pietro Aretino's arrogant offer to sell his services to the Papacy in exchange for a cardinal's hat.

The biographies of these favourites of fortune offer strong points of similarity. Whether born of noble families, like Bembo, or raised from comparative obscurity, like Bibbiena, they early in life attached themselves to some distinguished prince,[374] or entered the service of a great ecclesiastic. Their literary talents, social accomplishments, successes with women, and diplomatic service at the centres of Italian politics brought them still further into notice. Thus Sadoleto's Latin poem on the Laocoon, Bibbiena's 'Calandra,' Inghirami's acting of the part of Phædra in Seneca's 'Hippolytus,' and Bembo's friendship with Lucrezia Borgia might be cited as turning-points in the early history of these illustrious prelates. Having thus acquired position by their personal gifts, they travelled to Rome in the suite of their respective patrons, and obtained office at the hands of Leo. Sadoleto and Bembo became his secretaries. Inghirami superintended the Vatican Library.[375] Bibbiena's versatile abilities were divided between the duties of State minister and master of the revels. As they had built their fortunes by the help of eminent protectors, they now in their turn took the rank of patrons. In addition to the Vatican, Rome displayed a multitude of petty Courts and minor circles. Each cardinal and each ambassador held a jurisdiction independent of the Pope, and not unfrequently in opposition to the ruling power. To found academies, to gather clever men around them, and to play the part of Mæcenas was the ambition of these subordinate princes. During the pontificate of Leo the Cardinals Riario, Giulio de' Medici, Bibbiena, Petrucci, Farnese, Alidosi, and Gonzaga, not to mention others, entertained their own following of flatterers and poets, who danced attendance at their levees, accompanied them in public, and earned a meagre pittance by compliments and dedications. Some of these priestly patrons affected the arts, others the sciences; others again, and these the majority, bestowed their favours upon literature. Ippolito de' Medici is said to have maintained a retinue of three hundred poets, among whom are mentioned the elegant Molza and the learned Valeriano. The fashion thus set by Leo and the Sacred College was followed by all the eminent men in Rome. The banker Agostino Chigi made himself a name not only by his patronage of painters, but also by the private Greek press founded in his house.[376] Baldassare Turini devoted himself to the arts of building and of decoration. Baldassare Castiglione, as ambassador from Mantua and Ferrara, and Alberto Pio, as prince of Carpi and ambassador from France, dispensed the hospitality of their palaces to scholars, among whom they held no inconsiderable rank on their own merits.

[Footnote 374: See Vol. I., _Age of the Despots_, p. 145.]

[Footnote 375: He held this post under Julius II.]

[Footnote 376: The first Greek book printed in Rome, an edition of Pindar by Cornelius Benignius, 1515, issued from Chigi's press under the superintendence of Zacharias Kalliergos of Crete. Concerning this printer see Didot, _Alde Manuce_, pp. 544-578.]

Libraries, collections of statues and of pictures, frescoes painted from mythological subjects, garden-houses planned upon the antique model, Latin inscriptions, busts of the emperors, baths and banquet chambers decorated in the manner of the Roman ruins--on such objects the wealth of the Church was being prodigally spent. Posterity has reason to deplore the non-appearance of a satirist in this Papal society, so curiously similar to that of Imperial Rome. Horace would, indeed, have found ample materials for humorous delineation, whether he had chosen to deride the needy clients leaving their lodgings before daybreak to crowd a prelate's antechamber, or the parasites on whom coarse practical jokes were played in the Pope's presence, or the flatterers who praised their master's mock virtues in hour-long declamations. Fouler vices than vanity, hypocrisy, and servility supplied fit subjects for invectives no less fiery than the second and the sixth of Juvenal. At Rome virtuous women had no place; but Phryne lived again in the person of Imperia, and dignitaries of the Church thought it no shame to parade their preference for Giton.[377] In the absence of a Horace or a Juvenal, we have to content ourselves with Bandello and other novelists, and with one precious epistle of Ariosto describing the difficulty of conducting business at the Papal Court except by way of backstairs influence and antechamber intrigue.

