Chapter V: General Disintegration of Belief (8)

[1170] _Ann. Foroliv._ 235-238. Filippo Villani, _Vite._ Macchiavelli, _Stor. Fior._ l. i. When constellations which augured victory appeared, Bonatto ascended with his book and astrolabe to the tower of San Mercuriale above the Piazza, and when the right moment came gave the signal for the great bell to be rung. Yet it was admitted that he was often wide of the mark, and foresaw neither his own death nor the fate of Montefeltro. Not far from Cesena he was killed by robbers, on his way back to Forli from Paris and from Italian universities where he had been lecturing. As a weather prophet he was once overmatched and made game of by a countryman.

[1171] Matteo Villani, xi. 3; see above, p. 508.

[1172] Jovian. Pontan. _De Fortitudine_, l. i. See p. 511 note 1, for the honourable exception made by the first Sforza.

[1173] Paul. Jov. _Elog._ sub v. Livianus, p. 219.

[1174] Who tells it us himself. Benedictus, in Eccard, ii. col. 1617.

[1175] In this sense we must understand the words of Jac. Nardi, _Vita d’Ant. Giacomini_, p. 65. The same pictures were common on clothes and household utensils. At the reception of Lucrezia Borgia in Ferrara, the mule of the Duchess of Urbino wore trappings of black velvet with astrological figures in gold. _Arch. Stor. Append._ ii. p. 305.

[1176] Æn. Sylvius, in the passage quoted above p. 508; comp. _Opp._ 481.

[1177] Azario, in Corio, fol. 258.

[1178] Considerations of this kind probably influenced the Turkish astrologers who, after the battle of Nicopolis, advised the Sultan Bajazet I. to consent to the ransom of John of Burgundy, since ‘for his sake much Christian blood would be shed.’ It was not difficult to foresee the further course of the French civil war. _Magn. Chron. Belgicum_, p. 358. _Juvénal des Ursins_, ad. a. 1396.

[1179] Benedictus, in Eccard, ii. col. 1579. It was said of King Ferrante in 1493 that he would lose his throne ‘sine cruore sed sola fama’--which actually happened.

[1180] Comp. Steinschneider, _Apokalypsen mit polemischer Tendenz_, D. M. G. Z. xxviii. 627 sqq. xxix. 261.

[1181] Bapt. Mantuan. _De Patientia_, l. iii. cap. 12.

[1182] Giov. Villani, x. 39, 40. Other reasons also existed, e.g. the jealousy of his colleagues. Bonatto had taught the same, and had explained the miracle of Divine Love in St. Francis as the effect of the planet Mars. Comp. Jo. Picus, _Adv. Astrol._ ii. 5.

[1183] They were painted by Miretto at the beginning of the fifteenth century. Acc. to Scardeonius they were destined ‘ad indicandum nascentium naturas per gradus et numeros’--a more popular way of teaching than we can now well imagine. It was astrology ‘à la portèe de tout le monde.’

[1184] He says (_Orationes_, fol. 35, ‘In Nuptias’) of astrology: ‘haec efficit ut homines parum a Diis distare videantur’! Another enthusiast of the same time is Jo. Garzonius, _De Dignitate Urbis Bononiae_, in Murat. xxi. col. 1163.

[1185] Petrarca, _Epp. Seniles_, iii. 1 (p. 765) and elsewhere. The letter in question was written to Boccaccio. On Petrarch’s polemic against the astrologers, see Geiger. _Petr._ 87-91 and 267, note 11.

[1186] Franco Sacchetti (nov. 151) ridicules their claims to wisdom.

[1187] Gio. Villani, iii. x. 39. Elsewhere he appears as a devout believer in astrology, x. 120, xii. 40.

[1188] In the passage xi. 3.

[1189] Gio. Villani, xi. 2, xii. 58.

[1190] The author of the _Annales Placentini_ (in Murat. xx. col. 931), the same Alberto di Ripalta mentioned at p. 241, took part in this controversy. The passage is in other respects remarkable, since it contains the popular opinion with regard to the nine known comets, their colour, origin, and significance. Comp. Gio. Villani, xi. 67. He speaks of a comet as the herald of great and generally disastrous events.