[Footnote 377: The epitaph of Bella Imperia proves that the title of Hetæra was thought honourable: 'Imperia, Cortisana Romana, quæ digna tanto nomine, raræ inter homines formæ specimen dedit. Vixit a. xxvi. d. xii. Obiit MDXI., die XV. Aug.' Berni's _Capitolo sopra un Garzone_ may be referred to for the second half of the sentence.]

To over-estimate the moral corruption of Rome at the beginning of the sixteenth century is almost impossible. To over-rate the real value of a literature that culminated in the subtleties of rhetoric and style is easy. Nor is it difficult to mistake, as many critics have done, the sunset of the fine arts for their meridian splendour. Yet, while we recognise the enervation of society in worse than heathen vices, and justly regard Rome as the hostelry of alien arts and letters rather than the mother city of great men, we cannot blind our eyes to the varied lights and colours of that Court, unique in modern history. The culture toward which Italian society had long been tending, was here completed. The stamp of universality had been given to the fine arts and to literature by the only potentate who at that moment claimed allegiance from united Christendom. As the eloquent historian of the town of Rome observes, 'the richest intellectual life here blossomed in a swamp of vices.' It was not the life of great poetry: that had perished long ago with Dante. It was not the life of genuine science: that was destined to be born with Galileo. It was not the life of comprehensive scholarship: that slept in the grave of Poliziano. It was not even the life of progressive art; for Raphael died in this age, and though Michael Angelo survived it, his genius had no successors. But it was the life of culture, rendering the rudest and most vicious sensitive to softening influences, and preparing for more powerful nations the possibilities of great achievements.

Amid political debility and moral corruption an ideal of refinement, adopted from antiquity, and assimilated to modern modes of living, had been formed. This was the most perfect bloom of the Renaissance, destined to survive the decay of humanism, and to be for subsequent civilisation what chivalry was for the Middle Ages. Through the continued effort of patricians and of scholars to acquire the tone of classic culture, something like antique urbanity had reappeared at Florence and in Rome; while several general tions [Transcriber's Note: likely 'generations'] devoted to polite studies had produced a race distinguished above all things for its intellectual delicacy. The effect of this æsthetic atmosphere upon visitors from the North was singularly varied. Luther, who came to see the City of the Saints, found in Rome the sink of all abominations, the very lair of Antichrist. The _comitas_ and the _facetiæ_ of the prelates were to him the object of unmitigated loathing. Erasmus, on the contrary, wrote from London that nothing but Lethe could efface his memory of that radiant city--its freedom of discourse, its light, its libraries, its honeyed converse of most learned scholars, its large style of life, and all those works of art that made of Rome the theatre of nations. The Italians themselves, lessoned by the tragedy of 1527, looked back with no less mingled feelings upon Leo's Rome. La Casa mentions the _nimia humanitatis suavitas_--the excess of sweetness in all that makes society humane--as a characteristic of the past age. That excessive sweetness of civility, the final product of the arts and scholarship of Italy, when diffused through Europe and tempered to the taste of sterner nationalities, became the politeness of France under Louis XIV., the _bel air_ of Queen Anne's courtiers.

The Roman Academy still continued to be active, meeting at the palaces of more than one great prelate. The gardens of Angelo Colocci, Leo's secretary, a friend of John Lascaris, and himself no inconsiderable stylist, formed its headquarters. Sometimes the poet Blosius Palladius received the associates in his villa by the Tiber; sometimes they enjoyed the hospitality of Egidius Canisius, General of the Augustine Order; at one time they sought the house of Sadoleto on the Quirinal; at another they feasted in the vineyard of John Goritz, the Corycius Senex. The festivals of this learned society, to judge by the descriptions of its members, were distinguished by antique simplicity and good taste, contrasting powerfully with the banquets of mere mundane prelates.[378] When Agostino Chigi entertained the Academicians in the Villa Farnesina, he chastened his magnificence to suit the spirit of their founder, Lætus, and omitted those displays of vulgar pomp that marked his wedding banquet.[379]

[Footnote 378: See Tiraboschi, vii. 1, lib. i. c. 2.]

[Footnote 379: See Vol. I., _Age of the Despots_, p. 342.]

The muster-roll of the Academy brings the most eminent wits of Rome before us. First and foremost stands Pietro Bembo, the man of letters, who, like Petrarch, Poggio, and Poliziano, may be chosen as the fullest representative of his own age of culture. His father, Bernardo Bembo, was a Venetian of noble birth and education. To his generous enthusiasm for Italian literature Ravenna owes the tomb of Dante. Pietro was born at Florence in 1470, and received his early education in that city. Therefore the Tuscans claim his much-praised purity of diction for their gift. He afterwards studied Greek at Messina under Constantine Lascaris, and learned philosophy from Pomponazzo at Padua. When his master's treatise on the 'Immortality of the Soul' was condemned by the Lateran Council, Bembo used his influence successfully in his behalf. Though he denied the demonstrability of the doctrine, and maintained that Aristotle gave it no support, Pomponazzo was only censured, instead of being burned like Bruno. This good fortune was due, however, less to his pupil's advocacy than to the nonchalance of Leo. Having completed his academical studies in 1498, Bembo joined his father at the brilliant Court of the Estensi. When Lucrezia Borgia entered Ferrara in 1502 she was still in the zenith of her beauty. Her father, Alexander, grew daily more powerful in Rome; while her brother held the central States of Italy within his grasp. The greatness of the Borgias reflected honour on the bride of Alfonso d'Este; and though the princes of Ferrara at first received her with reluctance, they were soon won over by her grace. Between the princess and the courtly scholar a friendship speedily sprang up, which strengthened with years and was maintained by correspondence at a distance. To Lucrezia Bembo dedicated 'Gli Asolani,' a dialogue in the Italian tongue upon Platonic love,[380] by far the freest and most genial of his writings. The collection of his Latin poems contains an epigram upon a golden serpent clasped above her wrist, and an elegy in which he praises her singing, dancing, playing, and recitation:--

Quicquid agis, quicquid loqueris, delectat: et omnes
Præcedunt Charites, subsequiturque decor.

[Footnote 380: Written 1504. First printed by Aldo, 1505.]

This liaison, famous in the annals of Italian literature, gave Bembo a distinguished place in the great world. A touching memento of it--Lucrezia's letters and a tress of her long yellow hair--is still preserved at Milan in the Ambrosian Library.

From Ferrara Bembo passed to Urbino in 1506, where Guidobaldo da Montefeltre had gathered round him the brilliant group described in the 'Cortegiano.' The climax of that treatise, our most precious source of information on Court life in Italy, makes it clear that Bembo played the first part in a circle distinguished above all others at that time for refinement and wit. Many cities might boast of a larger and more splendid concourse of noble visitors; but none competed with Urbino for the polish of its manners and the breeding of its courtiers. In his dialogue in praise of Guidobaldo, Bembo paid a magnificent tribute to the prince from whose society he learned so much, and in whose service he remained till the Duke's death.[381] Giuliano de' Medici, with whom he lived on terms of intimacy at Urbino, took him to Rome in 1512. The reign of Leo was about to shed new lustre on the Medicean exiles. His victorious exclamation to his brother,'_Godiamoci il Papato poichè Dio ce l'ha dato_,' had a ring of promise in it for their numerous friends and clients. Even without the recommendation of Giuliano, it is not likely that Leo would have overlooked a man so wholly after his own heart as Bembo. The qualities he most admired--smooth manners, a handsome person, wit in conversation, and thorough mastery of Latin style, without pretension to deep learning or much earnestness of purpose--were incarnate in the courtly Venetian. Bembo was precisely the man to make Leo's life agreeable by flattering his superficial tastes and subordinating the faculties of a highly cultivated mind to frivolous, if intellectual, amusements. The churchman who warned Sadoleto against spoiling his style by study of the Bible, the prosaist who passed his compositions through sixteen portfolios, revising them at each remove, the versifier who penned a hymn to S. Stephen and a monologue for Priapus with equal elegance, was cast in the same mould as the pleasure-loving Pontiff. For eight years he lived at Rome, honoured by the Medici and loved by all who knew him. His duties as secretary to Leo, shared by his old friend and fellow-student Sadoleto, were not onerous; while the society of the capital afforded opportunity for the display of his most brilliant gifts. In 1520, wearied by nearly thirty years of continual Court life, and broken down in health by severe sickness, Bembo retired to Padua. The collection of a library and museum, horticulture, correspondence, and the cultivation of his studied Ciceronian style now occupied his leisure through nineteen most disastrous years for Italy. The learned courtiers of that age liked thus to play the Roman in their villas, quoting Horace and Virgil on the charms of rustic life, and fancying they caught the spirit of Cincinnatus while they strolled about the farm. Bembo's Paduan retreat became the rendezvous of all the ablest men in Italy, the centre of a fluctuating society of highest culture. Paul III. recalled him to Rome, and made him cardinal in 1539. When he died in 1547 he was buried not far from Leo in the Church of the Minerva. A fair slab of marble marks his grave.