[1191] Paul. Jov. _Vita Leonis_ xx. l. iii. where it appears that Leo himself was a believer at least in premonitions and the like, see above p. 509.

[1192] Jo. Picus Mirand. _Adversus Astrologos_, libri xii.

[1193] Acc. to Paul, Jov. _Elog. Lit._ sub tit. Jo. Picus, the result he achieved was ‘ut subtilium disciplinarum professores a scribendo deterruisse videatur.’

[1194] _De Rebus Caelestibus_, libri xiv. (_Opp._ iii. 1963-2591). In the twelfth book, dedicated to Paolo Cortese, he will not admit the latter’s refutation of astrology. Ægidius, _Opp._ ii. 1455-1514. Pontano had dedicated his little work _De Luna_ (_Opp._ iii. 2592) to the same hermit Egidio (of Viterbo?)

[1195] For the latter passage, see p. 1486. The difference between Pontano and Pico is thus put by Franc. Pudericus, one of the interlocutors in the dialogue (p. 1496): ‘Pontanus non ut Johannes Picus in disciplinam ipsam armis equisque, quod dicitur, irrumpit, cum illam tueatur, ut cognitu maxime dignam ac pene divinam, sed astrologos quosdam, ut parum cautos minimeque prudentes insectetur et rideat.’

[1196] In S. Maria del Popolo at Rome. The angels remind us of Dante’s theory at the beginning of the _Convito_.

[1197] This was the case with Antonio Galateo who, in a letter to Ferdinand the Catholic (Mai, _Spicileg. Rom._ vol. viii. p. 226, ad a. 1510), disclaims astrology with violence, and in another letter to the Count of Potenza (_ibid._ p. 539) infers from the stars that the Turks would attack Rhodes the same year.

[1198] _Ricordi_, l. c. n. 57.

[1199] Many instances of such superstitions in the case of the last Visconti are mentioned by Decembrio (Murat. xx. col. 1016 sqq.). Odaxius says in his speech at the burial of Guidobaldo (_Bembi Opera_, i. 598 sqq.), that the gods had announced his approaching death by thunderbolts, earthquakes, and other signs and wonders.

[1200] Varchi, _Stor. Fior._ l. iv. (p. 174); prophecies and premonitions were then as rife in Florence as at Jerusalem during the siege. Comp. _ibid._ iii. 143, 195; iv. 43, 177.

[1201] Matarazzo, _Archiv. Stor._ xvi. ii. p. 208.

[1202] Prato, _Arch. Stor._ iii. 324, for the year 1514.

[1203] For the Madonna dell’Arbore in the Cathedral at Milan, and what she did in 1515, see Prato, l. c. p. 327. He also records the discovery of a dead dragon as thick as a horse in the excavations for a mortuary chapel near S. Nazaro. The head was taken to the Palace of the Triulzi for whom the chapel was built.

[1204] ‘Et fuit mirabile quod illico pluvia cessavit.’ _Diar. Parmense_ in Murat. xxii. col. 280. The author shares the popular hatred of the usurers. Comp. col. 371.

[1205] _Conjurationis Pactianae Commentarius_, in the appendices to Roscoe’s _Lorenzo_. Politian was in general an opponent of astrology. The saints were naturally able to cause the rain to cease. Comp. Æneas Sylvius, in his life of Bernadino da Siena (_De Vir. Ill._ p. 25): ‘jussit in virtute Jesu nubem abire, quo facto solutis absque pluvia nubibus, prior serenitas rediit’.

[1206] _Poggi Facetiae_, fol. 174. Æn. Sylvius (_De Europa_, c. 53, 54, _Opera_, pp. 451, 455) mentions prodigies which may have really happened, such as combats between animals and strange appearances in the sky, and mentions them chiefly as curiosities, even when adding the results attributed to them. Similarly Antonio Ferrari (il Galateo), _De Situ Iapygiae_, p. 121, with the explanation: ‘Et hae, ut puto, species erant earum rerum quæ longe aberant atque ab eo loco in quo species visae sunt minime poterant.’

[1207] _Poggi Facetiae_, fol. 160. Comp. Pausanias, ix. 20.

[1208] Varchi, iii 195. Two suspected persons decided on flight in 1529, because they opened the Æneid at book iii. 44. Comp. Rabelais, _Pantagruel_, iii. 10.

[1209] The imaginations of the scholars, such as the ‘splendor’ and the ‘spiritus’ of Cardanus, and the ‘dæmon familiaris’ of his father, may be taken for what they are worth. Comp. Cardanus, _De Propria Vita_, cap. 4, 38, 47. He was himself an opponent of magic; cap. 39. For the prodigies and ghosts he met with, see cap. 37, 41. For the terror of ghosts felt by the last Visconti, see Decembrio, in Murat. xx. col. 1016.

[1210] ‘Molte fiate i morti guastano le creature.’ Bandello, ii. nov. 1. We read (Galateo, p. 177) that the ‘animæ’ of wicked men rise from the grave, appear to their friends and acquaintances, ‘animalibus vexi, pueros sugere ac necare, deinde in sepulcra reverti.’

[1211] Galateo, l. c. We also read (p. 119) of the ‘Fata Morgana’ and other similar appearances.

[1212] Bandello, iii. nov. 20. It is true that the ghost was only a lover wishing to frighten the occupier of the palace, who was also the husband of the beloved lady. The lover and his accomplices dressed themselves up as devils; one of them, who could imitate the cry of different animals, had been sent for from a distance.

[1213] Graziani, _Arch. Stor._ xvi. i. p. 640, ad a. 1467. The guardian died of fright.

[1214] _Balth. Castilionii Carmina_; Prosopopeja Lud. Pici.

[1215] Alexandri ab Alexandro, _Dierum Genialium_, libri vi. (Colon. 1539), is an authority of the first rank for these subjects, the more so as the author, a friend of Pontanus and a member of his academy, asserts that what he records either happened to himself, or was communicated to him by thoroughly trustworthy witnesses. Lib. vi. cap. 19: two evil men and a monk are attacked by devils, whom they recognise by the shape of their feet, and put to flight, partly by force and partly by the sign of the cross. Lib. vi. cap. 21: A servant, cast into prison by a cruel prince on account of a small offence, calls upon the devil, is miraculously brought out of the prison and back again, visits meanwhile the nether world, shows the prince his hand scorched by the flames of Hell, tells him on behalf of a departed spirit certain secrets which had been communicated to the latter, exhorts him to lay aside his cruelty, and dies soon after from the effects of the fright. Lib. ii. c. 19, iii. 15, v. 23: Ghosts of departed friends, of St. Cataldus, and of unknown beings in Rome, Arezzo and Naples. Lib. ii. 22, iii. 8: Appearances of mermen and mermaids at Naples, in Spain, and in the Peloponnesus; in the latter case guaranteed by Theodore Gaza and George of Trebizond.

[1216] Gio. Villani, xi. 2. He had it from the Abbot of Vallombrosa, to whom the hermit had communicated it.

[1217] Another view of the Dæmons was given by Gemisthos Pletho, whose great philosophical work οἱ νὁμοι, of which only fragments are now left (ed. Alexander, Paris, 1858), was probably known more fully to the Italians of the fifteenth century, either by means of copies or of tradition, and exercised undoubtedly a great influence on the philosophical, political, and religious culture of the time. According to him the dæmons, who belong to the third order of the gods, are preserved from all error, and are capable of following in the steps of the gods who stand above them; they are spirits who bring to men the good things ‘which come down from Zeus through the other gods in order; they purify and watch over man, they raise and strengthen his heart.’ Comp. Fritz Schultze, _Gesch. der Philosophie der Renaissance_, Jena, 1874.

[1218] Yet but little remained of the wonders attributed to her. For probably the last metamorphosis of a man into an ass, in the eleventh century under Leo IX., see Giul. Malmesbur. ii. 171.

[1219] This was probably the case with the possessed woman, who in 1513 at Ferrara and elsewhere was consulted by distinguished Lombards as to future events. Her name was Rodogine. See Rabelais, _Pantagruel_, iv. 58.

[1220] Jovian. Pontan. Antonius.

[1221] How widespread the belief in witches then was, is shown by the fact that in 1483 Politian gave a ‘praelectio’ ‘in priora Aristotelis Analytica cui titulus Lamia’ (Italian trans. by Isidore del Lungo, Flor. 1864) Comp. Reumont, _Lorenzo_, ii. 75-77. Fiesole, according to this, was, in a certain sense, a witches’ nest.