[Footnote 381: 'De Guido Ubaldo Feretrio deque Elisabetha Gonzaga Urbini Ducibus.']

Bembo succeeded Poliziano in the dictatorship of Italian letters. Like Poliziano, he was both a scholar and a writer of Italian; but he was far from possessing the comprehensive understanding or the genius of his predecessor. Of all the 'apes of Cicero' scoffed at by Erasmus, he stood first and foremost. His exclusive devotion to one favourite author made his Latin stiff and mannered. Tuscan critics again have complained that his Italian style lacks nerve and idiom. He wrote like an alien, not one to the manner born. In his dread of not writing correctly, he ended by expressing tame thoughts with frigid formality. Even a foreigner can see that he used Italian, as he used Latin, without yielding to natural impulse, and with the constant effort to attain a fixed ideal. The mark of the file may be observed on every period. Raciness and spontaneity are words that have no meaning when applied to him. The decadence of Italian prose composition into laboured mannerism and meticulous propriety should be traced in a great measure to his influence. Yet Bembo deserves credit for having braved the opinion of the learned by his cultivation of the vulgar tongue; and on this point some verses from a Latin poem to Ercole Strozzi deserve quotation in a note.[382]

[Footnote 382:

Nam pol quâ proavusque avusque linguâ
Sunt olim meus et tuus loquuti,
Nostræ quâque loquuntur et sorores
Et matertera nunc et ipsa mater,
Nos nescire loqui magis pudendum est,
Qui Graiæ damus et damus Latinæ
Studi tempora duplicemque curam,
Quam Graiâ simul et simul Latinâ.
Hac uti ut valeas tibi videndum est,
Ne dum marmoreas remotâ in orâ
Sumtu construis et labore villas,
Domi te calamo tegas palustri.

_Carmina Quinque Illustrium Poetarum_, p. 25.]

Jacopo Sadoleto's career was not dissimilar to that of his friend Bembo, though the two men offer many points of difference in character and turn of mind. Born at Modena in 1477, he studied Latin at Ferrara, and Greek at Rome, where he settled in the reign of Alexander VI. His copy of hexameters on the newly-discovered statue of Laocoon made him famous. Frigid and laboured as these verses may appear to us, who read them like a prize exercise, they had the merit of originality when first produced. Leo made the poet his secretary and Bishop of Carpentras. Sadoleto passed a good portion of his life in the duties of his see, composing moral treatises, annotating the Psalms, and publishing a 'Commentary on the Epistle to the Romans.'[383] Though strongly tinctured with Ciceronian purism, his taste was more austere than Bembo's. Nature had given him an intellect adapted to grave studies, sincerity of purpose, and true piety. Living in the dawn of the Reformation, Sadoleto was deeply conscious of the perils of the Church; nor did he escape the suspicion of sharing the new heresy.[384] His celebrated letter to Clement VII., after the sack of Rome in 1527, shows that he viewed this disaster as a punishment inflicted on the godless capital of Christendom. In 1536 Paul III. recalled him to Rome, and made him cardinal. He died in 1547, and was buried in S. Pietro in Vincoli. Sadoleto's correspondence may be reckoned among the most valuable materials for the literary annals of this period.

[Footnote 383: His most famous essays bore these titles: _De Liberis Instituendis_ and _De Laudibus Philosophiæ_.]

[Footnote 384: His _Commentary on the Romans_ was placed upon the Index.]