[1222] Graziani, _Arch. Stor._ xvi. i. p. 565, ad a. 1445, speaking of a witch at Nocera, who only offered half the sum, and was accordingly burnt. The law was aimed at such persons as ‘facciono le fature overo venefitie overo encantatione d’ommunde spirite a nuocere,’ l. c. note 1, 2.

[1223] Lib. i. ep. 46, _Opera_, p. 531 sqq. For ‘umbra’ p. 552 read ‘Umbria,’ and for ‘lacum’ read ‘locum.’

[1224] He calls him later on: ‘Medicus Ducis Saxoniæ, homo tum dives tum potens.’

[1225] In the fourteenth century there existed a kind of hell-gate near Ansedonia in Tuscany. It was a cave, with footprints of men and animals in the sand, which whenever they were effaced, reappeared the next day. Uberti. _Il Dittamondo_, l. iii. cap. 9.

[1226] _Pii II. Comment._ l. i. p. 10.

[1227] Benv. Cellini, l. i. cap. 65.

[1228] _L’Italia Liberata da’ Goti_, canto xiv. It may be questioned whether Trissino himself believed in the possibility of his description, or whether he was not rather romancing. The same doubt is permissible in the case of his probable model, Lucan (book vi.), who represents the Thessalian witch conjuring up a corpse before Sextus Pompejus.

[1229] _Septimo Decretal_, lib. v. tit. xii. It begins: ‘Summis desiderantes affectibus’ &c. I may here remark that a full consideration of the subject has convinced me that there are in this case no grounds for believing in a survival of pagan beliefs. To satisfy ourselves that the imagination of the mendicant friars is solely responsible for this delusion, we have only to study, in the Memoirs of Jacques du Clerc, the so-called trial of the Waldenses of Arras in the year 1459. A century’s prosecutions and persecutions brought the popular imagination into such a state that witchcraft was accepted as a matter of course and reproduced itself naturally.

[1230] Of Alexander VI., Leo X., Hadrian VI.

[1231] Proverbial as the country of witches, e.g. _Orlandino_, i. 12.

[1232] E.g. Bandello, iii. nov. 29, 52. Prato, _Arch. Stor._ iii. 409. Bursellis, _Ann. Bon._ in Murat. xxiii. col. 897, mentions the condemnation of a prior in 1468, who kept a ghostly brothel: ‘cives Bononienses coire faciebat cum dæmonibus in specie puellarum.’ He offered sacrifices to the dæmons. See for a parallel case, Procop. _Hist. Arcana_, c. 12, where a real brothel is frequented by a dæmon, who turns the other visitors out of doors. The Galateo (p. 116) confirms the existence of the belief in witches: ‘volare per longinquas regiones, choreas per paludes dicere et dæmonibus cnogredi, ingredi et egredi per clausa ostia et foramina.’

[1233] For the loathsome apparatus of the witches’ kitchens, see _Maccaroneide_, Phant. xvi. xxi., where the whole procedure is described.

[1234] In the _Ragionamento del Zoppino_. He is of opinion that the courtesans learn their arts from certain Jewish women, who are in possession of ‘malie.’ The following passage is very remarkable. Bembo says in the life of Guidobaldo (_Opera_, i. 614): ‘Guid. constat sive corporis et naturae vitio, seu quod vulgo creditum est, actibus magicis ab Octaviano patruo propter regni cupiditatem impeditum, quarum omnino ille artium expeditissimus habebatur, nulla cum femina coire unquam in tota vita potuisse, nec unquam fuisse ad rem uxoriam idoneum.’

[1235] Varchi, _Stor. Fior._ ii. p. 153.

[1236] Curious information is given by Landi, in the _Commentario_, fol. 36 a and 37 _a_, about two magicians, a Sicilian and a Jew; we read of magical mirrors, of a death’s-head speaking, and of birds stopped short in their flight.

[1237] Stress is laid on this reservation. Corn. Agrippa, _De Occulta Philosophia_, cap. 39.

[1238] _Septimo Decretal_, l. c.