Next to Sadoleto a place must be found for the grave and studious Egidio Canisio. He was born at Viterbo in 1470, and was therefore an exact contemporary of Bembo. His powers of Latin oratory gained him the fame of a great speaker, and the address with which he opened the Lateran Council in 1512 was committed to the press in that year. Egidius was already General of the Augustine Order. Five years later he received the red hat of a cardinal, and in 1518 he represented the Holy See as Legate at the Court of Spain. He died in 1532, leaving a vast mass of miscellaneous works on theology, philosophy, Biblical criticism, and universal history. Few of these have been printed. It is said that, besides Greek and Latin, he was a master of Hebrew and Chaldee, Turkish, Persian, and Arabic.

A more brilliant figure is presented by the witty but unscrupulous historian Paulus Jovius. He was born at Como in 1483, and came at the age of thirty-three to Rome, with the beginning of his comprehensive History already written.[385] Leo, who delighted in listening to recitations of new literary works, declared that nothing had been penned more perfect since the days of Livy. This high praise induced Jovius to fix his residence at Rome, where Clement VII. made him Bishop of Nocera in 1528. After spending twenty-one years in the expectation, continually frustrated, of being received in the Sacred College, he retired to Como, and died at Florence in 1552. Jovius was the cleverest of all the Latinists produced by the Italians. His style is fluent, sparkling with anecdote, highly picturesque in its descriptive passages, and adorned by characteristic details. In addition to the histories, he produced a series of biographies of great and varied value, some of which are libels, others panegyrics, while all are marked by acute observation and mastery of the matter in hand. He was wont to say that he could use a golden or a silver pen at will: the golden was exercised upon the Life of Leo; the silver, dipped in ironic gall, upon the Life of Hadrian. The sketches of eminent men, known by the name of 'Elogia,' were composed in illustration of a picture gallery of portraits collected in his villa. They include not only Italians, but Greeks, Germans, French and English worthies, dead and living notabilities of every kind.[386] If Brantôme had chosen Latin instead of French, he would have made a book not altogether unlike this of Jovius. The versatility of the author was further illustrated by a Latin treatise on Roman fishes, and by an Italian essay on mottoes and devices.[387]

[Footnote 385: Like the History of Guicciardini, it opens with the year 1494. It is carried down to 1547. A portion of the first decade was lost in the sack of Rome, and never rewritten by the author. Printed at Florence, 1550.]

[Footnote 386: _Elogia Virorum literis illustrium, quotquot vel nostrâ, vel avorum memoriâ vixere_, and _Elogia Virorum bellicâ virtute illustrium_, Basel, 1557.]

[Footnote 387: _De Piscibus Romanis_, Rome, 1524. _Ragionamento sopra i Motti e Disegni d'Arme e d'Amore._]

Among the celebrities of the Roman Academy a place apart must be reserved for Baldassare Castiglione; for though his biography belongs to the political even more than to the literary annals of the period, few men represent the age of Leo in its culture with more dignity and grace combined. He was born in 1478 at Casatico, in the Duchy of Mantua; his father's family held the county of Castiglione, and his mother was a Gonzaga. In his youth he received an education framed upon the system set in vogue by Vittorino and Guarino, and became the living illustration of those varied accomplishments which he described in the 'Cortegiano.' His scholarship was sound and elegant; as a writer of Latin verse he distinguished himself among the best men of his generation. Sensitive to the beauty of the arts, he proved an excellent critic of modern painting and of antique sculpture, and assisted Raphael in the composition of his famous letter to Leo on the exploration of old Rome. At the same time he did not neglect the athletic exercises which formed an indispensable branch of an Italian nobleman's training. Cultivated at all points, he early devoted his abilities to the service of princes; for at this period in Italy there was no sphere for such a character outside the Courts. After spending some time at Milan and Naples, Castiglione removed to Rome, where Julius II. discerned the use that might be made of him in furthering the interests of his nephew Francesco Maria della Rovere. Federigo da Montefeltre, Duke of Urbino, had died in 1482, leaving his son Guidobaldo in possession of his fiefs and titles; but it was known that this prince could have no heirs. In him the male line of the Montefeltri ended. His sister Giovanna had been married to Giovanni della Rovere, a brother of the Pope, and Julius hoped that their son Francesco Maria might be declared successor to the Duchy of Urbino. Castiglione therefore attached himself to the person of Guidobaldo, with the special purpose of making himself necessary to the princes of Urbino and furthering the claims of Francesco, then a boy of about fifteen. Of his residence at Urbino, and of the polished splendour of Guidobaldo's Court, he has left an ever-memorable record in his 'Cortegiano,' that mirror of gentle breeding for the sixteenth century in Europe. Guidobaldo received the Count of Castiglione with marked favour, made him captain of fifty men at arms, and employed him in several offices of trust. Not the least important of these was the mission to England, undertaken in 1506 by Castiglione as Guidobaldo's proxy for receiving from Henry VII. the investiture of the Garter. After the death of Guidobaldo, Francesco Maria della Rovere was proclaimed Duke of Urbino, and Castiglione continued to enjoy his confidence until the year 1517, when Leo succeeded in placing his nephew Lorenzo de' Medici upon the Ducal throne.