[1239] _Zodiacus Vitae_, xv. 363-549, comp. x. 393 sqq.

[1240] _Ibid._ ix. 291 sqq.

[1241] _Ibid._ x. 770 sqq.

[1242] The mythical type of the magician among the poets of the time was Malagigi. Speaking of him, Pulci (_Morgante_, canto xxiv. 106 sqq.) gives his theoretical view of the limits of dæmonic and magic influence. It is hard to say how far he was in earnest. Comp. canto xxi.

[1243] Polydorus Virgilius was an Italian by birth, but his work _De Prodigiis_ treats chiefly of superstition in England, where his life was passed. Speaking of the prescience of the dæmons, he makes a curious reference to the sack of Rome in 1527.

[1244] Yet murder is hardly ever the end, and never, perhaps, the means. A monster like Gilles de Retz (about 1440) who sacrificed more than 100 children to the dæmons has scarcely a distant counterpart in Italy.

[1245] See the treatise of Roth ‘Ueber den Zauberer Virgilius’ in Pfeiffer’s _Germania_, iv., and Comparetti’s _Virgil in the Middle Ages_. That Virgil began to take the place of the older Telestæ may be explained partly by the fact that the frequent visits made to his grave even in the time of the Empire struck the popular imagination.

[1246] Uberti, _Dittamondo_, 1. iii. cap. 4.

[1247] For what follows, see Gio. Villani, i. 42, 60, ii. 1, iii. v. 38, xi. He himself does not believe such godless superstitions. Comp. Dante, _Inferno_ xiii. 146.

[1248] According to a fragment given in Baluz. Miscell ix. 119, the Perugians had a quarrel in ancient times with the Ravennates, ‘et militem marmoreum qui juxta Ravennam se continue volvebat ad solem usurpaverunt et ad eorum civitatem virtuosissime transtulerunt.’

[1249] The local belief on the matter is given in _Annal. Forolivens_. Murat. xxii. col. 207, 238; more fully in Fil. Villani, _Vite_, p 33.

[1250] Platina, _Vitae Pontiff._ p. 320: ‘Veteres potius hac in re quam Petrum, Anacletum, et Linum imitatus.’

[1251] Which it is easy to recognise e.g. in Sugerius, _De Consecratione Ecclesiae_ (Duchesne, _Scriptores_, iv. 355) and in _Chron. Petershusanum_, i. 13 and 16.

[1252] Comp. the _Calandra_ of Bibiena.

[1253] Bandello, iii. nov. 52. Fr. Filelfo (_Epist. Venet._ lib. 34, fol. 240 sqq.) attacks nercromancy fiercely. He is tolerably free from superstition (_Sat._ iv. 4) but believes in the ‘mali effectus,’ of a comet (_Epist._ fol. 246 _b_).

[1254] Bandello, iii. 29. The magician exacts a promise of secrecy strengthened by solemn oaths, in this case by an oath at the high altar of S. Petronio at Bologna, at a time when no one else was in the church. There is a good deal of magic in the _Maccaroneide_, Phant. xviii.

[1255] Benv. Cellini, i. cap. 64.

[1256] Vasari, viii. 143, _Vita di Andrea da Fiesole_. It was Silvio Cosini, who also ‘went after magical formulæ and other follies.’

[1257] Uberti, _Dittamondo_, iii. cap. 1. In the March of Ancona he visits Scariotto, the supposed birthplace of Judas, and observes: ‘I must not here pass over Mount Pilatus, with its lake, where throughout the summer the guards are changed regularly. For he who understands magic comes up hither to have his books consecrated, whereupon, as the people of the place say, a great storm arises.’ (The consecration of books, as has been remarked, p. 527, is a special ceremony, distinct from the rest.) In the sixteenth century the ascent of Pilatus near Luzern was forbidden ‘by lib und guot,’ as Diebold Schilling records. It was believed that a ghost lay in the lake on the mountain, which was the spirit of Pilate. When people ascended the mountain or threw anything into the lake, fearful storms sprang up.

[1258] _De Obsedione Tiphernatium_, 1474 (Rer. Ital. Scrippt. ex Florent. codicibus, tom. ii.).

[1259] This superstition, which was widely spread among the soldiery (about 1520), is ridiculed by Limerno Pitocco, in the _Orlandino_, v. 60.

[1260] Paul. Jov. _Elog. Lit._ p. 106, sub voce ‘Cocles.’

[1261] It is the enthusiastic collector of portraits who is here speaking.

[1262] From the stars, since Gauricus did not know physiognomy. For his own fate he had to refer to the prophecies of Cocle, since his father had omitted to draw his horoscope.

[1263] Paul. Jov. l. c. p. 100 sqq. s. v. Tibertus.

[1264] The most essential facts as to these side-branches of divination, are given by Corn. Agrippa, _De Occulta Philosophia_, cap. 57.

[1265] Libri, _Hist. des Sciences Mathém._ ii. 122.

[1266] ‘Novi nihil narro, mos est publicus’ (_Remed. Utr. Fort._ p. 93), one of the lively passages of this book, written ‘ab irato.’

[1267] Chief passage in Trithem. _Ann. Hirsaug._ ii. 286 sqq.

[1268] ‘Neque enim desunt,’ Paul. Jov. _Elog. Lit._ p. 150, s. v. ‘Pomp, Gauricus;’ comp. ibid. p. 130, s. v. Aurel. Augurellus, _Maccaroneide_. Phant. xii.

[1269] In writing a history of Italian unbelief it would be necessary to refer to the so-called Averrhoism, which was prevalent in Italy and especially in Venice, about the middle of the fourteenth century. It was opposed by Boccaccio and Petrarch in various letters, and by the latter in his work: _De Sui Ipsius et Aliorum Ignorantia_. Although Petrarch’s opposition may have been increased by misunderstanding and exaggeration, he was nevertheless fully convinced that the Averrhoists ridiculed and rejected the Christian religion.

[1270] Ariosto, _Sonetto_, 34: ‘Non credere sopra il tetto.’ The poet uses the words of an official who had decided against him in a matter of property.

[1271] We may here again refer to Gemisthos Plethon, whose disregard of Christianity had an important influence on the Italians, and particularly on the Florentines of that period.

[1272] _Narrazione del Caso del Boscoli, Arch. Stor._ i. 273 sqq. The standing phrase was ‘non aver fede;’ comp. Vasari, vii. 122, _Vita di Piero di Cosimo_.

[1273] Jovian. Pontan. _Charon_, _Opp._ ii. 1128-1195.

[1274] _Faustini Terdocei Triumphus Stultitiae_, l. ii.

[1275] E.g. Borbone Morosini about 1460; comp. Sansovino, _Venezia_ l. xiii. p. 243. He wrote ‘de immortalite animæ ad mentem Aristotelis.’ Pomponius Lætus, as a means of effecting his release from prison, pointed to the fact that he had written an epistle on the immortality of the soul. See the remarkable defence in Gregorovius, vii. 580 sqq. See on the other hand Pulci’s ridicule of this belief in a sonnet, quoted by Galeotti, _Arch. Stor. Ital._ n. s. ix. 49 sqq.

[1276] _Vespas. Fiorent._ p. 260.

[1277] _Orationes Philelphi_, fol. 8.

[1278] _Septimo Decretal._ lib. v. tit. iii. cap. 8.

[1279] Ariosto, _Orlando_, vii. 61. Ridiculed in _Orlandino_, iv. 67, 68. Cariteo, a member of the Neapolitan Academy of Pontanus, uses the idea of the pre-existence of the soul in order to glorify the House of Aragon. Roscoe, _Leone X._ ed. Bossi, ii. 288.

[1280] Orelli, ad Cic. _De Republ._ l. vi. Comp. Lucan, _Pharsalia_, at the beginning.

[1281] Petrarca, _Epp. Fam._ iv. 3, iv. 6.

[1282] Fil. Villani, _Vite_, p. 15. This remarkable passage is as follows: ‘Che agli uomini fortissimi poichè hanno vinto le mostruose fatiche della terra, debitamente sieno date le stelle.’

[1283] _Inferno_, iv. 24 sqq. Comp. _Purgatorio_, vii. 28, xxii. 100.

[1284] This pagan heaven is referred to in the epitaph on the artist Niccolò dell’Arca:

‘Nunc te Praxiteles, Phidias, Polycletus adora
Miranturque tuas, o Nicolae, manus.’