Castiglione was now deprived of what had become the necessity of his life, a post of honour in the Court of a reigning sovereign. He therefore transferred his allegiance to his natural lord, the Marquis of Mantua, who appointed him ambassador at Rome. The first and most brilliant period of the courtier's life was passed at Urbino; the second, less fruitful in literary achievements, embraced his residence among the wits of Leo's circle. At Rome Castiglione adapted himself to the customs of the papal society, penning Latin elegiacs, consorting with artists, and exercising the pleasant patronage of a refined Mæcenas. His friendship with Raphael is not the least interesting episode in this chapter of his biography. Substantial records of it still remain in the epitaph composed by the courtly scholar on the painter, and in Castiglione's portrait now preserved in the Louvre collection. That picture represents the very model of an Italian nobleman as culture and Court life had made him--tranquil, with grave open eyes, and a mouth as well suited for urbane discourse as gentle merriment. The owner of this face was not born to lead armies or to control unruly multitudes, but to pass his time in the _loggie_ of princes--self-contained and qualified to win favour without the sacrifice of personal dignity. It forms a strong contrast to earlier and later portraits--to that of Sigismondo Pandolfo Malatesta, for example, and to the Spanish grandees of the next century. Castiglione was still in Rome during the pontificate of Clement VII., who, recognizing his great ability as a diplomatist, sent him to Charles V. At Madrid the Pope's nuncio was unable to avert the disaster of 1527, and Castiglione had the bitter mortification of hearing at a distance how the Rome he knew and loved so well, had been ravaged by the brigands of Germany and Spain. It is clear, however, from the diplomatic correspondence of that memorable moment, and from the letter addressed by Clement to Castiglione's mother in 1529, that he never lost the confidence of his master; in spite of his failure to negotiate between them, he was respected alike by the Pope and the Emperor. He died at Toledo two years after the sack of Rome, worn out, it is said, by disappointment and regret. Not only in his book of the 'Courtier,' but also in his life, Castiglione illustrated the best qualities of an Italian gentleman, moulded by the political and social conditions of the sixteenth century into a refined scholar and a courtly diplomatist.

Of Alberto Pio, whose life in some respects may be compared with Castiglione's, I have had occasion to speak in the last chapter. His first cousin, Gian Francesco Pico della Mirandola, demands more than passing notice. By no prince of that troubled period were the cruel vicissitudes of Italian politics more painfully experienced. Few of the scholars could boast of wider learning and a nobler spirit. He was born in 1470, and succeeded his father, Galeotto, in the lordship of Mirandola. In 1502 his brother Lodovico expelled him from his capital. Julius II. restored him. After being dispossessed a second time by Trivulzi, general of the French forces, he was once more reinstated, but only for a brief period. His nephew, Galeazzo, murdered him in 1533 before the crucifix, together with his heir, Alberto. In the intervals of his unquiet and unhappy life, Gian Francesco Pico devoted himself to studies not unlike those of his more famous uncle.[388] Early in his youth he had conceived the strongest admiration for Savonarola; and the work by which he is best known to posterity is a Life of his great master. Savonarola's principles continued to rule his thought and conduct through life. During the pontificate of Leo he composed a long address to the Lateran Council upon the reformation of the Church,[389] and dared to entertain the friendship of Reuchlin and Willibad Pirkheimer. His residence in Rome, and the dedication of his treatise on 'Divine Love' to Leo, justify our ranking him with the Roman scholars.