In Bursellis, _Ann. Bonon._ Murat. xxiii. col. 912.

[1285] In his late work _Actius_.

[1286] Cardanus, _De Propria Vita_, cap. 13: ‘Non pœnitere ullius rei quam voluntarie effecerim, etiam quæ male cessisset;’ else I should be of all men the most miserable.

[1287] _Discorsi_, ii. cap. 2.

[1288] _Del Governo della Famiglia_, p. 114.

[1289] Comp. the short ode of M. Antonio Flaminio in the _Coryciana_ (see p. 269):

Dii quibus tam Corycius venusta
Signa, tam dives posuit sacellum,
Ulla si vestros animos piorum
Gratia tangit,

Vos jocos risusque senis faceti
Sospites servate diu; senectam
Vos date et semper viridem et Falerno
Usque madentem.

At simul longo satiatus ævo
Liquerit terras, dapibus Deorum
Lætus intersit, potiore mutans
Nectare Bacchum.

[1290] Firenzuola, _Opere_, iv. p. 147 sqq.

[1291] Nic. Valori, _Vita di Lorenzo_, _passim_. For the advice to his son Cardinal Giovanni, see Fabroni, _Laurentius_, adnot. 178, and the appendices to Roscoe’s _Leo X._

[1292] _Jo. Pici Vita_, auct. Jo. Franc. Pico. For his ‘Deprecatio ad Deum,’ see _Deliciae Poetarum Italorum_.

[1293] _Orazione_, Roscoe, _Leone X._ ed. Bossi viii. 120 (Magno Dio per la cui costante legge); hymn (oda il sacro inno tutta la natura) in Fabroni,’ _Laur._ adnot. 9; _L’Altercazione_, in the _Poesie di Lor. Magn._ i. 265. The other poems here named are quoted in the same collection.

[1294] If Pulci in his _Morgante_ is anywhere in earnest with religion, he is so in canto xvi. str. 6. This deistic utterance of the fair pagan Antea is perhaps the plainest expression of the mode of thought prevalent in Lorenzo’s circle, to which tone the words of the dæmon Astarotte (quoted above p. 494) form in a certain sense the complement.

Typographical errors corrected by the etext transcriber:

belonged orginally to Florentine=> belonged originally to Florentine {pg 204}

the Citadal of Milan=> the Citadel of Milan {pg 38}

nature of Lndovico Moro=> nature of Ludovico Moro {pg 43}

Die Kriegskunt als Kunst=> Die Kriegskunst als Kunst {pg 98 fn 210}

to to take any interest=> to take any interest {pg 101}

of its vasals, the legitimate=> of its vassals, the legitimate {pg 125}

do so by imfamous deeds=> do so by infamous deeds {pg 152}

forged chroncle of Ricardo Malespini=> forged chronicle of Ricardo Malespini {pg 182 fn 420}

fight its way amongt he heathen=> fight its way among the heathen {pg 206}

to the annoyance of to Petrarch=> to the annoyance of Petrarch {pg 208}

was familar with the writings=> was familiar with the writings {pg 227}

now altogether lose it supremacy=> now altogether lose its supremacy {pg 255 fn 594}

The plays of Platus and Terence=> The plays of Plautus and Terence {pg 242}

and minged with the general mourning=> and mingled with the general mourning {pg 296}

compelled them for awhile to see=> compelled them for a while to see {pg 298}

I go for awhile=> I go for a while {pg 336}

Jo. Pici oratio de hominis dignatate=> Jo. Pici oratio de hominis dignitate {pg 354 fn 805}

he gives us a humorout description=> he gives us a humorous description {pg 387}

Cronaco di Perugia, Arch. Stor.=> Cronaca di Perugia, Arch. Stor. {pg 413 fn 934}

eyes of Delio and Atellano=> eyes of Delio and Attelano {pg 444}

Guilia Gonzaga, 385;=> Giulia Gonzaga, 385; {pg 552}

futherers of, 217-229.=> furtherers of, 217-229. {pg 554}

Illigitimacy, indifference to, 21, 22.=> Illegitimacy, indifference to, 21, 22. {pg 554}