[Footnote 388: The titles of his philosophical works--_De Studio divinæ et humanæ philosophiæ_, _De amore Divino_, _Examen vanitatis doctrinæ gentium et veritatis Christianæ disciplinæ_, _De rerum prænotione_--show how closely he followed in the footsteps of Giovanni Pico.]

[Footnote 389: _Joannis Francisci Pici Mirandolæ et Concordiæ Comitis Oratio ad Leon X. et Concilium Lateranense de reformandis Ecclesiæ moribus._]

If Gian Francesco Pico and Sadoleto bring us close upon the threshold of the German Reformation, we cross it in the company of Aleander. Jerome Aleander was born at Motta, in the Marches of Treviso, in the year 1480. His studies, more comprehensive than those of the stylists, included theology, philosophy, and science, together with the Oriental languages, in addition to the indispensable Greek and Latin culture. Before he reached the age of thirty he travelled to Paris, and professed Hebrew and the humanities at the University. French scholarship may be said to date from the impulse given to these subjects by Aleander, who rose to such fame that he was made Rector of the University. After leaving Paris, he spent some time in Germany, and came first to Rome in 1516 in the train of Erard van der Mark, Bishop of Lüttich. Here Leo appointed him librarian of the Vatican. The rest of Aleander's life was spent in the service of the Church. Despatched as _nuntius_ to Germany by Leo in 1520, he vainly attempted, as all students of the Reformation know, to quench the fire of Luther's kindling. When he returned to Italy, Clement VII. gave him the archbishopric of Brindisi, and Paul III. raised him to the scarlet in 1538. He died in 1542, leaving in France the memory of his unrivalled learning, in Germany the fame of an intolerant persecutor, in Italy the reputation of a stanch though unsuccessful champion of the Church.

Aleander's three predecessors in the Vatican Library--Tommaso Inghirami of Siena, Filippo Beroaldo of Bologna, and Zanobio Acciaiuoli of Florence--made their mark in Roman society by erudition rather than by authorship.[390] Inghirami's eloquence won the admiration of contemporaries, who called him the second Cicero; as a writer he had no celebrity.[391] A fortunate find of MSS. at Bobbio earned for him the post of Vatican librarian. Leo, like all the members of the Medicean family, was bent upon the rediscovery of buried classics. But the world had been already ransacked, and, though he employed agents for this purpose in the East as well as Europe, only one great treasure came to light. Gian Angelo Arcimboldi disinterred the first five books of Tacitus's 'Annals' at Corvey, and sold them to the Pope for 500 golden florins. Filippo Beroaldo, who was entrusted with the task of editing this precious codex, received the librarianship as his reward. Leo's privilege granted to the printers of Beroaldo's edition expresses in truly noble language the highest ideal of humanism, and reflects real credit on his patronage of letters.[392] Of Acciaiuoli there is not much to say. His knowledge of Hebrew and the classic languages gained for him a reputation for singular learning. In his capacity as librarian he began to catalogue the documents of the 'Secreta Bibliotheca,' founded by Sixtus IV. It is worthy of notice that Acciaiuoli is the only Florentine whom we have had occasion to mention among the learned courtiers of Leo. Florence, always foremost in the van of culture, had shaken off at this period the traditions of strict humanism. Her greatest writers, Guicciardini, Machiavelli, Varchi, Segni, and Giannotti, exchanged the Latin language for their mother speech, and sought for honour in fields removed from verbal scholarship or Ciceronian niceties of phrase.

[Footnote 390: Inghirami, made librarian 1510, died 1516. Beroaldo held the office two years, and died 1518. Acciaiuoli held it only for a few months. Aleander succeeded him in 1519.]

[Footnote 391: '_Linguâ verius quam calamo celebrem ... dictus sui seculi Cicero_,' says Erasmus. '_Affluentissimum eloquentiæ flumen_' is Valeriano's phrase.]

[Footnote 392: See Burckhardt, p. 174. Roscoe's _Life of Leo X._ vol. i. p. 357.]

The Roman Sapienza never held the same rank as the Universities of Padua or Bologna; nor could it compete as an academy of culture with the High Schools of Florence and Ferrara. The Popes of the Renaissance, occupied with nepotism and political aggrandisement, had but small care for the interests of education. Nor did Rome, always overcrowded by foreigners, require the students who brought custom and prestige to minor cities.[393] Leo X. resolved, as far as he was able, to raise the studies of his capital from the decadence into which they had fallen. In 1513 he reformed the statutes of the University, increased the appointments of the professors, and founded several new chairs. Yet, though scholars no less respectable than Janus Parrhasius of Cosenza, Tommaso Inghirami, and Filippo Beroaldo were numbered among the teachers, the Sapienza failed to take firm root in Rome:--the most flourishing school of humanism at this period was Ferrara, governed by Leoniceno, Celio Calcagnini, and Lilius Gyraldus. To Hellenistic studies, just now upon the point of decadence in Italy, Leo gave encouragement by the establishment of a Greek press, and by the foundation of the Gymnasium Caballini Montis, where Joannes Lascaris and Marcus Musurus lectured. Musurus we have already learned to know as the inmate of Alberto Pio's palace at Carpi, and as Aldo's most efficient helper. Soon after his elevation to the Papacy, Leo invited the venerable Lascaris to Rome; but he did not long retain the services of so illustrious a Hellenist. Lascaris, who had taught Greek in Paris during the reign of Charles VIII., and who had long served Louis XII. as ambassador at Venice, was induced by Francis I. to superintend the library at Fontainebleau in 1518. He once more visited Rome during the pontificate of Clement, and died there at the age of ninety--the last of the Greek exiles who transplanted Hellas into Latium. Between the visit of Manuel Chrysoloras in 1398 and the death of John Lascaris in 1535 more than a century had elapsed, in the course of which Italy,[394] after acquiring Greek literature and committing its chief treasures to the press, had seen her learning pass beyond the Alps and flourish with new vigour on a northern soil. The epitaph composed by Lascaris for his own tomb in Santa Agata touchingly expresses the grief of an exile for his country's servitude, together with the gratitude of one who found a new home in an alien land:--

[Greek: Laskaris allodapê gaiê enikattheto, gaiên
outi liên xeinên ô xene memphomenos.
eureto meilichiên, all' achthetai eiper Achaiois
oud' eti choun cheuei patris eleutherion].

[Footnote 393: See above, p. 86.]

[Footnote 394: Cf. Giovio, close of the _Elogia_.]

Any account of erudite society in Rome would be incomplete without some notice of its antiquaries. While the Pope and his cardinals were bent on collecting statues, coins, vases, and inscriptions, it was natural that the scholars should devote themselves to their illustration. Much of this industry was carried on by the academicians, who discussed difficult readings and exchanged opinions at their meetings. Treatises on Roman antiquities, topographical essays, and commentaries on Vitruvius and Frontinus abounded. Amid a multitude of minor works it will be enough to mention the cyclopædias of Andrea Fulvio and Bartolommeo Marliano, the comprehensive collection of inscriptions by Mazochi, and Valeriano's dissertation on the hieroglyphics of the Roman obelisks.[395] The greater number of these compositions were published by Jacopo Mazochi, bookseller to the Roman Academy, and himself no mean scholar. Together with his coadjutor, Francesco Albertini, he undertook what he describes as 'the Herculean labour' of saving inscribed tablets from the lime-kiln and the mason's hammer. Built into the walls of houses, embedded in church pavements, mingled with the rubbish of the Forum, unearthed by the mattock or the plough in vineyard and cornfield, these records of old history encumbered Rome. To decipher them as best he could, arrange them by the regions where they had been found, and incorporate his own readings with the previous collections of Ciriaco and Fra Giocondo,[396] was the object of Mazochi. His work formed the nucleus of the ponderous collection known as the _Corpus Inscriptionum_.

[Footnote 395: _Andreas Fulvius Sabinus Antiquarius, Antiquitates Urbis Romæ_, 1527. _Bartholomæus Marlianus, Eques D. Petri, Urbis Romæ Topographia_, 1534. _Jacobus Mazochius, Epigrammata antiquæ urbis Romæ_, 1521. _Johannis Pierii Valeriani Hieroglyphica seu de Sacris Ægyptiorum_, &c., in his collected works, Ven. 1604.]

[Footnote 396: The architect of Verona who first edited Vitruvius, and was employed by Lorenzo de' Medici in collecting inscriptions for him at Rome.]